After spending five years as a combat nurse during WWII, Claire Beauchamp decides to make a home in the Scottish Highlands when she finds an ancestral home to renovate.
a/n: As DJ Khaled would say: “another one”, yup…we canna be stopped and we hope you love this new au! Enjoy
Strange, the things you remember… Single images and feelings that stay with you down through the years, like that time Claire Beauchamp realized she had never owned a vase. She never lived anywhere long enough to justify such a simple purchase…until now.
Claire had spent the last five years as a combat nurse, healing soldiers at the front, all the while losing her husband and her beloved uncle to the bloody war. Before that, her childhood and upbringing were spent all over the world with her Uncle Lambert, digging on archeological sites. She had married Frank Randall at only nineteen and they had been happy…until the war tore them apart and left her a young widow.
Now, six months after the end of the war, she took her uncle’s inheritance and moved to Scotland to start anew and to find a home…away from pain and heartbreak with sole company, the soothing sounds of the wind and the music of the Highlands.
When Elizabeth’s Golden Globe is announced, Caitriona and her partner (😉) are sitting in the background. The camera is focused on Elizabeth for some time but Caitriona’s partner doesn’t look at her once with a ‘never mind Hun’ type gesture and Caitriona doesn’t look at him either. This is the most unnatural response to not winning an award from ‘partners’ I’ve ever seen…lol awkward….😂
This makes me feel like crying. Someone said about that night that she looked like she was new and didn’t know anyone at her table. I pity anyone who believes this engagement is real and honestly thinks how lucky she is to have him.
Thing is… even if you claim they want privacy and “we don’t know how they behave when the door is closed”, how come that a long term couple, newly engaged, “very happy” never ever slips in some kind of intimacy or affection toward each other? In some kind of PDA when you think the camera is not focusing on you? No, nothing, nada? Ok… let me tell you a say my grampa liked a lot about how what you do in private “bleed” to your social life, “the custom of using the smoking pipe, bend the mouth”. Healthy intimacy even if private, shows up somehow, always… and it doesn’t need an article to validation, it’s natural body language.
It concerns me no end that no candid moments were captured showing these two being happily in love. It’s a red flag in relationships when partners no longer pay attention to each other. Other red flags include, expression of moodiness (grumpy after 14 hours in forest?) if there is any communication, also friends don’t like your partner (fans in this context because they know her well and they just tell this guy is something off from an outsiders perspective?), secretive past etc.
True, we don’t know what happens between them off screen. But is it really unreasonable to say that it is unnatural and unusual for two persons in healthy relationship to show zero affection in public?
I read many comments about Cait being disrespectful to her fiancé but what worries me is how her fiancé has behaved around her. He never smiles around her, he takes care of her bags but at T2 when she was struggling to wear her jacket, his hands were in his pockets. At those very important moments in her career, when her name was announced, when she won, when she didn’t win, he looked indifferent, he didn’t attempt to acknowledge her with eye contact, a shoulder nudge, a smile to cheer her up. Perhaps he did but they were not captured unfortunately. But if there were any, they were so rare, that no random shots were recorded.
As I talked to my friend this morning, if Cait were our friend, our daughter or our relative, we would be very worried, from what an outsider can observe, no matter the actual relationship status they are in, nothing convinced us so far, our friend, our daughter, or our relative, was being loved and adored and taken care of. Again we don’t know what happens closed door. It could be much better than we had imagined, but logically, it could also be way worse.
His secretive past, alleged bankruptcy and unknown employment status, also worry me, as a fan who only wants to look out for Cait. I know she’s a feminist, a strong unusual woman. But she deserves the best and I don’t care if anyone considers me being politically incorrect. I don’t want any harm for her.
Yes, I’d be disappointed if in the end she is not going to be with Sam. But it’s not because it’s Sam, I’m first a Cait’s fan then only very recently a Sam’s fan. It’s because at least from what we can actually observe, Sam has always showed his affection and support to Cait through his actions. I think Cait deserves all the love and support, both behind the door and in public.
Single images and feelings that stay with you down through the years. Like the moment I’d realized I’d never owned a vase. That I’d never lived in any place long enough to justify having such a simple thing. And how at that moment, I wanted nothing so much in all the world as to have a vase of my very own. It was a Tuesday afternoon, six months after the end of the war. Somehow in my mind, V-E Day, the end of the bloodiest and most terrible war in human history, grows fainter with each passing day. But I can still recall every detail of the day when I saw the life I wanted sitting in a window. I sometimes wonder what would’ve happened if I’d bought that vase and made a home for it. Would that have changed things? Would I have been happy? Who can say? I do know this: even now, after all the pain, and death and heartbreak that followed, I would still make the same choice.
Tori