Imagine if on the Ridge Claire has a flashback to the war. She finally has the time and space to talk to Jamie fully about her war and the PTSD she's never coped with

anonymous asked: I’d like to see another instance of Claire experiencing PTSD during “Je Suis Prest” or “Prestonpans” explored. I felt that this was a great wrinkle the show added. This time she’s triggered into reliving The Blitz and explains the details of it to a horrified Jamie. Bring the feels!

–“There ye are!”

Claire glanced up from her work, crushing dried bog myrtle leaves with her mortar and pestle. She stood up, rubbing the small of her back, and smiled as Jamie quickly crossed the room to kiss her.

“Looking for me, were you?”

He nodded, bending to kiss her again. “Jenny said ye’d be in here. Ian just arrived wi’ the post – and look!”

Her gaze moved downward to Jamie’s hands – full of letters addressed to her, with postmarks from Paris.

“Oh!” Carefully she took the letters, seeing Mother Hildegarde’s spidery script on two, Louise’s flowery writing on one, and another whose penmanship she did not recognize.

“I wonder why so many came all at once.”

Jamie shrugged, in that odd motion he’d adopted from Fergus since their time in Paris. “I received a few letters myself – from Ned Gowan, and Colum if ye can believe it.”

Claire quirked an eyebrow. “I can’t possibly imagine what he would have to say to you.”

Carefully he leaned on Claire’s table. “An invitation back to Leoch, if ye can believe it. If he’s to be believed, Dougal is in rare form these days, ranting all about the Stuarts, what with the rumors from Italy and Ireland on the Prince’s whereabouts.”

Claire sighed. “I say a prayer every day that that doddering fool stays in Rome with the Pope.”

He squeezed her hand. “Well, I dedicate a decade of the rosary every day to that very same intention. Canna say I think it time ill spent.” Then he bent for one last kiss. “I’m due back to the potato fields. See you at supper.”

She gripped his shoulder, drawing him close for another kiss. “I can’t wait.”

–

“Who do you think my mystery letter was from?”

The candles flickered, casting stray shadows on the wall as Claire brushed her hair in front of the mirror that Ellen MacKenzie Fraser had brought from Castle Leoch, watching Ellen’s son kick off his boots and socks.

“Weel…over the past year ye’ve occasionally heard from puir Mary Hawkins, and Sister Angelique, and Magnus a time or two.” He unbuckled his kilt. “And Master Raymond, though I’d recognize his writing.”

“It was from Monsieur Forez.”

Jamie froze. “Truly? The hangman?”

Claire set down her brush and retrieved the letter. “And sometimes healer. He sent me a particularly detailed case study for a patient he had recently treated at the Bastille. An especially bad case of congenital syphilis, which resulted in early onset dementia.”

Jamie gulped, and carefully dropped his kilt. “Spare me the details. I dinna want the nightmare, though I’m sure it’s riveting bedtime reading for you.”

She smiled. “I already started a reply – I can exchange my own story about the MacNab lad I recently treated, the one with the terrible injury caused by his horse.” She glanced down at the sheet of paper she had already addressed to the mysterious man in Paris, picking up her hairbrush. “Do you know, Jamie – I’ve forgotten where we are in the calendar. What’s today’s date?”

“June the sixth,” he promptly replied, gently folding his kilt and placing it in the wardrobe.

Claire’s hairbrush sounded so loud as it crashed to the floor.

Softly Jamie pried her clenched fingers from the edge of the mirror. She had no memory of how or when he had rushed to her side.

“Claire?” he whispered. “Can ye tell me what’s amiss?”

He knelt in his shirt beside her, perched tensely on the bench, hands suddenly cool and clammy.

Finally her troubled eyes found his. “Three years ago today, I was in France.”

He nodded, listening.

“It was called Operation Overlord. We called it D-Day.” She swallowed. “At dawn, more than one hundred and fifty thousand soldiers stormed the beaches of Normandy.”

“One hundred and fifty thousand!” Jamie exclaimed. “For just one battle?”

“Yes.” Her eyes held his, but her voice sounded so far away. “They were brought in ships. They waded to the beach, straight into the machine gun fire.”

“Ye’ve told me of it – guns that fire many bullets at once.”

“Yes.” She shivered. “Many of them died. I was attached to a battalion that landed men on the beach that morning. I was brought ashore that evening, with the other doctors and nurses. On one of the beaches that had been taken.”

He squeezed her hands.

“Bodies were still floating in the water, turning the ocean red. Many more were still on the beach – English at first, and then German as we moved inland. And once we arrived to build the field hospital…you’ve seen what a bullet can do to a man’s face. Imagine multiple bullets hitting a man in the face and the arms and the belly and the legs at the same time – and that he’s still alive.”

“You did the best you could, Claire.”

She sighed, voice choked. “I’d treated the wounded before, in England. But those days in France, following the landing – that was the first time I’d seen true combat. The first of many times.”

Slowly Jamie stood, helped Claire to her feet, then led her to their bed, where he eased her onto the mattress and took a seat beside her. “I assume the invasion succeeded?”

She nodded. “It established the Allies’ first foothold on the European mainland. In ten months it was all over.”

“Where were you, when the war ended?”

“Performing emergency surgery on an Army private. Still in France, though closer to the front with Germany. I’d been moved back as the Allies advanced. Always trailing a bit behind, to stay in step with the casualties.”

One soothing hand caressed the bare flesh of her leg, curled up under her shift. “Ye stitch up the men, but it leaves wounds in yer soul, aye?”

She closed her eyes. “So much death, Jamie. So much that you can’t think about it – you just need to focus on the man in front of you. Heal his wounds. Then do the same for the next one.”

“And when it was all over – ye went straight back to England. Nobody gave ye the time to think on it.”

She pursed her lips. “I don’t know why I’m reacting this way. I never have before.”

“Perhaps because ye’ve never had the chance to. This time last year, we were still…apart, in France. And the year before that – ”

“I’d just arrived here. Yes. Had other things on my mind, no doubt.”

He shifted closer to her on the bed. Drew her against his side. Holding her so close.

“We’ve learned a lot about grief, you and I, this past year at Lallybroch. What do ye keep telling me?”

Her arms curled around him. “To not push down the feelings. To let them happen.”

“Aye.” He kissed the side of her neck. “Let me say the same to you now, mo nighean donn. Mourn for those men now, if ye wish – I’ll be right here.”

She turned her head and kissed him, fingers digging into the fabric of his shirt.

The fire in their bedroom crackled, and the early summer wind howled outside, and they held each other for a long while.

“Claire?” Jamie murmured sometime later, snug beneath the quilts, skin-on-skin.

“Hmm?” she asked drowsily.

“Three years ago today, I was in France, too – as a mercenary. Wi’ Ian.”

She burrowed against his shoulder. “We were there at the same time?”

“We were. And do you know what?”

“What?”

“Had you not spent time there – and had I not spent time there – as difficult as it was, I dinna think we ever would have found each other.”

She sighed, knowing the truth of his words. Kissing him with gratitude.