QUESTION: I've done some writing for other fandoms (very little mind you), and for the Harry Potter story (incomplete, like everything I've done on FF.net), two chapters, a couple thousand words long, I got about 14 (I forget the exact number) reviews. For the Star Trek, Enterprise fic, 7 chapters long with about 11 000 words, I got 86 (!!!) reviews... See, I'd love more reviews for this too, and not praising ones. Reviews that criticize constructively! Anyway, all this goes to say REVIEW! And a huge thank you to Katie B. for her review!
PAIRINGS: Hawk/BJ (ish), Hawk/Trapper (in mention), Frank/Margaret
NOTE: all of the 'flashbacks' are after Margaret's engagement to Lt.
Col. Donald Penobscott (swoon? Not if I can help it, and believe me,
I can).
CLOSURE pt 2/7
Dear B.J.,
Seeing Sidney has been... therapeutic. Oh, the suppressed memories it unearthed... I almost pity Frank Burns for all the grief we gave him. I'll have to speak to Sid about that one... not healthy. It gives me warm fuzzies just thinking about it, though. Oh, good times. Remember? How could you not...
***********************************
"Major Houlihan." Franks tray clattered against the table as he plunked himself down, jowls quivering as only Frank's jowls could.
"Major Burns."
"Hey Frank!"
"Good morning, Frank!"
"What about us, Frank?"
"Yeah, Frank. Don't you love us?"
"Oh, go swizzle your sticks, the both of you!"
"Can it, Burns, no one wants to listen to your lips flap!"
"But Margaret, I-"
"Can we try for some quiet? My breakfast is trying to speak..."
"I agree with Pierce. Cut the flabberjabber!"
"Yes Colonel."
"Of course, Colonel."
Everything was silent, but for the gentle slopping of breakfast on tray.
"Hey, Beej, I think my porridge is invading the toast compartment!"
"I told you war was contagious. I think we ought to impose a quarantine for a possible warmongering virus."
"We can start with Frank."
"Oh, fish!"
"And we were so enjoying your conversation, Frank!"
"You see, Beej, it's his occasional flashes of silence that make his conversation bearable... don't you agree, Margaret?"
"Oh!" Margaret huffed before stalking out of the mess tent, Frank scampering not far behind ("Margaret, Wait!").
"Ah," sighed Hawkeye, smacking his lips, "it's always difficult to follow an outstanding speaker. Fortunately, I don't have that problem this morning. What say you, B.J. to following me to follow up? Or follow down? Anyone? Aah, and thank you , ladies and jellybeans, for being a wonderful audience, but my limo awaits!" And Hawkeye swished out of the mess with B.J. in tow, leaving Colonel Potter, head in hands, to contemplate the half-life of his oatmeal.
***********************************
... Oh, did I mention that I am sitting here practicing yoga, a cross-leggedy bit, and did I mention that my posterior has never known such discomfort? Oh, I can hear you laughing, Beej... Before I left him, Sidney taught me how to do basic yoga, and I swear, the first time I tried it I nearly broke. I drink, am violent, am spiteful and angry and yell and holler (sometimes even in my sleep). Sidney woke me once and I decked him. And so I must do myself an injury as I'm shown up by a pretzel... yoga... pft... whatever happened to conventional medicine? Probably the same thing as what happened to army intelligence, har har, Hawkeye, you crazy guy, you maverick you.
Aah well, what can I say... every village has one...
***********************************
"Heavennnnn... I'm in heavennn... and the gin burns so that I can hardly breeeaaath..."
"Hawk, don't you think you've had a bit much?"
" Too much!? 'Drunkenness is his best virtue, for he will be swine drunk, and in his sleep he does little harm, save to his bedclothes about him,' " Hawkeye drawled, voice heavy with raw gin.
"Only an idiot would think something so loony."
"Tell that to Shakespeare, Frank," said B.J., as he inhaled his third martini, wincing as it ate its way through his esophagus.
"Oh, I read all right... I read that that poison's going to make your liver rot!"
"I'd like a doctor's opinion on that, myself, " said B.J.
Frank sucked in his lips in frustration. "Well, I learned that and boy, I never drank a drop after... not that I did before, no, let me tell you, I-"
"Me," interrupted Hawkeye with and air of experience in his voice, "well when I read 'bout the evils of drinking, I gave up reading."
"It's true, Frank. I had to feed his books to him through a straw!"
"Ooh, youuu... degenerates!" blurted Frank as he prepared to storm dramatically out into the Korean night, fumbling blindly in his cubby for a flashlight.
"If it weren't for the sake of the army," Frank orated, "I'd make sure you two lousy-"
"Surgeons, Frank?" interrupted B.J.
"You two lousy-"
"Lovers?"
"Livers?"
"Two lous-"
"Really, Frank! If you have something to say, by all means shut up!" said Hawkeye through the bottom of a glass, swilling the last of the gin. "Now leave us alone and go bother Margaret!"
A gust of frigid air and the flimsy racket of the Swamp door was Frank's parting shot, one of his better ones, to be honest, remarked one of them through a haze of gin ("Woah, Hawk, you're three and a half ahead of me!"). The two lapsed into an inebriated silence, Hawkeye staring morosely into his empty glass, B.J. gazing in drunken contemplation through the screen, out into the silent compound.
"Hey, Hawk, did you notice anything strange at breakfast today?"
"What, besides the food?"
"Yes, no, yes, besides the food," B.J. insisted with broad sweeps of his arm, nearly shattering his glass against a pole. "Really now, with Frank and... and Major Houlihan giving him the cold shoulder."
"Well, what other kind of shoulder could she give him?"
"Nonono, I think there's trouble on Paradise Island, Hawk."
"How would you know? We're stuck here in Korea!"
"Yeah yeah. C'mon, Hawk, lets go do a little," B.J. steadied a bombed Hawkeye, who swayed as he struggled to put his coat on, "do a little bird watching."
The door shivered slammed into its frame, buffeted by the winds of a Korean winter.
***********************************
Sid also says I'm bitter. Well THERE'S a guy who'll never get cancer of the brain. I went to Korea, right, and get a bit of a taste for the native tongue (in all ways one can taste the tongue), right? A couple of words; drink ox woman pain... But those hairless kids, they go to the field hospitals and learn a whole new language; dysentery frostbite typhus trenchfoot pneumonia cyanosis battle fatigue heartache, and if they recovered from those, then they're sent out to teach them to the enemy! Slathered in parasites... rot setting in (the worst of it in their eyes)... How does Sidney expect to cure my memory of that?
***********************************
See B.J., his wife soothes, stroking her husband's neck, Hawk'll be all right. He's just fine, see, darling? But B.J. worries, and wonders why he does so.
He remembers Hawk screaming out in his sleep for while, sleepwalking around the compound, how he was just the same old delinquent when he woke up, but how his mind tortured him so when there wasn't anyone watching to control it; every scream of pain that B.J. heard tear itself from Hawk's throat... every silent tear that escaped before it could be batted away with a casual brush of a hand... every broken complaint, shrouded in dark humour and snide comments. And B.J. heard them, and saw them, caught Hawk in the act of falling apart and gathering the pieces before anyone could notice, too caught up in his whirlwind of witticisms to notice the fraying edges.
Smokescreen.
B.J. never talks about Korea in the day. The day is for living, and being safe at home, surrounded by youth free from mutilation, and love free from affairs, and family, or at least, a different version of it. But when night falls, oh when night falls...
Words flow freely at night.
At night, B.J. brushes his teeth, washes his face in scalding water, and reads his two letters from Hawk until the paper becomes soft like skin. He tells his wife how lucky he is to have such a beautiful woman by his side, and such a gorgeous little girl, and what more could a man dream of, Peg? I love you, you know. And he goes to tell his little girl a story, and Hawkeye, the silly goof, comes to stay for the night in Erin's and her father's dreams. But he's always lgone when they wake in the morning.
Daddy, the one about Frank an'... and his birthday fight!
Birthday fight? But you heard that one last week!
Erin nods precociously, eyes shining.
Aah, yes, you have good taste m'dear, and Erin giggled. His daughter, she loved to laugh. B.J. told her her story
It was another day in Korea, in that awful awful war, and Major Frank Burns was pestering Klinger for some tapioca pudding. Where's my pudding, he wheedled, because you know how Frank liked to wheedle, right sugarbun? And, of course, he wanted to join us, but when he did, he took Igor's pudding! But it was full of flies! You should have heard Hawk laugh... he has the best laugh. It was-
-high 'n' silly 'n' contagious, almost fememin, but gen'ine, finishes his daughter with love in her eyes.
Yeah, genuine, and her father sighs and goes on to tell about their mock fight, and Hawk's prickliness, and Erin falls asleep nestled in a room warm with love for someone; for a man who only lived for them both in Korea.
~ ~ ~
B.J. slides between the sheets with a soft groan and a sigh, flopping back into the pillow. After a vicious battle versus death, he figures he ought to grab as every wink he can manage before the next truckload comes in. A warm hand caresses his shoulders, massaging his taut muscles, and he arches his back into the hands that suddenly seem too fine, too smooth, and he stiffens, biting back the name that had drifted, unbidden, to his tongue.
He tries to shake himself out of his daughter's bedtime story, return from Korea, and so he whispers, Peg. Suddenly being home is a reassurance, and he buries the tearless sobs that are building in his throat and turns to love his wife instead of his dreams.
***********************************
Oh, oh, barrel of laughs, diagnosis from Sidney: I've got 'bottle fatigue', hyuk hyuk. I told him if he didn't shut up, I'd shove him back in his vat of formaldehyde. It's coming back to me, Beej, slowly, slowly, but I'm not a lost cause. Now if only someone could convince me of that, I'd be made.
Love,
Your very own cuckoo without the clock,
Hawkeye
P.S. Like the drawing? In case you can't tell, it's a lobster in fatigues. Hey, I never said I was creative. Sidney made me do it. The devil! The devil! (I want to go home. But home is six years ago before I became me. I'm teetering here, Beej. There's only so much words can mean before they become just... words. Please tell me what I'm trying to say.)
TO BE CONTINUED...