A/N: Alright. Take a deep breath and get a strong drink, friends. You’re gonna need it.
The chapter of this title comes from the song of the same name by Florence + The Machine. If you’re not familiar with it, have a wee listen on youtube! The lyrics are about the most dead-on descriptor of this chapter I could have come up with if I tried.
Previously: Ch 1, Ch 2, Ch 3, Ch 4, Ch 5, Ch 6, Ch 7, Ch 8, Ch 9, Ch 10, Ch 11, Ch 12, Ch 13, Ch 14, Ch 15, Ch 16, Ch 17, Ch 18 , Ch 19, Ch 20, Ch 21, Ch 22, Ch 23, Ch 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: No Light, No Light
Claire longed for her nightmares.
For anything — anything — her woefully inadequate imagination had conjured as the ‘worst-case scenario.’
She wanted him to wheel on her, scream in her face, accuse and curse and rage. She needed him to be angry, to hate her as much as she hated herself.
Jamie stood motionless, staring blankly at the floor for several minutes after the door clicked shut. When at last he turned to look at her, there was a moment — a fraction of a second — in which his eyes sought hers, begging her to contradict every vile and venomous word that had spilled from Frank Randall’s mouth.
But one good look at her, and he knew.
For as long as she lived, Claire would remember the moment she watched Jamie Fraser’s heart break.
His hair was still mussed from her roaming hands, his lips swollen from kissing her, and his eyes burned blue as flame, desperate and pleading, and then…
It was as if the light inside of him guttered out.
All of the radiance, the joy, the wit and passion that blazed so brightly in Jamie’s beautiful soul was just… gone.
He stared at her through empty eyes, watching the tears stream down her cheeks until the silence grew too painful to bear.
“I’m waiting for you to say something,” he rasped. “Anything that approaches an explanation.”
Jesus H. Christ, how many nights had she spent pacing these floorboards, meticulously choosing her words in preparation for this very moment? She had polished her narrative until it was linear and coherent, sympathetic but honest; practiced the script so many times she could have recited it in her sleep.
But, of course, the moment she needed it, the words abandoned her entirely.
yousharknotpass
jbbartram-illu
gummygunk
baratheonpilled
origamiaround
andulkaphoto
2087
