(A/N: Read and Review? This one turned out rather badly, but I posted it anyway...)
"BJ, just what is your problem? You know just as well as everyone else here that, once a flag gets old'n worn, we take it out and burn it with proper ceremony."
"I know, but..."
BJ sat, slumped in the chair, the camp's old flag in his lap. With their last batch of wounded, the fierce wind from helicopter blades had caught the worn material and caused it to wrap around the pole and snag on the metal. There were little holes all over it.
"Hunnicutt, are you alright? Do we need to put in a call to Sidney? I can have him over here faster than..."
"No." He ran the faded flag over his fingers. "Just let me fix it up... you know, make sure it's in decent condition before you take it out and burn it."
"Uh... alright. Whatever you like. Just have it back by tonight."
Potter still looked rather worried as BJ picked the flag up gingerly, and carried it out of the room. Eyebrows all around the room were raised at this peculiar behavior, but the staff meeting went on without Captain Hunnicutt's presence.
Even though all he had was olive green thread, BJ's stitches on the flag were small and near-perfect. After all, he thought grimly, he had had much practice. He had darned a great number of things since he had arrived here. His most beloved argyle socks... his shorts, which wouldn't do to have holes in the rear in below-freezing weather... his shirt sleeves... the hems of his pants...
He had even been forced to sew up young men who looked, to him, no older than his own precious baby daughter at home. After awhile, despite the differences in technique, they all began to look the same. All with olive green thread, even, precise stitches, sewing up the destruction the war had caused, only to send them back out into the fighting so they could tear again.
BJ finished the last hole and tied off his thread, biting the excess off with his teeth. Unsure of why he had felt so strongly about making the flag whole before it was burned, he merely shrugged it off and headed back towards Potter's office.
Behind him, in the Swamp, every article of clothing was neat and clean. Any and every minute snag, hole, tear, had been sewn up with that ever-abundant green thread of his. Not a button was missing or out of place.
It was all about trying to make things whole again.