When the Music's Over

Note and Disclaimer: Obviously, I still don't own M*A*S*H and its characters, plots and storylines. However, I'm still on a kick, to write a story for each character during or just after "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen".

For the music is your special friend
Dance on fire, as it intends
Music is your only friend
Until the end…

He awoke that morning after what seemed like a nightmare from hell itself. The warm sunshine hit his weary face as consciousness dragged him on, the light blinding him instantly. However, with a slow rise, his eyelids made themselves used to the light that only Boston could give him.

Charles Emerson Winchester III was home. He was home in Boston.

The rustle of his parents' employed staff passed his room several times. Hot water steamed from one bowl as a maid walked by his closed door, intent on washing something or someone. Wheels from the laundry carts slowly whistled by. The kitchen below him was tinkering away, the cook ready to show off his delectable treats to a crowd wanting more.

Ah, food was surely going to be served soon, a breakfast that would made him forget that he was anywhere else but home.

Charles stretched his legs in his bed, pushing away the covers from his body and the soft, red velvet pillow from his head. He nearly jumped out of bed, eager to greet the new morning and prepare for a new life ahead of him. Surely, surely, it would be best to forget that horrible life that was just behind him, all the way in Korea. It was even better to put those miserable, heathen people out of his mind, all of them reminding him of the humiliation that he suffered, the lack of understanding he felt at a place where what was insanity seemed to make sense and what was sanity seemed to be out of control.

Ah, what dexterity his fingers now had! Charles had stretched those out as well, to submit them to what his meaning of perfection was, and knew that, without a doubt, he has wasted his time in a place where they had no appreciation for them. His mind even was one that was not accepted by the powers to be. His mind allowed him to lag behind in the world of medicine, those fingers just wasted on men that were unfairly slaughtered, in a war where they had no place in.

My mind, my mind…

Slowly, but surely, Charles grabbed a robe next to him (cleaned and pressed), seeing his usual morning paper on the bottom of his bedroom doorway. Smiling to himself (for his favorite butler had remembered he liked it there every morning, as always), he grabbed it quickly, intending to make his way to the bathroom as he opened the crinkling pages of a newspaper that he barely had time to read in Korea.

He then opened his door to freshness and civilization at long last, the newspaper blocking his face. The business of the household still ran, as per normal, he noticed as he made the customary walk to do his business (without others knowing about it, of course). Everyone was there, just as they were three years previously, with a few exceptions. A few relationships seemed to have blossomed. Fights were with the usual people. Maids flirted with him still (much to his chagrin) and the butlers asked what he wanted as he made that simple walk to the bathroom. Servants of both sexes, it seemed, wished to make him more comfortable.

After all, it would not surprise the elegant Charles that, after a brief conversation with Honoria and his parents the night before, all of the servants would know about his tenure in Korea. One would whisper to another and the word would pass on like a fire energized by fuel. After all, living in tents would be barbaric to most of them (if they had some sense) and, most certainly, in the primitive conditions that Charles had to face, it would seem unbearable to them.

All and all, to Charles, despite the excitement of the night before, it was a normal day at home in Boston. It seemed to be the best day he could hopefully ask for, after all of the carnage, running and fright and –

"Master Charles, would you like anything?" A maid, who appeared to be recently employed, pushed aside all the other maids and batted her eyelashes at Charles.

"No, no…" Charles, still engrossed in his newspaper, barred the woman to his person with a simple gesture. "I would just like some peace and quiet. Tell my parents that I would be down shortly for breakfast please."

Some of them gasped, hearing Charles so humbled, but to the surgeon with nothing to gain and everything to lose, it didn't seem as bad as they thought it was. Sure, others have called him egotistical, stuck-up and pompous. Sure, he complained all the time about the conditions of the camp and how he needed to be transferred from the festering rat hole that he was then stuck in.

At the same time, though, here was no need for it anymore. For all the criticisms that Charles launched against his fellow campmates (especially Colonel Potter), he found that being home was a comfort, but to be with the people he worked with was more than a longing. It was the long time yearning.

For once, Charles missed the people he stood side-by-side with. They weren't of his social standing, but they were more than just brave people. They worked in impossible conditions, just as he did, and worked with other impossible people, just as he did, and made a working unit function until the end of the war.

However, for those beneath him to hear of such respectful words trampled upon their belief in him. To them, Charles was the epitome of snobbishness and of high society, just as his father and grandfather before him was. Holding him so high up, as they did to his predecessors, seemed out of sorts, especially from a man who just came home from Korea.

A crowd had even gathered at the bathroom door that Charles was heading to. He dismissed them with a gentle wave of the hand, speechlessly asking them to kindly let him have the privacy that he craved.

"Please," he begged for the first time ever, the older maids shooing the younger ones away in a scandalized hush. "I need to have some time alone please."

Then, before Charles could reach his destination, he heard something. It was distant, coming from the downstairs. It had its usual skips and bumps, since so many people ran the household and streamed back and forth by it, but it was a rheumatic noise to him, a continuous playing of notes and melodies that once gave him succor. It had softened his features, allowing the stresses of the day to be released from his body, but this time, this time, it was a different emotion that rolled over him.

What have they done to the earth?
What have they done to our fair sister?
Ravaged and plundered and ripped her and bit her
Stuck her with knives in the side of the dawn
And tied her with fences and dragged her down

Even with the stoic emotions that have sewed themselves together for the past day, Charles felt the seams rip apart. The feelings of sadness, helplessness and even anger gnawed at him. Finally, without warning, he shoved himself head first into the bathroom, slamming the door behind him as confused looks glanced back and forth at each other. Even his newspaper laid perplexed on the floor before the door.

No, no, it's not fair! Charles' mind screamed as he faced the shined mirror, his hands trembling at the sink before it. How can so few bring so much?

The memories of Mozart and his broken records and its player brought back the full fury of Korea. It was not just the wounded, the fighting and the backlash and the horrendous days of his time there that made him so upset, for he had steeled himself against it unlike the others. No, it was the Chinese musicians, the prisoners of war that gave themselves up to him, ironically on his way to the latrine in the woods.

Charles fogged up the mirror with his heavy breathing, thinking as his perfect fingers clenched the sink tighter and tighter. God, he had taught them only Mozart because they had the potential to. In turn, they brought him more than frustration at their lack of musical skills. Those Chinese musicians had taught him that, no matter what side of the war you were on, no matter whether they were the enemy or not, the joy they passed on with music. Music was their friend, for all of them, and to share what they had learned had been the highlight of Charles' time in Korea.

For Charles, though, the haunting songs that used to fill his heart with gladness were now filling them with dread. For now, to hear music was a reminder of the thin line between life and death. It was to recall that his very own side washed away the lives of prisoners of war, talented people who were only on the other side of this Korean War.

And for what? To kill more before the war ended?

Tears streamed down Charles' face. Before long, he slipped to the floor with unease, his newspaper easily forgotten and his simple, human errand long deemed bearable to hold a little longer.

Why? Why must this confounded record bother me so?

The thought repeated itself constantly, as if it were the broken record that Charles had smashed into pieces not even a week before. Again and again, he cried tears of rage he couldn't define, couldn't fight against. More images popped into his mind, all of them reminding him that the music was over. And it was when the music was over that he realized that life had no true ending, that there was still some beginnings left for him.

However, it did not make his life any easier. With this music over for him, he had to bear the brunt of his own involvement in a war nobody wanted to be a part of.

An hour later, with breakfast cold on the table and his family so irritated at being kept waiting, Charles strode into the dining room with effortlessness. Smiling at them, he had forgotten about the music, the memories and the people that made his life a little more complete. He had now to remember that his own family was still there and they expected him to be as normal as the day he had said goodbye to them.

I hear a very gentle sound
With your ear down to the ground…

"So, tell us what took you so long?" Charles' father asked furiously, annoyed as he finally took a biscuit from the tray next to him and buttered it.

Honoria knew the answer, but kept quiet as Charles spoke his reply. "Ah, yes, well, something was keeping me from coming downstairs."

"W-w-what?" Honoria asked curiously as she, too, buttered a breakfast biscuit, ashamed of her stammering still.

"The music moved me," Charles only answered, himself reaching for some tea. "But, it was then that I realized how much it really ended. And there is no turning back now."

The lyrics posted were from the song, "When the Music's Over", performed The Doors (lyrics by Jim Morrison).