Chapter Text
Prologue
The horrors of war can scar a soldier for life, and not just physically. If left untreated, psychological injuries can be just as lethal as those sustained to one's body in a beautiful desert landscape scattered with mines, or grenades tossed through the air.
Unfortunately, I had succumbed to both. A roadside device tore through my body, wreaking havoc on my internal organs, tearing the flesh from my back, devastating my mind.
I had returned from war a broken man, a recluse, a stranger to those who knew and loved me. By the end of my first year at home, I was unrecognisable. My hair and beard are now long, matted, disgusting. My soul, tortured.
I was living with my sister and her family, in a small shed opposite the main house. They had converted it into an apartment for me on my return to Lallybroch. The hermit’s cave they called it.
It was named such after I only ventured out twice in the first few weeks. But as the days turned into months, as my skin paled and my eyes and heart turned to stone, the joke seemed not so funny. Not since I’d barely left my wee cave’s confines in twelve months.
But things were beginning to shift. They had to.
The tipping point came on my nephew's 6th birthday. I had ventured into the house to give wee Jamie a gift, a small toy train I had spent weeks carving from scraps of wood I’d collected.
Jenny had begged me to stay and have some cake, told me it would make my nephew’s day to have his favourite uncle stay for his party, then shuddered as she realised what she’d said.
“Favourite uncle?” I grumbled, “I’m the only one left.”
Our brother, Willy, had served in the military too. But unlike me, Willy did not come home. The same explosion that changed me forever also took my brother’s life.
I stayed in the corner, taking respite in the strong peat whisky in my glass, and wishing it was the full bottle. The noise of the children was hard to bear, but their games and laughter brought back memories of our childhood and a tiny flame of joy ignited in my belly.
Then it all went wrong...
“Happy Birthday!” cheered Jenny, as she proudly strode into the lounge, carrying the Spiderman cake she’d spent hours creating, to the applause of the kids and parents alike.
One excited child stood up, then jumped from their chair and landed with both feet on a balloon.
BANG!
The noise reverberated through every fibre and shrapnel laden muscle in my body. I jumped to my feet, screamed bloody murder, and pulled the hidden dagger I went nowhere without from my waist.
“Jamie! ‘Tis ok. Stop, stop Jamie. Ye’re home, mo chridhe, ye’re whole, ye’re safe,” begged Jenny, standing in front of me, shielding the kids from the madman before them.
Realising what I’d done, the knife fell from my hand as tears fell on my cheeks. To see their frightened faces tore me apart, and I fell to the ground, a pile of shame and grief.
Little did I know at the time, but that horrible, raw, devastating moment, would come to change everything for me.
At the behest of Jenny and her husband, Ian, I walked into a therapist’s office the very next day. Standing in the cold, stark white office, shaking with nerves and crucifying myself for being such a damned coward, I leant down, placed my palms on the desk and whispered to the receptionist, “I think...I ken I need help...please.”
For the first month, Jenny sat patiently in the waiting room knitting or reading for every one of my appointments. I was never sure if this was for my comfort, or because she didn’t trust me to stay without her watchful eyes keeping guard.
As my tale of woe unravelled before a complete stranger, I realised that even before the war, military life had worn me down. After my initial enrolment and training, my superiors recognised the inner compassion and empathy I carried in my heart, that couldn’t help but show. But rather than seeing it as a weakness as I had expected, they saw it as strength. I was one of only two graduates that year to be assigned to the British peacekeeper core within the UN. The other soldier assigned with me, Lt. John Grey, remained in my life to this day, although my hermit life existence since returning had placed a heavy strain on the friendship.
The constant travel to every far-flung, war-torn nation of the earth was thrilling at first, exhausting by the end. I loved knowing I was helping, being of service to those in need, especially the children. Working in countries like East Timor and Sudan gave me a new appreciation for my life back in Scotland and although I was fulfilled in my work, homesickness was a constant companion.
By the time I arrived in Iraq, into a place we should never have been, I was already on the edge. The conflict in Sudan, witnessing the pain and sorrow of its people and the lack of response by western countries, had taken its toll and I was struggling to see any reason to live.
Two things that got me through that time, John, and my brother. Willy was part of a military unit that by chance, had been posted as military support for my team. So although the conflict was traumatising and brutal, we had each other for support….until, we didn’t.
John was injured too that terrible day, the day I lost my brother. After the explosion, we were both transported to Germany for surgery and recovery, then sent home to Scotland, discharged with honours, as heroes.
Sleep often eluded me for days on my return, and that was one of the things that kept me awake the most, along with the screams of agony and cries for help. The fact that I came home and Willy didn’t, the pain that caused me was excruciating.
Six months of twice-weekly therapy had me feeling better than I had in a very long time. I was still broken, still felt like I was trapped in my cave, but there was a crack in the wall, and light had begun to seep through.
So much had things shifted, that after a long and particularly productive session, my ever-patient, ever-understanding therapist, Dr Rawlings, decided I’d graduated from super crazy nuts—as my nephew described me at their first meeting—to just a wee bit nuts. I would now only see her once a week, but with one condition. I needed to relax, breathe, and practice a thing called mindfulness. As part of this, it was recommended I practice yoga. She was so keen for me to begin, she made me promise to sign up for classes at the gym across the street before I was permitted to leave.
Jenny had just arrived to pick me up as this discussion took place and between the two of them, I knew there was no point in fighting. Like a petulant child being dragged into the dentist, I was marched across the street and signed up by the annoyingly bubbly blonde named Tiffany behind the counter. With her eyes darting between my almost dreadlocked red mop and the scars that ran the length of my fingers, she handed me a class timetable, a brochure on the yoga studio and a complimentary sweat towel.
The time it took to sign my life away to the gym was the longest amount of time I had spent anywhere other than home, or Dr Rawlings’s office, in over a year. So by the time blonde Tiffany had concluded my tour of the facilities, I was a sweaty, nervous wreck and was near begging Jenny to take me home.
“I’m proud of ye brother,” she said as she drove along the winding roads that would lead me back to safety, back home, to Lallybroch. “This is the beginning of yer new life.”
And although I would never tell her she was right, she was. Nothing in my life would ever be the same.