A/N: I own nothing.
Ben's mother died on a Saturday. He remembers it was late April, the scent of Forsythia outside the window clashing strongly with the burning tang of French Toast wafting past his father's slumped shoulders, arms curled around Ben's shaking shoulders like comforting vices.
He remembers sniffling into his father's tattered red bathrobe, sobs of "I miss her daddy, why did she have to leave daddy" staining the bird calls in the air with a somber lilt.
He never quite forgets his father's whispered "I don't know Ben. I really don't know."
Nor does he ever forget that it was the last time his father ever called him Ben.
Ben's mother dies when he is ten years old. And with her death, Ben becomes Hawkeye.
00
Sentimental Journey was the major hit right after the war. Hawkeye was just in the early stages of medical school, escaping war service by a scant few months of the right side of turning eighteen, his father's relieved sigh clashing with the bitterness of a youthfully foolish with for glory and serving his country.
He channels the frustration into school instead, and becomes the youngest member of his graduating class later that year.
He takes his latest fling out to the pictures to celebrate, watching Doris Day belt her heart out with half an eye. Hawkeye doesn't remember much about the film, but the song always rather sticks in his head, like it did in the rest of America's consciousness that year.
The girl was rather lovely, a cute little blonde named Suzie, and Hawkeye always looks back on their time together with a certain fondness.
He never quite remembers why, but one notable thing about Suzie's rather short presence in his life is that she always called him Ben.
Which is to say that she called him that twice, on the all of three dates they shared, but somehow, Sentimental journey always seemed to be playing in the background.
00
Five odd years later, bunked down sleepily in his CO's tent in Korea, the first strains of that half remember song play over the crackly PA, Radar's slightly tired and slightly funny jockeying adding a dissonant note of amusement to the melodramatic ballad.
Hawkeye watches Potter's rounded shoulders and shyly fond smile with exhaustion hooded blue eyes, and he's suddenly, abruptly reminded of being eight years old again, in the bench seat of his father's buick, driving back from helping his father deliver the Benson's youngest baby, pleading sleepily with his father to tell him the story of how Daniel met his mother once again, for the millionth time.
The words just sort of seem to slip out before he can really think about it.
"Come on Daddy, we want a story."
Ben never had a brother, but Hawkeye is luckier than that.
Ben had an awesome father. Hawkeye is almost as lucky as that.
00
Klinger deposits Hawkeye on his half assembled cot sometime around the first tricklings of dawn, his frilly hair net clashing unmistakably with the olive drab of the scratchy blanket.
Hawkeye doesn't remember lying down, but he rouses slightly moments or hours later as a weathered, gentle hand draws the blanket up to his chin, patting his shoulder softly.
He mumbles quietly, caught between sleep and wakefulness, the words hanging in the air like fresh dew in a spring rain. "Night Daddy."
The hand stills for the longest second, before withdrawing to sweep carefully through an unruly mop of black and prematurely grey hair. Hawkeye nuzzled into the caress, words lulling him off to dream land.
"Sweet dreams Ben."
00
Daniel Pierce helped his son pack for Korea. They were both crying buckets.
It wasn't until Hawkeye was on a different continent that he found the still slightly damp, carefully folded red flannel form of his father's favourite bathrobe carefully tucked in the bottom of his freshly issued army duffle.
Wearing it helps him feel closer to his dad, as he knows was the intention. They've never needed words to communicate with each other. Not in the things that really matter.
Drinking battery acid across from an old bird of a colonel, attempting to flip a chess board that has way too many kings of clubs on top of it's checkers to be normal, red flannel swathing him in a layer of familiar scents and memories, Hawkeye allows himself a moment to pause.
And reflect that maybe Ben never really left at all.