#why does my barin want to make my life hard?

[soyhasmcaamp]

Stop! *Smak* don't do that! *Smak* stop being bad! *Smak* *smak* *smak*

when the autism is being an actual mental health problem instead of making me obsess over fictional characters again:

[sapphiresassenach]

A Far Away Infinity

There probably will only be one more chapter and then an epilogue after this! The next update will probably be in another week because its finals and I am swamped. Enjoy and let me know what you think!

Part 1 2 3 4 5

Part 6 // Truth and lies and regrets //

~Five Years Earlier~

Time dragged on in a sluggish fashion after Jamie left. The days distracted her but the nights were lonely and dark as she ached for someone who was now across the world, away from her forever.

In the months he had been away, she had started med school and that filled a small void. It gave her motivation to get up in the morning and not sit in bed and sob for the things that she threw away. But on the weekends, she had to fight the urge to get on the first planes out of Scotland and go in search of the sun-burnt red head in California.

She would pull up the airline site, she would search for times, she would pick her flights and then her curser would hover above the blue button of “book.” And then she would imagine all the infinite possibilities of hitting that blue button, all the things that could change the course of her life.

Would he be happy to see her or mad? Would his face light up when she showed up on his apartment doorstep? Or would it be too late?

In her wildest dreams, he would see her. He would see her and then run to her. Eyes locked and heart pounding, he was running to her and then she would know nothing but warmth and the safety of the embrace of her love.

But the curser still blinked and the blue bottom remained untouched. The laptop closed and she replaced it with a textbook and so another weekend went by with her silenced dream placed silently on the shelf again with other lost things.

 ~Present~

 The small room was cramped and the air was freezing. She had permanent goose bumps, but not all because of the air. Normally, doctors didn’t frighten her, but when one of the new doctors came into to Jamie’s room, she felt herself start to shake a little.

“Well, it looks like Jamie will regain the full function of his hand over time. The ring finger may be stiff though, but we have every reason to belief that he will make a full recovery.”

The breath everyone in the room had been holding released in one collective sigh of relief. Jenny smiled at back at her and Brian smiled for the first time since she had seen him, placing a skinny hand on Jamie’s shoulder.

Jenny had told Jamie that Brian looked terrible because of the stress of Jamie’s accident, not willing to risk his recovery due to the news that their father was dying. She knew Jamie didn’t quite believe it but didn’t want to make Jenny more upset than she was.

“He will need a caretaker for the first few weeks. Someone to help while he recovers. We’d like him in bed for at least another two weeks.”

The room went silence for a beat before Jenny spoke up. “Aye, aye. It won’t be the first time I’ve taken care of ye, brother. And I dare say it won’t be the last.”

Jamie rolled his eyes at Jenny’s look, but glanced at her from the corner of his eye, asking her a silent question. She smiled at him reassuringly, trying her best to comfort him.

 “And I’ll be there, Dr.,” Jenny and Brian both glanced at her declaration. Brian with his ghost eyes and Jenny with a brow drawn up in question.

 The Dr. cleared his throat and nodded while retreating to the door. “Good. Good. It will be helpful to have someone with medical experience there for a bit.” 

He smiled at her before glancing back at Jamie. “You’re lucky to be alive, Mr. Fraser. I suggest you remember that.”

Jamie nodded and looked to her again with something in his eyes that she couldn’t quite identify. “Dinna worry, Dr. I will.”

Jamie was released from the hospital the next day and was under strict instructions not to fly. A part of her heart felt light at the news, he couldn’t be going back to California. At least not for a little while.

The greeting he got at Lallybroch’s door warmed her heart. She hadn’t seen Jenny’s children before, nor how much they loved their beloved uncle.

“Uncle, uncle!”

“No jumping on him, wee Jamie! He’s still healing,” Jenny’s voice ran clear and loud despite the fact that she was out in the yard still, helping bring in the bags. She smiled and hoisted up a bag from the trunk while her phone ran for the second time today. 

She didn’t need to look, she knew it was Frank. He had been trying to contact her and she had tried to be clear. It was over and they both needed to move on. 

A soft tap on her shoulder made her jump out of her thoughts and back into the present.

“Ian!”

 He smiled at her, once of those smiles that could melt you from the inside. He gave her a warm hug and it was the most welcome she had felt in a long while.

“It’s good to see ye, Claire.”

 “You too, Ian. I’ve missed it.”

 He smiled at her and glanced back to where Jenny was trying to prevent her children from smothering their uncle as he walked in the door. “Aye, I suppose ye have.”

A routine developed the next week at Lallybroch as it always does. No matter how strange of circumstances, there always is some constant each day as she had learned over the course of her nomadic life.

She mostly kept to herself as Jamie healed. He slept a great deal, after developing a fever from a minor infection. She checked on him, cared for his hand and back, made sure he took his medications. But when there was no more to do, she walked the fields of Lallybroch, taking in the valleys and hills and the sunsets that she used to watch with Jamie in college.

Nostalgia was powerful and she wanted nothing more than to lay down in the grassy hills and dissolve into the land that she once thought would be her forever home. A place for her and Jamie. Just a place to call home.

She spoke to Jenny a little during the week, but helped her with the little ones, admiring the split between Jenny and Ian. A little part of her felt Jenny was hurt when she stopped visiting, but how could she explain? 

Brian had been avoiding her for the most part, keeping to himself in his study and visiting with Jamie.

So, when he was waiting for her in the living room after she came back from her usual sunset walk, she was intrigued.

 He motioned for her to sit on the sofa across from him, a gesture so like the one he had done that had torn her life apart.

Sighing, she sat as straight as a rod and placed her hands in her lap. He was silent for a long while before clearing his throat.

 “I owe ye an apology, Claire,” his voice was again tired and aged, the deep lines in his face growing stronger as he took a deep breath and finally looked her in the eye for the first time.

 She said nothing. Just waited.

 “I told Jamie in the hospital about what I did,” he wrung his hands in his lap. “I dinna ken if he heard.”

He leaned forward, trying to reach out to her but holding himself back. “You see-

He tried to begin, but the words failed him. She watched him struggle for the right ones, the ones that would erase the past. But there were not enough powerful words in the world to undo time. 

“I kent I was dyin’ then, Claire.”

It was hard not to feel pity for him. He looked a man very much beaten down. By everything. It was hard to stay mad when he was trying to think out the best life for Jamie. Even if it wasn’t the life he had wanted.

“Why did you wait so long to tell everyone?”

He smiled sadly at the fire and shook his head, glancing up at the bedrooms where his children and grandchildren resided.

“I didna want to be a burden. Jenny was starting to have her barins,” his voice got quieter as he shut his eyes, unable to look at her. “I didna want Jamie to come home.” 

“Why? Why was it so important to you, that he left?” The anger in her voice was audible to her and she knew to him, but she had to let him know just an once of the pain he had caused her these last years. 

His head, which was once a full scalp of dark hair, was now streaked heavily with grey, nodded as if to confirm that he knew what he had inflicted on her. 

“You want more for your children. You’ll understand one day. Jamie always said he would run this place happily. He never complained about it and I never gave much thought as to why he shouldn’t, but when I found out about the cancer,” he looked to me pleadingly, tears in his eyes. It took every bit of strength for her not to run over and comfort him. The amount of pain that shown through his eyes was almost too much to bear.

“I wanted more for him than my life. Not that it was bad, I wouldna trade it for the world, but I wanted him to experience…more, ye ken?”

His eye drifted to the wooden globe in the corner. Jamie had told her once it had been passed down for five generations before his father and mother. 

“That’s why I needed him to go so badly, in part to live the life I never saw, and for him to be happy. But now I realize he might have been happier here with ye.”

And with eyes swimming with regret and grief and sadness and all the other dark things, his last words were filled with potent emotion.

“I’m sorry, truly.”

Brian’s words ran through her mind all night as she lay awake in bed, tossing and turning to the tune of the storm outside, echoing her inner turmoil. She forgave him. She had too. That’s the thing about impending death, it makes everything all too final.

 One part of her wanted to tell Jamie the whole truth. To explain to him why she made the choice she did. But how could she?

Pressing her cheek against the cool side of the pillow in her guest bed that Jenny had made up for her, she prayed to the universe for some kind of clarity.

 “My father is sick, ye ken?”

She paused for a moment, setting down this steaming bowl of chicken soup Jenny had made fresh that morning on Jamie’s bedside.

“Yes, I know. Jenny told me.”

But she didn’t know just how much he knew about the sickness. Whether he knew that the time Brian had left was fleeting or whether his diagnosis had been the catalyst for his decision to “suggest” she let him go to California.

“Well, it’s when yer sick, I think, it causes all the regrets ye have to puir out of ye.”

She smiled at his accent as she pulled up a chair next to his bed. It had dulled a little since his move to the states, but here, in his homelands, it was as thick as ever.

“Yes, I’ve seen it happen in patients.”

She reached to touch him but held her hand back before making contact. Their touches had been tentative since they had come back to Lallybroch, both dancing in repetitive circles of light grazes and small squeezes.

“He told me about some of his regrets,” his words were carefully chosen as he reached for her hand. The beam of sunlight from the window illuminated them twined together on the bed sheet. He smiled at this sight and brushed his thumb against the back of her hand. 

“Well, he thought he was telling me while I was asleep, but I heard.”

Her heart skipped a beat.

“How much did you hear?”

“Enough.”

There was a long pause. A pause that neither one could bare but neither seemed to know how to end. So, she turned to the one thing she knew with certainty and went to inspect his injured hand.

His gaze unnerved her as she sat, looking at the area. Finally, he broke the silence.

“I dinna ken everything while I was in the coma, mind ye. I’m no sure what was a dream and what wasn’t.”

He spoke casually, looking down at the blankets Jenny had smothered him with, playing with the end of the hand-knit yarn. The distant sounds of the running farm echoed through the open window as she poked and prodded.

“What are you trying to figure out? I’ll help…no, hold it this way,” she said as she carefully unravel his dressings. 

“Alright….Ouch!... did ye tell me that you were the one who broke all my records freshman year and no Rupert?”

She laughed as she inspected his hand, looking good for the state of it. She had told him a lot while he was unconscious and now was slightly afraid of what he heard. “Yes, that’s true. Sorry.”

He made a “mphm” noise and a wince as she cleansed the wound with rubbing alcohol.

“Did Jenny complained about wind from her curry take out?”

 She laughed again while looking at him, his eyes full of mischief in the sunlight creeping in from the window.

“Can’t confirm the wind, but she did have some curry, I smelt it in that room for two days.”

Jamie smiled at her as he watched her wrap of his hand in clean bandages, squinting in concentration.

“Ye love me,” he said abruptly, watching her face carefully as he spoke, seeing every emotion she tried to show and hide.

“You know I do,” she smiled and looked back down at his hand, trying to play it casual, not knowing what he meant or what he heard.

A finger brought her face back up to look at him as he shook his head slowly.

 “No… ye…ye said ye dinna want me to leave, that ye wanted to marry me and have my children,” he paused, out of breath to find her truth in her glass eyes. “That kind of love, did ye mean it?”

“Yes...yes I did.”

Later, she thought it funny how a single word, a single sound, could alter the whole course of her life. The whole future changed in one millisecond as the sound left her mouth, forever altering the universe in one breath of “yes.”

Continued here