double dating } closed

[beautifullies]

Who: Claire & Jamie Fraser, Bree Randall, Steve Rogers, Juliet O'Hara
Where: The Fraser Residence
When: 4-5
Rating: D for dinner party??? It shouldn't get that crazy.
Summary: Jamie and Claire host a dinner date.
The Story:

When Juliet and Steve arrive, they'll be ushered into Jamie and Claire's room that magically looks as close to Lallybroch (minus the second story) as she and Jamie could get it. There's electricity of course, but they rarely use it save in the bathroom and in Brianna's connected room. Introductions are made before Claire leads everyone to the dining room.

She doesn't cook, not well save for a few things, so the supper this evening - pot roast with potatoes and carrots, dinner rolls, a salad and good wine (and whisky) - is all Wonderland provided but homey and comforting.

After supper is done, Claire serves dessert in the parlor (a pound cake with light lemon frosting and coffee or tea--or more whisky) and they mingle and talk, sometimes as a group, and sometimes in smaller one-on-one conversations.

[ ooc: instead of all of us going one at a time, set up your own top levels at will and tag around! ]

Comments

[beautifullies]

"Admittedly it was selfish. Saving Scotland was the hopeful, larger outcome. Saving Jamie is why I pushed so hard for it."

Claire smiles thinly. "I suppose I'm not very proud of that, but in the end, history couldn't be changed and I've learned my lesson. I won't be meddling with the American Revolution."

(spoiler alert: she will.)

[holyshihtzu]

"I don't know if I'd do anything different to save someone I loved," Juliet responds, casting a glance over at Steve. Love is inherently selfish, and attempting to change history, given the opportunity, isn't a stretch.

She clears her throat, turning her attention back to Claire. "The fact that time travel is even possible is still something I'm trying to wrap my head around."

[beautifullies]

"Believe me when I say me too. There are some mornings I wake up and it's all so different, I forget for a moment where I am. The only thing that makes living without a good slice of pizza or indoor plumbing worth it is looking up and seeing my husband."

Which she does now, face soft before looking back at Juliet.

"I know if a few others who have done. Well, my daughter now, for one. Her intended, second. And a few others I only know of because remains have been found that, well." Claire pauses, thinking back to the skull she found. "I discovered the remains of a person with silver fillings in their molars. Only silver fillings didn't exist until the mid 19th century. I live in the 18th."

[holyshihtzu]

Juliet sighs dreamily. She would love to have that, what Jamie and Claire have. Although she isn't completely blind to the difficulties that have arisen from their specific situation, knowing that all of it is made worth it because of how much they love each other is a comfort. Juliet loves love, but she also knows there's a difference between the hormone-driven honeymoon period and the kind of love that makes not having pizza worth it. She hasn't experienced the second - not yet, anyway.

Her second comment drags Juliet out of her daydreaming, though, and her forehead wrinkles in excitement and confusion. "So you're not the only one? Do you know anything else about the remains you found? Who they might be?"

[beautifullies]

"Well, for one they both did it on purpose. They'd heard legends of the stone and decided to try it, both to try and change history. One was a man who tried to go back in time to warn Indians not to trust, well...colonizers. Noble of him, but ultimately the Natives were more wary of a man coming to their tribes and speaking of the future."

It'd ended with the man's execution.

"I found his skull quite...separate from his body."

The other example is far more personal, and she takes a sip of her drink, trying to gloss over it. "The other was going for making sure a true Scot sat on the English throne."

[holyshihtzu]

"Wow."

Juliet frowns, leaning back in her chair as she considers everything Claire has said. There are a lot of historical questions she could get into, and more implications about time travel, but there is one thing specifically that confuses her.

"How prominent are the legends? Why aren't more people out there trying to prove it, like those people who look for the Loch Ness Monster and aliens?"

[beautifullies]

"They're rather like...fables, really. I heard one of the ballads by accident when a performer sang for the Laird hosting me."

Well, 'hosting' is a loose term. Column kept her hostage and the only reason she can look past it, is because it allowed her to spend more time with Jamie, in hindsight.

"It would be like hearing a song about the Greek Gods of Olympus and trying to climb the highest mountain in Greece to get there." As far as she knows, anyway, and in her world, those were all just stories. "The way Jamie explained it to me was as a story parents told their children to keep them from wandering. Wander too far and the fairies will get you and take you away."

[holyshihtzu]

"Well, when you put it that way..."

She's not entirely sold that there isn't someone out there climbing mountains to look for Greek Gods, but people did plenty of things that everyone else thought sounded crazy. It definitely didn't mean anyone took them seriously.

"So why did you stay? Just for Jamie?"

[beautifullies]

Everything about Claire softens at the question and she looks at Jamie, happily talking away before smiling and looking back at Juliet.

"Just for Jamie. But three years later and with a war on, I was pregnant with Brianna and I went back through the stones thinking he'd died. That he was simply bones in a moor.

[holyshihtzu]

"That's terrible."

Horribly romantic, too. Juliet can't imagine giving up everything she knew for a relationship. She hadn't even managed to make it work with her college boyfriend when he wanted to stay in California and she went back to Miami. Giving up her own time for that? It was either completely insane or real love.

Watching them interact, though, it is clearly the latter. Mostly.

"But he was okay?"

[beautifullies]

There's probably a fair bit of insanity, it's okay.

"More or less. He was in hiding for a long while, then prison, then had to live as an indentured servant, but eventually," Claire says, exhaling. "Eventually, I was told by a young historian that Jamie likely lived. With twenty years between us and Brianna's blessing, I went back in time again to see for myself."

Not knowing if he'd moved on, if he loved another. She just had to find him and figure out the rest later.

[holyshihtzu]

"Twenty years."

That was a long time. For Juliet, twenty years was still over a third of her life. She can't imagine hanging onto a love that long, or taking the chance to chase it again, if it meant giving up everything she knew.

"What happened when you found him again?" She knows she's prying, but Claire has always seemed open about things and really, it was all terribly romantic. And Juliet loves a romantic story, especially if it's real.

[beautifullies]

"He saw my face and fainted," she says with a laugh, but it's fond and warm, and she gets serious again after that.

"It...took a lot of work; we'd been apart longer than we'd ever been married. We had to learn one another again, but what it was between us when we were younger, it never went away."

Claire is grossly in love with Jamie Fraser, and it shows.

[holyshihtzu]

Juliet stares at her with wide, dreamy eyes. She's a romantic at heart - Juliet loves love, whether it's the new honeymoon kind or the old and weathered kind. Whether it's her love or someone else's. Human connection is what makes the world go round, and she only hopes she'll be lucky enough to find a love like that someday, too.

If she hasn't already.

"I'm so glad you found your way back to each other. It's really... It's beautiful."

[beautifullies]

There's so much that makes their story wonderful, but so many horrifying things have happened in between. It's the fabric of their life, but it's messy.

And maybe Juliet wouldn't think it was as beautiful if she new Claire left Frank with no intention of ever seeing him again--her husband before ever meeting Jamie.

"What Jamie and I have hardly even sounds real. I've tried to understand it, to rationalize it somehow. If not for the living proof of Brianna all those years Jamie and I were apart, I'd wonder if it'd been real at all."

[holyshihtzu]

"It's like a romance novel."

Juliet knows it hasn't been all rainbows and hearts for the two of them--that much is obvious--but she would have no idea as to how bad it's gotten. What matters most of all, though, is how they managed to find each other despite the odds.

"I've had a few boyfriends, but I'm not sure I've ever experienced anything like that before."

[beautifullies]

"You'll know it when you have it," she supplies, though she knows that can be a frustrating answer.

"I didn't always have this with Jamie. Keep that in mind. I never wanted to marry him. I ran away from him. But one day, I think it was after he'd been caught up in a duel and could have died, I looked at him and realized I couldn't lose him."

She hadn't known it was love then, just that something had shifted.

[holyshihtzu]

Juliet doesn't know it yet, but she will have it, back home and possibly even in Wonderland. Back home might be slightly more surprising, considering she has no idea she's already met the man that she'll marry - and that he annoys the hell out of her.

"Well, I'm definitely a long way off from considering marriage," she confesses, leaning back in her chair. "I'm not anywhere close to being ready for that."