Chapter Text
Jamie Fraser, 1933
No one ever expected that Claire would become my friend.
My sister was the far more obvious choice — the lasses were of an age, and so similar in temperament that the adults immediately remarked on it. That very first mention sent me wheeling in a swift retreat; one Jenny Fraser in the world was more than enough for me. Thankfully, it sounded like this “endearingly peculiar” archaeology professor my father had encountered was only here for a short while, digging up some dilapidated ruins down the road, and then he and his niece would be on their merry way.
At first, the two girls got on just as expected, both of them eager for female companionship. Claire was a fine equestrienne, so she and Jenny spent their mornings on horseback, exploring the grounds and picnicking by the millpond. My best mate Ian and I kept an eye on them — not spying, of course, just gathering intel. It wasn’t as if they were saying anything of interest to begin with, just making goo-goo eyes over Humphrey Bogart and Bing Crosby and the like. Naturally, we had our fun mocking them for it — popping up from our hiding spot along the bank to run our hands over our torsos, one of us wailing “OH HUMPHREY, YE GORGEOUS HUNK OF A MAN!” while the other made exaggerated kissing noises — and their rage was so delightfully explosive that it was worth every stall we had to muck that evening as punishment.
We hadn’t much opportunity for a return engagement of the Ian and Jamie Comedy Troupe, however, before our source material suddenly and unexpectedly ran dry. Claire didn’t come back the next morning, nor did Jenny go to the dig site to seek her out. Fully suspecting that we had been the reason for the break, I sought out my sister with more than a twinge of guilt.
To my surprise, she brushed it off at once. “It was actually a good thing you two numpties acted the fool out there,” she’d told me with a haughty tip of her chin. “Dinna ken how long it would’ve taken to unmask her otherwise, and no good Christian lass should be keepin’ company wi’ the likes of her.”
“How do ye mean?” I’d asked, but she pretended not to hear.
Of course, about the worst thing one might say to deter a laddie’s interest is to tell him he oughtn’t pursue it. I wanted to know what Claire had said to scandalize my sister’s good Catholic sensibilities, and that seed of curiosity, once sown within me, grew like a weed until I was fully ensnared in its chokehold.
And so, later that same afternoon, I found an excuse to take my bike down the dirt path past the ruins her uncle was excavating, slowing down to the point that the front wheel tottered as I searched for a curly brown head amidst the rubble and canvas tents.
“You make a terrible spy,” chided an English voice just to my left. I barely had time to gasp before my bike toppled to the ground with a mortifying clang, the spiked metal pedal ripping painfully into my shin as I tried to extract my gangly-limbed body from the frame.
“Cack,” I hissed — not exactly a swear, but not a word for mixed company either. Hopping on one foot, I made for the short stone wall that my erstwhile target had been sitting on, though she was already scrambling up to help me.
“Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ!” Claire’s face had gone as pale as mine was red. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean t—”
“It’s fine,” I grumbled.
“It’s not, you’re bleeding like a stuck pig!” Before I could insist that it was only a scrape, my eyes followed her stooping form to the gash in my shin, already purpling at the edges and pouring enough blood to saturate my knee sock. Her hands fluttered helplessly around the wound, but with nothing handy to staunch it, she looked over her shoulder at her uncle’s dig site and then resolutely back at me.
“You sit right there,” she commanded, “and don’t move. I’ll fetch the first aid kit and be right back.”
“Dinna fash yerself,” I called halfheartedly, knowing it was futile. “It’s no’ that bad.”
“Sit!” she hissed, jabbing a finger at me as she retreated at a jog.
Da was right about one thing: she was just as bossy as Jenny, and just as stubborn forbye. But for some reason, I didn’t find her demands particularly galling the way I did my sister’s — in fact, I was almost… pleased by the way she fretted over me, the way her eyes glinted gold in the sunlight when she turned to check that I was obeying.
It wasn’t so bad at all, being ordered about by her.
As promised, she returned momentarily with a green metal case in hand and a determined furrow between her brows. “I was going to have Uncle Lamb take a look at this,” she said, “but he’s up to his elbows in muck at the moment, so it’ll have to be me.”
As she unlatched and opened the green kit, I eyed the various instruments inside with mounting nerves. “Ye don’t… Ye’re not going to try to stitch it, are ye?”
She raised her eyebrows. “Well, I could, you know,” she informed me matter-of-factly. “I stitched my uncle’s arm quite proficiently when he sliced it on a scythe in Matmar.” A twitch of a smile touched her mouth at my expression, and she looked back down into the kit. “But no, that won’t be necessary. Just some merthiolate and a bandage is all.”
I watched her fold a piece of gauze and tip the bright red antiseptic into its center with the practiced air of someone who had done so many times. “Do ye mean to be a nurse one day?” I wondered aloud.
Claire fixed her honey-colored eyes on mine briefly before returning to the task at hand. “Might do.”
“You’d be good at it,” I said — then, feeling my cheeks flame, amended awkwardly, “I mean, ye seem to grasp the basics well enough.”
If she noted my blundering at all, she showed no trace of it. “This’ll sting,” she warned in the second before she pressed the red-drenched gauze to my leg. Christ, and she wasn’t kidding — I gritted in a breath through my teeth, but thankfully managed not to make any embarrassing sounds. Claire’s grim stare was locked on the gash as she dabbed methodically around its edges, then once or twice at its raw red center. I jerked once, involuntarily, and she grabbed hold of my calf in a firm hand. “Try to hold still,” she instructed, and tightened her lips in acknowledgment of my whispered sorry.
“You’re doing very well,” she told me with uncharacteristic gentleness, and I felt a strange, pleasant white-gold tingling in my chest. “Almost finished now.” Any sensation of pain completely abated in the wake of the fireflies she’d set alight in me, and I could only watch, stupefied, as she carefully wrapped my leg in gauze and tied the end in a knot, then put away her instruments with all the precision of a field surgeon.
I could have walked for miles in that state — kicked up my heels like a wee goat, for that matter. But when Claire offered assistance to help me get back home, I made sure to stagger a bit even as I assured her I could manage, so that she rolled her eyes and wrapped an arm snug about my waist.
“Come on—” She cut off abruptly, glancing over at my face. “I’m sorry, I’ve just realized I don’t actually know which brother you are. Are you Willie or—?”
“James,” I said immediately, then cleared my throat and said in a voice that I prayed sounded as mature as I was aiming for, “James Alexander Malcolm Mackenzie Fraser, at your service, miss.”
Her lips curved in the bonniest smirk I’d ever seen in my life. “Claire Elizabeth Beauchamp,” she returned, and hitched my arm higher over her shoulder as we set off toward home. “And might I point out that I’m currently the one at your service, if you hadn’t noticed.”
In that moment, I no longer cared if she was the worst sort of heathen on earth; I knew beyond a doubt that my sister was a damned fool for relinquishing Claire as a friend. It was a mantle I was more than happy to take up myself… complicated only slightly by the fact that I was now hopelessly and irrevocably in love with her.