Work Text:
When mama told her the story of how she had lain in L’Hôpital des Agnes, she hadn’t believed it. She’d listened, angrily, as her mother spun stories of fairy hills, Scottish rebellions and a sister named Faith. Then after Brianna watched Gillian Edgars disappear through the stones, she begged her mother for more, anything she could get about her father, James Alexander Malcolm MacKenzie Fraser, and Claire was happy to tell it. Once the watershed opened, Bree could see the relief her mother felt about sharing after so many years of keeping it closed off to everyone including herself. But Claire would rarely talk about Faith.
So when she settled everything and made her plans to follow her mother in the past, she knew it would include a stop in Paris.
L’Hôpital des Agnes was still there. Although no longer a functioning hospital, the nuns of the Couvent des Agnes still looked after the weak and weary of Paris. Standing at the front gates, the modern sounds of cars and motorcycles disappeared and Brianna found herself seeing the chateau as her mother must have, the sounds of hoof beats and carriages behind her.
Brianna didn’t know how long she stood there before the bell clanged, startling her. The nuns must have been used to tourists gawking because no one stopped to question her being there.
“Excusez-moi ma soeur, pourriez-vous m’aider?” she asked a sister who came near the gates carrying a large basket, hoping she remembered what little of French she took in school. Surprisingly, the words came easier than she expected. Jamie, her father, she thought, had a knack for languages, her mother said. The sister in question turned.
“Oui mademoiselle, comment puis-je être utile?” Brianna struggled to find the words to ask, not because of the language barrier, but because of what she was there to do, to see. Maybe she still doubted her mother even after watching her disappear through the stones, even after feeling the pull herself.
“Perhaps English would be better for you?” the sister observed. Bree exhaled a long breath before answering.
“I’m looking for a grave. Family legend says she was buried here,” she began.
“Oui, we have many who come seeking solace with their departed loved ones. Can you tell me her name?”
“Faith. Faith Fraser. She was… stillborn,” she paused, “I’m descended from her sister.” Close enough, she thought. The nun thought for a moment before speaking again, her accent heavy on her words.
“Do you know when?”
It was a small grave marker, the edges worn away by the 200 years that had passed. Despite the wear, she could still make out the letters, Faith Fraser d. 1744. Her big sister. 1744. Her sister was born two hundred and four years before she was. But the grave was here, just as her mother described. A simple cross above her name.
It had taken about 15 minutes to find the grave, near the stone wall of the cemetery and under a flowering cherry tree, pink blossoms floating on the breeze and landing around the tiny headstone.
Bree stood at graves before. She visited her father, Frank, before she left Boston. She hoped he understood why she was going. She sat with him, telling him how lost she felt since finding out about Jamie, how everything she thought she knew about herself was no longer true. She was not the daughter of a historian, not a Randall, but a Fraser, a Scottish Highlander clan that had almost been completely wiped out at Culloden.
She told him how she needed to understand what her mother said about how she loved Jamie. For Brianna’s whole life, she thought her mother cold and unfeeling and then to find when Claire spoke about Jamie and the past, she lit up; a great light of love and warmth. Bree could see the love she felt for him all those years ago was still very much alive and burning brightly. She wanted to know who her mother really was. Bree hoped he understood she still loved him, still missed him, but she had to go.
Now, standing at the grave of her sister, she found herself lost again. Bree waited until Sister Marie-Louise left her before she attempted to speak.
“Hi… Faith,” she began, “I’m Bree… Brianna Ellen Ran… Fraser. Your sister.” After that, the words, and the tears, flowed freely. She recounted the story she heard from their mother, telling Faith all she learned about their father, Jamie Fraser. How, when Claire did speak of Faith, she told of slanted blue cat eyes and soft red hair, the same images she saw when she looked in the mirror.
Then, for just a moment, she saw them together, Faith and Bree, red hair flying as they ran through the fields of Lallybroch, her parents standing arms wrapped around each other watching their girls. The life they were supposed to have. Bree wondered if there would be more children, a brother perhaps with her mother’s dark curls and whiskey-colored eyes, William, she knew he would be named. She wasn’t sure how she knew, but she knew.
Would they have learned about Claire’s life before the stones? Would they have believed in cars, planes, refrigerators? Or would they have lived simply, Laird and Lady Broch Turach, working the land of Lallybroch and teaching their children the same?
For that moment, Bree could see it all so clearly and wanted it with all her heart until the guilt of betraying Frank overwhelmed her and she collapsed in on herself, grieving so many things. And just as suddenly, as if on the breeze itself, she felt it was all ok. Her mother, her father – both Jamie and Frank – and all those who came before her, she could feel their love and it overcame her. Taking a deep breath, she stood, and then a single cherry blossom floated down, landing in her palm. It was all ok.
“I visited her, Mama,” Bree said quietly, “I visited Faith.” Claire turned from the basin where she was filling a teapot.
“She’s… the marker…” her mother breathed.
“Still there, yes. By the wall, just like you said.” Her mother put the pot down and rushed to Bree, gathering her in her arms.
“Oh, Bree,” Claire began, tears welling in her eyes.
“The nuns took good care of her, Mama. Sometime in the last 200 years, a cherry blossom tree was planted and her stone is covered in pink flowers every spring. The grass is clipped and the weeds are pulled, it’s a beautiful place.”
“Faith…?” they heard Jamie gasp in the doorway. Claire nodded through her tears and she went to him. Jamie gathered her in his arms and kissed her hair. When Claire turned back to Bree, despite the tears and grief, Bree could see a shining happiness she had never seen before.
“I’m so glad you met your sister.”
Bree went to both of them and Jamie pulled them both into his arms, “All my beauties.”
“I was wondering…,” Bree began, “You said the nuns named her. What would you have named her?” She could tell the question startled them both.
“We both thought she was a boy,” Claire began, “we never really discussed girl names, did we?” she turned to Jamie.
“We barely discussed boy names,” Jamie replied, then chuckling, “your mother liked Lambert.”
“Uncle Lamb was very important to me!” she scolded.
“Would you have named her Brianna and me something else?” Bree asked.
“No, mo chridhe,” Jamie answered as Claire chuckled. Bree turned to her mother.
“Your father didn’t like your name when I first told it to him, he said it was ‘a terrible name for a lass’,” Claire responded, a glint in her eye.
“Ach Sassenach, I didna ken it,” he answered as he cupped Bree’s face in his large hands, “but clearly I was wrong. Yer name is beautiful just as ye are, a nighean.” She smiled.
“At the stones, before Culloden,” Claire added, “I promised I would name you after your grandfather, Brian, so when you turned out to be a girl, Brianna made sense.”
“You never told me that,” Bree replied, adding, “I’m named for both of my Fraser grandparents?”
“Aye,” Jamie answered simply, raising Claire’s hand and kissing it.
“But you haven’t answered my question,” Bree added.
“Well,” Claire began, “I always liked the name Eleanor and it’s close to Ellen, for your mother. Call her Ellie for short.”
“Ellie,” Jamie said, letting the sounds roll over his tongue, “Aye, she would have been Eleanor Julia – Ellie, but for God’s plan she is our Faith.”