anon asked: fillmore is killed by something (a fire, frank, criminal, overdose on something, a fall off a cliff etc) and sarge is left without his neighbor and closest friend. sarge struggles with grief for the loss of his friend and his PTSD growing steadily worse as he has more of not just war flashbacks, but also ones replaying the event he lost fillmore. normally when he has trouble with ptsd he'd go to fill...but he's gone. what hurts the most is that sarge never got to let him know how much he cared.
warning: this is the au where sarge fights in vietnam instead of world war two, so don't call me out on historical discrepancies. also there's this reoccurring thing with 1967, and that's because in one of the comics it said they met in "the summer of love," so i just took it and ran with it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
wishes.
Fillmore was dying. Sarge knew that much. The doctors had refused to tell him what was killing him, or how long he had. Not family, they said. Sarge hadn't grasped how truly bad the situation was until they let him into the room, well over a week after Fillmore had been hospitalized. He looked frail; shaking, hooked up to various IVs. He stared idly out the window, barely blinking.
"Hey, Sarge," Fillmore mumbled, not looking at him.
"You don't look so good," Sarge said, moving to sit with him.
Fillmore half-laughed. "That bad, huh?"
They chatted idly, Sarge brushing up against him every so often. It was like things had gone back to normal, like Fillmore wasn't dying of some mystery illness.
"It's sad, y'know," Fillmore said, "that I'm missing that festival ."
"Festival?" Sarge asked, suddenly flooded with dread. "What festival?"
"That Woodstock thing? Don't tell me you already forgot, man..."
Sarge stared at him for a moment, mouth slightly agape. "That was over ten years ago, Fillmore."
Fillmore coughed a laugh, and said, "I don't think Janis Joplin performed anywhere in '59, man."
. . . .
Sarge barely slept that night. His mind swirled with the same repetitions of he doesn't even know what year it is and he's going to be gone soon. Sarge found himself staring at the moon through one of the tiny windows in his hut, hoping it would relent some sort of answer. Minutes wasted themselves away like hours, and he hardly moved from his spot for what felt like days. What does it mean? What does it mean?
The moon didn't console him.
. . . .
The next time Sarge saw Fillmore, he looked dead. Eyes glassy and staring at nothing, kneading his thin, bony fingers aimlessly into his hospital gown.
"Hey, man," he said. "Long time, no see."
"A week is hardly a long time."
Fillmore's eyes flicked over him. "Nah, man, you enlisted, like, six months ago," he frowned.
"What?" Sarge's eyes widened, that same feeling of dread passing over him. "The war is over, Fillmore, it's been over for—"
He stopped talking when Fillmore looked away.
"I'm sorry," Sarge said in a broken tone, though he wasn't really sure what he was apologizing for. "I'm sorry, I—"
"You haven't done anything to apologize for, man." Fillmore's eyes returned to him, and he was smiling weakly. "You'll be okay."
He reached out his hand to brush against Sarge, but it fell short in a coughing fit. Sarge watched with vague terror as Fillmore collapsed, his breaths few and far between. He would have run to get help, but his worry and fear kept him glued in place.
. . . .
Fillmore died that evening, after the sun had been replaced with a brilliant night sky full of stars. Sarge approached him in a haze when the flatline shot through his brain like a bullet. "Don't do this," he said, shaking him. "Please, don't—" He cut himself off, swallowing the lump in his throat.
Sarge pried himself away when a nurse came in to pronounce him dead. He gave the corpse one last, lingering glance before fleeing into the hallway.
He stood there for what felt like hours, willing himself to get up and go home. There wasn't anything there for him, anymore, yet he remained, staring quietly at the opposite wall. He barely noticed when the nurse came out of the room, staring at him pityingly.
"You must be Sarge," she said, snapping him out of his daze. "He talked about you all the time."
Sarge nodded wordlessly.
"He's in a better place now," she comforted. "He's not in pain anymore."
Sarge nodded again, somehow unable to speak.
She stood with him for a few moments, before: "If you don't mind me asking, were you two…?"
Sarge didn't reply in favor of staring at nothing.
"Yes," he finally croaked. "I suppose we were."
. . . .
Fillmore was buried on a wonderful, sunny Wednesday in July. Sarge watched, numbly, as the plain, black casket was lowered into the red-orange desert. "He hated black, you know," he said to anyone who might be listening. Only then did Sarge share in that opinion; it was dark and lifeless, and fitting in some terrible way that he didn't care to describe.
"You'll be okay, right?" Ramone asked him as the group broke away after the funeral. At his side, Flo gave him a condolatory gaze.
Sarge just nodded evenly, and continued towards his home.
He saw Fillmore everywhere after the Funeral. He was in his normal spot at Flo's. Outside tending to his plants. Coming through Sarge's shop to say hello. Doing menial, everyday tasks just out of the corner of his vision.
Maybe it's a ghost, he thought as he absentmindedly fixed the rows of supplies in his shop. For a minute, he thought it was true. Then, Sarge snapped out of it. He didn't believe in ghosts, nor had he ever. Fillmore always tried to convince him that things like that were real. Stupid little things that Sarge did not and would never believe in.
He glanced out the window at Fillmore's vacant dome; a "lot for sale," sign had been stuck in the front lawn, and all of the tall grass and flowers in the yard had been cut to make it appear desirable. The sight was foreign, unwelcome, and Sarge half-considered going out and removing the sign. Instead, he moved on, displacing and replacing various items just to give him something to think about.
. . . .
Sarge isn't sure what started it. A car backfiring, maybe, or the clatter of something falling in another room over. The most he knows is that he's back, cowering behind a tree in Phuoc Tuy, just like the rest of his men.
Gunfire whizzes around him, from those brave enough to face the anti-vehicle gun that the NVA or Viet-Cong or whatever was out there had somehow gotten their hands on. He takes a gander, and swivels to look around his tree. Five, or maybe ten, of his platoon-his responsibility- were either dead or wounded over the perimeter line.
And then was over. Just as quick as it had begun, it was over. He realizes that he had been staring off at nothing, one of those things that Fillmore would have reminded him of if he were alive.
"You alright, man?" Fillmore's voice echoed, as it had so many times, in his head.
Sarge just shook his head, and continued with his day. He didn't believe in ghosts, after all, and he wasn't about to divulge his troubles to one.
. . . .
Sarge found himself wishing for a second chance in August. It had been a month since Fillmore's funeral, and a week since he had bought the lot next door. He couldn't begin to see it sold to someone new, not while the town was still recovering.
He cleaned out Fillmore's dome two weeks after the funeral. He hadn't found much: a box of dusty records, lava lamps scattered about the place, the odd empty bottle of beer. There were a few photographs scattered over the bed, as though he had been looking through them before being sent to the hospital. One was of Fillmore with what Sarge assumed to be his friends from college, lounging around a blazing campfire. Fillmore was in the back, holding his ukulele over his head and grinning at the camera. A second photo was of Flo and Ramone on their wedding day. They were both dressed completely in white, and they bore excited smiles, arm in arm. Sarge remembered that being taken- he had stood right by Fillmore as it had happened.
The last photograph that Sarge looked at featured himself, though he had no memory of it being taken. His head lolled on Fillmore's shoulder, and his eyes were closed. Fillmore's crooked grin was barely visible in the frame, though you could tell that he had gotten some sort of satisfaction out of getting a picture of him like that.
In the moment he saw the photo, he decided he wanted a second chance. He would go to war again, he would do anything, as long as it would bring Fillmore back to life. Better yet, he wished to meet Fillmore again, for it to be 1967, where he didn't know his whole world would come crashing down around him. They could start over.
. . . .
It should have been me, Sarge thinks, staring dazedly at the photograph. He had taken it with him in an attempt to keep ahold of the past, to not let it slip away.
He imagines himself in Fillmore's place, frail and dying while nurses fretted over him. He would be devastated, of course, and Sarge couldn't do anything to help. Would he die in the same way as Fillmore? Unable to breathe, coughing himself into a sleep that he wouldn't wake up from? Or would he go silently, without a fight?
This image, as it always did, faded into what he had seen of Fillmore's death: staring at nothing, gasping for air in his last moments, feebly reaching out and trying to touch him when he could barely even move.
He blinks, and it's gone.
. . . .
He visits the grave for the first time on an especially cold afternoon in September. He brought flowers, something that he wouldn't have done while Fillmore was alive. He greets the headstone like he would have any other day, and sits down in the red-orange dirt.
"It's been a while," he says, tracing the letters with his index finger.
He waited, as though there might be a response. In the back of his mind, he wanted some sort of reply- a "hello," maybe, or a "good to see you." All he can hear is the wind, and the distant sound of traffic.
"I'm sorry," Sarge blurted out, "I'm sorry I never told you how I felt, or that I-" He paused, making sure he wouldn't back out. "That I cared about you. A lot."
He sighed, and the weight was momentarily lifted off of his chest.
Fillmore would be smiling if he heard that, Sarge was sure of it. Maybe it would include a teasing remark about how he was going soft. He departs within the next twenty minutes, and leaves the flowers. Fillmore would have liked them; after all, they were bluebells, and bluebells meant love.
. . . .
When he dreams, it's 1967 and he gets his second chance.