#frasers!

[themusicsweetly]

"I've seen a marriage made from obligation -- and I've seen one made for love. If I hadn't--" She stopped and swallowed... "If I hadn't seen both, I could have lived with obligation. But I have seen both -- and I won't."

[themusicsweetly]

Auld Memories, New Year | A New Year’s Ficlet

~ December 31st, 1748. 11:50pm. Lallybroch ~

Claire stood in the doorway of the Laird’s room looking at the bed where her two young daughters --  both of whom had valiantly tried to stay awake and greet the new year -- were taken off to their dreams by Hypnos. She leaned her hip against the doorjamb, basking in the sight before her. Softly, she began singing under her breath.

Claire felt two hands wind their way around her waist, her back gently pulled to lean against a warm, solid presence. So familiar and comforting were these hands she neither started nor startled, only welcomed them by smoothing her own over the new intrusion.

“I’m surprised Jenny hasn’t locked you away in the study by now. Won’t the first footing begin soon?” Claire felt his quiet chuckle as his chest slightly bounced against her.

“Aye, I expect she would did she think to look for me up here.” Jamie theatrically, though quietly, sighed, his warm breath caressing her ear. “It’s nights like this I’m glad at least one of our lasses had the sense to take after their bonny mam’s looks instead of their Da’s. At least I ken Faith willna have to suffer the injustices and indignities set against us redheids.”

Claire brought her hand up to her mouth, stifling the laugh that threatened to bubble forth.

They were quiet then, simply content to drink in the sight of their daughters -- their marvels -- as they stood there swaying together while the last minutes of the year slipped by. The noises from the Hogmanay party below all but disappeared as Claire leaned her head back against Jamie’s shoulder, an appreciative hum passing her lips.

“What was it ye were singing before, when I first came up? I dinna think I recognized those words.”

“Oh.” She felt her cheeks flush, not having realized he heard her. “It’s a poem actually, turned to music. Or... will be a poem, rather. ‘Auld Lang Syne’ by a man named Robert Burns.”

Claire could practically hear Jamie’s ears prick at the title.

“A Scottish poet, then?”

“Yes, quite a famous one at that. People around the world will sing his poem, particularly at the new year. Though, English speakers do change it a bit from the original, the Scots language being what it is and all.” She turned her head to smile teasingly at him.

“Mmphmm,” Jamie replied. Ever the Scotsman. “Would ye sing a bit for me then?” he asked softly.

Claire turned her head back towards the bed, and began quietly, loud enough only for her single audience member.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot And never brought to mind? Should auld acquaintance be forgot And auld lang syne? For auld lang syne, my dear For auld lang syne We’ll take a cup of kindness yet For auld lang syne

It was Jamie’s turn to hum in appreciation. “Ye’ll ken I canna decipher the melody at all. But what I ken is that my wife has the loveliest voice.”

“And what I ken,” Claire said, doing her best impression of her ginger Scot, “is that my husband is a flatterer. And more than a little biased.” She moved her hip back in an attempt to bump his.

“Aye, I am and I didna mind admitting it one bit.” Jamie turned Claire so that she was now facing him. “Doesna mean I’m wrong, though,” he said through a smirk.

She snaked a hand up to run it soothingly through his thick red curls. “Like I said: flatterer.”

“That song makes me mindful, ye ken. Of all the hardships we’ve been through these past years. All the people we’ve lost. Friends. And family.” Seeing Jamie’s brows creased in thought Claire reached up on tiptoe to kiss it, as if that could wipe the worry away. She hoped, at least, she could continue to be a balm for him in this new year as he always had been for her.

“The decision to come back to the Highlands, despite knowing the difficulties we’d face here after Culloden. The abundance of raids by the Red Coats. The scarcity of practically everything else,” he said sadly as he shook his head.  “Even with your valuable knowledge of the future that’s saved us more than once...” he trailed off.

But then he lifted his head to look over her shoulder. Claire could see his eyes brighten as they took in the sight of their peacefully slumbering daughters before they reconnected with hers. Brilliant sapphires linking with crystalline whisky. “All of it. Those hardships all pale in significance to the miracles I have right here in this room and in my arms. My three beautiful lasses.”

Claire felt her heart soar, the smile that spread across her face as brilliant as the sun itself.

“I wouldna want to forget those difficulties if it meant I’d forget even one moment with ye.”

She reached up, then, to pull him down for a kiss, making sure it was one he wouldn’t forget for a long, long time to come yet. They broke apart only when they heard a sudden cheer go up from downstairs. Midnight.

Claire finished her song.

And there’s a hand my trusty friend And give me a hand o’ thine And we’ll take a right good-will draught For auld lang syne.

“Happy New Year, my love.”

“Bliadhna Mhath Ùr, mo chridhe.”

Only then did they fully step into the Laird’s room to tuck their daughters in before finding a quiet place for themselves to start the new year as they did the last: together.

[Happy New Year to you all! Thank you for all the follows, reblogs, likes, and friendships. May this new year bring wonders and happiness to us all!]

[themusicsweetly]

Happy Kiss A Ginger Day 💋

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The Family’s All Together!

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Each  m o m e n t  I’m not with you    Feels like  2 0  y e a r s  without my heart

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First Look at the New Seasons of 'Outlander,' 'NCIS,' 'Blue Bloods' & More (PHOTOS)

Outlander

Returns Sunday, Nov. 4, 9/8c, Starz

No matter how crazy the world gets, time traveler Claire (Caitriona Balfe) and her husband, 18th-century Scottish warrior Jamie (Sam Heughan, above, with Balfe), only have eyes for each other. The Season 4 premiere finds the lovebirds in Wilmington, North Carolina, with one objective: making a home in the American colonies. "We’re in a place where they’re both very settled and confident in their relationship," Balfe says. Even a looming Revolutionary War and a psychopathic new villain can’t tread on them. "External forces that would usually drive a wedge between them don’t," Balfe says. "They may have differences of opinion, but they are there to back each other up."

[themusicsweetly]

“What’s this?” I ran my hand curiously over the box.

“Oh, only a wee present.” He didn’t look at me, but the tips of his ears were pink. “Open it, hm?”

It was a heavy box, both wide and deep. Carved of a dense, fine-grained dark wood, it bore the marks of heavy use -- nicks and dents that had seasoned but not impaired its polished beauty. It was hasped for a lock, but there was none; the lid rose easily on oiled brass hinges, and a whiff of camphor floated out, vaporous as a jinn.

The instruments gleamed under the smoky sun, bright despite a hazing of disuse. Each had it’s own pocket, carefully fitted and lined in green velvet.

A small, heavy-toothed saw; scissors, three scalpels -- round-bladed, straight-bladed, scoop-bladed; the silver blade of a tongue depressor, a tenaculum...

“Jamie!” Delighted, I lifted out a short ebony rod, to the end of which was affixed a call of worsted, wrapped in rather moth-eaten velvet. I’d seen one before, at Versailles; the eighteenth-century version of a reflex hammer. “Oh, Jamie! How wonderful!”

He wiggled his feet, pleased.

“Oh, ye like it?”

“I love it! Oh, look -- there’s more in the lid, under this flap--” I stared for a moment at the disjointed tubes, screws, platforms and mirrors, until my mind’s eye shuffled them and presented me with the neatly assembled vision.

“A microscope!’ I touched it reverently. “My God, a microscope.”

“There’s more,” he pointed out, eager to show me. “The front opens and there are wee drawers inside.”

There were -- containing, among other things, a miniature balance and set of brass weights, a tile for rolling pills, and a stained marble mortar, its pestle wrapped in cloth to prevent it being cracked in transit. Inside the front, above the drawers, were rows upon rows of small corked bottles made of stone or glass.

“Oh, they’re beautiful!” I said, handling the small scalpel with reverence. The polished wood of the handle fit my hand as though it had been made for me, the blade weighted to an exquisite balance. “Oh, Jamie, thank you!”

“Ye like them, then?” His ears had gone bright red with pleasure. “I thought they’d maybe do. I’ve no notion what they’re meant for, but I could see they were finely made.”

I had no notion what some of the pieces were meant for, but all of them were beautiful in themselves; made by or for a man who loved his tools and what they did. [...]

“It’s a wonderful gift. However did you find it?”

He smiled then, in return. The sun blazed low, a brilliant orange ball glimpsed briefly through dark treetops.

“I’d seen the box when I went to the goldsmith’s shop -- it was the goldsmith’s wife who’d kept it. Then I went back yesterday, meaning to buy yet a bit of jewelry -- maybe a brooch -- and whilst the goodwife was showing me the gauds, we happened to speak of this and that, and she told me of the Doctor, and--” He shrugged.

“Why did you want to buy me jewelry?” I looked at him, puzzled. The sale of the ruby had left us with a bit of money, but extravagance was not at all like him, and under the circumstances--

“Oh! To make up for sending all the money to Laoghaire? I didn’t mind; I said I didn’t.”

He had -- with some reluctance -- arranged to send the bulk of the proceeds from the sale of the stone to Scotland, in payment of a promise made to Laoghaire MacKenzie -- damn her eyes -- Fraser, whom he had married at his sister’s persuasion while under the logical impression that if I was no dead, I was at least not coming back. My apparent resurrection from the dead had caused any amount of complications, Laoghaire not least among them.

“Aye, ye said so,” he said, openly cynical.

“I meant it-- more or less,” I said, and laughed. “You couldn’t very well let the beastly woman starve to death, appealing as the idea is.”

He smiled, faintly.

“No, I shouldna like to have that on my conscience; there’s enough without. But that’s not why I wished to buy yet a present.”

“Why then?” The box was heavy; a gracious, substantial, satisfying weight across my legs, its wood a delight under my hands. He turned his head to look full at me, then, his hair fire-struck with the setting sun, face dark in silhouette.

“Twenty-four years ago today,  I  m a r r i e d  y e , Sassenach,” he said softly. “I hope ye willna have cause yet to regret it.”

~ Drums of Autumn, chapter 8, “Man of Worth”