I have returned, and I own nnothing!
PS if you get the WTNV references throughout this, I like you. Let's be friends.
Six decades ago, Trapper John McIntyre left Korea without even saying goodbye.
Five weeks ago, Trapper Jeanne Mackerby left her crappy comprehensive with two goodbyes - not that it made any difference to her (his?) story.
This time, things will be different.
This time, I will be different.
I'm back.
CJ Harkett was a great person; no-one was in any doubt about that. She was smart. Funny. Pretty in a girl-next-door kind of way. Loyal.
Carson thought she was amazing.
Jake thought she was awesome.
Mim...well, it was hard to understand what Mim thought at the best of times. When CJ wasn't around, she referred to her as 'Desert Bluffs Trapper', but no-one really knew what that meant.
Tassie and Lewis, however, felt somewhat unsettled.
She was sometimes annoyingly smart. The similarities in her and Carson's senses of humour was almost creepy at times. If you looked at her long enough her wholesome butter-wouldn't-melt cuteness was sickening. Her devotion to her new friends was bizarre considering she almost never talked about her old mates in Cornwall.
She was a living, breathing Mary Sue.
And she wasn't a true Reincarnated Draftee. Admittedly, Lewis wasn't either, but he was close enough.
"Does anyone else miss Jeanne?" Tassie asked.
"Uh...kinda." Jake mumbled through a mouthful of anonymous food.
Lewis nodded. "I do."
"Yeah," Mim said briefly, before carrying on cutting her chicken (?) into microscopic squares and launching them in the direction of Hayley and her new boyfriend.
"A little..." Carson admitted sadly, before mentally shaking himself and trying to force Trapper Jeanne out of her mind.
"Jeanne?" CJ looked up. "That crazy girl who thought we lived in the fifties?"
"No," Tassie replied.
"She didn't think this was the fifties. She knew it was the modern day." Lewis continued.
"Oh. Then who did I hear about?"
"This weekend," Tassie said as the six of them began walking home, "we should watch M*A*S*H. All of us."
"Are you alright?" Carson tipped his head to the side. "Because right now you seem more like Jeanne than Tassie."
"I think Trap's just temporarily taken control of Tassie's body," Mim replied blithely. "She'll probably get bored and leave in a few minutes."
"Woah," Jake stared, wide-eyed at his crush. "Trapper? You in there?"
"I just miss her, that's all."
"M*A*S*H?" CJ wrinkled her nose in a way that was almost unattractive but somehow managed to look adorable instead. "Isn't that show from, like, the sixties?"
"Seventies." Lewis corrected. "And the early eighties."
"We can get through the first four seasons in two days if we order takeaways and give up sleeping." Tassie explained.
"Sounds fun," Mim smiled, "I'm in."
"I haven't got anything better to be doing." Lewis shrugged.
"Well, if you guys are all doing it..."
"So it's me, Lewis, Mim and Jake," Tassie checked them off on her fingers. "Carson? CJ?
" Nah. Too busy."
"You guys are so sad." CJ shook her head. From anyone else the remark would have been rude, but from her it seemed amusingly deprecating.
That Friday, four teenagers piled into the Drakes' living room and flopped down on the sofa - or in Mim's case, the elegant glass coffee table.
"OK. Who brought the -" Tassie was cut off by Jake handing her the first disk. "Ah. Thanks! Mim, get off the table."
"No!"
"Do we order pizza, Indian or Chinese?"
"Pizza!"
"Chinese."
"I want curry."
"I hate curry."
"Shut up!"
"Whatever it is, it can't contain wheat or its by-products."
"Why not?"
"You mean you don't know?"
"We'll never actually get to watch this, will we?"
Three hours later, Mr Drake came home from work to find his daughter and three of her friends sprawled out in the living room eating pizza (they had managed to agree in the end) and watching a show that hadn't been on since he wasn't much older than them.
"Hi," Tassie mumbled through a mouthful of food. "Bye."
Kids, he thought, sighing and leaving the room.
"Is anyone else getting tired?" Jake asked at around midnight that night.
"Nah!" Mim couldn't have been less tired if she'd tried,probably because she'd been practically mainlining Red Bull since nine.
"Drink your caffeine."
"A friendly wartime community where the sun is hot, the moon is beautiful, and military helicopters fly overhead whilst we all attempt to sleep."
"Mim, don't-"
"Welcome to Korea."
"Oh, God..."
"Why?"
"When we're done with M*A*S*H we should start on Welcome to Night Vale."
"No we should not."
Midway into Season 2, Lewis began scribbling on a scrap of paper. "I'm making a list of who's who in our continuity," he explained on the off chance someone actually cared.
"Shut up, Louise, I'm trying to watch."
"Mim's Klinger, I think I'm Radar, Tassie's probably Henry, and you're Louise."
"Jeanne's obviously Trapper, so Carson's Hawkeye."
"So who was CJ?"
"Oh. My. God," Tassie was shocked. "I'm dead?"
"Apparently so."
"Does this mean I can walk through walls and stuff?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because you're still alive."
"I'm confused."
"You really shouldn't have told us to give up sleeping. You need it."
"BJ!" Mim yelled triumphantly somewhere in Season 4, amidst the debris from a Chinese takeaway. "Carrie Jane Harkett is BJ Hunnicutt!"
"That's one mystery solved."
"Wait, wasn't BJ married?"
"You think CJ might be a two-timer?"
"I dunno. Maybe."
"I always thought she was too good to be true."
"How do we tell Carson?"
"Telepathy..."
"No, Mim."
"But Jake's a bit psychic sometimes!"
"Yeah, but I don't have that!"
"Oh."
"We can't tell him. We can't prove anything if all we have to go on is fan speculation on a seventies TV show."
"You think we should spy on her?"
"No I-"
"Shut up, Louise."
"It's Lewis."
I seriously have the greatest friends ever.
Jeanne Mackerby lay sprawled on her bed, depressed and officially a sufferer of Multiple Personality Disorder. Her hair had been straightened and was longer than she usually liked it. Her shirt was an unflattering kind of pinkish colour instead. Her therapist said too much khaki would send her crazy again. It was best to keep the 'Jeanne' part of her and the 'Trapper' part of her as separate as possible. She had spent the last few weeks in counselling, and had, on her therapist's request, been transferred elsewhere to complete her A-Levels. Being around her fellow Reincarnated Draftees for extended periods of time would apparently 'have a detrimental effect on her psychological well-being'. Personally, she thought it was a load of crap. They still talked, but it had been a while since they all met in person. She'd missed them more than she liked to admit.
"Knock, knock!"
"Mim?" She ran to the door.
"Hey!"
"It's us!"
"How are you?"
"Bored. They won't even let me watch M*A*S*H! I've been watching Due South a lot, but..." She sighed.
"We need you back." Tassie said.
"I can't."
"CJ is totally Desert Bluffs you and we don't trust her! Kill your double, Trap!"
"I understood none of that."
"CJ is Carson's girlfriend. We think she's this timeline's BJ." Jake supplied.
"What...Carson...has a...well, shit."
"Exactly. We think there might be more to her than he thinks, and I just can't bring myself to like her."
"I think it's cos Tassie and I never met her in the old timeline, whereas Mim, Carson and Jake did."
"Even if I was allowed to come back, I don't think I should. I mean, canonically I'm supposed to stay gone, right?"
"Canonically, I'm dead!"
"Canonically I never met any of you guys aside from Trap!"
"Canonically I'm straight and male!"
"Canonically you and Lewis are married and all."
"We've already butchered canon to the extent that it's barely recognizable anymore!"
"You were always talking about how you need to fix your relationship with Carson or Hawkeye or whoever he is. What better way to change your fate than by changing your story?"
"Okay, I'll try! But no promises."
"You're in my seat." The taller girl scowled down at CJ.
"No I'm not."
"Yes, you are."
"I don't see your name on it." From anyone else that would have been insulting. From CJ it seemed witty.
Not to the new arrival. "There's six seats and six members of the League. Tassie, Carson, Jake, Mim, Lewis and me. I'm not sat down, so you're in my seat."
"Who even are you?"
"My name," she replied, "is Trapper Jeanne Mackerby."
Oh, dear.