Canon Divergence AU: Faith survived and stayed at Lallybroch when Claire returned through the stones before Culloden. An accidental trip to Craigh Na Dun turns life upside down for the Frasers once again.
Artwork by the wonderful @cantrixgrisea
Chapter 1/ Chapter 2/ Chapter 3/ Chapter 4/ Chapter 5
Jamie couldn’t believe his eyes. Before him stood a man that he had thought a year and half dead. He had witnessed the blow that felled Black Jack Randall on Culloden Moor. But that confidence didn’t extend to stilling the tense set of his shoulders or the fury quickly rising in his blood. Instead, memories of his own pain at Randall’s hand flashed through his mind. Randall’s threats and misuse of Claire.
Belatedly, he noticed that Claire had risen the moment the door opened. She was looking between the two men, her face displaying her distress over the situation.
“Claire, Darling, I came as soon as I could,” the man began in a polished English accent. “Reggie phoned and said our daughter was ill.” When the man looked up and met Jamie’s eye, his jaw dropped.
“You can’t be serious,” he uttered. “This is him, then? The Scottish Barbarian you dallied with… What’s he doing here now after abandoning you for all this time?”
Claire looked down at Jamie, likely observing the way he had begun to shake with rage at the situation at hand. This man couldn’t be allowed to speak to Claire in such a way. She lifted Brianna from his arms and walked her to the buggy, placing her back in gently.
The man’s eyes followed the bairn in Claire’s arms with a strained expression. For a moment, he looked hopeful in the midst of his anger.
“Frank, we need to talk,” she said. She pulled him out the door by the sleeve. Before she shut it behind them, she turned back. Jamie tried to catch her eye, but she looked only at Faith. “Stay here, Baby.”
Frank followed Claire’s gaze, eyes widening in surprise and recognition at the sight of Faith.
Jamie deflated as the door closed firmly. Frank. The man indirectly descended from Jack Randall. The man Claire had intervened to save, nearly costing her own life in the process.
His heart fell in his chest as he realized that he and Claire had not truly discussed their plans for the future in the several hours they’d had together. Neither had they mentioned their feelings after all this time. Jamie had thought he saw the same passion in Claire’s eyes upon their reunion, but perhaps time had changed her.
Jamie was once able to decipher her emotions more readily than his own, with just one look upon the face he knew better than any other.
But it had been more than a year. Maybe she needed Frank more now. Perhaps she didn’t want Jamie at all. She may have rejoiced at their appearance only for Faith’s sake.
He looked toward his eldest daughter, who had frozen in the middle of her bed. The look of terror in her eyes nearly undid him. He opened his arms to her. “Mo chuisle,” he beckoned.
Faith scrambled to his lap, her face hitting his shoulder just as the tears came bursting forth.
“Da,” she sobbed. She shook in his arms. “Do ye needta hide?” She looked up to meet his eyes. “Will we haveta leave Mama?”
His own shoulders threatened to tremble as he tightened his arms around his daughter and tilted his head to place a kiss on her forehead.
“Nay, mo chridhe,” he whispered. “Yer mam… kens the man. He willna hurt ye.”
Jamie shifted Faith in his arms and stood, crossing the room to peer in at Brianna once again.
His two bairns. He knew the moment he had first seen Faith that he would do anything to keep her safe and content. He had only needed knowledge of his second child’s existence to want everything for her, as well.
Jamie would face any trial of becoming accustomed to a different time, of existing in a world with Frank Randall, of sacrificing his heart in order to see to his daughters’ protection and well-being.
Our daughter, Frank had said. He must have meant Bree. Jamie tried to force images of the three of them happily living together for the past months out of his mind. Would Frank come to consider Faith his own daughter, too? With how many Randalls must his life intertwine?
But how would he share a city, children, with Claire if they couldn’t share everything else? To not hold her as they fell asleep each night and wake with her soft hair in his face? To not tell her all his heart and cherish the words that came from hers?
Jamie wished for her joy, above all else.
He would have to lessen her guilt about their separation. For Claire. Lend sense to it, even as he ached for her.
The tears hit Jamie’s eyes as he fell into the chair next to Brianna’s buggy, Faith cuddled against his chest.
He closed his eyes. May he have the strength not to beg her to choose him.
________________________________________
Claire pulled Frank into the same office she had used to take Mrs. Graham’s telephone call. She turned to face him, crossing her arms over her chest. She took note of the defensive stance he had adapted.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“Me?! I get a call that you’re in hysterics at the hospital and my daughter is sick, catch the next flight from Oxford only to find you with him and you ask why I’m here?” His fists clenched at his sides. “And who in the bloody hell is that other child?”
“Enough, Frank!” Any semblance of patience she had was lost. “You know very well I’ve told you where Jamie has been all this time. Whether or not you believed me is of your own consequence.”
He grimaced. “Surely we’ve heard enough of that tale by now, Claire.”
“And you wondered why I haven’t agreed to move back to Oxford with you,” she snorted.
“Claire, I do love you. I’m more than willing to raise our child together,” he hesitated. “Both of them, as there’s no denying where those lovely curls came from,” Frank reached out to run a hand through her hair. She stepped away before he could reach.
“They aren’t your children, and you know that! Faith Fraser. Brianna Fraser, as soon as I can do anything about it,” she told him. “They have a father. The most wonderful I could imagine.”
“I can’t be what you want anymore, Frank, and it’s time we acknowledged it,” she said finally. She pulled the gold ring off her left finger and placed it in his palm.
Frank blinked at her in surprise, then his face settled into a scowl. Straightening his hat, he stormed out of the room. “You’ll be hearing from a lawyer, then,” he called over his shoulder.
Claire leaned into the desk behind her, finally allowing herself to breathe. Just as well. Composed and feeling free, she left the room and headed back toward her family.
Opening the door slowly, she observed Faith back in her bed, curled away from the door. Jamie was sitting in a chair next to Bree’s carriage. His eyes were closed and his head upturned, lips moving in supplication.
Jamie looked up at her as the door clicked shut. He wore a pained expression.
Claire took the first few steps toward him, but stopped abruptly when he stood. His eyes were somber and his jaw tense. He nodded his chin toward the door, so she led them into the hallway.
“So ye’ve gone back to Frank then, Nurse Randall?” he sneered.
She froze. This couldn’t be the same man she had just defended to Frank. Couldn’t be the way they would speak to each other now that they were free to be together again.
She pictured the nights they had spent curled together in the encampment for some battle or another, whispering of their deepest fears and desires. For themselves. For Faith. For the other children they wanted to have. For Lallybroch. Her heart tightened as she tried to cling to that image, unable to reconcile it with the one in front of her.
“What?” she blurted. “Jamie…” She leaned to place a hand on his shoulder. He shrugged it off.
“Nay. He willna want to share ye,” he said hotly.
Ice struck in Claire’s heart. Part of her knew that the man who had tried to sacrifice his life for her own protection and that of their daughters would not turn her away so coldly. But the rest was crumbling at his rejection.
“I thought you were dead!” she seethed. “So I did what you asked of me, you bloody brute!”
His brow furrowing, he cast his head to the floor, eyes darting around desperately. He looked anywhere but at her.
“You made the decision for me to leave, Jamie,” she whispered. “You took everything from me, so I did my best to pick up the pieces of what was left.”
Jamie’s shoulders slumped. Before she could stop him, he turned on his heel, bursting back through the door with his kilt swinging behind him.
________________________________________
Faith rolled over in the bed as the door closed, Mama and Da on the other side. She had pretended to be asleep when Da laid her down. But she heard his quiet sobs as she looked out the window of the big room.
Da’s reaction only made her more scared. She thought he would be happy to be with Mama. But something was wrong. She knew that. She hadn’t even looked at her parents as they left the room, worried to see what their faces might tell her.
Sitting up, Faith looked toward the floor. It was a taller bed than she had ever slept in, but she was determined. She carefully made the jump down.
She crossed the room to the buggy by the door. She had gotten a brief glimpse of the bairn inside, and was curious even in her fear about her parents.
Faith climbed into the chair next to the baby’s buggy and stood over it. She peered at the small face inside, eyes peacefully closed and thumb in mouth. She had seen bairns near Lallybroch when she made visits with Mama or Aunt Jenny. Mama would tell her she had been even smaller than them once. Faith found that hard to believe.
As she continued staring at the bairn, its eyes popped open. Faith reached into the buggy, and a smaller hand reached out to grab her finger. This startled Faith, but she didn’t mind. She smiled down at the baby and earned a small one back. She wanted to touch the bairn’s short red curls but remembered that she didn’t always like it when strangers touched her own hair. She grinned as she realized the red hair reminded her of Da’s. He had seemed interested in the baby, too. Maybe that was why.
Faith dropped into the chair and continued to study the bairn while holding its wee hand. She placed her chin in her other hand, wondering when Mama and Da would come back. Maybe they would take the baby back to its mama, or she would come to pick it up. But Faith didn’t mind watching over it until then.
Faith’s head turned toward the door as it squeaked open.
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