I can bear pain myself, he said softly, but I couldna bear yours. That would take more strength than I have.

He gave you to me," she said, so low I could hardly hear her. "Now I have to give you back to him, Mama.

No wonder he was so good with horses, I thought blearily, feeling his fingers rubbing gently behind my ears, listening to the soothing, incomprehensible speech. If I were a horse, I’d let him ride me anywhere.

But just then, for that fraction of time, it seems as though all things are possible. You can look across the limitations of your own life, and see that they are really nothing. In that moment when time stops, it is as though you know you could undertake any venture, complete it and come back to yourself, to find the world unchanged, and everything just as you left it a moment before. And it's as though knowing that everything is possible, suddenly nothing is necessary.

Am I a man? To want you so badly that nothing else matters? To see you, and know I would sacrifice honor or family or life itself to lie wi' you, even though ye'd left me?

I stood still, vision blurring, and in that moment, I heard my heart break. It was a small, clean sound, like the snapping of a flower's stem.

I prayed all the way up that hill yesterday, he said softly. Not for you to stay; I didna think that would be right. I prayed I'd be strong enough to send ye away. He shook his head, still gazing up the hill, a faraway look in his eyes. I said 'Lord, if I've never had courage in my life before, let me have it now. Let me be brave enough not to fall on my knees and beg her to stay.' He pulled his eyes away from the cottage and smiled briefly at me. Hardest thing I ever did, Sassenach.