Chapter Text
The first thing I noticed as I finally regained consciousness was the warmth of the sun on my skin. The weather had been quite poor when we had reached the abandoned cottage at the bottom of Craig na Dun the previous evening... No, the weather had been quite poor when we had reached the cottage 200 years ago. 200 years ago... Two centuries now separated me from my husband, my Jamie. It wasn’t the first time we had been separated since we had wed, there had been the ordeal at Wentworth and his time at the Bastille when we nearly lost Faith, but this time I knew for sure he was gone. My husband was dead. He went back and died on the moors of Culloden after making sure we were safe, back in my own time. Such a selfless act from such an honourable man... I loved him and hated him at the same time. Why couldn’t he be selfish for once? Why had he made me promise to come back to my own time?
“Mama?”
Faith was sitting on the ground, tucked in a Fraser’s plaid, playing with Sawny. Seeing the wooden snake brought back the memory of Jamie’s teary goodbye to our daughter. It had all started the night Dougal had died, the night Jamie had killed him to protect me... Murtagh’s disappearance should have raised my suspicions, but everything was going so fast... Before I could even register anything, Jamie had brought me to the cottage where we had first met and Murtagh had brought our daughter from Lallybroch. That’s when I finally put all the pieces together. Jamie was sending us back to my time, for my sake, for Faith’s sake and for our unborn child. The news of my newfound pregnancy was bittersweet. I should have been ecstatic, but how could I be when my husband was sending us away and planning to die?
“Mama sad?”
I forced a smile before hugging my small daughter, inhaling her sweet scent. The plaid had been Jamie’s and it still smelled like him.
“Come, darling. We have a long walk ahead of us.”
We made quite the duo, walking along the road to Inverness. Faith kept herself occupied by singing French comptines that Fergus taught her. Fergus... My brave little French boy... A wave of guilt invaded me at the thought that he would be all alone...
“Mama, we see Da and Fewgus?”
I couldn’t lie to my daughter and yet I couldn’t tell her the truth either. It would already be hard enough to explain to her about the modern era we were now in, how could I tell her she would never see them again?
“Mama, look! Carriage with no horsy!”
The car slowed down next to us. The man behind the wheel looked at us, probably completely baffled by our appearances.
“Ma’am, are you alright?”
“I... Yes... No... I’m... Could you tell me what year it is?”
He frowned, looking at me from head to toe. “What year, Ma’am?”
I nodded. I had been gone nearly three years, but didn’t know if time ran parallel on each side of the stones. If what Geillis had told me was true, she had come through the stones from 1968 and had clearly arrived to the 18th century earlier than me.
“Well it is 1948, Ma’am. Are you sure you are alright?”
“1948... Tell me, who won the battle?”
“The battle, Ma’am? Which battle?”
“The battle of Culloden? Which side won the battle?”
“The British, of course...”
Then they were all gone... Murtagh, Rupert, Angus, Willie... Jamie...
“My name is Claire Fr... Claire Randall.”
The name felt wrong against my tongue, foreign. For three years I had forgo that name, first by using my maiden name and then by embracing my new husband’s. Who was Claire Randall? To me she was a stranger or at least a former acquaintance. Could I still be Claire Randall after all I’d been through? Could I go back to bearing the same name as the man who had tortured and nearly destroyed my husband’s soul?
“Could you possibly drive us to the hospital in Inverness? My daughter and I need to be seen by a physician and...”
“Of course, Ma’am.”
The ride to town was spent in relative silence, albeit Faith’s sobbing at the awful sound the car was making. To be completely honest the sound irritated me as well and it got even worse once we reached the center of Inverness. I already missed the peace and quiet of pre-Industrial Revolution Scotland.