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You're right. . .
Your whole life has flashed in front of your eyes many times before, but it has never been like this.
There's nothing more lovely,
There's nothing more profound. . .
There was no pain. No worry. No fear. The stench and clamour of battle was only a distant memory. There was only him, and Claire, and the universe.
Than the certainty,
Than the certainty that all of this will end,
That all of this will end. . .
It wasn't like he was watching his memories, or even living them again. It was like he was living them. Actually living them. Not again, just. . . living them.
It was like time didn't exist, and never had.
So open your arms to me,
Open your arms to me. . .
She charged across the bothy, commanding everyone within hearing distance, “Don't you DARE! You'll break his arm if you do it like that!”
He was shocked. Annoyed. Angry that anyone or anything was preventing something being done about his shoulder.
Then, he looked up and saw her. Wet. Draggled. Scared and lost and alone. Dressed in nothing but a shift and unfathomable, impossible power.
“You have to get the arm into the correct position before the bones will slip back into joint.”
He saw Dougal look at her too, and recognize the strength of her. Fierce, inexplicable jealousy bloomed in his stomach.
A woman worth having.
A woman worth respecting.
A woman worth loving.
He had been looking for such a woman for ages, despairing of ever finding her. And now, she had found him instead.
All thought of the pain in his shoulder vanished. Just the sight of her was better than a whole barrel of whisky. Then, she touched him. Helped him. Cared for him.
Healed him.
He was lost before they'd even begun.
This will be the one moment that matters. . .
“Ye'r shakin' so hard ye'r makin' MY teeth rattle.”
He held her for hours that day, and the next, nestled close against his body, both wrapped in his plaid, and drinking from the same flask of whisky.
For all the long ride back to Leoch, the thought was in his mind that if this was all he ever had of her, he'd still die a happy man.
And this will be the one thing we remember. . .
“Well, I guess that means ye'r comin' with me.”
Christ, he loved her defiance. If he had never heard her speak, and had to judge solely by the jut of her chin and the snap in her eyes, he'd have guessed her far more Scottish than English.
He had only threatened to throw her over his shoulder in an attempt to get her to growl out a “No!” just exactly like she had.
She was wary of him, and as skittish as a doe, but somehow, even in the midst of that, she was not one particle afraid. She was wise, not scared. Not of him, nor his sword, nor of the blood that drenched his shoulder now, clammy and sticky. Most fine ladies he'd ever known would have quailed at the sight of him like this – battle-stained and covered in the grime of travel – and probably fainted at the smell of him too.
She only stood nose to nose with him, and balled up her fists with barely restrained fury.
He debated falling to his knees and begging for her hand in marriage right there and then, but eventually settled for leading her back to his horse, and getting her settled between his thighs again.
Would she ever know how completely she owned him now?
Would he ever have the courage to tell her?
And this will be the reason to have been here. . .
“Ye need no' be scairt ov me. Oor ov annyone else heer. So long as I'm wi' ye.”
“And when you're not with me?”
Her tears were still drying on his chest. The weight of her still burned in his arms. The touch of her fingertips still blazed across his shoulders. Her scent, her sounds, the very soul of her was far more permanently embedded upon him than even the scars on his back.
She would always be with him now, no matter what happened next.
And this will be the one moment that matters at all. . .
The kiss was public, and chaste, and far more brief than he would have liked for it to be, but it was still a kiss from her. A willing, confident, intimate kiss, from his wife.
His wife.
The knowledge glowed hot in his chest like a warm toddy. Claire was his wife. If she'd had to be persuaded into it, ultimately she had chosen for herself, and that kiss only proved it.
There was no revulsion in that kiss. No resentment. No regret.
She didn't love him, but he'd soon see to that. Doubtless women weren't so far different from men that he couldn't see his way clear to winning her. It was only battle of a different sort.
Battle with her uncertainties. Battle with his own self-control. Battle with the cruel twists of fate that had led them both here to begin with.
They'd win, he and Claire together. He knew they would.
Because they couldn't do anything less.
So while the mile reclaims our footprints,
And while our bones keep looking back,
The overgrowth is swallowing the path. . .
Fort William.
Horrocks.
Leoch again.
The ill wish.
The witch trial.
Lallybroch.
Redcoats.
Horrocks again.
Wentworth.
Paris.
The Bastille.
Faith. . .
They all blended themselves together into a whirlwind of pain, and fear, and horror, and sadness the like of which he could never fully express, not in words, or tears, or in any way at all.
It was only Claire's eyes that could speak for him. Only her living heart that kept his beating.
Before the grace of God, go we. . .
A dragonfly in amber.
Forgiveness.
Vows.
Love.
Jenny. Ian. Wee Jamie.
Murtagh.
Home.
Silver spoons.
Fergus.
Faith. . .
There were good things too. Wonderful, perfect things that lived unto themselves, always separate from the bad.
Untainted.
Pure. . .
Before the grace of God, go we. . .
“Lord, ye gave me a rare woman. And God, I loved her well.”
The words echoed throughout his soul as the battle raged around him. He saw her safe. At the very least, he saw her safe.
Her and the child. . .
Before the grace of time and chance
And entropy's cruel hands. . .
Twenty years without a heart.
Twenty years with only a dry, choking feeling in his throat when he thought of what it meant to be happy.
Twenty years he barely remembered at all.
There was only wee William, and all the times he saw Claire in his dreams. . .
So open your arms to me,
Open your arms to me,
This will be the one moment that matters. . .
“It isn't Geordie. It's me. Claire.”
For a minute, the world goes dark. When it comes back, it is filled with the light of her face.
Time melts away.
He cannot believe his eyes. Or his hands. Or any of his other corporeal senses.
But his heart knows.
She is here. And real. And alive.
And his.
Which means. . .
The dry, strangling feeling in his throat softens and evaporates with the knowledge that he is just as much hers as he ever was.
And this will be the one thing we remember,
And this will be the reason to have been here. . .
“How small a thing Death is between us, Sassenach.”
She doesn't quite believe him, her doctor's senses warring with her magical soul. She knows methods and types of death that he has never learned.
But no matter. He knows even the Great Unknown cannot separate them.
That is enough.
And this will be the one moment that matters at all. . .
F.
R.
He carves each letter deep into the bark of the tree, making sure the marks will last.
Fraser's Ridge.
It isn't Lallybroch, or Scotland, but as Claire says, it is a land of opportunity. There are possibilities here.
Possibilities and hope.
Hope. . .
For the first time in decades, he allows himself to dream.
So won't you stay here with me?
And we'll build 'til we blister our hands. . .
“I must have ye.”
“What, now?”
“Aye. Did I not tell ye I've missed ye?”
There had been many moments in the past thirty years when he had very nearly succumbed to believing that Claire was, and had never been anything other than, a dream. A wild, impossible fantasy cooked up by his despairing, often desperate mind, trying to salve its loneliness and fear.
How much easier that would have been, sometimes.
But at moments like this, with her in his arms, both surrounding and being surrounded by her, she was so real he cursed Time itself for landing him in the past to begin with.
If he had been born in her time, their separation need never have happened. All the suffering and grief that led up to it need never have happened either.
She might not even have married before she met him. . .
“Nice, was it?”
“Mmm.”
A million alternative pasts swirled through his mind, joined soon after by ten million impossible futures.
There was no use in regretting, but oh, how he wished. . .
So won't you stay here with me?
And we'll build us some temples, build us some castles,
Build us some monuments, and burn them all right down. . .
After the print shop, he had never thought to see his home burn down again.
Then again, after Culloden, he'd never thought to be happy again.
He looked inside himself, and this time, he still had his heart. Claire was still beside him, and there was still a future to fight for.
So open your arms to me
Open your arms to me. . .
He has died so many times.
He doesn't think of it as near-death, but real, actual death. Every time. Who he is afterwards is never the same. That is a kind of death, and not “nearly” anything.
This time he had no idea what news she'd gotten, or what she thought had happened to him.
But from the taste of her, he knows he just died again.
“I hate to break up such a joyous reunion, but your son will be home soon.”
This will be the one moment that matters. . .
War was always tumult. Back and forth, and up and down, often not knowing why you're fighting, sometimes not even knowing who you are.
He thought of all the wars he'd fought in, all the battles lost and won, all the people killed and souls darkened, and lands left in upheaval. He thought of god Himself, as he signed his name in blood.
I quit.
And this will be the one thing we remember. . .
“Why did ye never tell me Frank looked jus' like Black Jack?”
In truth, that face rarely haunts him anymore. What demons he sees in the dark, if he sees them at all, nearly always bear his own likeness. It is darkness from within that is the heaviest to bear. Evil imposed from without may harm the body, and even imprison the mind. But it cannot touch the soul, unless you let it. . .
“Was he an honest man? Frank?”
It feels odd to admit to himself now, but between the Randalls, he had always hated the Professor far more than he ever did the Captain. Black Jack was. . . so simple. There was nothing to discover about him. No mystery. No hidden depths. Nothing. . . human. He was repulsed by the man's memory, and disgusted and horrified by his actions, of course, but just as he would have been by a malformed and evil beast, or a particularly virulent disease. It was an ice cold, almost detached revulsion he felt, so easy to understand it was almost easy to forget, once the direct pain of an encounter with him had healed, and the prospect of honest, open revenge was in the offing.
There had never been enough to Jack to inspire truly passionate, personal hatred.
Nothing like the primal, visceral thing he has always felt for Frank.
Because his wife loved Frank once.
His wife.
She still loves him, in a way.
And the worst of it all is, he doesn't want her to stop. He wants her to love as much of her life as possible. Frank was once part of her life. A very important part. He doesn't want her to regret him.
But, oh, how he hates him. How he would cheerfully rip out his fingernails one by one, just to listen to the man scream, all the while knowing that his agony would never come close to what he felt when he'd sent Claire back through the stones.
He had given his best beloved up to him, and there wasn't any scenario after that which wasn't constant, vital, exquisite torture.
Jack had to be present to torture him. Frank could do it just by existing.
“They were so different.”
Yes, he thought, One of them I never had to fear you'd leave me for.
“Can I trust him?”
And this will be the reason to have been here. . .
He's been shot before. Often enough that he knows this time is different. His head feels light, and it is as though his spine is made of water.
The fabric of space and time shifts. He feels the presence of his wife, long before she arrives, but he cannot stay with her long. There is something he must do.
Must do. . .
Must. . .
His being fades, but his existence does not. The world is dark. Suddenly, he is walking down a street, and looking up at the one point of brightness in the entire universe.
It is her face, illuminated by a strange, otherworldly light.
He has seen it so many times, in his dreams.
He could stand here for eternity, just staring at his other soul. But he cannot. There is something he must do.
He dips a hand into his sporran. It comes out full of seeds.
He does not know what plant they are, but he knows now what he must do.
He takes one last, long look at her, wanting her more than food or water, needing her more than air. Loving her more than life itself.
It takes every spark of willpower he has, but he tears himself away.
And this will be the one moment that matters at all. . .
You open your eyes, gasping with the first breath you have ever taken.
On the edge of your vision, you see a flash of silvery blue light, reflecting off your wife's hair.
Time does not matter. Death does not matter.
They never did.
Claire is here. The world spins. The stars run in their courses.
You feel her fingers close around your wrist, and hear her almost imperceptible whispers as she counts the beats of your heart.
We are here, and it is now.
Now.
The one moment that matters at all.