entrancelogs | double dating } closed

Entry tags:

double dating } closed

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! ]

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"And without having to beg my mother for money to pay for all of the sorority expenses. Scholarships for school are one thing. Asking for hundreds just for a social group to be a part of? Seems like overkill for the college experience."

She made plenty of friends, and once she transferred to MIT it didn't matter much anyway.

The story though, that's more interesting than thinking about what it would have been like to pledge somewhere.

"So you knew. Like a...gut feeling?" That put her directly in danger.

Sounds like mama.

Juliet wrinkles her nose. She never put much thought into what had exactly driven her to investigate the case, or why Chief Vick even entertained it. As a matter of fact, everyone, including Gus and Shawn, had gone along with her, no questions asked, because they trusted her judgment. And she did end up being right.

"Yeah, I guess you could say that. It was her family that swayed me, though. They were convinced there was no way Doreen could have killed herself, and something told me I had to trust them." She leans forward a little, tilting her head. "When I was at the academy, I was really good at learning the rules, memorizing the regulations. I had to figure out pretty quickly that the real world is a lot more complicated than that. The things that people do to each other--or do for each other--they don't always make a lot of sense."

Taking that case hadn't made a lot of sense, either, given the evidence. But they all managed to take that leap together.

"The world isn't so black and white, the more you learn about it," Bree agrees with a small smile.

"You sound like a really great detective. And you care about people, a lot. I mean, the Christmas party, the bowling alley. You care about how people are doing in general. It's really nice to see," Bree says genuinely.

"Thanks, Bree." She smiles, equally genuine. She does care about people, sometimes to a fault, but she'd rather funnel all of her energy into putting good in the world than the opposite.

Besides, Wonderland is quickly becoming her home. She cares about it.

"How about you? What did you study while you were at college?"

"Well," she breathes out. "I started at Harvard because the man who raised me taught there and I thought I'd follow in his footsteps, major in history. But after...well."

Bree gestures toward her parents.

"After finding out history is more in my blood than I thought, I decided to switch gears. I switched my degree to mechanical engineering and graduated from MIT a few months ago. It'll come in handy in the 18th century, I hope. Indoor plumbing may be a century away but I bet I can figure something out just for my parent's cabin."

"Harvard? That's impressive."

There isn't any sarcasm at all in her tone. Bree seems like a clever girl and if she is anything like Claire, it tickles Juliet to think she was probably running circles around any men who thought they were better than women in that field. Coming from a heavily male-dominated field herself, that isn't lost on Juliet in the least.

"Maybe it turns out you invented indoor plumbing after all," Juliet jokes. "Are you planning on staying in the 18th century with your parents?"

"And then a man took credit, because that's how history always goes for women," she says with a smirk before taking a bite of her dessert and nodding as she chews and swallows.

"I think so. I mean, my time is easier but...it takes so much to travel from Scotland to American in the 18th century. Unless they make me go back for some reason, I plan on staying. I missed my mother too much, anyway."

"Yeah, you couldn't really just jump a Delta flight back then, could you?"

She offers a soft smile. Being across the country from her family had been hard enough, but even that didn't hold a candle to being completely cut off from them in Wonderland. Juliet isn't sure she wouldn't give up all the creatures comforts of the modern world if it meant being near her family, either.

"I'd miss my mom, too. We have always been really close."

"I can't even say we were that, really. Close, I mean. I just...didn't appreciate what I had until she was gone again. I'm trying hard not to do that here, in Wonderland, you know?"

Bree thinks about it for a second, trying to put it into words.

"I'm meeting so many great people here and I don't want to ever forget they could just be gone one day."

Juliet nods, her smile fading as she glances over at Steve. She hadn't planned on getting attached to anyone she met in Wonderland, especially knowing one day they were destined to leave each other, and their memories, permanently. But human connection didn't really work like that, and there was no way of escaping caring about people in the end.

"I think that's the best we can do," she agrees, turning her attention back to Bree. "It's a weird feeling. I want to go home so badly, but at the same time, I'm really learning to enjoy being here. And it's the people I've met, and the friends I've made, that make it worthwhile. I don't want to take that for granted, either."

"There's a lot of stuff at home I'm ready to get back to. Like...meeting my da for the first time," she says as she nods at Jamie.

"Maybe knowing it happens is enough for now. I'm trying to tell myself that, anyway. There are perks, I guess, to being behind my parents in our own weird timeline."

"Maybe time travel isn't so bad. Knowing what's coming probably makes it easier."

Juliet isn't sure what they have ahead of them to deal with, nor does she bring up her conversation with Claire that changing the future is a lesson in futility. It doesn't seem worth it to dash any hopes Bree might have to help her parents through anything.

Instead, she moves the conversation to Jamie.

"You didn't know your father beforehand?"

"I didn't even know the man who raised me wasn't my biological father until a couple of years ago. It's a...long, time travel involved story. I was conceived in Jamie's time, born in the 1940s and now I live in the 18th century. Or, according to my mother I do. She's ahead of me, here."

Bree can hardly wrap her mind around it, so if Juliet needs a moment, she'll understand.

Luckily, Juliet has a little bit of the timeline worked out thanks to Claire being so open about it, but it's still an incredibly bizarre thing to hear about. She does take a moment to work in out in her mind and offers Bree an understanding nod.

"That must have been a really difficult thing for you to come to terms with." Although, she is a little jealous at the thought of having two fathers. She barely had one.

"I was angry. For a while, just...knowing that I'd been lied to for twenty years. But it's okay now. We're all okay now."

For the most part. It still hasn't been easy.

"Okay enough for dinner parties, I guess," she says with a small smile.

"I don't blame you. I'd be angry, too."

She grows quiet for a moment, glancing down at her lap. Her anger at her own father defined her more than she would ever want to admit. With that came some good, but also struggle. The anger she still harbors is something she does her best not to think about.

"But family is so important," she adds, trying to lift the mood a little. "And you have yours, here. It has to be nice, to have the opportunity to fix things."

"It definitely is. The situation sounds impossible, that's been the hardest part to wrap my mind around. That I lived in 1968 but my father is an 18th century Scottish Highlander? I thought my mother was losing her mind."

The only reason she started to believe it was because she'd watched a woman literally fling herself at a stone and then disappear into it. That changed things.

"And now I'm here where things I never even dreamed could exist, definitely do. My perspective on 'impossible' and 'unbelievable' has shifted," she smirks. To say the least.

"I thought that had happened back home. Well, it did a little. I knew someone who had some pretty special powers."

At least, she'd been led to believe. Gren ended up bringing an end to that.

"But being in this place will change anyone's perspective. I mean, I'm sitting in a room filled with people who have time traveled, in one way or another. And I'm sure I'll never see any of that when I go back home. It's a shame we won't remember any of this."

"It really is. God, there's so much I wish I could remember. Some I...want to forget."

Randall arriving here over Christmas had been--to date--the worst thing Brianna's ever been through. She still has the scars on her back to match Jamie's, and her thumb presses to the palm of her hand where Randall stabbed her, to give her yet another mark just like Jamie's.

"But this? Meeting you and Steve and all the other people who've been so incredible? I really hate that I'm going to lose this one day."

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