Dear Hawkeye,
Do you remember how you felt the first day in Korea? That first step out into this alien landscape where chaos was all around? Coming home was a little bit like that. Of course, seeing Peg and Erin wasn't quite as alien (although Erin has shot up in size).
I couldn't get over walking down civilised streets again, how the faces looking back at me weren't those of Korean people, starving or wounded, living in the hell we left behind, or that the people weren't dressed in green... I might just burn anything I own that's olive in colour.
My first night home there was a party. It was touching and welcoming, yet overwhelming and unnecessary all in the same breath. And these people I loved (and some I didn't actually know) tried to embrace me and understand what I went through but they never will. How can they?
We're the only ones who know what we went through and even then... we could be in the same room, watching the same thing happen and I'll never know how it might have affected you differently, does that make sense?
BJ halted in his writing.
He looked at the sheet of crisp white paper filled with his scribbled writing, words coming almost quicker than he could write them. And what was he saying? Hawkeye wouldn't want to get home and read this.
He didn't really know Hawkeye as a civilian man. He knew as a combat medic. Often times he thought that the war had changed Hawkeye in some ways before he'd even got there. Warped him in certain ways, made the manic side of him light up like he would never have done if he'd just be home in Crabapple Cove. He thought back about the time he'd borrowed Hawkeye's socks without asking. How Hawkeye wasn't just a little annoyed with him for taking them, he was furious. And it was born of that place. Hawkeye was generous. If BJ asked him for his socks, he wouldn't have cared about them, it was a way to distract himself from what he hated to see happening around him.
How could BJ take him back there again so soon?
He knew he wouldn't be so hesitant in what he wrote if Hawkeye hadn't had the breakdown he'd suffered. As much as BJ tried to treat him the same when they were back together at camp, he couldn't help but being mindful and cautious around his friend, not worried so much that he would say the wrong thing, but that something might trigger him. Because Sidney was with Hawkeye for a while but it didn't seem long enough. Not to heal a shattered mind. And it had been a long time coming. Potter had even said that himself after Hawkeye was taken off into Sidney's care.
He'd been on that bus when it happened, when the babies cries had grown silent. Once they were out of danger and moving again, between tending to the wounded, whispers found there way too him about the baby being dead. And he thought he should go to check on Hawkeye but before he got the chance they were arriving in camp. When they scrubbed up to treat the wounded that they'd picked up, BJ had asked him if he was okay and Hawkeye had given him a vague look and asked why he wouldn't be. He had dismissed it as Hawkeye trying to focus on the task at hand.
BJ cast the letter to one side, took a fresh sheet and started again.