#i haven't posted a full outlander fic in over two years 💀

[walkinginland]

when my time comes around

five times Jamie Fraser nearly dies, and one time he does canon-compliant 5+1 for Outlander part of my hozier song fics series; this one's based around "Work Song" aka the most JamieClaire song ever written.

one

Boys workin' on empty

Is that the kinda way to face the burning heat?

Jamie Fraser is almost twenty years old the first time he truly comes near to death. Now, there had been no shortage of foolish boyhood accidents, and the illness that took his brother from him had not left him unscathed. But he is almost twenty years old, barely more than a child, the first time that he stares into that darkness, and feels it staring back.

The last few days have been a blur interspersed with sharp moments of startling, scarring clarity. Anger and shame and hurt and fear. He can’t comprehend how he had gone from pitching hay in Lallybroch’s fields to laying in a prison cell with his back flayed open and a burning infection creeping up his spine and into his limbs.

The fort physician has been kind, at least. Had let him cry, had set his hand gently on his shoulder, and done what little he could for Jamie’s shredded back. He had offered water and a bit of bread, said that it was important for him to keep his strength up. Jamie had taken some water, shook his head at the bread. He can’t imagine holding anything in his stomach when his whole body feels so hollow, carved out as cleanly as a hunted animal.

The physician’s best hadn’t been enough to prevent infection or erase the memory of the last time he saw his sister’s face, but it was something. He had handed him a worn out book, a worn-thin Bible with the smudged ink of fear-dampened hands.

“Here you are, lad. This belonged to another prisoner, but I reckon he knows the truth of it now better than any of us here do. Mayhap it’ll bring you some comfort.”

Jamie lays on his stomach on a creaking cot in a prison cell, trying to calm his spinning mind any way he can. He blinks at the tiny print of the Bible from an awkward angle, head tilted to the side and book resting on the edge of the cot, and tries to turn a page without pulling the muscles in his back. He had had no idea that the tips of his fingers were connected to the back of his shoulder in such an intimate way, but he is learning it now with every twitch in his hand.

He's not sure he is actually reading any of the words in front of him, couldn’t tell you which book or passage he has open before him. He could do without the chastisement of Saint Paul. Perhaps one of the Prophets, calling out doom and hope in the same breath. It feels fitting, somehow.

He steers far away from the whipping of Christ. Some things feel far different from a prison cell than they do in the pews in kirk of a Sunday.

His fingertips feel numb and the words in front of him blur, from tears or exhaustion or just the poor typeset and smeared lettering, he can’t tell.

The fingerprints and tear tracks that lived on these pages long before he opened them won’t judge him for the drops that find their way out of the corners of his eyes.

keep reading on ao3