Work Text:
[Taking place as Roger approaches Claire and Bree, after calling the police, and as mother and daughter sit close together after their promises of truth. Brianna stands and goes to Roger.]
BRIANNA - Tell her what you found.
[Roger and Brianna stand close together telling Claire about what they found out. Brianna is very nervous and Claire feels it deeply.]
ROGER - I found something in my father’s correspondence. Not sure if he ever sent it to Boston, or if this is a copy… After the battle, a few wounded Jacobite soldiers took refuge in an old house for a few days. They were all taken outside to be shot, except for one… A Fraser, a Fraser of Lovat’s regiment…
A Fraser officer whose name is NOT memorialized in Beauly’s church…
[Three heartbeats. Claire looks at Brianna, not sure if she wants to hear the rest, not sure if her mind is ready from the adrenaline rush of watching Gillian Edgars disappear… But she is.]
CLAIRE - Who?
BRIANNA - My father… James Fraser.
[camera to Claire as she covers her mouth and her eyes are dancing behind a tearful smile - “I have to go back.” The words echo from Claire’s mind through a soft whisper on her lips, that neither Bree nor Roger really hear or understand. The god forsaken stones are there tall and powerful, forever impervious to the mystery behind them, only open to those blessed and cursed by the ability to understand what the buzz means. We get a shot of Claire’s eyes filled with tears, and in the background Roger keeps explaining what the letter from the Reverend to Frank said.]
–-
[Light sounds of the highland mist start….
From Claire’s eyes filled with emotion and hope in 1968, we pan to Craigh na Dun, 222 years before. A doomed afternoon. A man is riding a horse away from the foggy stones, broken beyond measure but so driven towards his fate. We dont see his face, only the horse’s legs riding, for 5 seconds, but we know who he is. Jamie had to get out of there before his grief led him to break his head against the rock, fighting the powerful sobs and need to grab fists of grass. He had his fingers in hers, he had been grasping her waist, he felt her being sucked away. There was nothing left to be done but to go the moor. We left Claire like a Dragonfly in Amber, and we meet Jamie in the same way.]
–-
[Culloden Moor // post battle. A merciless smoky air sweeps through the field. Red coats mingled with tartan. Swords, pistols and hay forks abandoned together. The surviving winners start to roam the field.The camera finds Jamie with a red coat officer lying across his stomach and upper thigh, we cant see this red coat’s face. Jamie is surrounded by a few highlanders wrapped in their bloody tartans, but we cant see their faces either… Yet.
Close up on Jamie Fraser’s bloody face, red hair ever more red in the twilight, mouth slightly open. As this happens we listen to…]
V.O. ROGER - "He meant to die at Culloden, but he didn’t.“
[Jamie opens his eyes in a fit of agony, pain and surprise. Is he in the gates of St. Peter? Is this Purgatory? That is his first thought. His pupils clench, all the audience sees is blue and black.]
[FADE TO BLACK]
V.O. JAMIE - "I wished I were dead.”
END CREDITS (same as the original episode, with Time Has Come Today)