#Sorcha once more coming in like a marvel

[flowerflamestars]

Effloresce snippet

Buried in hinterlands long abandoned by high fae, shrouded in a magic so thick it had changed the land and stilled the day: what their foremother had called Mist for the fog, an estate large enough for an entire royal court, trapped forever in the same night and day of late harvest season. A lost, cursed, forgotten kingdom. It was as safe a place Lucien could imagine. If it hadn’t been within the boundaries of the Court of Night. “I could make even better wards out of Rhysands bones,” Lucien murmured, curved down to her temple, before pressing a kiss to her soft skin. “But it will feed and house a damned nation, given the chance.” They’d be a nation, too, if they survived long enough. Honeysuckle sweet, smoke stinging dangerous, Lucien breathed in the grounding, perfect scent of her right up until it changed. Gold and bone. Moss and blood. Eyes cracked open, there it was- the crown of Autumn, shining alongside twisting vermillion ribbons in her curling hair, like it had always been and always would be a part of her. “Elain.” She didn’t startle, but the bond burst like a door, Elain responding to Lucien’s panic like it was her own. He didn’t- couldn’t- Lucien simply picked up her hand and molded it, careful not to burn himself, over gilded bone, pollen teeming into the air. She shook her head. Met his gaze with more question that horror. “I didn’t call it.” Fire flared, a quick crackle of crimson light, the single leaf it carried falling on phantom wind directly in front of her. Smoldering, it burned nothing it touched, fire only further illustration to the single word punched through green. RUN A dozen, a hundred, tree fall itself a wrongness in Lucien’s heart, green leaves and red leaves and crunching oak, a forest filling the air, the entire empty hall, piling on benches, covering stone: RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN-

[lady-o-ren]

The Dig 

Part Two (Because I was bullied into this . . .)

//Which can be read (HERE) for easier reading// And Part One (HERE)

In a little rented room above auld Geordie’s pub, Claire Beauchamp stood in nothing but her silk undergarments as she flipped open her weathered suitcase (once belonging to her dear uncle Lamb) she had heaved atop her bed. She rummaged through the contents, blowing at her curls clouding around her face, before pulling out a single dress of pale blue.

It wasn't something she usually packed whenever she went off on a dig but the dress had caught her eye in a department store window in London just before coming to Suffolk. She reasoned one never knew when the occasion might call for her to dress in something other than dirt stained trousers.

And never had she been more relieved by an impulse buy.

Or thankful for a rainy day that halted her excavation.

It was a chance to be with the Scot who thought her more precious than the iron rivets they discovered a few days ago, proof that the burial site they were knee deep in was a ship to honor a fallen king. She would've kissed him on the spot if it weren't for Foster and Pound.

The kiss however did come later.

After her and the lads celebrated with too many pints, she and Fraser went back to Sutton Hoo, slightly swaying with every step beneath the twilight, until their arms found their way around one another. Soon they were laying side by side in the grass and dirt, the air cool on their whiskey flushed cheeks, and she wrapped in his coat. Big and warm and enveloping like himself.

"We may very well be unearthing a legend here ," said Beauchamp, leaning back on her elbows, eyes closed facing the moon.

Fraser grinned.

" Beowulf ?"

She laughed and turned her gaze to him. "Arthur, King of the Britons !"

He laughed along with her, a deep and hearty sound, then joking all aside said  -

"Anglo Saxon, ye think?"

She nodded and rolled to her side, nearly pressing herself against Fraser's chest, heaving from a sharp intake of breath.

"I told you before that something grand and marvelous was buried here . . ."

"Ye did."

Then shyly Fraser said -

"Bha mi a ’bruadar mun bhròn mhòr. . . Remember that bit from my notebook?"

Her eyes softened and her features took on a pretty shade of pink remembering a great deal more of what that book contained.

How each page held a piece of his heart.

And laid a hand over his chest, against that fervent beat.

"Of course I do," she answered back, but frowned a little when Fraser bashfully kept his gaze to the small gap between them where a dandelion bloomed.

"Weel, I wrote it that night after we first met, from a dream I had. Sounds a great deal better in the gaelic though. . ."

Beauchamp raised her hand to cup his cheek, thumbing the fine cut bones beneath his skin, before pressing her soft warm mouth against his lips.

"Tell me," she insisted, when they managed to part and nudged her nose against his.

And so he did, voice low and more than a little breathless.

I dreamt about the mourning.

The deaths of great men. Terrible men. Old and young. Of Kings lost in battle buried beneath us.

They cried out to me and the Earth came to life and twisted her roots around me, dragging me inside her womb. Dark and cold, breathless like a cave.

But I wasn't frightened. I saw lights rushing around me, bright as the twilight sky. The souls that lie ahead. Surrounding us.

They brought me to you.

He shrugged sheepishly then.

Just before she kissed him again. Knowing she'd never want anyone more than she did right then and there amongst the swaying trees and spirits of auld.

This man whose soul spoke to her own.

Too bad a crack of lightning had to ruin the night.

But at least the rain blessed them with a day to themselves in apology.

Taking one last glance in the vanity mirror (that was about as big as her compact) and another quick check that her nails were clean of dirt, Beauchamp left her room and walked down the hallway to Fraser's, knocking softly against his door. When no one answered she pressed her ear curiously to the door hearing voices and knocked again, just a bit more louder, tapping the toe of her slingback  heels against the beaten wooden floor. With still no response (and patience never being a virtue she ever possessed) she flat out turned the knob finding it unlocked.

She poked her head in and found a room even smaller than her own and the source of the voices coming from a small red radio playing an adaption of a film from the windowsill.

- I might have known you were here. I had a feeling just as I hit the floor.

- That was your hat.

- Oh, Susan! Just look at it! Look!

Fraser himself was fast asleep and spread out atop the bed sheets dressed for a date to the cinema with his long arms crossed above his head and his big feet dangling off the edge of his too small bed.

Beauchamp stood watching him for a moment, filled with a sudden tenderness at his sleeping innocence . . . and a bone deep wickedness that gave her an idea. She closed the door quietly behind herself and flipped the lock, grinning as she did so. She then slipped out of her slingback heels and crossed the room in two short strides (the floorboards creaking with the pitch of a mouse beneath her), to carefully lay down beside him.

Fraser turned to her in sleep, a throaty murmur on his lips, and laid a heavy arm around her slim waist, gathering her heart to heart. She sighed happily and reached to caress a curl hanging low at his brow, admiring the color that reminded her of the scorching sunsets in Giza she basked in with her uncle so many years ago. Her fingers then threaded through his thick mane down to where they began to curl at his neck and was rewarded with an unexpected smile. Pure and sweet.

"You're too perfect for words, lad," she whispered against his wide mouth, but before she could seal their lips together his long blonde lashes fluttered open.

Fraser gazed at her sleepily, his smile only growing wider as the word Sorcha was adoringly breathed against her cheeks.

She wanted to ask him what that one meant. It might be her favorite bit of gaelic so far.

But then . . .

"Claire!" Fraser exclaimed, and nearly toppled them both out of the bed if not for Beauchamp clinging to his shoulders, steadying him above her.

"How di' ye - Why are ye -"

Beauchamp giggled loudly at his befuddled face and at his hair sticking up in all directions like a sunflower crown. She coasted her hands up the wide breadth of his shoulders to cup both his scarlet cheeks.

"You're door was unlocked, and you know how cold I easily get . . ." she playfully pouted, and tugged his face closer, enjoying how his skin felt like a glowing hot coal between her hands.

But Fraser pulled away.

"Claire. . ."

She sighed yet kept her amused grin.

"You're not a lad of sixteen, you know. You can have a girl in your room."

"I ken that," he answered back, with a defensive spike in his voice.

Beauchamp ignored his tone letting her hands wander to his chest, the muscles taut beneath his crisp white shirt straining to contain his racing heartbeat.

"We even spent a night under the stars together."

"That was altogether different."

Her eyes flashed with mischief as she toyed with the buttons of his shirt. "How so?"

"For one," Fraser breathed hoarsely, placing a hand over hers lest she get too carried away. "It wasn't all night, the thunder made sure of that, and we mostly were talking anyway."

"Mostly?"

"And two," he said firmly, ears pink. "There wasn't a bed either of us could fall out of."

"No, there wasn't," she agreed, deciding he'd had enough of her teasing (and only because she had never taken anyone seriously enough to go slow). "But you can still keep me warm, Fraser. Virtue intact. I promise."

He arched a ruddy brow, doubtful of the lass with cheeky hands and a red cheshire grin that could lure a man to break every sin. Yet he eased himself beside her anyway and in the only way that worked.

With their legs twined together, nearly flushed against one another.

And his big hand braced along her back, the fabric soft against his callused palm as he smoothed it up and down, feeling the gentle rise of her ribs as she breathed in absolute contentment.

“Better than sitting in the cinema don't you think?” said Beauchamp, as she nuzzled her face to the crook of his neck, warmed by his skin that smelled freshly clean. Yet she found herself missing the scent of a hard day's labor on him.

“Aye, much - wait!” Fraser shifted to his elbow. “We missed the film didn't we?"

Beauchamp, a little annoyed at being jostled, shook her head and tugged at his collar to settle her lad back down.

"No, there's still some time left. Cary Grant just lost his intercostal clavicle bone to a dog named George. . . Or was it a leopard named Baby?"

Fraser stared at her like she'd gone completely daft until he noticed the radio playing in the background and heard the inimitable voices of Grant alongside Katherine Hepburn.

- Now it isn't that I don't like you, Susan, because, after all, in moments of quiet, I'm strangely drawn toward you, but - well, there haven't been any quiet moments.

"Oh,” he chuckled lightly, dropping his head to the side. “I must've fallen asleep listening to Lux Theatre . What I meant was the actual cinema though.”

“I think Judy Garland is merrily singing down that yellow brick road as we speak. But don't be sorry," she said, with a kiss to the hard line of his jaw, before the words could fall from his mouth. "It would've been far too crowded anyway."

“But you got yourself all dressed up," he protested, as his eyes traveled down to where her dress had been rucked up tight over her breasts and waist (and where his hand involuntarily flexed over the winged flare of her hip) before hastily clearing his throat.

"Ye look lovely by the way, mo chridhe. More than lovely actually. . ."

That shy and tender smile of his was her undoing and made her feel light-headed and reckless.

"Either that clever mouth of yours keeps on with the compliments, Fraser, or . . ."

Her voice carried off as her knee glided up between his thighs and her arms clasped around his shoulders so that any thoughts Fraser had of being a gentleman were forgotten in a wanton blaze of heat.

Some time later, with Fraser's cheek pillowed against her breasts, breath hot and seeping through the thin blue fabric thoroughly wrinkled now, he groaned.

"I wish we weren't in a room above a pub that reeks of cigarettes and wee."

She hummed softly, her fingertips stroking the back of his head, twirling around his curls. Admiring their beauty.

"Where should we be then?"

Fraser lifted his gaze to hers, blue eyes glimmering with that undeniable emotion that should've scared her yet it only made her want to claim him forever.

"A woman like you. . ." He smiled. " In a tent somewhere outside the ruins of a temple or in a cave in the Himalayas."

Her chest bounced with sparkling laughter.

"How about when this is all over and our names are the talk of the town, you take me anywhere you please. Preferably with a bed we can both fit in."

It was a tantalizing thought yet Fraser couldn't help but think of Scotland. Of his home Lallybroch. With her hand in his passing through the centuries old stone archway as his lady of Broch Turach.

Someday, maybe. God willing.

"I can think of a place," he murmured, and tightened his hold around her lush frame and pressed a daring kiss of hope above her heart. Felt her shiver beneath his mouth.

- I've just discovered that was the best day I've ever had in my whole life!

- But I was there!

- That's what made it so good!

And together they drifted off listening to the rain and the silly, sappy music.

I can't give you anything but love, baby.

That's the only thing I've plenty of, baby.

Dream awhile, scheme awhile

We're sure to find happiness . . .

//

A/N: There’s a lot of notes so I’ll keep them to ao3. And there’s probably mistakes galore but I needed to post this before cringe settled in and I deleted it, Thank you for reading!

[imagineclaireandjamie]

The Last All-Clear: (6)

Notes from Mod Bonnie

This story is a series of vignettes following the premise: “Imagine if Jamie travelled through the stones, but instead of finding Claire in Boston he found himself having arrived years too early, when the War was still happening and Claire had yet to meet him… What would he do?”

Formatting note: Bolding in Jamie’s letters = underlining

Previously:

(Part 1) September 17, 1942: A Rusty Nail

(Part 2) December 3, 1942: Comb and Glove

(Part 3) 1943: Blood and Whisky

(Part 4) 1943-1944: Gifts and Ends

(Part 5) June, 1944: The Road 

June, 1944: The Ditch   

There, in that darkness with you, love, there was no fear in me. None. There was no worrying about stones, or time, or wars, or consequences. There was only the feel of you in my arms, for the first time in so many years; the feeling of my soul, reaching out to yours, and being accepted in kind. The intimacy of it was a blow and a caress sending me reeling, and everything went silent around us. I held you, stroked your back, cupped your head; felt your heartbeat against mine as ye wept and shook. I held on to you, lass, like I never would let go. Perhaps, I thought, I wouldn’t. 

You didna speak, so violent was the terror and relief within ye, but I myself could scarcely stop the words from tumbling out, incoherent and tear-choked as they were. I had enough sense left to move from language to language—Latin, Greek, Gàidhlig, Hebrew, the ones you wouldna ken, or very little— but I was able to speak my heart aloud to you, and that itself was relief beyond telling.

“You will survive this day, my heart.” 

“You will survive and go on to do so much more than you ever imagined. You’ll be kind and brave and reckless and wild and wonderful. Happy. Free. I promise you.”

“Even the suffering, the horrors, you’ll bear with grace. You’re a fighter. You overcome. I’m so—so very proud to be your husband.” 

Her husband. Lord, that he might be given the grace to be her husband again. He pulled her closer, breathed deep, his hammering heart breaking for the millionth time to hear her own breath calmer, slowing. 

“I miss you, mo Sorcha.” 

“I love you.” 

She couldn’t have known the words, but she gave a little whimpering sigh and pressed her face closer into his chest. He closed his eyes tight and didn’t bother to stifle the sob in his throat. 

“I love you, and no other.” 

“I promise I will find you, wait for you and the bairn, no matter how long it takes.”

“Be brave,” he heard himself saying in English, in his own voice, brushing his lips against her forehead. “Be brave, Claire, and have hope in the joy to come.” 

When the fingers of dawn began to creep into the ditch, you were still in my arms, fast asleep. I hadn’t slept, for I couldn’t bear to look away from your face. I was happy. No matter else might come, I had had that night with you, a night in which you would not have been alone. 

And then, I heard them. 

People shouting above the roar of motors, close at hand. Carefully dislodging himself from Claire, he grabbed the hilt of his knife and eased up to peer over the edge of the ditch. Nothing and no one in sight, but a breeze carried a word or two on the wind: Americans. THE Americans that she’d said had found her and brought her to safety. Only, they weren’t coming closer. They were on the other path, going the wrong direction at the crossroads. 

“Come back,” he muttered, fixing his eye on the distance with all his might as though he could summon them by sheer will. “Come back....come this way....damn you, come back...”

The panic was roaring within him, heightening with every passing second. They weren’t coming. He could get her back to the camp himself, of course, but why had the goddamn memory changed? He had been so relieved, the previous night, to find that things had played out as she’d foretold, but something.... something had gone wrong. Something was different. What had he done to change— 

...

Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ

It was like a blow to the head, but he didn’t have time to stop and marvel. One moment only, he spared, that to kneel over Claire once more, look at her, and kiss her sleeping face. 

“I love you, mo nighean donn.” 

Then he was gone. 

Perhaps you’ll have understood at once, Claire, pieced together the conclusion of the tale long before I myself did. Perhaps, to a person raised with Films and so verra many books about fantastical happenings, it would have occurred to ye sooner. 

But how great was the shock that tore through my own simple mind, not to mention the abject relief, to comprehend the truth....That I perhaps couldna have changed events even had I tried; that things set in the motion of history might be—for better or worse— unstoppable, certain. While it makes my heart ache with regret, thinking that our efforts to stop the rebellion will have been for naught from the outset, in THIS case, love, it is for the better; for better than I could ever have imagined. 

My being alongside you, these years, wasna a divergent path, Claire. My coming through the stones and finding young Claire Randall during the War: that wasna a course of events separate from the ones you knew. I— Danton—was always a part of your story. Even if, perhaps, you had your reasons not to think of or remember him since, he always was there, beginning in 1942. There was never a version of your life in which you did not stitch his arm; in which he did not offer you whisky after that unfortunate operation; in which he did not become your friend in camp. As astounding as it is for my own faculties of comprehension to reconcile, I was always there. Here.

And I was always in that ditch with you, mo nighean donn. Why it is that ye never remembered me; that your lingering, terrifying memory of that night was of being completely alone? That, I shan’t even attempt to comprehend until the day I can ask you of it myself and ken the truth from your own lips; but you weren’t alone. I was always there with ye, holding you through the night

and it was always a ragged, bearded Frenchman that ran after the Americans and told them of two of their countrymen, dead in a German attack, always his word that made them hurry down the adjacent road to see for themselves; always me that made sure you were found. 

“Hey, Bill! Boys, there’s a woman over here!” 

“Alive??” 

“I think so! Ma’am? Ma’am?” 

He hung back at the fringes of the troupe, close enough, only, that he could see all that occurred. If they laid a foul hand on her....

“Ma'am, are you okay?” 

She was awake, and—Oh, love.... Have courage, my heart— as frantic and terrified as when he’d first found her the night before. ‘Helpless.’ ‘Alone.’  

“Ma’am, can you hear me?” the soldier kept saying. “What the hell are you doing down here all alone?”

Jamie’s heart broke to see her curl up with her hands about her head. But this is how it must be, Fraser. This is the morning she remembers, the way she remembers it.  

The soldier was insistent, agitated with concern as he tried to get her to speak. “Ma’am? Ma’am?”

“Cool it, Jimmy,” the other man said, “the poor lady’s been through hell. The English camp ain’t far off—Let’s take her with us and see if that’s where she came from.” 

“Here, ma’am, it’s alright,” the man Jimmy said, more gently. “Put your arms around my neck. We’ve got you now, okay? It’s all over.”

Jamie kept his distance as they trekked back down the forest road; kept far back as they approached camp; stayed hidden in the woods as he watched the Americans waiting outside the fence. The last sight he had of her was her head still bobbing on the American’s shoulder, her hands fisted in his shirt as the Nightwing guards ushered the party in to safety. Then, she was gone. 

He didn’t cry; he didn’t feel the churning of regret and pain that he perhaps would have expected. He took the time only to find that patch of woods through which he’d left camp the night before. His pack was there, just where he’d dropped it. Shouldering it, he cast one more look at the place that held her. 

“Until we meet again, mo chridhe.” 

Will you believe that what I felt as I left, and what I feel now, all these weeks later, is happiness? 

For, as much as the memory of that night’s fears shall haunt me, always, I’m more at peace, today, than I have been these many, many years. For I ken, at last, why it is I was brought to this time. It wasna a mistake; wasna a twisted blow of fate. It was for that very day, to see you safe. 

Had I not been there, had someone not gone to fetch the Americans, help might never have found you. You might well have lain there in that ditch until you were found and shot by the Germans. I’m on my knees thanking the heavens for guiding my footsteps to where they were meant to go. I couldna have known or planned it on my own merits, but yet somehow I was led to where ye needed me; all the way from the stones to France, through all the years and to that very ditch on that very night. 

The relief within me, Claire, at that knowledge, is balm beyond imagining. Call it pride, call it selfishness, but to know that my time near you was not in vain, that there WAS some purpose, some role I was meant to play for my wife’s sake—I’m grateful for it. I’m so very, very grateful. It makes every moment, every year that I otherwise might have deemed ‘lost’, have been worthwhile; precious, even. 

And now, I’m sitting on English soil—sand, rather— James Fraser, again, respectable Scottish stowaway. Something within me knew that it remained my time to be parted from ye, to leave camp, just as I’d planned. If you were to remember my presence there that night, the intimacy, connection, yes, the intimacy of the heart between us in those hours....Even if nothing in the events could be changed....No, far better to allow myself to fade from your presence, before we could have the chance to properly talk about that night, or make amends for the rift that preceded it. 

Sitting here on this beach, looking back across the channel, and even with the knowledge that there remain four years more in this purgatory of waiting,  I am filled with exquisite peace. It will be like claws in my skin, waiting for 1948, agonizing as to whether you too will be sent to the wrong year, but ‘tis a pain that I can bear in the blessed assurance that you will be well until then, and that I’ve done what I was meant to do, for your sake and the bairn’s.  

I will see you soon again. 

C. E. B. Randall

Camp Nightwing, France

1 July 

I will not put to paper what occurred that night on the road; what happened to those innocent men. I never shall. 

But one thing I must write out, else refusing to acknowledge it will drive me mad: 

I passed out alone, in that ditch; I woke up alone. But I dreamed. I dreamed that strong, familiar arms held me throughout the night. I dreamed of my own name, over and over, said with such tenderness. Even more, I dreamed of strange words, words in languages I couldn’t even name, but words that spoke of warmth and care. I dreamed that they were words of love, so deep that I believed them, without knowing what they said; so visceral that when the Airborne men found me, I was still reeling from the sensations awoken in me.

It isn’t like one has any control over dreams, but what I must get out of my mind, confess, even if I later burn this page:  

The arms weren’t Frank’s. Nor did I want them to be.