#within a week he mods it to A) be strong enough to pull the Master Emerald and B) be armed.

[mobbothetrue]

Spotify prompt! Knuckles and tails, an 19 :)

Oh hoho! You managed to land FightSong by EVE (<- YouTube link), a song that by all rights shoulda been #2 (<- I refuse to pay Spotify money).

Hmm…. It’s been a while since I’ve done anything with Super Sonic Speed, but I always did intend to write follow-ups…

.•.•.•.

The city is unbelievably loud. They’re in what Sonic had called a shopping district, and it’s apparently very popular. Knuckles would kind of like to go home, a lot, actually, but Tails is flirting from one shop to another and he doesn’t have it in him to shut the kid down. Sonic is somewhere on the periphery of their little group— he and Tails had bonded, thick as thieves, and Knuckles— well, he tolerated the guy.

Tails gasps like he’s seeing the sun rise for the first time, excited enough that he’s lifting off the ground. Knuckles ambles over, grabs him by the ankle, and pulls him back down. He’s looking at some sort of… thing. Knuckles can’t make heads or tails of it, but it’s definitely saying something to Tails.

Hmm. He is, at least, familiar with the idea of shops. Chao liked to set them up, sometimes, selling fruit or handmade crafts for rings, but Knuckles has no idea if their idea of currency and everyone else’s aligns. Would the shopkeep accept a fruit? Most chao did. It isn’t like rings are a problem, so…

Knuckles turns, seeking out Sonic in the crowd. There he is— stiff as anything, glancing frantically back and forth between Knuckles and some other hedgehog, a pink one. One of his friends, maybe? They look irritated, maybe not. Knuckles steps away from Tails, invites himself into their conversation.

“and you just RAN OFF—“ the hedgehog is shouting. Sonic cracks his mouth open, a faint wheeze escaping.

“Hey,” Knuckles says.

“—do you have ANY IDEA how WORRIED I was—“

This looks like a battle Sonic is better off fighting on his own. Still, Knuckles needs his question answered. “Hey,” he repeats, slightly louder.

“—I mean, I knew you were alright because my cards said so, but—“

“Hey Knuckles,” Sonic manages to crack out, “this is Amy.”

Amy tilts her head at him, and then gives him a sharp, discerning once-over. “Are you one of his other friends?” She asks.

“Yeah, sure,” Knuckles says, and then “do rings work as currency down here?”

She blinks at him, as if this is a weird thing to ask. “Yes?” She says.

“Okay,” Knuckles says, nodding, “try not to scare him too bad.”

Any lingering confusion evaporates, and she whirls around to find Sonic trying to sneak away. “AGAIN!” she shouts, full of conviction, and Knuckles makes his way back to where he left Tails. He isn’t pressed up against the glass anymore, so Knuckles steps into the store. Yeah, there he is. Hovering— literally— over the same display.

Knuckles takes a moment to properly observe, rooting around for the terms Tails would use, in an attempt to ensure he gets the right thing. There’s a looping track, and a few other gadgets on the sides. A switch, one of them looks like, and some barricade, and a few blinking lights. On the track itself is a… sideways cylinder, set on wheels, connected to a few boxes, puffing out smoke— or steam, maybe. Tails is absorbed enough in watching it chug along that he doesn’t even realize Knuckles is standing right next to him. Knuckles’ll just have to make sure he comes up for air, occasionally.

He casts about the rest of the store, vaguely lost. There are a lot of displays, and a lot of colourful boxes. Knuckles picks up one, flips it over, and realizes swiftly he is out of his depth. He brings the box over to Tails, handing it to him. Tails holds onto it for a full few seconds, watching with bated breath as the cylinder switches tracks, before he looks down. His fur all along his spine puffs up, and he turns to look at Knuckles so fast he has to wonder if Sonic hasn’t started to rub off on him in more ways than one. That’s the right box, for sure.

“Really?” Tails asks, voice breathy with excitement, and Knuckles ruffles his fur instinctually.

“‘Course.”

Maybe the shopping district isn’t that bad.

[imagineclaireandjamie]

Flood my Mornings: Climbing

Anon said: This is a prompt for Bonnie & FMM: since BabyBree is becoming quite the strong minded little lady, can we see her get into some antics at the worst possible time?

Notes from Mod Bonnie

This story takes place in an AU in which Jamie travels through the stones two years after Culloden and finds Claire and his child in 1950 Boston.

See all past installments via Bonnie’s Master List

Previous installment:  Vermont (ii)

Fernacre, July, 1951 

“JESUS, lass!” Jamie hissed as he lunged to snatch Bree mid-stride and prevent what would have been a flying leap off the picnic table. He forced himself to exhale before setting her onto her feet and asking, “Why in the name of all that is holy and right do ye turn demon the instant we go out in public?”

The demon giggled. 

“Brianna, hear me, it’s no’ a game, this.” He dropped to a crouch before her, trying to keep his already-worn temper in check. “I mean it. NO climbing up upon things, d’ye hear?” 

“Okayyyy!” she trilled, beaming with joy, already turning on her heel. 

“Wait just there, we’re not—” 

But she was already out of reach, scampering off to join a pack of other children headed toward the play-slides. 

“Stay within the yard!” he called after her. “Heaven BLOODY help me,” he groaned under his breath in Gaelic, getting back to his feet and his conversation. “I’m terribly sorry for that wee hooligan, Tom.” 

“It’s alright, bud,” Tom Harper laughed, handing him back his bottle of terrible American beer. “Kids will be kids, no harm done.”

“Perhaps it’s some great test of parenting, to see how well I cope wi’out Claire to hand....or how poorly, as the case might be.”

It was the annual Fernacre employee summer picnic, or as Bree saw it, a battlefield ripe for the carnage her impish soul apparently craved. Scarce an hour the two of them had been there, and she’d already knocked over a pitcher of Lemonade, bitten another child who had bumped into her, squirted tomato sauce all down her front, and managed to get a lollipop stuck in her hair. This was to say nothing of the tantrum on the car ride about not being able to see the clouds (it being a hot, blue day and there being no clouds), and several outbursts of language he was more than grateful Claire had not been present to overhear. Nine days out of ten, Bree’s heartbreaking sweetness outweighed the net destruction (though there was plenty of the latter in any given day, and no mistake); but there would be a full moon brewing in the sky this evening, certainly, for Brianna Fraser had come out IN FORCE. 

“Really, though, she’ll grow out of it,” Tom said with a veteran’s confidence. “Our Rob was just the same at that age. It’s your first kiddo’s job to put you through the wringer. It’s in their contract and everything!” His wink went suddenly sideways as both brows furrowed over his Sunglasses. “Speaking of which, Claire’s okay, I hope?” 

“Oh, aye, she’s well enough,” Jamie assured him, taking what restorative strength he could from the watery excuse for a draught. “The babe kept her up all through the night, and she didna think she could manage being out the heat, besides.” 

“Don’t blame her one bit.” He wiped sweat from his forehead before adding significantly, “Not long, now, huh?” 

“No,” he grinned back, “not long at all.” 

Earlier that morning

“Will you absolutely hate me if I stay in bed today?”

“Of course not, mo nighean donn,” He tucked the covers more securely around her and then stood, looking around to see what he might bring her. 

“Would it be pressing my good luck to beg you to take the monster with you?”

He kissed her, then Ian. “...Which one?” 

“Oh, I'd happily give you BOTH, if I could!” She rubbed her now-still belly ruefully and winced a bit. “Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ, little one, you have got to give Mummy a BREAK when she’s trying to sleep. We can’t keep having these midnight drill parades!”

A whinnying horse galloped into the room and catapulted herself onto the bed next to Claire. “Mum-ma, you comin’?”

“No, lovey,” Claire said, pulling Bree close into a great, warm hug. “Mummy’s going to stay here and take a nap.” 

“Nappin’ isna FUN!” 

“Oh, it’s LOADS of fun for me! But you and Daddy will go and have a lovely time at the picnic, just the two of you.”

Bree grumbled for a minute, then brightened. “Can’see iffee’s ‘wake? If Beeyin’s ‘wake?”

Claire smiled that warm, sweet smile he loved so well. She pulled up the hem of her nightshirt from under the blankets, patiently letting Bree inspect the whole expanse of her with exuberant pats. 

After a few moments, Bree glowered up and whispered in a confidential yell, “I dinna heer’im.”

“I don’t feel him ei—Oh! There he is!” 

Bree shrieked in delight, dissolving into insane giggles as she poked the heaving mass back to and fro. At such a degree of intensity, it was rather like the game Jamie had seen the Fair where you clubbed the stuffed groundhog with a mallet only to have another pop up on the other side. ‘Clubbed’ indeed, for Claire was obliged to grab Bree’s hands and croon, “Gently, Bree, baby, *gently*...” 

After a long, peaceful while, Claire happened to glance up and catch his expression. She was a canny one, his wife, and she gave him a gimlet eye at once. “And just what are you smirking at like a cat in the cream?”

In truth, he WAS grinning, so widely he must have looked positively deranged. “You. are. SO. BIG.”

“You ARSE,” she laughed, managing to land him a kick in the belly even through the blankets.

“Ye ARE! I mean, LOOK!” He came to sit on the edge of the bed and joined Bree in outlining just how massive she was. “Big as a—a—”

“A HOUSE!” Bree finished helpfully, “or A ‘POTTAMUS!” 

“I do hope wee Ian comes out a fair shade more polite and complimentary than YOU lot,” Claire said, splitting a glare between the pair of them. 

“And just think, you’ve *two weeks more,* forbye.”  

“One and a half, thank you very much,” she corrected primly.

“But let’s just stop and consider.” He raised a significant brow. “Should wee Ian see fit to bide his time…”

“Don't EVEN suggest it.”

“....It could be THREE weeks more...” He was having trouble speaking normally through the bubbling laughter. “....or even FOUR, until—”

“You wish four more weeks upon me, Jamie Fraser, and I will make you wish otherwise.”

Bree turned her coat in a flash. “Don’ wisp that at Mum-ma, Da.” 

“Oh, verra well, if ye say so,” he said, mock-abashed, with a wink at his wife. Glancing at his watch, he groaned and straightened with a yawn. Claire’s tossing and turning in the night from Ian’s acrobatics hadn’t done him any favors, either.  “Alright, a leannan, let’s see to your clothes and get along to the picnic.”

“You really do delight in seeing me as huge as a beached whale, don't you?” Claire asked sardonically as Bree scurried from the room, cheering.

“Aye, I do,” he admitted freely, wrapping both his arms around her and nuzzling his nose against hers. “Truly one of the happiest sights I’ve ever seen.” 

In the cave, he had many a time wondered—longingly—what Claire might look like at the time of her full term; and what he had imagined paled in comparison. She was full and lush in every single inch of her. Hair thick and glossy. Skin softly glowing like sunlight on a flower petal. Whisky eyes seeming to sparkle with the same light, heavy with a soft, sleepy happiness. Claire was absolutely exquisite in this height of her bearing, and he would happily spend all his days glorying in the memory of her, this way. 

“I never imagined...” He bent and laid a kiss on her straining navel, reflecting that spending a fair number of those days in good fun and laughter would *also* be greatly rewarding. “...that anyone could get even bigger wi’ child than JENNY.” 

“Bree!” Claire shouted, swatting him with a pillow as he lunged up to kiss her cheeks and neck ferociously, “tell your Da to take his imagination and shove it up his—”

A crash sounded from the other room, followed by a ‘whoops-eeee’, which, in retrospect, had not boded well for the rest of the day

“MISTER FRASER!!!” 

His head whipped around so fast he heard his neck crack.

She was on the top rung of the fence separating the yard from the adjacent pasture, and he felt his heart stop as she fell from it headfirst. 

The next moments as he sprinted toward her seemed to pass as slowly as in a dream. He could hear shouts and cries behind him, but he didn’t stop for an instant until he was vaulting over the fence and snatching her up off her back. He didn’t remember what words he may have uttered, or in what language, but a few moments later, he was exhaling in great gasps of relief seeing that she was conscious and not injured, just badly scared with the breath knocked out of her. 

Dazed, she began to cry with great long wails that drove away the two mares that had come to investigate the visitor to their pasture. Thank the Lord she hadn’t chosen the next paddock over, where the true brawlers were kept. 

“You’re alright?” he demanded once more as he got back to the right side of the fence, vaguely aware he was speaking in Gaelic. “You’re not hurt?” 

She coughed and gasped for breath, considered, then showed him, lips trembling, a slightly-red patch on the fleshy part of her palm.

He laid a fervent kiss in her hand—silently praising heaven she hadn’t broken the wrist, for all that she was still crying like a banshee—and then could contain himself no longer. 

“What did I say about climbing?” His teeth were gritted tight and his hands were shaking even as they strove to remain gentle. “AND about wandering off??”

“I din’knowww,” she wailed, hearing his tone and trying to hide her face in his chest. 

“Ye DO know.” He pulled her up and made her look at him. “Brianna Ellen, ye must listen to what I say! Don’t ye understand ye could have gotten very badly hurt? Lass, look at me.”

She was sobbing, now, working herself up into hysterics. “C—can—na—”

“Why not?”

“Cause—mad—dit—m—meee—”

He went completely still at that. Closing his eyes, he took a deep, deep breath. 

Help me, Da. 

With gestures and apologetic looks, he shooed the well-meaning onlookers back to their picnic and made for the big oak tree in the opposite corner of the yard. It was well-shaded, and he sat down against the trunk, holding his daughter to his chest as she sobbed against his shoulder. 

Thank God she wasn’t hurt. Thank GOD. 

“Bree, cub?” The walk had calmed him, and he was glad to hear his voice was gentle and soft. “Look at me, aye?” 

After a moment, she glanced timidly up (face red as an apple and covered in liquids of all description) and he smiled at her, stroking her cheek and her hair. “I’m here, a leannan. It’s just me...just Da... I love you.” 

“Love—” she hiccuped through her tears, “—too.” 

He kissed her and held her close for a minute before setting her on his legs facing him and saying gravely, “But ye made me verra afraid today, a chuisle. Ye disobeyed and could have hurt yourself.” 

“I did’nint mean to,” she said, rubbing her eyes.

“Aye, I ken ye didna mean to get hurt,” he said, gently pulling her fists away from her face, “but ye meant to be climbing the fence, even after I told ye not.” 

“...It was fun, though,” she offered with a shrug, voice tremulously defiant.

“Aye, well...” 

Come on, Da.... How would ye have explained this to me?  

A shrill whinny sounded in the distance, then another, and Jamie glanced around to see the two sorrel foals playing together in the south pasture, teasing and prancing about one another.  

He smiled and felt peace whispering through the grasses. Until the day break, and the shadows flee away. 

“Ye ken, when wee Ian is born, Bree, he’s going to grow up fast. Before long, he’ll be as big as you and running about on his own! And you’ll want your wee brother to be safe, aye?” 

She straightened at that, no longer crying. Bairn safety was no small matter, in her book. She nodded. 

“Say there were something like a great, nasty snake crawling about in the grass about to bite your brother on the foot.....Would ye just stand by and let him be hurt?”

Brianna looked up at him in absolute affront. “NO, I’d kill dat snake!”

He very nearly choked, but managed to keep a moderately straight face. Call upon a Fraser, and a Fraser ye shall get, he supposed;  but he cleared his throat and plunged on, determined to make his point. “But what if wee Ian didna understand the beast was dangerous? What if he went running to the snake because he thought it would be fun to play wi’ it?”

“Well...I jus’tell him not.”

“Aye, just so,” he said, “because we have to protect the people we love, d’ye see?” 

“Uh-huh.” She was staring up at him, rapt but not quite understanding. 

“So when I tell ye not to do things like climb the fence, mo chridhe, it’s only to keep ye safe, to keep ye getting hurt because I love you so. And when the bairn comes, it’ll be your job to keep him safe, too.”

She nodded emphatically. “I’ll do him safe, Da, promise.”

“But that means ye have to keep yourself safe, as well. Elder sisters have to be the best at obeying Mam and Da so the smaller bairns ken what’s the right way of things. Can ye do that?” 

“Aye,” she said at once. “I’ll ‘bey.” 

For precisely sixty seconds out of every hour, he predicted. 

“Hear me, though, Bree: the next time ye disobey like ye did today, I shall have to strap ye. I dinna want to do it, not one bit, but it’s how you’ll learn. Are we understood?

“....What’s s-tuh-rap?” 

“Getting smacked hard on the bottom wi’ a belt.” 

“Hard?” she clarified, shocked. 

“Aye, hard enough that it hurts.” 

“But ye said—” She scrunched up her face and gestured with both hands. “NOT do things to KEEP me of getting hurted....”

A Dhia, Da, he laughed silently, how by all the saints did ye raise three—

“JAMIE!!”

His head snapped up and he saw Marian rushing down from the house, beckoning wildly, with a look of—

“Da—ddy—” Bree gasped out from where she bounced against his shoulder. “Why we runnin’?”

His heart was pounding.

“Because your brother has decided he’s going to arrive early.”  

[imagineclaireandjamie]

can we have another FMM scene of jamie really missing lallybroch/his family? the little moment in the supermarket broke my heart!

Flood my Mornings: Stones

Notes from Mod Bonnie:

This story takes place in an AU in which Jamie travels through the stones two years after Culloden and finds Claire and his child in 1950 Boston.

See all past installments via Bonnie’s Master List

Previous installment:  Night Check (Jamie takes a night shift at the stable and gets some visitors)

October, 1950

Claire stirred and came to life as he laid her gently in their bed and tucked the blankets around her. “What time-zt?” she mumbled.

“Just after nine. Lay your head, lass.”

“But–Breen—” She struggled against the palm he’d laid on her head and she managed a half-sitting position, though she could barely open her eyes. “Brianna–”

“Is already abed,” he promised, putting gentle hands on her shoulders and easing her back down.  “Sleep, mo chridhe,” he whispered, pulling the blankets up around her and kissing her cheek. “I’m just going for a walk, aye?”

“Mmmhmm,” she acknowledged sleepily as she relaxed, eyes already closed. “B’safe, love. Take th’ torch?”

“I promise,” he said, turning off the bedside lamp and kissing her once more, lingering with his lips on her temple as he murmured, “I love you.”

“Love…y’too,” she managed from her stupor, giving his hand a squeeze.

Poor lass, he thought as he closed the door and made his way toward the foyer. Claire had had to switch back and forth and back again between day and night shifts for the last week and the irregularity was wreaking havoc on her rest.

The three of them always sat in the living room after dinner, playing, reading, talking, listening to the Radio, and the like. Tonight, Claire had sat down on the sofa with a book whilst he and Brianna played on the floor with cuddly toys, and yet had fallen asleep within the first ten minutes. She needed the sleep and so he was very glad to see her abed early—and he’d wished to go to the wood this evening, in any case. 

Jamie pulled on his hat and coat, and though he could feel the small candles and matchbook in his pocket, he took care to bring the Electric Torch for Claire’s sake. 

Feeling the familiar pang of fear at thought of leaving them, he made his nightly rounds with all the more care: every window, secure; Bree, snoring away in her bed; TelePhone, functioning, ready in case of need; rear garden quiet and still; back door, locked; and, at last, pulling it shut after him, front door locked as well. Laying his hand and forehead against the door, he closed his eyes in earnest prayer:  

“God, shield them….preserve them from violence and harm, in this place and everyplace; on this night and every night.”

Hands in his pockets for warmth, he made his way down the quiet street, over four blocks, and up the knoll that led to the wooded path behind the neighborhood. The air was brisk and cool, whistling betwixt the trees and shaking the browning leaves into their nocturnal susurrus. In the distance, a dog barked. It wasn’t a mountain, but tonight, the wood held the same peace and stillness that had been a balm to his soul all his life; the peace of being amongst living things that chose to remain silent, waiting.

He felt well, this evening; very well.  More than two months’ laboring at Fernacre had brought back his old strength, sapped as it had been by the hunger of the years after Culloden and the months spent seeking Claire. It was a warrior’s body no more, he reflected, but unquestionably strong and muscled, able to do his bidding without the slightest hesitation. Even his senses seemed more acute: though it was an all-but-moonless night due to gathering clouds, he found he had no need of the Torch, able to see clearly the shapes and shadows of the wood; able, even, to find the Fridstool easily in the dark, unmarked a half-mile down from the head of the path.

He squeezed between the hedge of chest-high bushes and stepped into the tiny clearing, hardly bigger than the wee rug in Brianna’s nursery. 

It was just as he had left it the week before. All still. All quiet.

Reverently, he knelt and brushed away the Autumn leaves that had fallen since his last visit.  He placed the new candles atop the layers of wax in the wee glass jars. They lit quickly and gave the place a tiny, warm glow, the barest of oases in the blue darkness. 

Crossing himself, he placed his palm on the largest of the flat, worn stones.

“Hello, Jen.”

They had discovered the small burying ground only by chance some weeks ago, when a gust of wind had blown Claire’s hat off into the overgrowth to the side of the path.

It was naught but a handful of stones laid flat in the ground; but neatly grouped, arranged with care. So far from Boston-proper, and with no visible markers bounding it, it was likely a family plot, Claire had said, not a consecrated cemetery; a simple patch of ground chosen as resting place for loved ones in a New World. 

It had been full daylight when they’d happened upon the place, and even then, it was nearly impossible to read the inscriptions. The names and other words appeared only as blurred scratchings; an S here, a Wm there. 

Nearly all the birth and death years, though, had begun with the same two numbers: 17. 

And it had been that that had brought Jamie to his knees. 

“Riding away from Lallybroch in April,I kent I’d never see them again,” he had said—wept—into Claire’s shoulder a long time later. 

“You did?” 

“Aye…I kent that—whether by the noose or rotting in prison, it—it would be heaven before I saw any of them again….“

They had not spoken much of events that had transpired in Scotland after Claire’s departure. The hurt of Culloden, of Murtagh, of the cave, of all of it, was too real and raw, and Claire hadn’t pressed him for detail. Speaking of it now, he knew the memories caused her physical pain, as they did him.

“And in the months since, I’ve thought of them—missed them—longed to see them—Worrit myself half to death wi’ knowing that they’ll have heard of my disappearance and never know what truly happened— that I’m happy and safe…..But I havena before thought of—thought of them as—”

Dead. 

A hundred years dead or more. 

Jenny. Ian. All the bairns. Wee Fergus. 

“All of them are dead, Claire.” 

“I know….I know…” she’d whispered, her own voice tight as she held him there in the leaves while the grief washed over him. “God, it cuts me like a….Yours is the only true family I’d ever known…and sweet Fergus was…But, darling, they ARE also alive. They did have–WILL have the whole rest of their lives—Good lives!”

But those 17s…17… 

“Are they—already in heaven, d’ye—think?” he managed to choke out. There would be bruises on her skin, later, from how tightly he clung to her.

“I—I don’t—Well, if—” She’d made a sound of pain and frustration, crying. “Damn it! Damn all of this time rubbish! I don’t know…I really don’t, but I think—” 

She’d taken a deep breath that resonated through her limbs into his own body, calming him, somehow. “I think…you have to keep them in your heart as living. Which…” She shuddered. “Maybe that way hurts all the more because… if they’re alive and yet unreachable—” 

She’d squeezed him tighter. “But hold on to that; hold on to them how you knew them, because that’s how they are right now. Just think: they’re at Lallybroch right now, tending the sheep and the kailyard…Mrs. Crook is cooking in the kitchen….The children are playing their games…”

“Ian’s telling daft jokes…” Despite himself, he’d felt his features tighten into a smile against her shoulder. 

She’d pressed her head tight against his. “They’re alive, Jamie…ALIVE….It’s impossible, I know, but they are alive.”

A long time later, as they were picking themselves off the ground, Claire had said softly. “We—we could find them, if you ever wished to.” 

“Find them?” he’d croaked. 

“Look in the records….find out what did—will—happen to them. Perhaps we couldeven— visit Scotland to see their resting places?”

He’d nodded slowly, reeling. 

“Someday. But…not soon.” 

Because they need to be alive. 

They’d come once every week since then, to light candles and say a prayer for their lost family. His wife’s presence was always a comfort; but tonight, alone, he felt truly able to speak his heart to them through these stones, to treat these not as monuments to the dead, but as an open channel to the living. 

Jamie felt not the slightest qualm or doubt over speaking—weeping— to them aloud into the night. Perhaps it was the influence of the twentieth century upon him, with its technologies that made the unfathomable possible every day; perhaps it was simple pigheadedness on his part, a refusal to admit futility; but if travel through the fabric of time had been possible—thrice, no less—then his words could reach the hearts of his family, somehow. Perhaps it would be in the voice of a stranger they met on the road; or in the pages of a book as they read in the study; perhaps simply in the whisper of a thought in their own minds as they drifted toward sleep; but they’d know. 

“Wee Jamie….You good lad. I ken you’re taking good care of Maggie…Kitty…wee Janet and Michael….I miss hearing all your sweet voices….Be brave for them, and listen well to your Mam and Da, aye?”

“Ian, I miss ye, brother….Every day I wish to have ye here by my side….I pray that it was enough—the gold. I tell myself that there was nothing better I could do…that having me nearby was a danger to your family. But I fear; I fear, brother….If I was wrong to go, forgive me….”

“Jenny….I canna tell ye how many times in this new place I learn of some daft way things are done now, and think, ‘how Jenny will laugh when I tell her of it’ and then I remember that I never can tell ye…that you’re behind the veil….I ken you’re strong and you’ll have no real need of me…but Christ, how I miss ye ….And oh, Jen, that you could meet our Brianna. A Fraser, teeth to toenails, this one…Feisty and cantankerous…ready to put up a skelloch the moment things are no’ to her liking…and bonnie and canty and clever….and how she’d love her Auntie Jenny….Keep hope, a piuthar.”

And finally, his voice worn and breaking: 

“If anything is wrong in my being in this new world…it’s that I had to leave you behind, mon fils…. Please…please, dinna ever believe that you’re forgotten to me, a chuisle...“

Jamie felt a lump in his throat as he tried to conjure the memory of the lad’s face. Never forgotten…but all of their faces were more blurred with every passing day. The knowledge of it, that even the vestiges of them would slip away from him, tore at his heart like claws and teeth in the dark.

And yet, Claire’s voice rested on him like a hand on his shoulder: 

They’re alive…hold on to that.

His sorcha with him, now and always, Jamie fixed his heart once more on their boy. 

“Look after them all, aye? You’re the man of the place when Mister Murray canna be….Be strong for me…and live well, son.”

[to be continued/next chapter link to come]

* Fridstool: place of refuge (Referenced in The Scottish Prisoner)

* a piuthar (ga): sister

* mon fils (fr): my son

* a chuisle (ga): ~my heart’s blood (used by Diana to signify ‘child of my heart’)

* sorcha (ga): light (Claire’s name in Gaelic)