Disclaimer: I don't own M*A*S*H. The following personification of Death, however, is mine.
A/N: Hey! Breaking my usual pattern of crack treated seriously, have something serious and vaguely spiritual but mostly just weird. I actually wrote this fic about a year and a half ago but never posted it, for some reason. Now, I do hate to be presumptuous - and really, what I'm about to say is not only that but remarkably full of myself - but please don't use this description for personified death in your own works. It's just that I'm using it in an original fiction work that I might actually try to go somewhere with. Thanks.
Anyways, on with the fic!
The room is cramped and crowded and the figure is wearing a cloak. Yet whoever is wearing it moves unhindered and gracefully; they seem to drift more than walk as they survey the room. All in all, not someone Radar ever expected to see in a makeshift army OR in Korea. He blinks and scrubs at his glasses, utterly stunned. Whoever it is has disappeared by the time he's put his glasses back on.
Then Hawkeye's patient dies.
Radar forgets the figure. Maybe he was seeing things - he'd been awake for twenty hours, after all. And it was cold. Really cold.
He doesn't think about the figure again for weeks. Post-op is beginning to quiet down as the flow of wounded pitters to a stop. He can't even smell the blood anymore, though Hawkeye insists that's just his nose giving up on trying to smell it in the first place. Father Mulcahy, a yard or so away, goes to move from a patient's bedside. The priest stops mid rise, and looks at something on the floor.
"What is it Father? Everything alright?"
"Oh, not the best, my son. Last rites." the priest gives a solemn nod to the man on the cot. Radar gasps loudly, and alternates between gaping at the prone man and the Father.
"You don't mean - you mean he's dead?"
"I'm afraid so."
"Oh, golly. I can't believe it!"
In the shock of it all, Radar forgets why he came over in the first place. It's only later, when Mulcahy had gone to to inform the nurses, that Radar notices the floor. Footprints. With only four toes.
Maybe he hadn't dreamed the figure.
He notices it more and more. There are footprints with four toes out in the yard they use for triage. Frost tickles the windows of an ambulance by where a man has died in transit. He catches glimpses of the cloak in the OR more and more. It's nothing like the first day, with a whole body visible, but he knows he sees the tails of fabric slip around corners. He can hear them moving too. Someone always dies.
"What are you looking at, Corporal?"
"Oh! Uh, nothing sir. I mean ma'am. I mean Major Houlihan. I just…"
"Just what, Corporal?"
"I thought I saw someone."
Margaret's face softens with concern.
"There's no one there, Radar."
They're standing at someone's bedside one night. Radar blinks and scrubs at his glasses, but this time the figure is still there when he looks again. Their face is obscured but Radar can see their hands. The skin is pallid - blue-grey instead of pink or brown - and dusted with dirt. Radar runs toward them.
"Hey! Leave him alone!"
He stumbles when the figure turns to him. They have four eyes, one pair right on top of the other. The upper pair is only half open, but the bottom pair are wide. They're violently blue and covered in cataracts. Radar swallows his fear.
"Hey, you have to go. This man's real sick and he needs-"
The figure has turned away. They're completely ignoring him.
"Hey! Look at me when I'm talking!"
Nothing
"Come on, it's kinda rude of you to ignore someone."
They're looking at him again. He realizes why they're here.
"You're- You… He's gonna die, isn't he?"
The figure blinks, and Radar knows. He gets angry.
"Well you can't! Our nurse Ginger said he was going to be fine! He's got a family back home and he needs to see them again and-"
The figure reaches out and grabs his face. It's a gentle touch, fingertips just grazing him, but he's paralyzed by it. The hand is so cold. He's flooded by the sounds of safepassingsouljourneysafe and a strange sense of peace.
He wakes up on the floor of post-op with the nurses standing around him and Hawkeye listening to his chest.
He doesn't remember passing out.
He sees them later when he heads back to bed. They're just standing, not looking at anything, holding a bright white light between their hands. Radar freezes.
"Is… is that him? The man who died in there?"
The figure nods.
"You're gonna take him somewhere safe?" Even as he says it, he knows the answer. The figure smiles and nods again.
"Well, okay then." he fidgets "But you be good to him! Take good care of him!"
The figure's lips don't move, but Radar can hear it anyway. Yes. Safe. They're telling the truth.
Radar doesn't think so much about Death after that.
A/N: That's it! I hope you enjoyed it! If you have the time, please drop me a review! I know the multiple lines breaking up the fic are kind of weird, but unfortunately fanfiction doesn't like normally formatted work, so I couldn't just use regular line breaks for spacing/pacing reasons. Thanks for putting up with it.