Work Text:
As it often was when he returned, Lallybroch was silent; the bairns now fast asleep. As usual, he could see a faint light shining through the doorway – Jenny doing some chore or another to occupy herself as she waited up for him.
Unusually, she didn’t look up as he walked in. She was writing a letter, and the candlelight caught a glint of wetness on her cheeks. Writing to Ian then. He’d been gone long this time – long enough to miss much of his wife’s pregnancy and his newest son’s birth – and Jenny was sorely worried about him, though she rarely let it show. Christ he knew that feeling all too well.
The sight stirred something in him – a half-forgotten dream, perhaps, for it could not be a memory. It was an image of Claire, exactly as Jenny was now, though her hair was unbound, tumbling around her tear-streaked face, and the light was not that of a candle (where it came from exactly, he could not say, for it was unnaturally steady). The sorrow etched on her face came back to him with great clarity – was it her he was seeing, or just his own grief reflected back at him?
He longed to know that she and the child were safe, as Ian would know that his wife and children were safe. As he dwelt on the dream, a thought came to him that shook him to the core. If they were safe, would Claire want to know the same of him?
He may never know of them, but they could possibly know of him. If he were to write to Claire, was it possible that she would receive it? It was such a small thing, it seemed all too likely that it would be lost in the flow of the years, and she wouldn’t be looking for it. But if there was a chance…
Over the subsequent weeks in his cave, he wrote to her, putting his love to letter as best he could. Yet a small voice reproached him with his own selfishness. He could not deny it, a substantial part of him was writing in the hope that Claire would to find the letter and realize he was alive. That she would then return to him, she and the child, and they would be a family again.
Yet could he leave her with the horrible choice between returning to him despite the danger, and staying in her time, for the safety of their child?
Yes. He had promised her honesty, and as such, he could not keep his survival a secret from her.
What was more, he owed her the choice. He had left her no choice but to return to the future after Culloden, yet now the situation was vastly different. She alone was capable of knowing whether or not she and the bairn could safely return.
The best he could do to protect them was to tell Claire of the hardships of the present, to make sure she knew as much as possible in order to make the best choice for their child. If there was a way that Claire and the child could return, she would find it. If this time was too dangerous for them to return to, then they would endure the separation. His choice was made.
He tucked the letter into the inside breast pocket of his thin coat. It would not leave his person until he found a suitable place for it.
Until then, it would be safe there - they would be safe.
-~-~-
Frank delicately laid the paper down, unable take his eyes off of it. It was so thin he could make out the wood grain of his desk through it - as ghost-like as the man who’d written it, and just as present. He’d felt Fraser lying between them since the moment Claire had returned, though he’d then believed the man had been from the present. And now?
Claire using a historical figure to support her mad story was one thing; it could easily be believed that she’d run off with some man, and then he’d died and she’d gone mad. This, however; a historical figure supporting her story from across the veil of time…
The rational side of him rejected it, but a small, niggling voice becoming louder by the minute argued that the description of her physique and manner were unsettlingly accurate, far too accurate to be a coincidence. And the reference to ‘her time’ was far to clear to be ignored.
The historian in him could not help but be excited. Yet the husband in him seethed, cursing his colleague for sending him the box of post-Uprising prison documents for his research, cursing the young, sentimental Ardsmuir guard who’d taken and saved the letter from the new inmate, and most of all cursing James Fraser for writing it.
A slow, creeping fear chilled him as he contemplated the letter. If Claire were to find this…
She’d come out of the horror of the war bolder and stronger than she’d entered it, but when she’d returned after having been missing for not quite three years, she’d been utterly broken. If she knew Fraser was still alive, he had a nasty suspicion that she would return to him. And if she returned, she would take his darling Brianna with her, destroying their family.
His scholarly nature would not let him destroy the letter – the only proof the Claire’s story was true – but he could not risk her finding it.
He locked it deep in one of his filing cabinets, in the file marked ‘1753’. Claire had never shown any interest in his work, and that hadn’t changed since her reappearance.
It was safe there - they were safe.