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It’s evident as the four of them reconvene at the TARDIS, they’d experienced vastly different fronts on this expedition, though no less…turbulent.
Polly’s make-up is smudged across her face, and Ben’s clothes are singed and torn in places.
There’s a sword limply dragging in the sailor’s hand, like a make-shift cane, more likely to topple one over with its weight rather than support its bearers.
No matter how tired Jamie is, enough so that his head is tipping between the blades of the Doctor’s shoulders as the fumbling man unlocks the door, it’s such a fine piece of craftsmanship so utterly misplaced in Ben’s hand; He takes notice when nothing else in his eyes will even sit in proper focus.
Why or even how Ben and Polly came across it, since he and the Doctor had been dodging plasma bullets from what would be considered blasters rather than any form of steel, Jamie doesn’t know nor does he have the ability to guess.
Regardless, it was seemingly a souvenir of the trip they decided to take with them, and what a souvenir it was.
Jamie is jostled suddenly by the Doctor, the man muttering in frustration, still fighting for the key to either get in the lock or turn at all, he doesn't know.
The Highlander can feel it more than hear it, if words would even register in his ears at the moment.
He should help like he always does when the Doctor struggles.
He should help because the Doctor being just as exhausted as the rest of them is such a rare occurrence something in him yearns to make it easier on him, but Jamie can’t do anything more than offer his physical presence at the moment.
Even if it’s only to make sure the man didn’t go tumbling back, he probably wouldn’t, and Jamie wouldn’t really catch him if he did, more like he’d be one of landing pads those flying beasties used.
Well, it's the thought that counts.
His calves are aching, knees wobbling, his weight threatening to topple out from under him.
If it did, unwittingly he’d be taking the Doctor down with him, as his fingers were grasping the man’s biceps, unable to let go on the off chance the minute he did, he’d lose motor function entirely.
A haggard puff of air escapes him at that, too exhausted to truly laugh.
The idea of the Doctor indignantly sputtering after being bowled over only to be further dog-piled by Ben and Polly, the idea of getting into the TARDIS having been abandoned, is a good one.
A nice reprieve from the nightmares Jamie knows were sure to follow him after today, after every day.
His only escape more often than not, when sleeping in the presence of his friends...and the Doctor.
The bliss of feeling rested and unhaunted, even if he’d only been asleep a few moments, when having succumbed to rest when he knew the Doctor was near him was otherworldly.
So much so, Jamie almost wants to fall back, to let go so they’ll crash and burn to the ground together, the four of them, even Ben’s stunning and rather unexpected sword.
He couldn’t feign he wasn’t tired and try to stick around in the console room or library to keep the Doctor company, essentially using the man as a sleep aid.
Especially not now, not when he expects the Doctor himself might actually turn in.
Jamie doesn’t think he’ll ever garner the strength to outright ask the man if he could join him, or if the Doctor might join him instead.
Even now, there’s something telling him he needs to pull back, to not be so bold in allowing his head to nestle against the man’s spine;
That the Doctor himself was only allowing it because of their shared exhaustion.
Jamie isn’t sure what or who he believes in any more, the Doctor being the most concrete thing, and amusingly at the moment, he’s exactly who he needs to thank for sparing him from any further thought on the subject, as the man finally manages to open the door.
He tumbles in after the Doctor, Ben and Polly are right after him, tripping on his heels, the grating of a sword scratching the poor floor.
It’s reassuring hearing the creak of the TARDIS doors shutting behind them, it one of those things the Doctor had explained to him, the dogs and the bells.
That door is closed and they are safe, exhausted but safe.
He has to let go, and he does, the white light of the TARDIS too blinding to keep his eyes open too wide, not even to watch as the Doctor puttered away at the console.
Ben startles him then, warped in his vision as his eyes tried to adjust, pressing the sword’s pommel in his mournfully empty hands.
His fingers, which he’d been so sure wouldn’t work any longer, grasp it like an old friend.
As if the weight of it had never left, and maybe it never had.
“For you mate,” Ben practically slurs out, a touch of a smile bearing into his cheek as he winds his now free hand around Polly’s shoulder, steering her back towards their room.
“Thank ye,” he whispers, not bothering to say goodnight, not even to the Doctor as he ambles back towards his own room.
Not allowing the blade to scrape amongst the floor, for it and the TARDIS’s sake, whilst his thumb digs into the pommel.
When he can’t sleep, when he can’t bear to burden the Doctor with his presence, he practices.
His room is just big enough for him to properly turn the metal in his grasp, to slash and thrust.
There are times it feels useless, swords are not the weapon they come across most often, in fact there’s a possibility, while not concrete, he’ll never hold a sword in combat again.
It doesn’t stop him from training, it doesn’t stop him from purging every last woe into gutting slashes that leave sweat pooling from his temples and dripping down his back.
In some ways it helps, in some ways it doesn’t. Not when the dummy in the corner of the room he’d found deep within the bowels of the TARDIS reminds him of a mirror as he aims for the throat.
As he eviscerates, aiming for some kind of release. Whether it be from shame, from the ache, from the mere weight of everything he once was compared to who he’s become; to what his initially small world has opened up to.
Jamie wonders how it’s possible at times to be the sheild and the sword, but he plays both parts willingly, he’d been forged to do so.
Ben and Polly are gone, and his feelings for the Doctor are more confusing than usual; scornfully tinted by foreign yet seamless callousness that a weapon like himself can miraculously identify - likely because he yearns for it himself. His consciousness was a slight on his purpose, wasn't it?
Culloden would have been different then. Maybe the nightmares less potent, if there at all.
Still, he’s ready to be called upon, ready to yank the extension of himself off the wall, to wield and fight because there is someone in need of rescue.
There is another he’s still vowed to protect even if they themself could never wield him.
If they themself ever really cared about him in the first place. Jamie doesn’t know, nor is he certain it makes a difference.
Will the creaking of the TARDIS’s doors act as his scabbard? Or will it be the clang of a smith's mallet in the forge?
No, he suspects with a dejected heart, it’d be the clattering of a violent tool, abandoned on the cold hard floor.
He’s no closer to telling the Doctor, not with words at least, his actions had always been louder, more eloquent too, even when the actions themselves weren’t.
It’s not only muscle memory, but conscious thought. Jamie knows what he needs to do, even if it’s not expected of him when the beastie before them, sword in hand, lunges.
The beastie’s spare blade is within reach, it now in Jamie’s hand, expertly catching the man’s incoming blade on the cross guard before deflecting it back roughly enough the steel sparks and the beastie is forced to cede some ground.
Its snarl thundering in the air, near entirely covering up the astonished, “Goodness!” Jamie hears from behind him.
Had he not intervened, the beastie’s blade would have slipped through the ridges of the Doctor’s spine, where Jamie had once very tiredly rested his head, where he ached to do so again.
That will never be, Jamie figures, another dream as the instinct to protect what he’ll never have roars. He doesn’t look back, not even as he rears back his boot in a hopefully not too harsh kick.
The Doctor shouts, taken off guard and winded, tumbling through the door they’d been headed for before they’d been attacked, hopefully not badly injured.
They were supposed to go through it together, as it’d lock behind them. Jamie ensured this way, the man, the love of his life, goes alone:
Safe.
The hiss of the door shutting, followed by the frantic sound of muffled protest and banging hands, are quickly lost to another scratch of metal crashing together in a piercing clang.
Jamie eventually thrusts the sword through the beastie’s heart, knowing in a kinder world, they would have bested him and managed to do the same.
“Must you be so insolent?” The Doctor asks, the worry in his tone enough to shave off some of the instinctual indignant spike that wells up in the Highlander’s heart.
Jamie can’t tell the Doctor he loves him, he can barely admit to any supposed weakness on his part, and yet he’s tired.
He’s bleeding, there are wounds littering what should be his corpse, and the Doctor is whole and complete above him, safe despite the tears in his eyes.
The man is smarter than Jamie could ever hope to be, so why doesn’t he understand why he is this way?
Why he does what he’s always been meant to do.
His bloody hand reaches up to cup the man’s cheek then, but it falls before he can make contact, the thought of sullying the Doctor further is a heavy deterrent.
A man as good as the Doctor didn’t deserve a weapon's love. It was honor enough being useful in the rare moments of absolutely necessary service.
There’s blood crawling up his throat now too, and Jamie can’t swallow it down in the same way he can’t stop the words spilling out with it:
“I was supposed to be a piper,” he coughs and smiles at the thought, while above him the Doctor is frantically calling his name, likely begging him to stop. To save his energy.
Not to waste it on goodbye’s.
This isn’t a goodbye, he could say in an act of comfort, instead Jamie wastes what he’s sure are his last breaths on the revelation that even in a better world, where he could play the pipes and tell the Doctor he loved him;
Instruments like weapons were also tools, and he can't function to the beat of his own drum.
Always needing another’s rhythm.
There’s a double beat beneath his head, tapping at his ear, and cold fingers sifting through his hair.
The Doctor’s murmurs are pressing softly into his scalp, and the man’s body is wrapped around him like a scabbard.
It's everything Jamie needs to relax, to forget how he’d been forged, to trick himself into the belief his sharp edges could be culled after all.
The Doctor might deserve better than his love, but Jamie can’t live with the idea of the man not knowing of it's existence any longer, that there was love to be provided should he want it, just as eagerly as Jamie would fight in his stead.
“I’m sorry...I’m in love with ye.”
The hand in his hair stills, the beat beneath his head thrown off tempo, before the man is shifting to hold him closer to the quickened beat, grounding him, like Jamie might somehow break from the scabbard of his own volition:
The man’s voice is breathy and curious, tentatively cautious against his hair: “Now why would you apologize for a wonderful thing like that?”
Jamie minutely pulls back, enough for steel to glint, to look the man in the eyes, still endlessly lost and frustrated because the Doctor still didn't seem to understand and Jamie needed to know how it was possible the smartest man in the universe couldn’t understand he was hugging a knife bound to run him through.
He needed to know what the man saw that couldn’t actually be seen, if it was there at all.
“How can ye say that? I’m-I’m,” Jamie stammers, not knowing what to say, broken was too light a word, and dangerous was an understatement, “Cursed,” he sums up for lack of a better word.
He shouldn’t be surprised by the man’s frown, or the obvious disagreement in his blue eyes, but they ignite some spare flint of yearning in his heart that he might possibly be wrong, for it not to take him off guard.
The Doctor’s hand is cool, slipping from his hair to his face, to dance across his cheek until it’s gently gripping his chin, not giving him any chance to turn away.
“You, Jamie McCrimmon, are not cursed. Nor is your love some spite to my well-being. In fact, now that you’ve said- ah ah- Not that I didn’t have some inkling as to your...care before mind you, I consider myself…oh- Oh listen to me ramble on like some old fool when I could just-” Leaning in the Doctor pressed their lips together, giving Jamie no place to go, as if Jamie could or even would pull away.
“I’ll be what you need me to be,” Jamie whispers when they finally pull apart, breathless and small, not knowing what else he had to offer so he could be graced with those cold lips again.
The Doctor smiles and frowns all at once, and pets at his hair, all too aware the battle ahead was not one fought in a night, “I just need you, as you are, my Jamie. Why don’t we start there, hm?”
Jamie isn’t quite sure what he means by that, but he’ll try. Damn it he’ll try.
“Aye.”