Work Text:
Jamie stood in between two rows of large houses, illuminated by bright lights that were posted atop poles evenly spaced along both sides of the street he stood on. A strange street too, made of a black material and bordered by a raised grey ridge on either side – both of which were slowly being covered by the fat snowflakes drifting down from the nighttime sky. For all it was peculiar, he felt immediately peaceful, as though he was supposed to be here.
He turned to a blue house with a brown door, feeling inexplicably drawn to it. Fixated as he was on the house, he almost bumped into a couple walking down the street. He turned to apologize, but they didn’t seem to seem him, nor did they seem to have felt him, continuing down the street as though he were invisible. That sent a chill up his spine, and he increased his pace, eager to be inside, where he ought to be – though he could not have said how he knew this.
Without consciously having opened the door, he found himself inside of the house, walking into a large room where he could hear a soft, familiar voice singing.
“and I’ll take the low road / and I’ll be in Scotland before you,”
He stopped dead in his tracks. Claire. He couldn’t bear to take the final few steps and peak around the edge of the wall, sure that the house would be empty, her voice merely the echo of a bone-deep longing. Yet if he could be here in the odd house, he argued with himself, she too could be here. Heart racing, he rounded the corner.
She was there, all curled up in a large chair, the moonlight illuminating the myriad of colours in her cloud of hair. Her eyes were closed, and despite the dark shadows under her eyes, she looked peaceful. He let out a long-held breath and silently thanked God that she was here – safely through the Stones.
Her arms were curled protectively around a bundle of blankets, held securely in place by her raised knees. His breath caught in his throat. The bairn.
He hurried to Claire’s side. He could not say how, but he felt sure the bairn was a lass, and a perfect one at that. She was delicate as a bird, from the tiny wings of her ears to the minuscule veins he could make out in her eyelids, she looked as though she was made of moonlight and liable to vanish at the lightest touch – yet when he did touch her small hand, the fingers that wrapped around his own finger were solid and strong.
He rested his forehead against Claire’s in silent thanks.
Her golden eyes opened at his touch, wide with shock.
“Jamie?”
She touched his face, lightly touching his face as though to reassure herself that he was truly physically there. Disbelief and hope were plainly displayed on her face, and he knew those same emotions were mirrored on his own.
“Sassenach?” He still couldn’t quite bring himself to believe he was truly home.
A small cry broke their gaze. Though their voices were barely audible, they’d woken the wean – evidently she was a light sleeper, like him.
Claire softly stroked her chest, calming her almost instantly.
“Do you want to hold her?” She asked, already shifting to hand her over.
Jamie nodded, unable to speak.
Claire placed the wriggling bundle in his arms.
The wee lass studied him in awe, as he did the same. He rubbed her back and sang to her the songs his own father had sung to him when he was small.
After some time, her eyelids began to droop. She turned her head into his chest and slowly stilled once more, suddenly heavier as she fell asleep.
Claire rose, and he followed her to what he assumed must be the bairn’s room. Together they lay the lass in her trundle for the night. He noticed that the room was strangely similar to the room wee Maggie and Kitty shared at Lallybroch, but this fact seemed unimportant. He kissed his daughter’s tiny forehead. They would have more time to get acquainted with each other in the morning.
He barely noticed the room they entered next. It seemed blurry, as though he was seeing it through a veil; the detail of walls and furniture unclear and changeable. In contrast, he was aware of every detail of Claire, from the soft curves of her body that he could easily make out through her shift, to the bags under her eyes from long nights up with their daughter. He held her close, tasting the softness of her lips and the silky smoothness of her skin. Her warm herbal scent pulled him down to her, and time stopped in her arms.
Afterwards, he curled himself around her, burying his face deep in her hair.
“Bree does that too, when she’s frightened,” Claire commented softly, one hand lightly running through his own hair.
He held her tighter in an unspoken acknowledgment of her words. Yet in spite of his fear, he felt hope bloom in his chest as he surrendered to the pull of sleep - if some strange fairy stones could pierce the veil of time, then perhaps there were other ways to breach it.
~
The feeling of her hair across his face brought a smile to his lips. He hummed contentedly and wrapped an arm around her, needing to feel the solid warmth of her body against his. Oddly, she was cold, and now smelled dank and musty, like wet earth. Alarmed, his eyes flew open.
A deep despair opened in him at the sight of the sloping walls of the cave that surrounded him, forcing the air from his lungs and leaving him sharply aware of his own solitary heartbeat pounding in his ears.
No. NO. It had been so real. He’d held his daughter, made love to his wife; he couldn’t be back here, not again. But the soft, warm bed of the night before had vanished with the morning sun, and his family with it.
~-.-~
Over and over the dream repeated itself. Sometimes it was snowing again, and bitterly cold. Other times the sweet scents of fall greeted him, the gentle crispness of spring, the warmth of a summer’s night.
Always, he would find Claire, talk to her, love her. He would hold his daughter, laugh with her, read to her. He watched her grow into a smart, loving and strong young woman.
Every time, he let himself hope that it was real. Every time, he woke to the cold walls of the cave, the prison, the stables of Helwater, Balriggan, his room in Edinburgh.
He would hold to the dream for as long as he could – hold Claire and Brianna close – but they would fade as he woke, leaving for his waking hours only the well-worn memories of Claire from the days of their marriage, and the faint feeling that their child had a sweet smile and red hair.
–
Jamie stood in the front hall of the Boston General Hospital, uncomfortable in the unfamiliar clothes that Mrs. Graham had given him after he’d made his way to Inverness from the Stones; a suit, she’d told him, and a very dapper one. A harsh light bounced off of every surface of the polished, white hallway, which smelled sharply of cleanliness, and faintly of sickness. The hospital was a large building, and he had no clue of how where to go, now that he’d found his way here.
He walked over to a large desk to the left of the hospital entrance. Several people wearing identical baggy, green shirts and breeches were working behind it – they would presumably be able to help him.
“Pardon me,” he addressed a young woman, the only person not talking into the strange box he’d learned was called a ‘telephone’. “Do ye happen to ken where I could find a Dr. Randall?”
“Dr. Claire Randall?” asked the woman. He was oddly relieved that she’d been able to hear him.
“Aye, Dr. Claire Randall” he repeated, mentally correcting her last name to Fraser.
“Are you a patient of hers?”
He smiled, “Aye, ye could say so.”
The woman looked at him warily, but sighed flipped through a booklet that seemed to contain a list of doctors, from what Jamie could make out.
“Her office is on the sixth floor, Wing B, Room 68,” said the woman after a moment. “No guaranteeing she’s there, of course.”
“How would I go about getting to room 68 of Wing B on floor 6?” He asked, double-checking the information to make sure he’d correctly understood her queer, flat accent.
“Just take the elevators up to 6, go through the double doors that say ‘Administration’ above them, and there will be a sign to direct you from there.” She replied pointing to a wall of doors a little further down the hallway. Disturbingly, the doors seemed to open to let people enter without their having to even touch them. Even more disquieting was the fact that they emitted a ‘bing’ noise every time they did so.
“Ah, thank ye.” He said to the woman - who was now talking to someone else – and walked over to what he mentally dubbed ‘the magic doors’
The magic doors were all closed when he arrived in front of them, and none had handles. He tried pushing on one. It did not yield. The door to his right ‘bing’ed open, saving him from making a greater fool of himself. Several people stepped out of the the small room they opened onto, and he stepped into it. On one wall there was a long row of knobs with numbers next to them. He hesitantly touched the one next to the ‘6′, and the number lit up. This was entirely too outlandish to be a dream.
That mantra - repeated often since he’d made his way through the stones – calmed him a bit. He’d witnessed any number of incredible things from the time he’d crossed through the Stones to when he’d stepped through the doors to Claire’s hospital, and though it had taken him some time to figure them out (or, really, to just accept them), each reaffirmed the reality of his situation.
After a bit more confusion, and a little help from some decidedly vague signs, he finally found himself outside of Room 68.
A metal plate beside the door announced in neat, printed script that this was the office of Dr. C. Randall, Chief of Surgical Staff. He took a deep breath to steady himself. He was truly here.
His fingers tapped anxiously against his thigh, and he realized distantly that both of his hands were shaking. His nerves were beginning to get the better of him. What if she’d moved on? What if she’d been happy with Randall all this time? She’d loved him before, what if that love had been rekindled after she’d returned? Randall was dead now - Reverend Wakefield had told him so - but what if the love Claire had for him had faded over the many years after she’d been reunited with her first husband? His mind conjured up an image of Claire, happily kissing a man with Jonathan Randall’s face, and he felt the contents of his stomach rise in rebellion.
He stubbornly pushed the image away. He’d considered all of this many times, and he couldn’t turn back now, no matter what. He was here, possibly merely seconds from his wife. He couldn’t turn away now. Best do this quick then.
He ran a hand through his hair - briefly prayed to God that it was truly Claire beyond the door - and opened the door.
The door opened onto a white room, in the center of which was a handsome wooden desk with neatly stacked papers on one side, and a lamp with a framed image beneath it on the other.
Claire stood in front of a large window overlooking the park he’d crossed coming here. She was studying a black and white image of a skeleton. Her hair was somehow tucked into a strange blue bonnet. Odd, he wouldn’t have thought she would ever wear one. Yet another comforting sign, for he would certainly never dream her with a bonnet.
“Is that you, Joe?” She asked, still examining the image of the skeleton. “Did you perchance get Mr. Graham’s results on the way over? I was thinking -”
“It isn’t Joe.”
She froze.
“It’s me. Jamie.”
She stayed still as a statue for a long moment. Her hair was pinned up underneath her cap, the myriad of brown, gold, and silver peeked out of the bottom. He had time to notice that one small curl had broken free of its confines, and then she turned around.
She looked almost exactly as he remembered her; the flawless, smooth skin with small laughter lines around her mouth and eyes – slightly deeper with age – the soft, sensitive mouth, and the whisky eyes warmed him to the bones.
She walked over to him slowly, as though caught in a dream. He reached up, fingers barely grazing her face, still scared, so scared that he would wake. She placed her hand over his, holding him to her, and his vision went black.
He woke with his head cradled in her lap, her hand stroking his hair.
“That bad is it?” She asked, a faint smile touching her lips.
He grinned back at her as a wave of relief washed over him.
“That bad, and worse, Sassenach.”
He was home.