Work Text:
***
I sighed as I moved carefully around the rickety bed in the small, cramped inn room. Being stuffy and dusty, it was not much better than the cabins on the ship, but at least it didn’t move, which I knew was enough for Jamie. The constant roll and pitch of the waves had rendered him as sick as a dog, something that had really worried me, considering his already deteriorated condition in the weeks after Wentworth.
I looked at my husband, lying asleep on the rough woollen blankets of the bed, his good hand loosely clutching the tattered fabric to his chest. He really was thin. I swallowed dryly as I let my eyes wander over his cheekbones, sharp and jutting as knives in the gloom, and the bluish smudges of his eyes sunken in their sockets. I could feel the tears welling hotly, prickling threateningly behind my eyes. I sniffed angrily and continued my appraisal, trying to be as objective as I could.
His body was unrecognisable from the strong warrior’s form it had been. The wounds on his back and side were healing well, but his flesh clung tightly to his bones, which seemed to jut out and protrude at every angle. As I watched, my throat tight with swelling love and anger, I could see his ribs rise and fall. Only butterfly-thin layer of skin covered them, causing the light to highlight them like the bars of a cruel cage. His arm, which lay by his side, its hand bound in my heavy makeshift splint, was so thin I thought I could probably encircle it with my hand. Oh what devastation can be wreaked on the human body in such a short time!
I knew also that it was not just the sea-sickness to blame. Jamie was still hardly eating anything, and often I caught that haunted look in his eyes when he thought I couldn’t see. This was where I felt most helpless – the physical wounds I could fix, but the demons that invaded his dreams night after night and day after day – those were beyond my reach.
I pursed my lips and continued to stand, transfixed, next to the bed where my husband lay. I was debating whether to lie down and risk waking him. He so needed what little sleep he could get, as his nights were mostly spent screaming and panting with terror. But with his usual perfect sense of timing, just as I stood undecided, his eyes fluttered open and came to rest on me. A small brave smile quirked his lips, but he just continued to look at me, as I was looking at him. His eyes were so desperately blue, almost feverishly so, seemingly glowing out of his gaunt face, and I could feel the rest of the dingy little room dropping away as I lost myself in their depths.
See me. They seemed to say. Everything I am, broken as I am, I am yours.
Feeling the honesty of his gaze prickling the back of my neck and threatening to make the banished tears return, I broke the spell and gave him a brisk smile as I moved round to the head of the bed to gather the extra bandages for the next day’s dressings. I could not help but notice how my sudden movement towards him made him flinch, although he suppressed it quickly.
***
Hobbling along the cobbled Paris Street, I bunched my skirts in my fist and paid attention to my feet; the potholes of les boulevards were treacherous when navigated in the wobbly heels of the period, and after only a few days in the city, I was far from accustomed to them. Beside me, Jamie was an erect and solid presence, pacing with huge strides. A head and shoulders above all others on the street, he stood a towering figure in his breeches and tailored coat. The fact that his muscles still clung tight and scarce to his bones, with much of their strength and weight still to recover, made him seem even more unnaturally tall and long-limbed, and I couldn’t help but notice the heads that turned to stare after us as we passed. I snaked my arm through his, felt his small squeeze in the most private of acknowledgements, and on we walked.
Until we came upon the heifer. A huge bellow to our right suddenly shot out across the street, and I looked up to see a young black cow, tethered and snorting outside a blacksmith’s, with three men wrestling to keep her still. The blacksmith himself was holding a glowing red brand onto the rump of the desperate animal and the acrid smell, as the burning flesh sizzled and popped, drifted across the street like smoke.
Before my mind had fully processed the scene and its implications, I felt Jamie blanch. His whole body flinched involuntarily away from the sight, and I realised too late what significance it held for him. Turning to look at him, I saw the blood drain from his face, and he seemed ready to faint, or vomit. Without stopping to think, I clamped my arm down tight on his, and practically dragged him away from the memories and the demons which chased us. I felt his tall form stumbling behind me, as I hurried on and away, until at last I found a small side street where the awful smell of the branding no longer followed us.
Coming to a stop under the comforting overhang of the old uneven buildings, I turned to face him. His breathing was ragged as he fought to gain control of himself and beat down the rising panic which threatened to consume him. He couldn’t look at me.
“I’m alright, Sassenach”
The words were breathless, reminding me painfully of his early panic attacks after Wentworth, and I did the only thing I knew I could do. I reached up, and wrapped my arms around him. In close contact, I could feel the minute tremors of his shaking through the protruding bones of his back. I clung to him, as his voice continued, now muffled by the fabric of my coat:
“I’m alright, Sassenach. I’ll do. I’m fine, Claire.”
***
I sighed in contentment and let myself relax into the luxurious sheets of our bed, my legs falling open to the familiar welcome feel of my husband between them. His elbows come to rest either side of my head, and I reached up and wove my hands into the silky soft strands of his hair. My eyes stayed closed as I allowed myself to enjoy the comfort of his skin for the first time in what seemed like forever. Feeling his soft kisses on my lips and neck ignited the flames further in me. I wanted to beg him to enter me, to quench the throbbing ache at my core which yearned for him. But I dared not.
I let my longing translate instead to a small moan that became lost in his shoulder as I curled up, wanting to pull him closer, closer. Feeling my heart would burst with wanting him. The taught muscles of his leg brushed against mine as our nightgowns became rucked up between us. And then I felt him, hot and heavy against my core, and I almost cried out in my need. I had not realised how much I missed him until this point. I was desperate to taste his sweat, to smell his male musk, to feel him moving inside me in that deepest and most intimate of unions. I could feel my wetness seeping down between my legs and dampening the sheet below us and I strained my hips up, silently imploring him as I whispered his name.
Jamie let out a soft moan, and I felt the warm tip of him push slightly inside me. It felt huge after so long and I gasped, pushing my head back into the pillow and grabbing his shoulders…
And then Jamie stilled his movements above me as I thrashed, and I opened my eyes to see him staring down at me, frozen, his blue eyes open and so vivid. An internal war was waging in their depths, I could see. The sweat stood out on his brow, but it was a cold sweat, the stuff of nightmares. And then, all at once he was blinking, shaking his head as if to dislodge some vision, and he was withdrawing from me, too fast, so that I winced. He rolled away from me, so that no part of him was touching me, and sat on the side of the bed, spine rigid and tense. In the soft light of the candle I could see his shaking.
When his voice came, it was strained with self-disgust and bitterness: “I’m so sorry, Claire. I… I… can’t. It’s not that I don’t want to, lass, I… It’s just… just…”
His voice gave out and his shoulders squared, angrily trying to stop their shaking. I bit my lip, forcing back the lump in my throat and staring hopelessly at the wretched humiliated lines of my husband’s back, the ugly slashes of his scars dancing mockingly in the cruel firelight. Jamie had survived hell, had escaped Wentworth, had come back to me. Yet I had never felt so alone.
***
I was awoken not by a scream, but by a whimper. In the dark, the vaults of the Parisian ceiling were cavernous and silent as I blinked up at them. I awoke with a jolt these days, alert to the slightest movement or sound, immediately aware and ready to react. As I lay, breathing silently, and straining to hear Jamie’s breathing, I became aware that the form next to me was drenched in sweat.
I reached over to light the candle next to our bed and as its warm light flickered across the room, I could see Jamie, his eyes scrunched tight, and his whole body tense in the panic of his nightmare. He had gained some vital weight – the muscles were no longer quite so frail around his bones – but he was still so thin. I swallowed as the bands of his collar bone stood out stark and brutal in the flickering illumination of the candle. My arms ached to embrace him, to rock him like a child and hold him to my heart. I so desperately wanted to chase away the horrors he was reliving, as I gazed at his sweaty face pressed into the pillow.
I knelt up on the bed, wanting to get closer to him, and I became more aware of his whispered mutterings. They were so soft at first I couldn’t catch the words, but then I heard, and my heart clenched. Jamie was pleading.
“Please no. Don’t. Please don’t. No, I can’t. Please, please, please, please, please, please…”
The pillow was wet with his tears as well as his sweat, and I felt my own useless burning need to cry. The tears spilled over onto my nightdress, and I put my hand on his arm to wake him as his protestations got louder. But it did no good, in seconds he had started thrashing, and then his voice descended into a wordless desperate scream. A scream that told of unspeakable terror. My heart jumped into my mouth and, barely suppressing my own sob, I shook him with all my might.
He immediately came awake with a gasp, wild eyed and frantic, a fire-tinged demon crazed with fear, his hair a burning halo around his sweat soaked face. I immediately started talking, knowing it would anchor him and hoping it would pull him away from wherever he had been.
“I’m here. Don’t worry. It was just another dream. You’re safe Jamie, we’re in Paris. I’m here. You’re fine.”
His breathing slowed and he glanced up at me. The candlelight was not so dim that I could not see the remnants of the demons still fleeing from his eyes. He blinked, and I could see new tears forming in the tortured ocean-blue depths. His voice was the faintest of whispers again, hoarse from his screaming, as he reached weakly for me:
“Oh Claire.”
I immediately folded him in my trembling arms, feeling the bob of his Adam’s apple as he swallowed back all the things he could not yet bring himself to share, and willed my love to leave my bursting heart and seep through his broken spirit to somehow heal him.
~FIN~