Chapter Text
Jamie wasn’t sure how long he’d been moving. After waking up to find a redcoat pointing a gun at him, he’d had no time to rest. He’d jumped on the redcoat, knocking him unconscious, and then he’d run for it.
He didn’t understand. There was something he’d forgotten – but how? He’d been saying goodbye to that strange Doctor fellow and his equally strange friends, Ben and Polly. And then – then he was waking up on the ground, a redcoat nearby. Around him battle raged, his own people fighting the English and losing. The redcoats were hunting everyone down, trying to kill anyone who had survived the battle. Even women and children weren’t safe from the murdering bastards. He stopped finally, leaning against a tree and catching his breath, his hands fiddling with the sash he was wearing. It almost felt as though he wasn’t used to wearing it, as if he’d gone without it for a time, but when? He’d been wearing it throughout the rebellion, just as everyone else did. Why did it feel like he hadn’t worn it for months? He groaned, resting his head against the tree. His head was pounding. He wondered if those people, the Doctor, Ben and Polly had done something to hurt him somehow. Something told him that wasn’t right, even if it was the simplest explanation. The idea of the three of him doing anything to harm him felt wrong. Why did he feel like he trusted them so much, when he barely knew them? They weren’t even highlanders like him, they were sassenach!
He shook the thought from his head. He had to keep moving. Where had he last seen the Maclarens? That...that barn, maybe? Yes, they’d hidden there after the battle – no, that had been where he’d met the Doctor and the others – they’d all been captured, almost hung, and then taken to a boat to die or be sold into servitude. But Kirsty had worked with the strange lass, Polly, and brought them weapons – they’d fought, taken control of the boat – and then the Doctor, Ben and Polly had left. He’d overheard them talking and hidden in the small rowboat they’d taken back to shore, wanting to help them when they spoke about trying to find something they’d left behind. Going to France to hide didn’t seem like a good choice for him anyway, and what would he do there? He was a piper. It was the only work he knew. The Maclarens had been kind to take him in, let him fight with them when he’d turned against his family, but he wasn’t one of them even if they tried to include him. Going into hiding with them would be pretending he was someone he wasn’t, wouldn’t it?
He’d helped them get back to their strange hut, painted blue and too small to look as though they could even all fit in.
That was where things felt uncertain. As if he couldn’t quite form the memories, couldn’t work out what had happened. He must have left them, but where had he been trying to go? And where had they gone? Surely hiding in a fairly easy to see tiny hut wasn’t going to protect them. He supposed they were English, and so could likely pretend to be innocent and uninvolved somehow. That hadn’t worked for them before, though. They’d been assumed traitors and almost hung themselves, if he remembered right.
He wasn’t sure if he did. Something felt...off. He decided to go to where he’d seen that hut, where he’d last seen the others. If he could get there, he could find the odd Doctor and the other English people who didn’t seem to support the redcoats, and they could at least give him some answers.
It wasn’t far from the barn that he and the Maclarens had been hiding in, and Jamie thought he could find his way there from the Moor, which was where he seemed to have woken up. He wasn’t sure how there were still so many people fighting when the battle had been over for days, especially with how merciless the redcoats were. He stayed out of sight, moving quickly but stealthily towards the barn. It took most of the day to get there – the sky was starting to turn dark, though the sun had been high in the sky when he’d started.
The sound of footsteps – redcoats! He looked around for somewhere to hide, and decided that a tree was his best option, if he could get high enough that they didn’t look. He clambered up, grateful for the low branches that helped him up. He stilled as soon as he was high enough, looking out to see how many there were, and almost slipped out of the tree in shock.
It wasn’t redcoats. It was – it was him. He knew his own face well enough to see it, even when it made no sense. It was – he was standing there, but he was in this tree. He was in the tree – but he was looking down at four people walking past. The Doctor, Ben, Polly, and him.
His head throbbed, and he closed his eyes for a moment. Maybe the impossible sight would clear – but no, they were still there. All of them.
How could he be in two places at once? How – it didn’t make sense. He wasn’t with them, he was here in the tree.
Was it a witch? Had a witch stolen his face, his likeness? If so...were they working with the Doctor, Ben and Polly, or pretending to be him to harm them?
He had to follow. He had to find out what this...thing was using his face for. He didn’t know if it would be dangerous to attack – you heard all sorts of things about faeries, and he didn’t want to bring the wrath of the fae down on him. But – could he really let this thing be?
He followed carefully, down from the free and softly behind them. The group were being careful not to draw attention, but he already had their trail.
Except – except -
they were talking as they walked, and he knew this conversation. He’d -he’d had this conversation. He grasped his head in his hands, trying to push away the pain shooting through his skull. This didn’t make sense. None of this, none of it made sense at all.
He took in deep breaths as quietly as he could, still following the group. But then they stopped, near a strange blue wooden box. It was taller than any of them, and about a meter wide, perhaps more. The other him looked confused, saying that he’d stay in Scotland, but Polly dragged him into the box, where the Doctor and Ben had gone, and the doors closed behind them.
How did they all fit? He hadn’t been able to see inside. But he hadn’t gone with them. He remembered this, at least – he thought he did. It was...fuzzy. He’d watched them go inside a strange wooden box, and then – and then -
and then he’d woken up alone with a redcoat firing at him, as if he was back in the battle that had ended days before.
Was that him? Had it been him, somehow, and he’d gone into that box, and -?
There was a loud noise, something he’d never heard before, but sounded somehow familiar. He watched as the blue box faded from view, disappearing completely.
He moved forward, his hands out. It had to be there. How had they hidden it? What had happened?
His hands collided with nothing but air. It was gone – with The Doctor, Ben, Polly and himself in it, apparently.
He’d said those words – the ones he’d heard the other him say – he remembered that conversation.
Was he reliving something that had already happened? No. That didn’t make any sense – it was impossible. But so was all of this. He felt like he was forgetting something, as if something important was missing – but what could he have forgotten? He’d decided to lead the strange English people who’d saved them back to this area but planned to stay in Scotland himself.
But – Polly had pulled him in, hadn’t she? He winced. His head – it was as though he had three memories of it. One, where it was fuzzy and he said goodbye to them. Another, where Polly pulled him in, and there was...something. Something he couldn’t quite see in his mind’s eye, something big. And then there was what he’d just seen – watching himself step in to the strange box with the others, and watching as the box disappeared completely.
Was that why he couldn’t remember anything after he’d left them, until he’d woken to be attacked by a redcoat? It was like he’d been taken by faeries, but no time had passed – in fact, it seemed like time had gone backwards. He couldn’t remember that in the stories he’d heard.
It was as though he's been sent back in time, and someone has replaced him, going off in that box as if they are him. But they can't be - can they? He's still here. And he doesn't remember going into that box, so if it was him, wouldn't he remember? Wouldn't he know where it vanished to?
Then again, when faeries are involved, who can say what he should or shouldn't remember?
He tried to push the thought away, but he kept seeing it in his minds eye - that version of him, walking into a box and disappearing. Well, being pulled. He stumbled away, moving to find somewhere to go. He looked at the sky for direction, and headed towards the northwest. Any direction would get him away, hopefully, but northwest would be…home. Not that his home was necessarily the best place to go. He knew they would be angry, furious at his leaving, at what he’d done.
They’d dress him up the way they wanted and have him play the part he was born to play, instead of the one he needed to. The thought made him tense, dreading it, but how better to hide? If he went to Skye…well. It was unlikely any English soldiers would think a daughter had been a soldier fighting at Culloden.
Thinking about it made the awareness of his body rise, his hands reaching to press down his chest even further than they were bound, as if he could push them back into his skin until they were gone.
Only he felt…nothing. Flatness. No bandages underneath. There were was no tightness to his chest, no difficulty breathing past the bandages he used and the loose shirt he covered himself with to make it harder to see.
He was flat.
He almost fell to the ground, almost ripped his shirt off immediately to check, to see for himself that what he was feeling was real and not some strange imagination brought on by the trauma of the battle. But he wasn’t safe yet. He needed to make sure he was away, far enough from the battle that they would be less likely to find him.
Eventually he came to a river. It was getting darker, and he had not seen anyone since fleeing. Slowly, carefully, he lifted his shirt to clean himself.
Smooth skin, nothing sticking out, nothing – A thin line, hardly visible, stretching across his chest, but nothing more.
He felt dizzy, sitting down hard on the ground.
His breasts were gone. His wishes, his dreams, his prayers had been answered. How? How could he have the body of a woman one day and then –
He checked the rest of his body and was glad he was already sitting down. He supposed he’d been lucky he hadn’t yet needed to pee. If that had happened with anyone nearby, he doubted he could have kept his reaction quiet enough to not alert any of his fellow soldiers. He’d been careful with the Maclarens, seeming oddly private perhaps but managing to keep his secret, managing to hide the fact that his body wasn’t what they expected, wasn’t what he wanted.
How had he not noticed immediately? When had this happened? Whilst he was unconscious? Before he woke up, back on the battlefield, in a body that matched how he felt inside instead of the one he’d had. Except…he looked in the river, as much as he could in the slowly darkening light. It was still his face. Still his form. He still looked like himself. He looked like the himself he had been presenting to the world, instead of the one he’d had.
He felt a rush of indecision. Should he still return to his family, with this change? They wouldn’t understand any more than he did. And it would be harder to pretend to be a woman with his body changed.
When had he started thinking of himself that way, he wondered. As a man, who had pretended to be a woman? When he’d first made the choice to join Bonnie Prince Charlie’s forces, to abandon his home and join them with nothing more than stolen clothes and his bagpipes and the limited weapons training he’d convinced people to give him over the years, he’d still thought himself a woman. It had always felt…incorrect, wrong somehow, but it was what he’d known.
He'd loved when they’d treated him as a man, referred to him as one, called him Jamie. But he had still thought he was pretending. A kind of pretence that he wished was real, but a pretence none the less.
Now it felt different. He knew he was a man. He knew who he was, and he knew that it was different. Words came to mind that he had no explanation for but were there none the less.
Trans gender, Trans man, top surgery.
What knowledge had he lost? Those weren’t words he’d heard before in Erse or English. He felt…sure about who he was. Confident. As if he’d lived years being who he truly was, instead of simply during this now failed campaign for Scotland.
And his body felt right. As though it was meant to be this way. He felt used to it, even as he knew it was a huge change, something so different to what his body had been even before the battle.
He remembered the years of praying, hoping, wishing for a miracle.
Somehow, it had come.
He cleaned himself up, performed other necessary tasks, and tried to find somewhere to rest. When he did, he lay awake, staring at the stars as if they were his friends. Why did something about the sky feel so endless, and yet so familiar?