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Claire couldn’t do it.
She knew he was dead and gone; even if she could go back through the stones, Culloden was sure to have been a bloodbath, and everything she had read indicated that she wouldn’t have a home to return to.
But she couldn’t stop looking, couldn’t, as Frank requested, move on. This, after all, wasn’t her home any longer.
His demands that she stop chasing ghosts fell on deaf ears.
“You’re a historian,” she said simply. “Is your job not about honoring the dead?”
One day, he left.
She stayed.
Reverend Wakefield, though torn between supporting the two, understood more than he let on.
And he helped her.
Any book, any document, anything that she could read about Culloden, she did. They worked together, piecing the devastating last day of those brave men together. She wept as they did it, grieving those vibrant, brilliant, lives lost — but she knew it had to be done.
It still wasn’t enough.
So, she decided to tell their story.
With the help of Reverend Wakefield, she compiles a book. Telling the stories of those men — men like Angus, Rupert, even Dougal... most of all her fierce, Red Jamie... who were lost to history. Commemorated by no more than a stone in a Scottish moor.
She wonders then: what else? What can she do?
Sometimes she talks to Jamie, still.
“What would you do if you had more time?”
Sometimes, she swears she can hear his response.
And with the knowledge in her heart that she’s honoring his memory, his brilliance, she strives on.
She raises funds; she expands beyond telling the story in her book. She supports initiatives in honor of the old ways; she advocates for children to be taught the Gàidhlig in schools.
And one November day, when a small, redheaded lass loudly announces her arrival in the world, her name — Brianna Ellen — is a tribute.
And, though Claire’s grasp of the language isn’t perfect, she uses it to soothe her daughter.
And tells her stories of a fierce, gallant Highlander who tried, so hard, to change the world.
And that the Highlander — Da, to Bree — had changed her world.
In her daughter’s eyes, Claire sees Jamie. In her smile, as she sleeps — in so much of her, Claire sees him. Every time.
And still, she wonders... when she meets him again, will she have done enough?
He promised her that he would be waiting for her — even through 200 years of purgatory.
She hopes it’s true.
And one year, on her annual pilgrimage to the Clan Fraser stone at Culloden, a familiar voice makes her turn.
It can’t be.
And for an instant, she isn’t sure if it is.
He looks so, so different. His hair, shorter and in the 50’s style. Modern dress. Looking simultaneously older and younger than he had when she left him.
But his voice, his smile...
It can’t be.
“Oh, excuse me,” Claire says softly, seeing that he’s trying to get past her to the stone. She moved to get out of the way.
“Miss, wait—“ a soft hand on her upper arm, a jolt of electricity.
Her eyes meet his.
“Have I... have I met ye before? Ye look familiar, but I canna place ye.”
She smiles, her eyes filling with tears.
“Perhaps in another life,” she says; he might think it a joke — if only he knew. “I’m Claire.”
A light in his eyes; one she first saw years ago, the first time she healed him.
“Claire,” he breathes.
And they smile at each other. She knows, then.
He kept his promise.
It was only a matter of time.