A/N: As you know, I withdrew this story out of respect after the murder of James Foley. I wasn't comfortable with the story being public until a decent interval had elapsed. Then another murder took place, then another.

What changed my mind and convinced me to finish the story was the attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices. I was humbled by the surviving journalists' determination to continue publishing in defiance of the violence and cruelty visited upon them. If they could manage it, then what right had I to choose not to? I had no excuse. I should do too.

So here it is. I haven't specified where this story takes place and have deliberately set it in the past, because A) it's about Anthony and Edith and not current events, and B) events in real life have escalated while I've been writing and I really didn't want to get into discussing them in the story. If I have any readers who have been affected by what's going on, I can only apologise and send you my sincerest solidarity. I hope you can find a little fictional relief here.

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June 2005

The Poppies of the Battlefield by our own Foreign Correspondent, Edith Crawley

"There are many victims of this war, some of them more commanding of our sympathy than others. There are the orphans and widows both here and in the home nations of the armies involved in the conflict. But there are also victims among those very armies. There are the young men, some of them as young as 12, or even younger, still mere boys, who have been dragooned into fighting for the insurgents. There are the women who have been kidnapped and pressed into serving as 'comfort women' for the insurgent soldiers. And there are the Western soldiers who have to face a fanatical enemy who honours no code of conduct in warfare except their own, and sometimes not even that. These brave men and women are facing a situation as brutal as that in any war, just more unpredictable and with an elusive, and unspecified, goal to call 'victory'.

Is it any wonder that they return home with PTSD?..."

Anthony read the whole article in The Daily Sketch twice, three times before he could tear himself away from the print to wipe his eyes. He was so proud of her. He was also so angry with her for going in the first place, because he knew just how very dangerous it was, and he was afraid, in fact completely terrified, that any day now he would read very different headlines. Most of all, he blamed himself…she might not be in all that danger now if only he hadn't…

.

August 2002

He couldn't believe his eyes when he first saw her that bright summer afternoon. She was…all light and grace and beauty.

Robert Crawley, his neighbour and sort-of friend, had rung earlier in the week. His middle daughter, Edith, had graduated from Cambridge, and, despite Robert's disapproval, she was determined to secure a career in journalism. Job offers were hers for the taking from a number of Fleet Street dailies, and she had come home to Downton to think about which to accept.

"Come over to the garden party on Saturday, Anthony, would you?" Robert's voice was at its most patrician. "She's terribly keen to meet anyone who has had experience in the armed forces. And if you can, tell her the reality of what you and your colleagues had to go through, mmm? Perhaps it will put her off."

So it was that Anthony found himself sipping a Pimm's while strolling round Downton's immaculate lawns, trying to recognise a girl he'd last seen ten years ago, or failing that, trying to find anyone he thought he could bear to talk to. He'd already had the "What Ho! Jolly well done, old boy!" treatment from Colonel Henderson, who himself had never actually faced fire or stood on a battlefield in his life, climbing the ranks by a series of postings in the MoD in Whitehall.

Anthony kept away from anyone he knew disapproved of this so-called "War on Terror", just in case he gave offence. No, he scolded himself, it was cowardice in case he couldn't cope with their disapproval.

He'd given up trying to find Edith and was idly watching the fish swim around their pond rather to one side of the main garden party when he heard a quiet, gentle voice behind him call his name.

"Sir Anthony."

He turned and saw an angel. Dressed in cool, white linen, her golden hair streaked with sunshine, intense, dark eyes gazing up at him, it took him fully five seconds to realise who she was.

"Lady Edith! Goodness, I'm sorry. I didn't recognise you."

"It's been far too long. You still look well though" she answered politely.

He tried to gather his scattered wits.

"And you look…extremely well. Cambridge must have agreed with you."

"I suppose it did…Papa said that he'd invited you over. It's terribly nice of you to come, and let me interrogate you."

Anthony couldn't think of anything lovelier at that moment that being interrogated by Edith Crawley.

"My pleasure."

He indicated a bench and she came to sit by him, smiling.

It was a smile that melted his heart.

"Papa says you joined the Territorial Army after…after you lost Lady Strallan."

"Yes, something to do, to take my mind off it all, and, you know, be useful."

"Which regiment?"

"53 Military Intelligence Company based in Leeds."

"And you've served overseas?"

"Yes, I was called up for active service just after 9/11." The statement was the truth, but he'd never uttered it with such pride before. He wanted this madly wonderful young woman to think well of him, and she was looking up at him with the sort of admiration that he'd never experienced before. It was going to his head in the most intoxicating way.

"How long were you out there?"

"I've done one tour of duty…six months, although I expect to be sent out again in the not too distant future. The war is spreading eastwards…"

She asked more questions, which he was happy to answer. He thought it was all going so well, when her sister Mary came to fetch her.

"Oh, Sir Anthony. I didn't know you were coming" she exclaimed on seeing who was seated the other side of Edith.

"I wouldn't miss it for the world, Lady Mary" Anthony replied courteously standing in her presence.

"Not even to go play soldiers a bit more? Edith, Mama wants you to meet Cameron Murray, his brother is a publisher or something."

Edith stood looking embarrassed on behalf of her sister, as though she had done something wrong. Anthony couldn't stand it.

"If you want to finish our discussion, Lady Edith, please call round sometime. Any time this week would be fine."

"Thank you, Major" she answered, giving him that wonderful smile again and taking his breath away with her beauty, her modesty, and her lightly worn research. He hadn't told her his rank.

... ... ...

Anthony slept little that night. He had never been so affected by a woman, not even by Maud who had been sweet and caring, and he'd loved her almost as he loved a sibling, which was also how she regarded him. Consequently, their attempts to beget an heir to the Strallan title had not been satisfying for either of them. In fact, they'd become acutely embarrassing.

But Edith…

In his forties, suddenly, Anthony had discovered what it truly meant to be in love. As a teenager, there had never been one girl in his thoughts for very long. His shyness ensured that he'd not asked any of them out, and none of them noticed him. He spent his undergraduate years happily studying, rowing, going to concerts, and making friends, and meeting Maud. She came to Anthony on the rebound from the one true love of her life who had dumped her in a most brutal fashion. Anthony was there for her, and being a chivalrous kind of man, just wanted to make her pain go away. When she began to want more than friendship, he went along with it. He could have done very much worse. He took the concept of duty very seriously for a young man, and was well aware of the burden that one day would lay on his shoulders to manage the Locksley estate and produce an heir.

When Maud had died of ovarian cancer, he had lost not only his wife, but also his best friend. He wasn't heartbroken in the conventional sense, but he found himself bereft, grieving, and extremely lonely. Within the year, he'd joined the Territorials as an Intelligence Officer. He made new friends, and enjoyed the training and manoeuvres. He'd never been sent into the field until asked to by Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair. What he'd seen then had changed him, he realised that. But he'd taken the Queen's Shilling, and duty was duty.

... ... ...

It was early afternoon the next day that Anthony answered the bell.

"Goodness, I'm…I'm sorry. I wasn't expecting you to answer your own front door!" gasped Edith.

"Did you expect me to have a butler?" asked Anthony, pleased by her reaction to his being 'normal', and even more pleased that she had come to visit so soon.

"Why not? Papa does!"

"Your Papa is somewhat grander than I am. Please, come in."

Anthony took her through to the library.

"Would you like a cup of something?" he asked hospitably.

"Only if you're having one." She smiled at him, and at the bookshelves. He smiled because she smiled.

"I won't be a tick" he said, walking in long but purposeful strides down to the kitchen.

I really must try to remember that she's only here to ask about the TA. For God's sake, man, get a grip! She's hardly going to fancy a widower in his forties.

Nevertheless, he still looked at himself in the hall mirror to make sure that he was presentable before he returned to the library. Edith looked round from flicking through an eighteenth-century treatise.

"Your library is amazing!"

"Thank you, but surely it isn't a patch on Downton's?"

"No one ever uses Downton's…except me. There's nothing of such interest there. They were bought by the yard, not selectively chosen like yours. You obviously really love books."

"A weakness inherited from my father." Anthony watched her entranced expression with fondness.

She took her mug of tea from him, sipped it, and said how good it was, before tackling the real reason for her visit.

"Papa keeps saying that I must not go into journalism, that it is a dangerous profession, and 'not one becoming a lady in my position'…his words. And Granny, of course, agrees with him, only in more forthright terms."

"They have a point about the danger…that is, if you intend to become a foreign correspondent. But I consider his view of women in the professions…rather outdated. There are plenty of women in the Intelligence Unit and damned good they are too."

Edith sighed. "I knew you would understand."

"What does your mother think?"

"She's not over the moon, but is more supportive of me doing something I want to do. I just get the feeling that she would prefer me to write for Vogue! But I really can't understand the worth of journalism if it doesn't report what's going on in the world and bears witness to injustice. That has to be its main duty!"

Edith was so passionate, and had principles that chimed so well with his own, that he felt himself fall just a little farther in love.

"Then you must do it. Do whatever you feel you must do, and be true to yourself."

In her gratitude to this charming, brave, modest, and most proper of gentlemen, whom she found so very attractive, she reached up and kissed his cheek.

And that was it: he was done for.

Anthony took her for a drive in his vintage Rolls-Royce later that afternoon. By the end of that first week he had taken her to York for a concert. On the way back, in the moonlight, his feelings had overpowered his propriety and he had kissed her shyly. He was in ecstasy when she pulled him closer and kissed him back. After another week, he had proposed, and she had accepted. They planned to wed in a month, much to Robert and Violet's violent disapproval, which they didn't keep from him.

After sleepless nights and internal arguments back and forth and, yes, even tears, Anthony had turned up to Downton Church on that fateful morning, to stop Edith and her father on the way in. Robert excused himself, and nodded at Anthony. It was meant to be encouraging, approving of what Anthony was about to do. To Anthony it felt like the nod of an executioner.

Anthony's excuses felt feeble once he'd said them out loud. Edith's bewilderment then disbelief and finally tears unmanned him and he wept too. When she told him she loved him more than anything and she couldn't go on without him, he couldn't cope, and walked away out of the churchyard, and out of her life.

He'd gone home to Locksley, changed his clothes, then headed straight for Leeds. Within ten days he was back on the front line. Within five months, he'd been caught in an ambush, gunned down, and left for dead…which is really what he wanted to be.

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July 2005

Anthony still had friends in the army. They told him what he needed to know, and issued a few orders to assist him in travelling out to the warzone. He packed lightly, but strategically. Most of the equipment he would need he would have to buy on the black market once he got there.

The last thing he packed was that morning's edition of The Daily Sketch blaring its banner headlines:

THE DAILY SKETCH'S WAR CORRESPONDENT TAKEN HOSTAGE

Horrific internet video shows Edith Crawley held by insurgents

Sketch Editor and Edith's fiancé, Michael Gregson, inconsolable