Outlander 03 - Voyager

She hadn’t heard him. He sat down beside her and took her hand.

“She might be able to come back,” he said gently. “We don’t know.”

Brianna shook her head slowly, not taking her eyes from the leaping flames.

“I don’t think so,” she said softly. “She told you what it was like. She may not even make it through.” Long fingers drummed restlessly on a denimed thigh.

Roger glanced at the door, to be sure that Claire was safely upstairs, then sat down on the sofa next to Brianna.

“She belongs with him, Bree,” he said. “Can ye not see it? When she speaks of him?”

“I see it. I know she needs him.” The full lower lip trembled slightly. “But…I need her!” Brianna’s hands clenched suddenly tight on her knees, and she bent forward, as though trying to contain some sudden pain.

Roger stroked her hair, marveling at the softness of the glowing strands that slid through his fingers. He wanted to take her into his arms, as much for the feel of her as to offer comfort, but she was rigid and unresponsive.

“You’re grown, Bree,” he said softly. “You live on your own now, don’t you? You may love her, but you don’t need her anymore—not the way you did when you were small. Has she no right to her own joy?”

“Yes. But…Roger, you don’t understand!” she burst out. She pressed her lips tight together and swallowed hard, then turned to him, eyes dark with distress.

“She’s all that’s left, Roger! The only one who really knows me. She and Daddy— Frank”—she corrected herself—“they were the ones who knew me from the beginning, the ones who saw me learn to walk and were proud of me when I did something good in school, and who—” She broke off, and the tears overflowed, leaving gleaming tracks in the firelight.

“This sounds really dumb,” she said with sudden violence. “Really, really dumb! But it’s—” she groped, helpless, then sprang to her feet, unable to stay still.

“It’s like—there are all these things I don’t even know!” she said, pacing with quick, angry steps. “Do you think I remember what I looked like, learning to walk, or what the first word I said was? No, but Mama does! And that’s so stupid, because what difference does it make, it doesn’t make any difference at all, but it’s important, it matters because she thought it was, and…oh, Roger, if she’s gone, there won’t be a soul left in the world who cares what I’m like, or thinks I’m special not because of anything, but just because I’m me! She’s the only person in the world who really, really cares I was born, and if she’s gone…” She stood still on the hearthrug, hands clenched at her sides, and mouth twisted with the effort to control herself, tears wet on her cheeks. Then her shoulders slumped and the tension went out of her tall figure.

“And that’s just really dumb and selfish,” she said, in a quietly reasonable tone. “And you don’t understand, and you think I’m awful.”

“No,” Roger said quietly. “I think maybe not.” He stood and came behind her, putting his arms around her waist, urging her to lean back against him. She resisted at first, stiff in his arms, but then yielded to the need for physical comfort and relaxed, his chin propped on her shoulder, head tilted to touch her own.

“I never realized,” he said. “Not ’til now. D’ye remember all those boxes in the garage?”

“Which ones?” she said, with a sniffling attempt at a laugh. “There are hundreds.”

“The ones that say ‘Roger’ on them.” He gave her a slight squeeze and brought his arms up, crisscrossed on her chest, holding her snug against himself.

“They’re full of my parents’ old clobber,” he said. “Pictures and letters and baby clothes and books and old bits of rubbish. The Reverend packed them up when he took me to live with him. Treated them just like his most precious historical documents—double-boxing, and mothproofing and all that.”

He rocked slowly back and forth, swaying from side to side, carrying her with him as he watched the fire over her shoulder.

“I asked him once why he bothered to keep them—I didn’t want any of it, didn’t care. But he said we’d keep it just the same; it was my history, he said—and everyone needs a history.”

Brianna sighed, and her body seemed to relax still further, joining him in his rhythmic, half-unconscious sway.

“Did you ever look inside them?”

He shook his head. “It isn’t important what’s in them,” he said. “Only that they’re there.”

He let go of her then, and stepped back so that she turned to face him. Her face was blotched and her long, elegant nose a little swollen.

“You’re wrong, you know,” he said softly, and held out his hand to her. “It isn’t only your mother who cares.”

Brianna had gone to bed long since, but Roger sat on in the study, watching the flames die down in the hearth. Hallowe’en had always seemed to him a restless night, alive with waking spirits. Tonight was even more so, with the knowledge of what would happen in the morning. The jack-o’-lantern on the desk grinned in anticipation, filling the room with the homely scent of baking pies.

The sound of a footfall on the stair roused him from his thoughts. He had thought it might be Brianna, unable to sleep, but the visitor was Claire.

“I thought you might still be awake,” she said. She was in her nightdress, a pale glimmer of white satin against the dark hallway.

He smiled and stretched out a hand, inviting her in. “No. I never could sleep on All Hallows’. Not after all the stories my father told me; I always thought I could hear ghosts talking outside my window.”

She smiled, coming into the firelight. “And what did they say?”

“‘See’st thou this great gray head, with jaws which have no meat?’” Roger quoted. “You know the story? The little tailor who spent the night in a haunted church, and met the hungry ghost?”