AN: Thank you, all of you, as always :D

It's been a week and a half since she'd left, and four days since he's bothered changing his shorts. Trapper's stopped re-stocking the still because he was drinking it all and he hasn't got the will to do it himself. Hawkeye doesn't leave his bunk unless he absolutely has to. He's sick of the wary glances thrown his way, and he can't stand the new head nurse. As far as he's concerned, she's what nothing would be like if it was a person. She's average at her job, has an average personality and average looks, and the few jokes he's tried out on her were met with blank looks. He misses Margaret. He'd even take the Margaret he'd met on his first day here. She'd been appalled by him, probably even offended. All that scolding, ordering and threatening and yelled, but she'd at least been interesting. Very good at her job, too, which had been a lot more than he'd been expecting.

A knock on the tent door roused him from his thoughts."Whatever you want, I can assure you I'm not worth the time."

"That's not what I heard." Sidney says, letting himself in.

"What are you doing here?"

"I heard you'd been having a tough time."

"What, so that automatically means I need my head read? Who was it, Trapper or Henry?"

"They're worried about you."

"Yeah, well tell them to keep their worried to themselves."

"What's it like without Major Houlihan here?"

"It's great, fantastic. One less regular army clown to yell at."

"Is that so? 'Cause the way I heard it is that you've been feeling pretty lousy since she shipped out."

"Oh, you mean all this drinking? Nah, this is just part of my month long celebration."

"So this has nothing to do with the fact that she shipped out home to your place to live with your dad, or the fact that the you got her pregnant?"

Hawkeye pointedly looks in the opposite direction.

"Maybe you feel slightly guilty that you're here where she wants to be, or maybe you're even jealous that she's now exactly where you want to be. Or maybe, just maybe, you miss her."

Sidney can tell he's hit a nerve.

"Miss her? Why should I miss her? We're enemies. She and I have never agreed on anything."

"And yet you both agreed on the fact that she should go and stay with your father."

"She's only there to get a bit of help, but you wait, as soon as she's back on her feet she'll be off into the sunset."

"Ah, so this is about the fact that you're stuck over here with feelings for her and you have no idea what she's going to do."

"Feelings? What feelings? Besides, even if I did, there's no point having them."

"Why not? You're obviously something to her or she wouldn't be in Maine."

"She went there because I told her dad would help her, and why would someone like her be interested in me? Hell, why am I interested in her?"

"Sometimes people just get under your skin. You two had a pretty good back and forth going, even if it was mostly arguing, but you both kept coming back for more, and then some. Besides, when has Margaret Houlihan accepted help from just anybody? She obviously trusts you, but I suspect there's more to it than that. Write to her, try to keep the channels of communication open."

"What the hell am I meant to say to her?"

"You'll think of something. In the meantime, try hitting a little less of the sauce, it'll make things easier."

"Yeah yeah…" Hawkeye mutters, but his mind is churning things over. He's not about to admit it, but he knows Sidney's right about one thing, the thing Trapper had tried to tell him before: Margaret would never have gone to Maine if she hadn't wanted to. If she was going to slink away into the night she surely would have just skipped that step. He hoped. He could only hope. He wanted to believe, but the price of being wrong was high.


"Is he going to be okay, Sidney?" Henry asks, wearing strain and concern on his face.

"Well that depends."

"On what?"

"On whether he wants to be. Right now he has a heady mix of guilt, jealousy, and self recrimination, with a dash of loneliness. Those two shared a connection, however brief, but it was real and palpable, and now she's not just thousands of miles away with his only family, but growing a new one that he doesn't know when or if even if he'll ever get to see."

Henry mulls this over. "I mean, my wife had a baby while I've been over here. It's been rough at times, I'm not gonna lie, but I'm not freaking out over it."

"This is Hawkeye we're talking about, his emotions live fairly close to the surface with nothing but humour as a shield. You also know where you stand. You remember why and how you fell in love, you had a courtship, a marriage. He's still conflicted about how and why himself and the Major ended up in bed together in the first place. It's all up in the end and he's too far away to see how it's gonna fall, and he's too worried about it to even notice that some pieces have already started to fall in his favour.

I've told him he needs to start writing to her, but we'll see how he goes. Let me know how he goes."

"Thanks, Sidney."


There's a growing pile of scrunched up paper in the corner of The Swamp with each failed attempt at writing a letter. Hawkeye scrunches up yet another failed attempt and lobs it at Frank's former bunk. Part of him wishes that moron was sitting there, then he might wrap some rocks in all that paper and then throw it. Frank wouldn't even notice, they'd be right at home with all the other rocks in that idiot's head.. Hawkeye sighs loudly, making a tutting sound at himself as he rolls his eyes. He was going to have to just go with one of these sometime soon or he was going to run out of paper.

Dear Margaret,

It's been real quiet around here since you've gone. The new head nurse couldn't be any more dull if she tried. She's an average looking average person with an average personality who has average skills in the OR and doesn't understand the concept of joking. You understood, though you usually didn't approve, but I'd take being told off by you any day. Frank is still trying to be regular army Jesus, only he's not living in The Swamp any more. Henry moved him out because he was aggravating my anger issues and said if I threatened Frank one more time I'd be in a lot of trouble. It's not my fault I have a very itchy fist that can only be soothed by connecting violently with a Frank Burns.

I hope Maine and dad are treating you well,

Hawkeye

He stares at the paper for a full minute before putting it in an envelope. It'll do. It's not quite what he wants, whatever it is that might be, but then other than climbing into the envelope and mailing himself it's the best he can do. Hawkeye scrawls down her name and then his address and pauses again to appreciate this moment in the spirit of the surreal.

Margaret in Maine.

He was feeling positively possessive and he had no idea what to do about it.