Anonymous said: Someone write a quick little drabble of Oggy out laughing and playing in the rain by himself but when asked he’s playing with his imaginary dog friend named Rollo.
Author’s note: This is a canon compliant one-shot set a few years after Written In My Own Heart’s Blood. Mild spoiler warning for those who haven’t read books 7 and 8, and some book 9 daily lines, too. Rollo and Young Ian feels, ahoy!
Oggy and Rollo
by @ianmuyrray
It had been raining for days, only now had it slowed to a mist. Moisture thickened the air, punctuated by steady sprinkling. It was humid and foggy, causing the residents of the Ridge to peel and pluck their clothing away from their sticky bodies.
Puddles collected on the uneven ground around the small cabin. Excess water made small horse troughs of wagon tracks, and rain puttered against the puddles, making the surfaces ripple and vibrate with each droplet. In the tall grass beneath the window sat a little boy, his breeches damp and muddy. He was four years old -- just old enough to go outside on his own and be trusted not to wander off. Unbeknownst to the boy, however, his mother watched him through the window while she kneaded bread, her hands covered with flour, and his granny was seated with a quilt by the fire, looking out for him from the corner of her eye through the cabin’s open door. The women smiled and sighed together, thankful for a break from a little boy who had been cooped up out of the rain for too long.
He had a proper name, but not very many people used it. On the Ridge, he was simply Oggy. At his hip, a pocket of his breeches bulged into the shape of a vroom, made special for him by Nunkie Roger after Jemmy refused to share his childhood toys. The wheels of Oggy’s vroom were so caked in mud they no longer turned on their axles, and the wood was dark and soggy-feeling, soaking up muddy water and raindrops and fog like a sponge.
The grass was tall here, and thick-- Granny hadn’t let her goats out of their paddock in a while. He liked that, preferring when the leaves of grass grew to his knees, broad at the base. He picked at a shorter one now, held it between his thumbs at his lips and blew, trying to whistle. He wasn’t very good at it, but Nunkie Fergus told him he’d get better if he practiced. Maybe Da could show him, but then again, Da could do that thing where he sticks two fingers in his mouth and whistles so loudly it spooks birds and summons horses.
A black flutter of bird wings caught Oggy’s eye, and he spotted it stopping to peck at a worm washed free in the dirt path. Oggy squatted in the grass, camouflaging himself and turning his body slowly towards it. The vroom in his pocket bit at his hip, but he didn’t care. How did Da say to stand on your feet, so the animal doesn’t hear you? He didn’t think he accomplished it, because the bird lifted his beak and blinked at him, turning its head this way and that, black eyes suspicious.
Drawing a deep intake of breath, Oggy stuck two fingers in his mouth and blew, just as he’d seen his father do it. To his shock and complete joy, a loud, clear whistle rang out, just like Da’s. He heard a bang from inside as if someone had dropped something heavy onto a table, and the bird squawked and flew off. Laughing, and utterly pleased with himself, Oggy landed on his back in the soft, wet grass, not caring how much wetter it might make him. Mam always had dry clothes ready for him after it rained, and he quite looked forward to sitting by the fire with a biscuit. But not yet.
He lay looking at the sky for a minute, relishing the few droplets that fell onto his face. The sky oscillated between grey and white, as if it could not make up its mind, and Oggy’s hazel eyes tracked the movement.
But at that moment, he heard something four-legged bounding towards him, and he sat up just in time to be tackled by a giant dog. Or he would have been, if the dog didn’t pass through his body, causing a delicious chill to shoot through him, sparking laughter. The dog circled him, a big grin on its face, his tongue lolling out of his mouth. His tail and ears were held high.
“Dog?” Oggy asked, rising to his feet immediately. He held out his hand for the animal to sniff. Da and Nunkie Jamie had shown him how to properly introduce himself to animals. To go slow, to not move too quickly.
No sooner had the wet nose touched Oggy’s fingertips than the dog leaned into him, as if asking to be pet. Oggy obliged, scratching his ears, chin, chest, and spine. He felt like a dog, the damp fur clinging to Oggy’s fingertips. At the right angles, he looked solid as a dog. But was he? A bit of the dog’s form trailed behind in his movement, wisping and curling in the humid air, and he glittered in the sunlight like snowflakes he’d once caught in his mittens with Auntie Claire. And still, Oggy’s skin hadn’t quite shed the chill he felt from the dog, and his fingertips tickled from giving pets, as if there was a veil that had been passed through between the living and the dead.
The dog flopped over onto its back to show Oggy his belly. He yipped once, clearly asking for belly rubs, wriggling its back into the mud. Oggy laughed delightedly at this show of affection and trust, kneeling to give the dog a hug around the ribs and pressing his ear to the dog’s sternum.
It was an odd feeling, to hug a ghost. But the dog was warm and loving, too, and Oggy was warmed to his toes.
He might have been afraid of the dog, given that he looked like a wolf-- grey and scruffy, tall with a broad head, daring yellow eyes. But this dog was a friend. This, Oggy sensed instinctually, this dog felt like family.
The wolf-dog leaped to his feet and gave a soft, playful growl, bowing in an invitation to play. Oggy squealed and made to tackle him, only for the dog to leap away once more and nip at Oggy’s tunic, begging him to follow as he ran. Oggy took off after him, his boots sinking softly into the muddy ground.
“A bhalaich,” came a voice, calling after Oggy, stopping him in his tracks. He turned to see his father emerging from the trees, a large, dead deer over his shoulders.
Ian stooped to drop the deer on a nearby bench, where many animals had been skinned and butchered for meat. It landed with a soft thud as Oggy approached, feeling a tug behind his navel in the direction of the dog. But the dog was gone.
“Was that you I heard whistle, jus’ now?”
“Aye,” replied Oggy, putting on his best adult-sounding voice.
“Yer gettin’ better at it,” Ian replied, removing a knife from his belt and applying it to the deer. Oggy watched in fascination as his father’s big hands began the work of skinning the animal, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw his mother come to stand in the doorway.
Ian smiled up at Rachel in greeting. “Brought dinner,” he remarked with a grunt, working the belly of the deer open.
“Da,” Oggy interrupted, needing to ask before his parents moved on to other tasks. “Did you see that dog?”
“What dog?” Ian asked, not looking up. He was kneeling in front of the deer now, studying it.
“Just now, he came running from where you were.”
“He did?” Ian asked, not without interest. He glanced in the direction Oggy pointed, then gave his son a quizzical glance. His hands, however, paused over his kill, running lightly along the deer’s hair. “What kind of dog?”
Oggy’s answer was immediate. “Like a wolf, but he was friendly. Are there ghosts here, Da? I don’ think he was real.”
Ian’s eyes blazed as he looked at his son. For what, Oggy didn’t know, but he was pleased to have his father’s rapt attention.
“What did he do, when he was here? The dog?”
“Tackled me. We played a bit. Ye might ha’ scared him off when ye came, just now.” Oggy lifted his hand, still damp and a bit ticklish from the veil he’d felt, as if his father could see the shed dog hairs trapped there with moisture.
Ian studied Oggy’s small hands before his face broke into bright satisfaction, causing Oggy to grin back. “Aye, Oggy, there was a dog. He was helpin’ me hunt. He visited you too, then? I wondered where he’d gotten off to.” He reached and ruffled his son’s hair.
“What is thee talking about?” Rachel asked, and as Oggy turned to look at her, he saw her skirts flutter in the breeze, her apron dappled with puffs of flour.
“Rollo,” Ian responded immediately, and Rachel’s dark eyebrows flicked upwards. This obviously meant something to his parents, and though Oggy had heard the name ‘Rollo’ before, he hadn’t known what it meant.
“Rollo is a dog?” Oggy inquired.
His father nodded, his expression impenetrable. “Rollo, the dog. He died before ye were born. Go on inside, wee lamb, and help yer mam and Granny with whatever they need.”
Oggy would usually protest -- he was a boy, he shouldn’t have to help the women so much anymore, he wanted to help with the meat -- but he could sense his father wanted a moment alone, hands trembling over the deer. The young boy dashed inside, brushing past his mother, who lingered in the doorway for a moment, watching Ian work.
Anonymous said: Can you write some Claire x Jenny?
Author’s note: 2019 Queerlander is upon us! This is an FF au lightly sprinkled with fantasy. Enjoy!
In the Cabin
by @ianmuyrray
Jenny was a princess. Not an ordinary princess, she was aware of that, even though she might appear as one to others. She wore the dresses and the tiara; she threw dinner parties and knew how to waltz. She could hold court, school her features into an immobile mask, even insult someone while making it sound like a compliment.
But nothing was quite as important to Jenny as escape, pretending to be someone she was not. She was never as fulfilled as when she snuck away in a pair of her brother's breeches, tied tight about the waist to keep them from falling, the cuffs rolled to prevent tripping. She preferred to escape outside the confines of the castle, to run and pretend she wasn’t, in fact, royalty. That she didn’t have obligations or responsibilities outside of herself. She considered the headache earned from her hair twisted in a tight, hasty braid a badge of honor and her sunburned cheeks a trophy well earned.
Her most trusted companion on these excursions was her horse, Marble. Marble would know, before Jenny even twitched the reins, in what direction she wanted to ride, and what speed she’d want to travel at.
There was a cabin, not far from the lake, where the court healer lived. It was Jenny’s preferred place to be.
Jenny's mind drifted there now, even as she sat in her father's council room, her brother looking as bored as she felt while he sat sprawled on his large stone chair. Throne. Whatever they were calling it these days.
Spoiled brat, Jenny thought, running her hand down the wooden arms of her much smaller chair, sitting up straighter.
She frowned, trying to regain focus on the state affairs her father worked hard to keep the two of them apprised of. She tried hard to pretend to care. But her mind kept drifting, seeking that warm little cabin, with the scent of bergamot in the air, the soft prick of a wolf fur bed against her back, her knees, her palms, her cheek, the graceful lines of the feminine person inside it, the sound of her heavy breathing...
A throat cleared, and then she heard a voice, "Janet."
"Mm?"
Brian's black brows were raised. "I was saying, I have some news for ye."
She folded her hands in her lap, the cabin vanishing from her mind as her eyes caught on the new person in the room.
A man, of marriageable age. He merely stood there and gave her an expectant look. Oh no. No, no, no.
Shock flared in her eyes before it extinguished itself into courtly, passive femininity.
"This is Ian Murray," her father said, and Jenny forced herself to smile at the man as he was introduced. He was all hard lines and angles, nothing of the softness or grace she'd come to know and prefer. "Your betrothed."
Jenny inhaled deeply, crumpling her silk skirts in her fists. She let go, and then crumpled them again. Took a breath in, let the breath out.
Her eyes were hard as stone as she studied him, though she continued to give him the smile she knew she had to.
"It's a pleasure to meet ye, Ian," she whispered, and it was only the wine she'd had with dinner that had made it possible to speak.
“He is from a neighboring clan,” her father continued. “An alliance greatly desired.”
Ian bowed slightly, the sword at his hip sweeping back just a bit.
Jenny stood abruptly, her wooden chair scraping against the stone floor with an ungodly sound, ringing in the silence. "Excuse me," she said, as soft as she could, trying to cover for the way her slippered feet stomped out of the room.
And Ian looked like he was going to apologize for merely existing, damn him.
She flew into her room to pack her bags. Her belongings were flung across her room, the wardrobe emptied, the doors left open. Discarded clothes lay in piles on the floor, the four-poster bed. She tore herself out of her silken gown, unpinned her hair. She eventually settled for two dresses that might pass for a peasant’s and stepped into a set of Jamie's clothes, stolen from the laundry a long time ago. The breeches afforded her much-desired freedom of movement and the shirt hung loose on her, several sizes too big and built for a man's body, not the figure of a woman's. But it was freedom; it was hers. She needed to claim what moves she could on the game board she’d been placed.
She was lacing herself into her boots when she heard a knock at her door. Stomach turning leaden, she opened it slowly, then swept it wide upon seeing who it was.
"Jamie.”
He stepped into her room and she closed the door behind him, latching it locked.
"I know," he began. "And I'm sorry. But ye must've kent it would always be this way."
She did. She'd known. This was her fate -- to be shipped off and married to the most eligible bachelor, for the sake of alliances and politics. A pawn in a game she had no power to play; where perhaps, as a woman, she had the most to lose.
Because this was Jamie, she nodded.
He went on, "If it makes it any easier, I know Ian. From the war. He's an officer, a damn good one. Someone who will be an asset to the family as a man, not just for his connection to Clan Murray."
"And to me?" Jenny demanded.
"He'll be an asset to you, too, Janet. If ye give him a chance."
"But what if I can't?" she said, her voice barely audible, her mind once again imagining a flurry of skirts in the garden of that cabin by the lake, of the tinkle of laughter and the flutter of a shift as it dropped. Jenny wanted to weep, to scream.
"He'll understand."
"What if he doesn't?"
Jamie's shoulders dropped. "I might --" but then he sighed. "Go. Go to her. I won't tell anyone."
So Jenny ran. She ran to the stables, to her horse. Like always, Marble knew she would be coming. She saddled him, leapt onto him. The horse let off nothing more than a grunt of excitement as she flicked the reins.
Jenny was electric, needing to outrun her own power. But as she neared the cabin, the world seemed to still its spinning, and mist seemed to hover, shimmering in the air.
Marble trotted near the front door, stopping at the fence post where Jenny always tied him. She hopped off, catching a brief whiff of her own scent, sweet with the tang of musk.
The woman who lived in this cabin was alone in the world. She had no one but Jenny -- she had chosen Jenny.
Jenny strode up the cobbled path to the door, removing her feathered hat and riding gloves as she went. Sweat beaded and dripped between her breasts and down her stomach; she picked at her shirt, trying to air it out.
It was night and yet the air was sweltering.
The door flew open before she knocked, bathing the blue night in a swath of orange light.
A soft, feminine body tackled her and held her tight, curls swarming Jenny's face. "I heard the news. The servants told me."
Jenny breathed the woman in, buried her face in that hair, her nose brushing just so against the woman's cheek. She placed a kiss to the corner of her jaw, content to just hold her.
"Claire," she breathed. Her knees wanted to buckle at the touch of her.
Claire nearly withdrew. "But what about--"
"Don't." Jenny held her tight, refusing the request to pull away. A hot tear swept down her cheek.
Claire was taller than her by nearly a head, but that didn't stop Jenny from gripping her tightly about the waist and lifting her, if only briefly, to set her back inside the threshold. The cabin door swung shut behind them, bathing the field, and Marble, once again in a sea of blue.
Anonymous said: Young Ian, Rachel, Denny, and Dottie walk into a bar.
I Heard You’re In Town
by @ianmuyrray
“Ian, oh my goodness!” Her voice pierced through the sound of the pub crowd, generally jovial, celebrating the game on TV. Ian felt a pair of arms wrap around him and hug him tightly.
He turned towards her on his stool, dropping his phone onto the walnut bar. “Hey R--”
“Dots, this is Ian, my friend,” she interrupted, her voice a little loud for how close they all stood. “I met him when we were both assigned to Bahir Dar, a year or so ago.” Rachel grinned wide, her eyes brighter than usual. “We both worked in the OR.” Her dark hair was pulled into two loose buns with flyaways that framed her face, a familiar hairstyle of hers, and she wore a white t-shirt and jeans.
Ian looked at Rachel appreciatively, even as he tried to hide his surprise -- and his joy -- at seeing her again. “We did.” A grin spread across his face despite himself, and he felt warm, as if he was out in the Ethiopian sun with her again, stealing rides in the agency’s Jeep and browsing marketplaces during downtime. She’d changed in the last six months, but only a little. She’d lost her tan, and maybe her hair was a little longer. She was more relaxed, too, free of the urgency and strain of their rural medical encampment.
The blonde woman in a dress next to her stuck out her hand. “You must be the Ian,” she said, dodging Rachel as she tried to elbow her in the ribs.
“The Ian?” he asked, intrigued. He took a sip of his beer to hide his pleasure. When they’d both returned to the States after their assignment, they’d fallen out of touch.
“It’s nothing,” Rachel said quickly. “This is Dottie. She’s thinking of working with MSF, too. Has an interview.”
“A humanitarian, are ye? Congratulations,” he nodded to her, “For what position?”
“RN.”
“Ye look unsure.”
“I’m not--”
“I think she’s a bit frightened--” Rachel said, interrupting.
“I’m not!”
“--but like I keep telling her, she’ll do great. My brother is a reference, and you know how MSF fawns over him, she’s a shoo-in.”
“Ah, Dr. Hunter. Denny. How is he?” Ian asked, remembering her brother’s friendliness and his ability to make difficult decisions very quickly. Ian had once been part of the team to execute those decisions as a nurse who assisted in his surgeries.
“Oh, he’s fine. A bit tired. But when is he not?” Rachel laughed.
Ian turned to Dottie, trying hard not to think about how close Rachel stood to his knee and how her eyes sparkled in the pub lights. “How do ye know Denny, Dottie?”
“I--”
“She’s only met him once,” Rachel cut in. “I introduced them.” She turned to the bartender and ordered a round of beer for the three of them.
“And ye think that will get past the powers that be? They’ll let all of ye work together?” Ian clicked his tongue, pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to slip into an easy-going conversation with her, despite their time apart.
“No,” said Rachel, not looking at him as she plopped down on the stool next to him. He swiveled so his body angled away from her. He hadn’t expected to run into her here and felt unprepared. She powered on. “But not only is Denny a reference, he’ll actually be there at the interview.”
“What?” Ian and Dottie asked at the same time.
“Mm-hm,” hummed Rachel, taking a sip of the beer that had been brought to her, as if she had all the time in the world to respond to their surprise. “He’s attending the interview. Well, perhaps not exactly,” she said, reconsidering, “but he might… pop in.”
“What? You’re kidding!” Dottie rounded on Rachel. Clearly, there was a history there that Ian wasn’t aware of, and he watched the pair closely.
“Well,” Rachel hedged, casting about for an explanation. “I thought you guys hit it off really well the last time you saw him, and thought, you know, it might be convenient to…” she trailed off, met Dottie’s eyes, and flinched. “Dottie, you know you liked him! When you met him, the last time he was in town. God, you guys couldn’t keep away from each other.”
Red in the face, Dottie sputtered as if to deny it, but Ian saw her laughing at herself.
“Oh, you don’t?” asked Rachel, knowingly. “It wasn’t you, then, constantly asking me why I think Denny followed you on Instagram? It wasn’t you that asked me why he might’ve liked this post or that, and who, at one point, wanted to know if it would be appropriate to ‘pop in’ to the coffee shop he said he was at when he was working on that paper? Or how to exactly word your text messages to him when you finally got brave enough, hm?” Her voice rang with certainty, nearly shouting now. She exploded into a burst of laughter at Dottie’s horrified face. “You should see yourself, Dots, you’re smitten! Smitten kitten! Isn’t that right, Ian?”
“Rachel, be chill, for Christ’s sake!” Dottie exclaimed.
Rachel turned to him, her face radiant with laughter and the teasing of her friend. “Don’t you think so, Ian?” she asked again when he didn’t answer.
“Well, I…” Ian hesitated, his eyes darting between Dottie’s anguished embarrassment and Rachel’s sparkling hilarity. “I can’t possibly know.”
Rachel sighed, her mood swiftly changing to something wistful. “Denny and Dottie… You guys would be so perfect together. And we’d be sisters!”
“Rachel,” Dottie hissed, though she smiled wide. “Hush, you’re ruining this.”
“So let me get this straight,” Ian said, leaning back on the bar now. Dottie still stood in front of him. “You both flew all the way from North Carolina to New York, just to feign interest in MSF, just so you can hook up with Denny?”
Both the women looked at him with disgust.
“How dare you, I am a nurse that cares--”
“Dottie is very good at what she does--”
“Alright, alright, calm down.” He rolled his eyes at them and switched gears. “So if you were to get in, where would ye want to be assigned?”
“Well,” Dottie said, “it doesn’t really matter to me. But I’m fluent in French so probably somewhere in Northern Africa, like Niger or something.”
“Mm, or Haiti,” he added.
”Wherever they need me, I’d be happy to work.” Dottie grinned, and Ian saw how the blonde hair, pale eyes, and soft features might strike someone like Denny. “I’m not an OR nurse like you guys; I don’t know how you stomach all the blood.”
“I don’t know how you stomach how your patients can still talk to you,” Rachel quipped, eliciting a startled laugh from Ian.
“There’s blood in your work, too,” Ian said to Dottie, happy to have an excuse not to look at Rachel. She was humming quietly beside him. He was attuned to her like he always had been, like something shimmered in the air around her that only he could see.
“Yuck, but not that much.” She made a face before she pulled her phone out of her pocket. “Oh my god!” she gasped, immediately showing the phone to Rachel, who grinned mischievously.
“Yes!”
“What?” asked Ian, feeling a bit dumb.
“Denny,” the women breathed together, their heads bent over Dottie’s phone. Their faces glowed in the light from the screen as they tittered together.
“It buzzed, just now,” Dottie said breathlessly.
Rachel grinned. “That means he was thinking of you!”
“Of course it does, Rachel, don’t be silly, he can’t text me and not be thinking of me.”
“Oh, Dots! You and Denny! It’s really happening!”
“Nothing is happening, Rach, will you quit it?”
“‘Nothing is happening’? You can’t be serious.”
“But what does it mean?”
“What’s it say?” Ian cut in, unable to help himself.
“‘Dottie, I heard you’re in town, I’m in town too,’” Dottie read. She paused. “That’s it.”
“It means he’d like to see you,” replied Ian. “He knows you’re here for your interview.”
“It does? But he doesn’t say that!”
“Er, no.” Ian grimaced. “But Denny’s like that. Awkward, a bit.”
Dottie rounded on Rachel. “Why does your brother have to be so weird?” she nearly wailed. “Rachel, how on earth am I supposed to respond to this?”
Rachel gave an exaggerated shrug. “I don’t know, don’t ask me.”
“He’s your brother!”
“Yeah, but I don’t know how to flirt with him. He’s my brother!”
“You keep pushing us together, and now you won’t help me? Rach!” Dottie looked terrified, Rachel amused.
“Alright, alright.” Ian held up his hands as if he were surrendering. “I’ll help. Gimme.” He made a grabby motion for the phone, and Dottie handed it over.
“Do ye want to respond to this like a booty call or no?” Ian asked, his thumbs poised over the keyboard.
“Booty call?” Dottie asked.
“Well…” He nodded his head toward the front of the bar, where two large windows shone darkly in the night, streetlights were lit, and brake lights at the nearby stop light reflected on the glass. “It’s late. Do ye want to see him tonight?”
Dottie’s eyes flew wide. “No!”
Rachel laughed. Ian loved that sound.
“Aye, okay. Let’s see, then. We’ll be cool and casual.” Dottie and Rachel stood at either shoulder, their heads bent conspiratorially together. “‘What a funny coincidence,’” he narrated as he typed, “‘that we should be in the same city at the same time. What should we do about that, do you think?’”
“Send!” Rachel squealed and Dottie groaned, even as she laughed.
“Fine, fine!” Dottie grabbed the phone and sent the message along without bothering to glance at it. She saw Ian’s surprise and shrugged at him. “Why not?”
Ian laughed. “Glad I’m of some use.”
“You’re of use,” Rachel said, and even in her playful correction, her face was soft and appreciative as she looked at him. She was standing very close to him now, and he nearly backed away with the shock of realizing it.
“What’s this?” Dottie asked, her eyes darting back and forth between them.
“Nothing,” Ian and Rachel said together, but too quickly. They both looked at each other and laughed. Ian felt the strange impulse to embrace her, but he held back, fearing the awkwardness that could so easily spring between them.
“It’s nothing,” Rachel said again, placing a hand on Ian’s arm, the touch so brief he might have imagined it. “C’mon, Dottie, we should go.” She glanced back at Ian. “I’ll be in touch,” she said to him. “See you soon?”
She was still standing close to him, perhaps she had stepped even closer without him realizing it; he could feel the warmth of her, even in the crowded bar. Maybe it was just the beer. “I’ll be here.”
She smiled, and he wanted to kiss her, but before he knew it, she was gone as quickly as she had arrived, tugging an astonished Dottie away by the elbow.
Later that night, when Rachel was tucked into the starchy sheets of her hotel bed, her phone lit up with a notification that made her heart leap: Rachel, I heard you’re in town. I’m in town, too.
Not really from a prompt, but kind of: This tropey, cozy one-shot is a result of excess creative energy instigated by @lady-o-ren‘s call for fantasy aus as well as @whiskynottea‘s current enthusiasm for her Witches story, which I’m lucky enough to beta. Ren, Jenny’s ‘sight’ in this story was something that ended up on the cutting room floor from my Philly brainstorming sessions but I loved it so much I had to pick it up, press out the creases, and tape portions of it together again. @whiskynottea, you got me thinking long and hard about what Jenny is capable of.
In Voyager, Jenny says she saw Claire’s fetch at Jamie and Laoghaire’s wedding. I extrapolate that concept out and bend it to my will in this Ian/Jenny modern-ish au.
A Trick of the Light
by @ianmuyrray
Jenny had always known she could see the future – but she didn’t quite understand how her gift worked until she was older.
It had started when she was maybe fourteen. In the halls at school, she’d see her classmates flirting with each other – but often there was a third person around, sometimes a fourth. Lifelike and human-sized, light distorted through their figures as they patiently stood near the couple. They never spoke, never interacted with the two people. Often, they would stand close to one person, like they were attached.
She once voiced her concerns to a friend of hers, wondering aloud what the hell was going on, could they see the ghosts, too? But after her friend gave a wide-eyed look and refused to speak to her the next day, Jenny had learned to be quiet about it. She was seeing things, they said. Those people weren’t there, she was told. But they were – and while they were transparent and misty, like a ghost, the fetches were as real as the couple they stood by.
She could see them but no one else could, it turned out. That terrified her.
Even on the street, when she saw strangers walking hand in hand, Jenny would see fetches moving along with them. She hadn’t known what it meant, or why when she was at the supermarket she’d see the nearly-transparent image of someone standing right where couple’s hands were clasped.
Other times she’d be out at a bar or a restaurant or a coffee shop and she’d see people on what were clearly first dates, where each person was using any and all excuses to touch, to laugh, to compliment and impress. And the fetch would be sitting in the booth with them, or between them, or standing beside the table.
Sometimes couples did not have fetches as company, but that was rare.
These visions eventually faded into the background, though, and stopped irking her, leaving Jenny to see her world similar to how normal people do. She learned to see beyond them, or to incorporate them into the landscape. It was nothing to worry about, until it hit close to home.
One day, a fetch woman had just appeared next to Jamie, her brother, following him inside as snow flurried in about him and his girlfriend, Laoghaire. The fetch followed him and Laoghaire everywhere during that holiday, even when they were not directly beside each other. At times Jenny saw a man beside Laoghaire, lingering over her shoulder. The relationship faded as young ones often do, and as Laoghaire and Jamie drifted apart, the fetches faded, too.
And single people… well, it was only ever with couples that the fetches appeared, even though Jenny had no notion as to why this would be.
She finally figured out what it meant when Jamie brought a different woman over for Christmas breakfast. Jenny was shocked by how familiar the woman was, and it took several moments to place her. Where had she seen her before?
And then – there. This woman was the ghost Jenny had seen trailing Jamie not that long ago, when he was with his last girlfriend. This woman’s hair was dark and curly, her body slender, and yes, Jenny would recognize those eyes anywhere.
“Jenny, won’t ye say something?” Jamie asked. “Yer gaping like a fish. This is Claire, like I said.”
“I’m sorry, so nice to meet ye, Claire.” Jenny enthusiastically shook the woman’s hand. “I believe we’ve all been waiting for you.”
Jamie and Claire just fit. Something had locked into place with both of them; though their relationship was new, Jenny was left with the impression that this was it.
And that’s when it had clicked. She was able to see someone’s soulmate.
All those fetches, all those couples followed by them – the fetch meant they were with the wrong person, their soulmate was someone else, someone out there, waiting for them. The fetches were the imprint of what should be.
And now Jenny was certain she couldn’t tell anyone what she knew, what she could see. Never.
Though she did daydream about becoming famous for it – having a radio show, a television show, a website, an app. She could build an empire. People would contact her, begging to be matched with their person. Is this the one? Do I say yes to the proposal? She could run an elite life advice and dating service, work in a high rise, become rich.
But ultimately – her sight would hurt more than it helped. She knew the nature of people, and stable families would be destroyed over the anxiety about soulmates and being with the ‘right’ person – because Jenny had seen with her own eyes people making their marriages and families work, even as the fetches of their soulmates glided behind them.
There might be someone out there for everyone – that person, the unknowable soulmate. But someone else could do just fine, too, with hard work and love and patience. Jenny believed that, sincerely.
And while she could put this in practice with other people, seeing soulmates drove her mad regarding her own love life.
She didn’t have a love life. Never had. She was apprehensive to date anyone, though others had frequently made their interest in her apparent. She was too frightened to be with one person while a third could be drifting around them, waiting. And she would be tortured by the sight, unable to handle the thought of not finding her own person.
She supposed not having a love life wasn’t so bad, though. She’d managed. And so far, she’d made it well past college without seeing anything resembling a fetch around her.
But today was Claire and Jamie’s wedding day, and things were quickly becoming complicated. The event was casual, relaxed, and cozy, with simple decorations and a short guest list. It reflected the intimate simplicity that Jamie and Claire’s relationship carried into every space they went together, only magnified into something grand enough to match the solemnity and grace of choosing marriage.
The partygoers were all at the reception dinner, in a private room at a nearby restaurant. Jamie and Claire held court and listened and laughed and drank with their guests, and Jenny saw the occasional ghost person flit in and out of the room with the surrounding couples. On one side of her was Jamie, and on the other was Ian, her childhood neighbor and lifelong friend.
She and Ian had a complicated relationship. Well, that was putting it mildly. He’d been her first kiss, her first crush, and then, as they got older, her first at other things. But it meant nothing. They were strictly friends with benefits. Strictly. When her friends got their heads all in a whirl over this man’s kiss or that man’s touch, Jenny never let anything like that bother her. He was simply Ian, and they were very close. That’s all.
She’d once thought it might lead to something more, but they seemed to have mutually decided to prioritize their friendship, and she wasn’t certain she even wanted more, anyway. Just being friends – with occasional sex – was enough for her. Ian was perfectly happy to take the edge off for her every once in a while. She was an adult woman with needs, after all.
Now what if– What if she entered a relationship with Ian and the ghost of another person came along? What if she didn’t have a soulmate and he did, and the woman was with them, always? And Jenny had to live beside Ian knowing that she wasn’t enough, forced to stare down the woman every minute of every day?
No, things with Ian were fine just as they were. There were no fetches in sight, because they weren’t in a relationship.
A few times his leg brushed against hers under the table, and during each toast, he always made sure to clink glasses with hers first. She could, however, tell that he was already tipsy, his words slower than usual, as if he had to concentrate just a bit harder to get them out. He would lean very close to her every time he spoke, smelling of faintly of aftershave and strongly of wine. She knew from experience what he would feel like, his body just a bit warmer and heavier than usual, his inhibitions lowered…
The wedding atmosphere must have her feeling sappy, that must be it. It made her feel like things weren’t fine just as they were, like she wanted to lean into him, to tell him everything that he’d meant to her over the years, how much she adored his sense of humor and that she loved when he’d ask for her opinion on things, big and small.
And yet…watching Jaime and Claire get married had washed away any delusion of complacency; she felt things for Ian – great things, deep things.
She nearly touched him, just now. Had nearly swept a few fingers through the hair over his ear. That’s all it would take, she knew. Then he’d be hers for the night.
But she didn’t dare. She couldn’t. It was too risky– things felt too serious, here. There was a draft in the small room, wafting in from the summer night outside– a reprieve from the stuffiness of the room– and if she listened hard enough, she could hear crickets in the distance, the lapping of water. Being together would be easy, as natural as breathing, but would ruin both of them, possibly doom them to a life where she lived with his soulmate while he was oblivious to it. What kind of life would that be?
Her heart ached.
Jenny stood slowly, excusing herself from the jovial, sparkling table by dropping the napkin from her lap onto her place setting. She pushed out of the room and escaped into the restroom. She stopped a moment in front of the mirror – she took two solid breaths, then tears welled in her eyes. She was frustrated, overwhelmed. And lonely. So, so lonely. She used a tissue to dab at one or two tears that overflowed.
Someone came into the bathroom, and she jumped, feeling a bit skittish.
Folding the tissue and tossing it away, she decided some fresh air might be best. The night sky was clear, the air warm – but still cooler than inside. She crossed her arms over her chest and breathed deeply, hanging out under a lantern. The restaurant was on a pier, and water lapped at the wooden columns beneath her feet. She breathed in the salty ocean air, enjoying the freedom of it, and peered into the water.
The sounds from inside briefly grew louder as the door beside her opened, then died as it shut.
“Janet?”
Her head jerked up. “Ian,” she breathed, using her thumb to press at the corner of her eyes, hoping he wouldn’t notice she had cried. She sniffed. “What are ye doing out here?”
“I could ask ye the same thing,” he replied, shoving his hands into his pockets as he leaned on the wall near her. He turned to look at her. “Ye left in a hurry, are ye alright?”
She took one step back from him. He noticed but didn’t move. “No, everything is fine.”
He gave a light snort before looking out over the water. She watched him surreptitiously from under her lashes. In the distance, boats bobbed in a marina on the other side of the small inlet. This town was a small fishing port, often overrun with tourists in the summer, sometimes smelling of fish from the stink of old fishing boats. It was peaceful in the night.
“What are ye up to, Jenny?” he asked, cautious.
“Wh-what?” she replied, trying to keep her voice light. “I have no idea what ye’re talkin’ about.” But she knew what he was asking. There was no mistaking it. An unspoken us lingered in the air and Jenny walked away from him, as if that word wouldn’t be able to follow her.
Ian, however, could, and he did. He matched her stride easily, catching up in just a matter of steps. “Come with me.” He offered his arm, and she had no choice but to take it. They silently walked down the wooden pier, where the boards creaked and Jenny’s heart skittered in her chest. Lanterns were lit on either side, misty golden lights in the humidity.
He stopped them when they reached the very end of the pier. He sat, his legs dangling over the edge, and gestured for her to sit, too. She removed her shoes, concerned the heels might fall off into the water, and sat beside him. The dress she was wearing was simple, and it fluttered over her knees in the light breeze.
“Jesus, Jenny, ye’d think I was a stranger, ye sitting so far away like that.”
She said nothing.
“What’s going on? Ye’ve been giving me the cold shoulder all night.”
“I don’t mean to.” She watched the light roll over the water, saw her dark shadow in it. It might have been a trick, but she thought she saw the shadow of another person between them in the waves, and her heart sank.
He spoke, mostly to fill the awkward silence.
“Aye, well, I thought … ye know… considerin’ where we are tonight…” He rubbed the back of his neck and then, seeming to decide something, scooted closer to her, bringing his hip flush with hers. She blushed. He laughed awkwardly, trying to break the tension with humor, and leaned closer, his warm breath tickling her ear. “I thought I might see you later tonight, ye know?”
His fingertips lightly traced over her shoulder, goosebumps rising on her skin. She sighed with pleasure, an automatic response, and he sensed it. He took her earlobe in his teeth, sending a pulse through her body. “Ian!” she pulled away, grabbing at her ear.
He was dumbfounded. “Did I–?”
“We can’t.” She glared at the water.
“Okay,” he said, slowly. “May I ask why? Are you–do you– have someone already?”
“No! Christ, no. I don’t.”
He gave an uncertain smile. “Okay, then. Can ye clue me in? I don’t like being broken up with in this way,” he added teasingly.
Her eyes flashed. “We’re not together.”
His brows rose in surprise, and he opened his mouth to reply but he said nothing. He waited.
“Ye wouldn’t believe me if I told ye.”
He leaned back on the dock, bracing himself upright with his palms. “Try me.”
She considered him. Maybe she should. Maybe it was the only way to make him understand. Maybe he would be get it, why she couldn’t risk being with him like that anymore. That it hurt too much.
A few moments passed before she blew out a breath. “Fine, but ye’re not allowed to call me crazy.”
“Why would I call ye crazy?” he wondered. “Ye’re not seeing things, are you?”
She started. “Excuse me?”
He grinned. “Teasing.” The drink had made him more light-hearted than usual, and she shook her head at him.
“Well, actually…”
Then she told him everything. About Jamie and Claire, about fetches and seeing them in public, about knowing what someone’s soulmate looks like. She confided her fears to him that if she were to be with him at all, she’d have to live with the sight of the woman who was actually his soulmate, that it would drive her mad, remind her of her inadequacy, her fears about them not making it because she could see his future in front of her. He listened, patiently, and didn’t interrupt, even when her voice cracked as she told him she loved him, that she couldn’t bear for him to settle for her, that he needed to be free to be with someone else.
As she spoke, his face grew sadder, more concerned. When she stopped speaking at last, she waited with bated breath for him to respond. He didn’t say anything, only gazed at her.
“Say something,” she snapped, feeling all too vulnerable. She drew away from him, but he held out a hand to stop her.
“Don’t you see?” he plead, and she was taken aback by his earnest tone.
“See what?”
“Has anyone ever been in the room with us when we… when we’re together? Have you ever seen someone else?”
“No. No! I want to keep it that way, Ian, please! I couldn’t stand it if I did see her, don’t you understand?” Furious tears stung her eyes. “Don’t come any closer, I can’t be with you anymore, it’s too complicated.” She stood, legs trembling. She picked up her heels and strode away.
“Jenny!” he called after her. “Christ. C’mere, listen to what I’m trying to say.” He scrambled to keep up with her, his footsteps echoing on the planks.
“Don’t torture me, Ian,” she snipped. “Don’t you dare.” She scowled, trying to intimidate him, backing away as he cornered her. She itched to break into a run to get away from him. Didn’t he understand?
“Listen! The reason you’re not seeing another person with us is because you are my person, Jenny! It’s you, it’s always been you.”
He embraced her, pressing his face into her hair. “All those couples you’ve seen – you really think something like your sight adheres to whether or not two people say out loud they are together? Ye think something that special would listen to made up relationship names and ideas? All those first dates you witnessed, with those ghosts there, in particular, do ye really think that was a formal, established relationship? No. Those people were just trying each other on for size. But us– we never needed to. We’ve always been together, always, and ye’ve never seen a fetch, right?”
Her eyes scanned their surroundings, as if one might be lurking in the shadows. There was no one here but them.
“What makes you think you’re not my soulmate, Jenny?”
She bit her lip. “I know for a fact some people will never meet theirs. Sometimes a fetch is just a child – I think that means that person’s soulmate died young; or sometimes, they look like they’re from another continent entirely with no hope of crossing paths. Us– we just sort of… fell into each other. We were neighbors, for Christ’s sake! Ye really think it would be that easy?”
Ian smiled. “Yes.”
“Sometimes you piss me off.”
“Sometimes you piss me off, too.”
He moved his face to hers, testing. As if on cue, she moved towards him, too, and kissed him. He was familiar, and solid, and comforting, and tasted like red wine. There was no pressure; he saw her for who she was. She pulled away, feeling a bit dazed.
@lady-o-ren said: Muy, you could write me a Jenny/Ian fantasy au.
Philomene I: Homo homini lupus est.
by @ianmuyrray
Jenny had lived the past several years of her life in solitude. She inhabited a tiny cabin in a shady glen, one room, white-washed with peeling walls. It was self-sufficient and sturdy, often smelling of jerky and bread, occasionally onion. Dill, lavender, bay leaves, catnip -- they all hung from the heavy beams of the cabin ceiling among cloves of garlic.
In the garden, she was digging up turnips. The plant life in the glen did not belong to her; she had not planted them. She did not know how they got there -- she only knew she was now responsible for them. She tended them all, nurtured the vegetables and herbs as they grew, and, when ready, she harvested them. Caring for them in this way was how she paid her debt to them. They had fed her and healed her when she’d stumbled upon the glen several winters ago, brutally injured and in hiding, still covered in rich furs and a heavy brocade dress, though torn and muddy -- a ball gown. The cabin and its garden had become a sanctuary, a bunker protecting her from a world who assumed her dead. She made it her home.
Shaken loose by her work, some hair had fallen out of the braided knot on the back of her neck. She blew it out of her face and brushed stragglers away with the back of her hand, trying to prevent a smear of earth across her forehead, but it was hopeless. Her trowel loosed a turnip, much smaller in size than last year’s. She dusted the vegetable off and turned it around in her hand, feeling for any oddity, before dumping it into her basket with the others. All the vegetables were smaller than she’d assumed. Had she been wrong to harvest today? From the calendar she’d notched into a piece of wood, she’d harvested twice the amount on this exact day last year.
She stood and braced the basket on her hip, shaking her homespun skirts and apron loose with her free hand. It was a warm day, and sunlight filtered through the trees. In the shade, a coolness had settled into the air, filling Jenny’s lungs, rejuvenating her. The sun was setting, however, and the evening was on its way. She needed to finish the day’s chores with the daylight.
Jenny set the basket of root vegetables on her doorstep and went to check her traps. They were always full of critters -- rabbits, mostly. Fat and flavorful ones. She could use more, and she checked the hooks on her belt, ready to come back laden with meat.
She knew every inch of the land, had staked it out in cautious missions when she’d first arrived. She could accurately draw every boulder and landmark tree on a blank map; knew where the fish beds always were in the stream nearby, what patches of clover were most popular with the local herd of deer. She knew precisely where she’d awoken, her body dumped by soldiers, maybe three or four miles away.
She also knew the best places to lay traps. But this time, to her astonishment, there was nothing. They were all empty -- ransacked, looted, and torn to shreds by what seemed like an animal. Large paw prints circled her traps, and around them, the strike of claws in the mud. She knelt, reaching to touch the streak of blood across the leaves on the ground.
And… it was unusually quiet. All the years she’d spent in her cabin, she had never experienced fear or thought something might harm her outside scattered paranoia of being found alive. She lived nestled in the heart of the trees, protected by something beyond herself. She’d always suspected there were protective enchantments surrounding the places she wandered. But now…
Trying to rein in her galloping heart, she scanned the area around her, but she saw nothing. The tree cover made the location she was in seem darker, more menacing.
She strained her ears, listening for the usual chatter of birds or insects. Perhaps she was being paranoid. Even still, she started to double back to the cabin, clutching the strap of her rifle across her chest, when the unusually loud snap of a twig nearby stopped her.
She hardly dared to breathe, deciding to move behind an evergreen tree, slowly. She circled around, looking and listening for any sign of movement. She slipped her rifle around to her front, placed her hands at the ready.
She can kill on sight, she told herself, trying to counter the shaking of her hands. She can hunt. She cocked the gun, drawing deliberate breaths, and stepped around the tree.
But there was nothing. She shook herself and resumed the walk home.
She was unable to shake the sense that whatever it was that had approached her -- if anything -- was following her, waiting. The forest now felt too small, too big, too threatening, and too dark. She didn’t trust the animals or plants anymore and hurried through them. Entering the cabin as quickly as she dared, she shut the door and latched it for the first time in a long time. Despite the heat that still lingered in the air, she shut her windows, the wood of the shutters splintering under her fingers, and latched those, too.
Jerky was laid out to dry on the only table she had. She assessed it with a glance before deciding to get to work, scrubbing her turnips with a rag, sitting on the edge of the bench before slicing them with her dagger over a simmering cauldron of hambone broth. There was only an hour or so before her soup would be ready. She broke off some sprigs of rosemary and dropped them in, ignoring how the herb trembled in her hand.
The night was quiet at the cabin, and Jenny relaxed. She minded her mending and needlework, lulling time away with the repetitive push and pull of thread and yarn.
Even though the cabin provided for her, living a subsistence lifestyle was hard work. Her hands were callused and her body muscled and lean. The scars on her arms and thighs, however, were from before. She was safe here, she told herself resolutely. She was assumed dead -- no one would be looking for her. No one would send anything after her.
The wind blew hard as she tried to sleep, rumbling over the walls and the roof, and rain fell in sheets. She drew the wool blankets in around her, tight, blinking at the orange glow of embers in her fireplace. Sleep, she told herself. It’s just a storm.
A loud crash came from outside. She flinched in her bed, every nerve drawn taut. Had a tree fallen? A prayer came in a rush even as she tried to will herself to sleep, or to wake up -- was this a nightmare?
She felt the rope once tied tight around her wrists; she felt the uniformed man aggressively reaching through her clothing, his hand wandering and pinching while he held her captive in a dark room, no one heeding her struggle. She felt the barrel of a gun as it was held beneath her chin, a finger on the trigger. Her throat closed in on itself as she relived the pain of being dragged into the dark castle yard and beaten in front of strangers, her friends, her brother. How she’d wept and screamed and begged him to stop them -- why hadn’t he? -- but her protests had fallen on deaf, unfeeling ears.
Moved beyond fear and into fury as another crash sounded behind the door of the cabin, shaking the walls, she rolled out of bed and grabbed her rifle. She’d evaded them for years. She’d known that sooner or later, they would track her down. Positioning her gun so she could easily fire, she braced herself and waited, allowing two steadying breaths.
With a crack like thunder meeting lighting, the door shuddered off its hinges, and in prowled the largest wolf Jenny had ever seen. Its coat was black, a reddish-brown where the light hit it, and its eyes glinted yellow. Without missing a beat, she fired, point blank.
Somehow, she missed. A loose shot, and a clay jar exploded on her shelf, sending salt flying everywhere.
The beast snarled and lunged for her as she staggered away. He came for her again, lips tight and hackles raised. He growled and charged, but Jenny was quick; she circled around and ran out the smashed door, the grass muddy and cold beneath her bare feet, her shift sticking to her back as rain pelted down on her.
The wolf moved slowly out of the cabin, still growling and snarling. This was no ordinary beast -- the air around him shimmered like an illusion, and he was too big to be anything natural or wild. She recognized the magic on him -- a wolf made by the king. Her brother must have sent him to track her down and kill her. The wolf’s nails clicked across the wooden porch and stairway as he gathered speed and chased her.
Jenny sprinted into the forest, dodging around trees, breathing wildly. But the wolf was gaining on her; she could almost feel the heat of his breath behind her, could feel his footsteps against the soft, wet earth.
She wiped the rain out of her eyes, squinting to see ahead of her in the darkness. Her legs strained as she ran, her muscles burning.
She leapt over a large tree root and mistook the landing, tumbling to the earth with a yell, her rifle falling out of reach. She backed away, trying to stand, but pain shot up from her ankle and she collapsed. The wolf was there, circling her, watching her every move.
“Stay away,” she warned him as she panted, trying to sound more in control than she felt. “You can’t kill me.”
I must, came a voice, and then he pounced, knocking the wind out of her and pinning her to the ground.
Big paws pressed hard into her shoulders, the pain of his nails excruciating, the stench of him terrible and frightening. Blood, death, terror. Jenny wanted to retch.
He bared his teeth and was about to snap them shut around her throat when she throttled his ribs and chest with every ounce of strength she could muster, willing the fire she knew was inside her to her fingertips. It responded to her call, filling her hands, heat sizzling and popping in the rain, burning him. She winced from pain, too, injured by the flames nearly as much as he was, but she kept her focus until he yelped and jumped away from her. She smelled singed hair and skin and smoke, a sharp contrast to the smell of blood and rain and mud.
Her hands were blistered, but triumph thrummed through her. She rose. Ignoring the shooting pain up her ankle, she raced to her rifle and aimed it as he jumped at her again. With the smell of his burning hair and rancid breath in her nose, she fired her second and last bullet.
A sharp yip met her ears and the wolf landed on the ground. The bullet had hit a hindlimb, and he held it at a contorted angle, the wound gaping and red even in the night. Knowing she’d missed the killing blow and even accepting that she’d lost, she tensed, waiting for him to strike. He could still overpower her and tear her apart like she was nothing.
To her utter amazement, his eyes met hers, and he hesitated. Then he snarled and limped away, leaving her in the pouring rain, alone.
@lady-o-ren said: Muy, you could write me a Jenny/Ian fantasy au.
Part I
Philomene II: Nulla regula sine exceptione.
by @ianmuyrray
Rain fell in massive drops around her, pelting the grass like fingers drumming on a window pane. Her rifle sat heavy in her hands, gunpowder lingering in the air. She was soaked through and sticky with mud, rain, and the sweat of adrenaline.
Jenny’s mind had gone numb, her body frozen. The world had slowed, so much she could count her heartbeats if she wanted to.
Jenny recognized the illusion: that had been no ordinary wolf. He was a lycanthrope, or lycan, forced into animal shape by the king. Only her brother was powerful enough to force others into an unnatural body. Lycans were foot soldiers, sent out on missions to do the crown’s bidding.
By choosing not to attack, the lycan was likely risking everything dear to him. Jenny knew from experience that the lycans were prisoners -- they had no free will, no freedom -- altered and coerced by threats to their family’s livelihood. The motivation to protect their families and themselves often drove them to extremes. Murder. Massacre. But this wolf had turned away from her the moment he’d had the chance to end it. He could have returned home.
Was it a trick? Dare she run? Stay?
She draped her rifle over her shoulder, taking a second to breathe, to think. Perhaps she was not the primary objective for this wolf; perhaps he had found her by accident. Did he know who she was?
Yes--he must. There was only one way to ensure that he wouldn’t attack her again: she had to kill him.
A wounded wolf wouldn’t get far. The gunshot wound in his leg seemed serious enough to significantly slow the beast down if he planned on tracking her. She might be able to reload her gun if she could make it home. She was a decent hunter, too; perhaps she could track him. She tested her weight on her injured ankle, exhaling slowly as pain shot up her leg. She could move, but not very fast. She’d need to bind it and find a healer.
No. She was in no state to hunt a lycanthrope. They were powerful, with the strength of an animal and the resourcefulness of a human. She knew when battles were lost. She couldn’t hunt him. Not at night, and not in the storm, even as the rain slowed.
She set off for home, walking as quickly as her ankle would allow. Just past a mulberry bush, where a distinct, knotted tree root broke the ground, she heard it. A whine, high pitched over the distant rumble of thunder.
It couldn’t be, Jenny told herself as she tread lightly over the forest’s thick brush, ignoring the jabs and scrapes from the gnarled undergrowth. Bathed in moonlight, the lycan was curled into himself against a tree, nestled between knobby roots that pushed into the ground. Each exhale was punctuated by a high pitched cry that faded with each moment.
Without thinking, she moved towards him. He shifted in the darkness, curling tighter into himself, lifting his head. He snarled at her, but, oddly, did not make eye contact. He was distressed, perhaps distracted.
She dropped her rifle; it was out of bullets, but he didn’t know that. She took a step closer and reached towards him, a gesture of peace. His ears flicked.
She spoke, trying to keep her voice steady, to be brave. “Wolf.”
He chuffed at her, giving her pause, but then he whined and dropped his head, tucking his snout into the curve of his hind legs. She swept forward.
“Let me see.”
Her hands trembled visibly as she reached for his leg. The moment her fingers brushed his fur, his eyes glinted; he yelped and snipped at her, slinking away.
Knowing that this was more from pain than anger or distrust, Jenny leaned forward and placed a firm hand on his thigh. “I will help ye, but ye must be still.”
The wolf sniffed and turned his head away, didn’t flinch as she shifted his hindlimbs to get a look at the wound. She couldn’t see much at all, just the moisture of blood and exposed flesh caught in the moonlight.
She cursed and glanced around, checking to see if she was being watched. Snapping her fingers, a fire, an unnatural pale blue, took light in midair. Beyond a curious glance, the wolf didn’t react. She shrugged almost apologetically at him and straightened out his leg to assess the wound better in the light. His body tensed as if holding back a scream from the pain.
She wasn’t sure what it was that had compelled her to help the lycan. Perhaps it was the knowledge that his natural form was human, that he was utterly disempowered, a weapon sharpened and extended on behalf of someone else. Besides, he hadn’t killed her -- and he’d had the chance. And the look in his eyes now. He hadn’t wanted to, of that she was certain.
“I’m sorry,” she remarked under her breath. The bullet wound gaped dark red in the pale blue light. A deep wound, she could not see the bullet with a casual glance. Painful, and might lame him, but not life-threatening.
She met his yellow look; there was a heaviness in it, that of recognition. He saw her, knew her.
“Someone sent you for me?” she asked, trying to keep her voice natural.
He gave what would have been a nod if he were human.
“Do you know who I am?” she asked, and her voice broke on the last syllable as he curled his lip and growled at her.
He yanked away from her, leaving her aghast and frozen. As if to scare her way, or perhaps to kill her, he prowled around her, limping, and barked. Yipped. Growled. Large teeth gritted in her face, coming together with a click in front of her nose. She flinched and cowered, sucking in a breath, ready to scream.
It was a trap, she was going to die, be torn apart alive.
Leave, snarled a weary, furious voice. He backed away.
She paused, taken aback. “But--”
He charged her, his teeth out. She staggered to her feet and ran, not daring to look back.
She flew into her cabin, slamming the door shut behind her. With a wave of her hand, the fireplace blazed. Her brother knew she was alive and knew that she lived here. He’d already sent something -- someone -- for her. He’d know in a matter of hours, maybe minutes, that she’d survived the attack. It didn’t matter anymore that she lived quietly and without magic. Not here, not when he knew where she was. She was supposed to be dead.
Her shelves and clay jars and weed baskets rattled as she rifled through them, packing bread, dried fruits, anything she could find and shoving it into a small sack - the most inconspicuous she could find. She dressed quickly to avoid delay. There was fresh clothing-- and thank goodness. Her hands shook as she tied her stays, and she stumbled and lost her balance once as she’d stepped on her bad ankle. She cursed her mother for giving her fire rather than the ability to heal. She bound it tightly with a wrap, trying to keep it from moving, and slipped on her worn leather boots.
Muttering to herself about the lunacy of leaving in the dark and freezing rain, she waved the fire dead, extinguishing it with a hiss. She left the cabin behind, not even bothering to check that the wooden door locked behind her. She wouldn’t return.
Anonymous said: How did Jenny decide to leave Lallybroch once Ian died?
“And ye’d leave Ian?” he [Jamie] asked.
She made a small noise in her throat. Her hand lay against her breast still, and at this she pressed it flat, fierce against her heart.
“Ian’s with me,” she said, and her back straightened in defiance of the fresh-dug grave. “He’ll never leave me, nor I him.”
- An Echo in the Bone, Chapter 84, “The Right of It”
Canon compliant, a missing moment from Echo (Jenny/Ian).
Other Ocean
by @ianmuyrray
Lallybroch, 1777
Ian was not what he once was.
He lay on his back, the bedclothes tangled around his waist. He slept naked - he always had, no matter the weather. Early on in their marriage, she had laughed at him for it, not seeing what a familiar comfort his body would become to her, how often she would turn to him on cold nights, how he would always sigh and open his arms to her without waking. She knew if she leaned over him she’d see the peg he used to get around leaning against the sideboard, resting within easy reach, awaiting daybreak.
He had always been lean and wiry, but now - she ran delicate fingertips over his protruding ribs, the crests and valleys on his chest - it was different. Imprisonment and English interrogation had left their mark on him, leeched much of him away over the years. Jenny withdrew her hand and studied him, his body bathed in orange and blue, firelight fighting the depth of moonlight. The dimness of light must be accentuating the weight he’d lost, she reasoned, trying to hold her grief at bay. Then the lines of his body blurred, the gaps and sharpness filling and softening with how she’d known him, like a blacksmith pouring molten metal into a mold.
Here in bed, with the farm asleep, things were simple. No need to put up a brave front for their children or grandchildren. Here, they wept, raged, laughed, made love, or sat in silence. Death and its separation - no matter how temporary - eked ever closer, but the walls of their bedroom, and the four posts of their bed, insulated them from its violence and pain.
It was a quiet night, a chilly night, and with the whistle of wind against a window, Jenny shuddered.
“Dinna look at me like that, Jenny,” he said, his voice oddly alert for a man woken from sleep, “I’m no’ dead yet.”
She planted an open palm against his chest, feeling for the beat of his heart, the fullness of air in his lungs with the precious draw of breath. “I know,” she whispered, and met his eye.
There was a stillness in the air, like the crest of a yawn before it falls. Days had been sliding by, turning into months, years, and Ian’s persistent cough never waned. It wasted him, sapped his strength until he was reduced to sitting in armchairs under knitted blankets, watching farmwork from inside. It was his worst nightmare, to be trapped, to feel useless.
Jenny’s hand drifted down to Ian’s right leg, feeling the half limb for the wholeness that it was; his missing limb, a reminder of loss and ache, but also recovery and adaptation. She gave an involuntary squeeze to his upper thigh and closed her eyes. Hot tears welled over onto her cheeks.
“Mo chridhe,” came Ian’s whisper, and she felt the bed shift as he sat up and gathered her to him. She leaned into his body, her arms holding him tight against her. He was frail, but he would not break. His chest was lightly dusted with hair and she nuzzled her nose and cheek into it, taking comfort in its familiarity. He stroked her hair and she wept.
At Ian’s touch, her fears and pain dimmed to the accustomed numbness, snuffing out like the end of a candle’s wick. There was an ugly irony in his soothing of her tears; she shut her eyes firm against it. With one last squeeze, she released him, sitting up and wiping at her eyes with the back of her hands. She sniffed.
“I’ve written to Jamie,” she muttered, struggling to gather her loosened reins. Suspended in the air was the unspoken, palpable absence of their youngest son, their missing piece, living across the ocean with him.
Ian breathed out a sigh, deeper than she had heard in a long time. “Thank ye.”
“Ye should ken I’m no’ afraid,” she stated, her gaze unwavering.
“I ken.” He was quiet a moment, his face momentarily obscured by darkness. “Ye should ken I’m no’ afraid, either.”
She nodded. “I ken.”
Suddenly, he was overcome with a rattling sound, and he erupted into a violent coughing fit. Jenny scrambled for a clean, scented handkerchief, holding it up to his nose and mouth. Coughs were supposed to clear cobwebs in the chest; his, instead, reopened wounds. She held him til it was done, her body stiff, unwilling to let him see how much the sound and sight of blood unsettled her, frightened her. Because - she was afraid. The very marrow of her bones shook with fear of the loss of Ian; she felt to her very essence the gaping maw of absence and sorrow.
He settled back into the bed and opened his arms to her. Crawling into them, feeling childlike, she nestled into his body, taking stock of how it felt different, how it was the same.
With a sweep of her hands across his torso, she could sense his life fading away.
Ian was dying.
“What will ye do when I am gone, Janet?” he asked.
“What do ye mean?” she asked carefully, buying time. Precious time.
“What’s next? Ye must ha’ thought about it.”
At her silence, after a pop of a log in the fire, he turned into her, his legs tangling with hers, her nightshift rucking up at the movement. A way he had thoughtlessly held her for years.
“Jenny.” He brought her face up to his. “Ye’ll leave me to wonder?”
“No,” she said. “Only, I havena given it much thought, beyond how things will change. If I try to plan, I dinna get far along in it.”
He smiled sadly as she saw his pulse skitter in his throat. He was afraid, too.
“I’m no’ afraid,” she repeated, as if saying it again would make it true. “I’m only… sad.” A short word, a three letter word, not enough to express what she meant. She pressed a hand over his heart.
“I’m sad, too, mo nighean.” He placed a hand over hers, large and knobbed at the knuckles, his fingers long and white. “I willna see the day when yer hair goes all white. Yer mam and da both gone afore that time. Makes it hard to picture in my mind.” His other hand swept through the strands at her temple.
She took a deep shuddering breath. “I dinna want to live that long beyond ye. Dinna ask that of me.”
“Oh, but I do. Promise me, mo chridhe. That ye willna sit and wait for death. That ye willna wish it will hasten itself just to be with me. You are my heart; as long as you live, I live.”
Her eyes burned and her voice cracked on her next question. “And if it were me instead? What would ye do?”
He wheezed with an impending cough, his bone-sharp frame shaking with the effort to suppress it. Her hand still on his heart, her fingers tightened their grip as his hand did the same, pressing her to him. He would not cough, not now - holding his wife was more important.
Then, a confession spilled from Jenny. “Ian,” she whispered, barely audible.“I dinna think I can bear our home without ye in it. To be in the kitchen and no’ have you to make parritch for, to milk the goats and no’ hear you talking to the horses in the barn, to walk the fields I've kent my whole life and no' catch sight of yer gait coming down the road to me. I canna stand the idea of counting the headstones: Willie and Ma and Rabbie, Da, Caitlin and -- yours.” She took a deep breath, the movements of her body swift, smooth; uninhibited like the roll of water. “I want to leave Lallybroch.”
“Oh, mo graidh,” he nearly wept. “Yes. Go.” He kissed her eyelids. “Tell me. Where would ye go?”
She swallowed, and it was a moment before she spoke, feeling the ground quake beneath her, standing on the verge of breaking. “Maybe France, with Michael. Or-- Jamie. Maybe Jamie would take me in America.”
“America?” Ian repeated, faint surprise folding itself into a resigned happiness. He reached up to gently hold her face in his hands.
Jenny felt the approaching abyss, as deep and wide as the ocean between Lallybroch and the New World. “This willna be home anymore.”
“Aye,” he agreed, his voice barely more than a whisper. He was still holding her face, tangled together in their bed.
“But, mo graidh,” she breathed. “Without ye, I should never ken a home again.”
He took a shaky breath that had nothing to do with his illness, his eyes shining in the dark. The pads of his fingers drifted over her cheekbones, her lips. Memorizing.
He moved towards her and planted a soft kiss on her mouth. “Mo nighean dubh,” he murmured. “If ye think death or oceans will stop me from being with ye, you are a fool.” He touched her chest, above her heart. “I will be with ye always.”
Anonymous said: What was it like for Ian to return home without his leg? Was it hard for him to adjust?
“Don’t tell me I dinna ken what it’s like!” Jenny blazed at him. “Stories, is it? Who d’ye think nursed Ian when he came home from France wi’ half a leg and a fever that nearly killed him?”
She slapped her hand flat on the bench. The stretched nerves had snapped.
“Don’t know? I don’t know? I picked the maggots out of the raw flesh of his stump, because his own mother couldna bring herself to do it! I held the hot knife against his leg to seal the wound! I smelled his flesh searing like a roasted pig and listened to him scream while I did it! D’ye dare to stand there and tell me I…don’t…KNOW how it is!”
-Dragonfly in Amber, Chapter 35, “Moonlight”
While preparing for this prompt, I realized handling a canon-compliant backstory for Ian (and Jenny) was impossible to do as a one-shot. Here’s the first installment of a series exploring what it was like for Ian during the time between Virgins and Outlander.
Fleur-de-Lis: Part I
by @ianmuyrray
The letter from the Murrays said he had come home in the back of a wagon, but Jenny saw only one line when she read it:
Ian is home and gravely injured. He is convalescing from the loss of a leg.
Hay still clung to the little clothing he wore when she had arrived, dusty from the road and stinking of the horse sweat that marked her haste. He was laid across a cot in front of the hearth, his body limp from pain and exhaustion, his skin damp with the cold sweat of fever.
She handed her cloak to a servant and stepped cautiously into the room. Barring Ian and a servant who followed her, it was empty; his mother and father had disappeared into the spare corners of their small farmhouse, avoiding the tortured breathing and desolate moans of their son. He was quiet and still as she approached him.
The room was a sanctum, Ian sprawled across the altar. There was something disturbing about this space, domesticity ripped away, the brutality of war violating the home. The only sign of robust life was the fire that burned.
“Ian,” she said softly. Scanning him for injury, she stepped carefully as she neared him, worried that even the slightest rustle of her skirts would disturb any rest he might have slipped into. He didn’t acknowledge her; maybe he couldn’t. She saw his chest rise slightly as he breathed, heard the rattle of it in his throat. But he was not resting, was not at peace; he was overcome with misery and despair.
Closer to him now, she saw the injury. Where there should have been two feet, he only had one. His right leg was sawed off at the knee. Caked with old blood, the blankets he had been given were stained brown and black, and he smelled like rust and dying flesh. Shock rumbled over her at the sight of it.
She gently touched his face. It was pale and green, contorted into an inhuman expression.
“Ian,” she said again, this time louder and more firmly.
With a sudden movement, his eyes popped open and he grasped her wrist so hard she thought it might bruise. Despite her discomfort, she wrestled her hand free and gave him a small smile, whispering, “I’m here to help you, mo ghraidh.” She had never called him that out loud before, the endearment falling from her lips as naturally as water down a waterfall. He softened at her tone, and the air lightened as his head lolled back, his gaze feverish and distant, unseeing, before his eyelids fluttered closed. He trusted her.
Had his family left him here to rot? To die? Where was the physician? Why was he alone? Why wasn’t anyone sitting to watch him?
The windows were closed to sweat out the fever, and it was dark and sweltering in the room. Heat crawled over her, causing sweat to bead on the back of her neck. Her hands drifted down the cot to the blankets and linen bandages covering his leg and she began to remove them. Peeling the sticky layers away, the silver tang of fresh blood met her nostrils. Something needed to be done, and fast; she could feel Ian slipping away into hazardous unconsciousness, blood loss threatening to overtake him.
Not noticing the cold, viscous pool of Ian’s blood at her feet, she knelt near the wound, peering at it as objectively as she could even as her own blood furiously roared in her ears. The surgeon’s field stitches had come undone, the wound reopened. It was horrific, ghastly up close; she had never known the human body to be so gruesome or so grotesque. The tissue had begun to rot, and the smell, like that of rancid meat, was not something she would ever forget. She nearly retched at the sight of the maggots within the wound. Dear Lord--how long had he been left like this?
Laying a gentle hand near his injury, she closed her eyes for a moment and murmured a prayer before she stood, back straight and shoulders squared. One of the servants stood a good distance away from the cot, hovering near the doorway with her hands clasped behind her back, averting her eyes from the sick and rotting man on the cot.
“I’ll need hot water, fresh linen, tweezers, and a knife,” Jenny ordered, her words swift and decisive. “And anything else that might prove useful. Now go.”
Ian groaned, a sound that walked the line between gratitude and protestation. Jenny touched him on his shoulder, one eye on the doorway awaiting the maid’s return.
His parents had abandoned him, had left him here, helpless and dying. Jenny was furious at them for it, she felt the rage roll through her veins, flicker under her skin; she would not let him sink into the abyss that beckoned him. Even with a featherlight touch, her hand on his shoulder turned hard as stone, when two maids returned, along with Ian’s mother, their arms laden with the supplies Jenny needed. Jenny barked orders, tying a spare apron around her waist and repinning the loose curls at the base of her neck that had flown free from their binding as her horse galloped towards the Murray home.
She didn’t spare a look at Ian’s mother, who hovered anxiously some distance from the cot but made no move to assist.
“Useless woman,” Jenny muttered as she prepped her tools, not caring in the slightest if she was overheard.
After all the bandages were carefully removed from his leg, Jenny looked to Ian’s face. It glowed pale in the firelight, his features still and broken as if carved into clay and then cracked. She placed a hand on his head, his hair cool and damp with sweat, his skin hot from fever and the heat of the fire. She sensed him caught between two worlds, hovering between the living and the dead. She willed her gentle touches to be restorative and prayed he was too far away to feel, or imagine, what was coming next.
Jenny knew the basics of how to heal and how to kill. She had nursed sick animals, had cared for her older brother as he wasted away in illness, had fetched her mother water to drink before she died in childbirth. She was no stranger to the violence of farm accidents or the bodily destruction of injury, having seen it on tenants and servants, even her family members - the lash of a violent whip on her younger brother’s back, for one. She knew how to slaughter an animal for meat, knew the injuries that could kill men. She had read books about soldiering and seen paintings depicting the brutality of gun and cannon fire. But Ian’s injury — the worst she had ever seen — was gruesome, a permanent maiming; it was not the result of a farm accident, nor was it an illness. This was war brought to hearth and home.
She gestured to Ian’s mother and the maids to come closer. “We must move him so I can see the wound better, there is too much shadow at this angle. Be careful ye don’t jostle him.”
Her hands grasped the cot near his head, and in a synchronized movement, the four women lifted and turned him so his wound faced the fire. The flames illuminated the desecrated flesh in a grotesque way, and bile rose in Jenny’s mouth just to look at it. She grabbed a tin cup, a stool, a cloth, and the tweezers, settling herself near his leg without glancing at it. Her gaze flicked to Ian’s mother in the shadows of the room, her look as sharp as a razor.
“Why don’t ye make yerself useful and get some laudanum?”
“We dinna have any,” came the sheepish reply.
“Whisky, then? And a belt or bullet for him to bite on?” Ian’s breath seemed to come faster and more shallow, escalating the urgency of removing the maggots from his leg and sealing the wound. Jenny clenched her apron in a trembling fist on her lap.
As if frozen, his mother stood still, jaw clenched as if to keep from crying.
“Then get out,” Jenny hissed.
“But I want to—“
“If he had been tended to right away and not left to fester this might not ha’ happened. D’ye want to be the one to pull maggots from his leg?”
The woman turned a shade of puce at the thought.
“Get out,” Jenny repeated, this time with an air of apathetic dismissal. She knew each moment they waited Ian wasted away. She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand and took a deep breath in spite of the putrid air.
“Here ye are, mistress,” said one of the maids, bringing a bottle of whisky and a leather strap.
Jenny willed her shaking hands to be still. “Thank ye kindly,” she replied, her voice still terse but quieter now. “Try and get him to take a swig, a big one, and ask him to bite down on that, now, would ye?” The maid nodded.
Jenny peered closely into the wound, locating a maggot for removal. With one hand on his thigh to brace herself, her body angled so she didn’t block the light, she lifted the tweezers and — Ian’s body convulsed as he sat up to cough, and Jenny sat bolt upright, looking towards the head of the cot. His shirt was splattered with wet droplets of whisky and some dribbled down his chin while the maid jumped back from him.
“What did ye do?” Jenny demanded with a glare, rising to meet Ian. She pressed gently on his shoulders, encouraging him to lie back down before taking the whisky decanter from the servant.
“I didna do nothin’, mistress. He spat it out,” came the stammering response that Jenny ignored.
Jenny brushed hair back from his face, murmuring loving assurances in Gaelic. “Ian, mo chridhe, ye must drink. Ye’ll feel better.” She held the decanter to his lips, and after a moment of hesitation, he drank several big swallows. Her fingers swept through his matted hair, attempting to tidy him. “There’s a good lad, I’ve got ye, dinna be afraid.”
She held her hand out for the leather strap, handed to her by the maid, and held it in front of his face. “Next, bite down on this, mo ghraidh, and scream all ye need. The pain will be over soon.” With a final, loving touch to his chest, Jenny returned to her seat on the stool.
“Hold him down,” she ordered the maids, who stood at attention, their hands hovering over his shoulders, ready to brace him while Jenny did her work.
After a flicker of firelight, there it was — a maggot, moving through the muscles of the flesh. Jenny allowed herself to shudder, but only once before plunging to the task, sharp tweezers glinting in her hand. She could only hear the sickening plunk, plunk, plunk of maggots into the tin cup at her feet as she worked. Jenny hardly dared to take a breath, hardly dared to think about what she was doing lest she crumple into weakness like Ian’s mother… no, Ian needed her too much.
She pressed on, blocking out the groans and sharp breaths that echoed throughout the room. She told herself that temporary discomfort was better than more horrific pain or death. With quiet murmurs, she tried to assure him that this was best, that this was what needed to be done, that she was willing to do it for him, but nothing she said was of comfort to either of them.
Agitated by her poking and prodding, the wound bled freely, and at one point Jenny had to pull a belted tourniquet tight around his leg to slow the flow of blood. She dabbed at the wound with a linen cloth, not her first. A pile of bloody rags lay at her feet on the floor.
Without looking into the tin cup, Jenny stood and tossed the maggots into the fire. They hit the flames with a menacing hiss, and for a moment she pressed a hand to her stomach to steady herself before turning back to the man on the cot. Even with the tourniquet, his wound continued to seep on to the floorboards. With a chill that pressed upon her bones, Jenny wondered if the stain would be permanent.
But cleansing the wound wasn’t the hardest part - sealing it was. Out of the corner of her eye, a knife blade glinted evilly at her from the table, reflecting fire.
At some point, Ian had passed out, but now he stirred. His hand reached out, and Jenny went to him. She clasped his single hand in both of hers, brought it to her lips for the smallest of kisses before kneeling before him at face level.
“Mo chridhe,” she whispered, “I’m sorry, this needs to be done. I dinna want to hurt ye but I must. I have to seal the wound.” He stared dazedly at her for a moment before nodding. The leather strap had fallen from his lips, and she gingerly held it to his mouth until he took it between his teeth. “Bite. Hard. And dinna let go.”
In a whirl of skirts, Jenny swiped the knife from the table and stooped to rest it in the fire. The flames blazed, and she blinked against the rush of heat that blew across her face. She reached behind her to touch Ian’s uninjured leg, giving it a gentle sweep of her hand as he trembled, waiting for her, for the knife.
In order to avoid a blistering burn, she wrapped her hand in thick cloth before pulling the hot blade out of the embers. She couldn’t look at Ian’s face.
On an inhale, in one swift movement, she pressed the glowing hot knife against Ian’s wound.
He screamed, and as the inhuman sound filled the room, Jenny felt the wind knock out of her. After a few torturous moments, she removed the blade—it stuck to the burned skin, and she had to carefully peel it off, much to her horror and Ian’s continued pain. She afforded herself one quick glance at the wound before settling the knife in the hot embers again. She’d need to do this two or so more times until it no longer gaped open.
She stayed near the fire, not daring to move near Ian’s head lest she lose her courage to finish the job.
“Again,” she announced, swiftly pressing the flat of the knife against the other half of the wound, and Ian screamed a second time, though this was less desperate — he now knew what it felt like and had been prepared. Somehow, this recognition made the sound of his cries worse, and Jenny blinked back tears.
What had he sounded like when the field doctor removed his leg? Who was with him? How had he survived the journey home, over land and over sea?
His muscles were drawn taut, his entire body tense. She could see more of him now than she ever had. He was dressed in hardly more than his shirt, the blankets removed by her own hands. His body was contorted, trying to crawl up into itself in pain, though she saw how he fought against it, how he tried to lie still and not ruin the work she was doing. He was pale and his eyes squeezed shut; he was perhaps on the verge of fainting or vomiting. Knife back in the flames, Jenny flew to him and cradled his face in her hands, pressed her forehead to his, willing her proximity to infuse him with comfort. She needed him almost as desperately as he needed her.
“One more, mo ghraidh,” she whispered to him. “And then we’re done, aye? And ye can rest, and I willna trouble you any longer.”
The maids, forgotten, stepped back into the shadows of the room, allowing the two some privacy.
“Are ye ready?” Jenny asked, not expecting a response. None came, aside from a lone groan, a hiss of breath. Whispering yet another prayer to the Lord, Jenny wrapped her hand in cloth for the last time and withdrew the blade from the flames. It glowed, red-hot and eager in her palm. “Last one,” she promised before pressing it against his leg the final time.
He didn’t scream, though his head did rocket up, teeth bared, and he glared at her, beyond her. In his agony, he had lost his sense of self, his grip on reality. She could sense it as his muscles tensed and he tried to pull away from her. His soul might have separated from his body, hanging on by a tether. She gripped his thigh firmly, not allowing him to budge, willing him to stay still.
“There,” she proclaimed, feeling nauseous as she peeled the knife from his burned skin. She briefly placed the blade back into the fire, enough to singe off the bits of his flesh that stuck to it; after, she nearly dropped the knife on the table in her hurry to be rid of the thing, to distance herself from the sound and sight of Ian’s pain at her hands.
The leg was deep red and blistering, but had stopped bleeding. Slow and gentle, Jenny unclasped the buckle on the belt that made a tourniquet, wanting to give his leg some reprieve. A bruise formed where it had pressed, a menacing ring of purple and maroon, some edges of it yellow and green. Had this belt been on him since France? she wondered, giving the bruise a brush of her thumb as if she could melt it away.
“Get the burn balm,” she ordered a maid, who curtsied and left. “And you,” she said to the other servant, “bring fresh bandages. Please.”
In the few moments since the knife was removed, Ian seemed to have come back to his senses and was the most lucid Jenny had seen him since arriving. She went to stand near his head, and he blinked at her as if removing a glaze from his eyes.
“I’m alive,” he muttered, causing Jenny to smile.
“Ye are.” She felt tentatively triumphant. But Ian still blazed with fever, she could see it in his sweat, in the threatening cloudiness of his eyes — they were not out of danger yet.
She held his cheek, just for a moment, and they looked at each other. She opened her mouth as if to say something when the maids returned, bandages and salve in their hands.
She doused her hands in a nearby bucket of water, attempting to scrub away the blood that had crusted in her fingernails and the creases of her knuckles and palms. Even in the relative dimness, she could see the water change color from a clear transparency to an opaque, cloudy brown, rolling away from her hands. Ian’s blood. She scrubbed furiously, wanting to be rid of the horrific substance.
Drying off her hands on the apron, she nodded at the salve for one of the maids to open it as she spoke to Ian. “Mo chridhe, I’m going to rub a salve on yer leg. It may hurt ye, but doing this now will help ye feel better later.” She tried to make her voice as soothing as possible, but he made no move to acknowledge he heard her.
She worked quickly and efficiently, her back stiff as she massaged the greasy substance into the burns. Perhaps she imagined it, but she thought Ian let out a sigh of relief at her touch. Her lips twitched with relief at the sight of his deep breathing before she wrapped his stump in linen, tying the bandage tight to ensure it wouldn’t chafe his skin in movement.
This was a labor of love, she thought to herself. There were few people in the world she would do this for. She hadn’t anticipated Ian to have so grievous an injury when she left Lallybroch, let alone that she would need to care for it herself, but when she saw him lying there, she snapped into action. She had been moved by something larger than herself. Of course, she had known his leg had been partially removed, but maggots? Green and purple rotting flesh? How could his family have left him that way?
Double and triple checking the final touches on the bandages, she muttered curses to herself, wishing she were a witch and could hex the Murrays for their cowardice.
The servants left, leaving Jenny to sit on her stool alongside his head. She held an open book in her hands, but she didn’t read. She was restless, constantly monitoring his exhaustion, his fever, as he slept. His mother checked in once, bubbling over with feeble gratitude that Jenny disregarded, dismissing with a wave of a hand. Ian’s father, John, once stood in the doorway, not daring to enter. Ian was on the cot, and Jenny stared John down over Ian’s weary body, daring him to apologize, daring him to say anything. He left without a word.
“Jenny,” Ian said, once he woke, his voice hoarse. He searched for her, first looking towards the fire, then at his side. She sat, her back as straight as it always was, as if relaxing meant a lack of vigilance. She said nothing, but conveyed to him in her expression that she was listening as she grasped the hand he held out ot her.
“Stay?”
She blinked, long and slow. “Of course,” she replied, her voice hardly more than a whisper.
