Title: Cultural Differences
Author: MicroChips
Disclaimer: I don't own MASH.
Notes: I'm back, after almost a year of absence. I'm so sorry guys, I apologize greatly. Life's been, well hellish recently. This chapter is very important to the rest of the story. It is also very, very gory. You have been warned.
Chapter 5: Air Raids and Snipers
Meg slowly turned the half empty martini glass that she held and let out a shuddering sigh as she turned her eyes to Hawkeye and BJ.
"You have to understand that telling you this feels almost like a betrayal for me. Alex made me promise that under no circumstances was I to speak of these events to anyone, but I feel that they are affecting her more than she is letting on. Don't ask me why I'm telling you two, I really don't know. I think that you seem trustworthy, though I seem to think that anyone who gives me a free drink is trustworthy," she chuckled nervously and twitched slightly before taking another gulp of the gin.
"Alex was born to her parents Jay and Maria on August 7th 1922, and was the second of their two children. Her older brother Jason was born four years earlier just after the end of the Great War. They lived a pretty happy life with our family nearby. My father and Alex's father were twin brothers, and never went very far from each other. In 1939, when the second war broke out, My father, both of Alex's parents, and her brother went over to war. Alex came to stay with my mother and myself.
"Three weeks into it, a bomb was dropped on one of the medical bunkers. Both of Alex's parents were in it.
"Maria died in the explosion, Jay lost his leg and was sent back home,"
"Is that why she reacted how she did earlier?" Hawkeye asked. Meg smiled sadly and shook her head.
"That's part of it but not all. A lot took place afterwards. He managed to get a prosthetic limb before," she frowned slightly, "drowning his sorrows. To say that he was a mean drunk would be an insult to their kind. Vicious, vindictive, even sadistic suits him much better. He'd beat her, spit on her, kick her, verbally torture her. And she just took it. I don't know how she did, but she just took it."
There was dead silence in the tent for about ten seconds before Meg took a shuddering breath and continued.
"I stayed away from that house for two years. I just didn't know what to do. It was such a huge mistake. Alex eventually turned up on my mothers doorstep with a broken nose, three broken ribs and a cracked sternum. I don't know how she managed to sleep at night," Meg shook her head slightly. "Her brother eventually found out and quit his job to come home and "fix" his father.
"Alex has never gone back to that house, and I can't say that I blame her. She enrolled in University as soon as her face healed, and forced her way through there. When that was done she managed to make enough to stay away from her father forever." Meg shrugged slightly and turned her eyes to the floor. Both Hawkeye and BJ had the sense that she was finished.
"But if all this is tied to a war in some way, why is she here of all places?" Hawkeye asked. Meg smiled at him carefully and looked highly unlikely to continue. She was silent for a few moments as her expression changed to one of sad recollection.
"That's the big question isn't it?" she asked herself out loud. She looked away from them both before taking a deep breath. "It's a very long story..."
-+-+-
He trudged along the path, this green eyes bland and tired. Every bone in his body ached from the long march that he had subjected himself to. The heavy bag strapped to his back seemed to push him forward with more determination than he had left in himself. He couldn't stop though, no matter how tired he became. It was his duty to keep going, to make sure that the three people behind him got to where they were going. Then he could rest.
He stared up the path, angry at how it looked the exact same as it had not ten minutes before. Dust and rocks and scrub; all that he had seen for almost twenty four hours. Though it could have been worse, they could have come across Koreans.
He let out a wry chuckle at that thought, wondering for a moment if the heat was addling his brains. He had been needing a drink for well over a day, but hadn't stopped to drink. He certainly felt rather insane as he kept hearing someone call "Lieutenant," over and over. He shook his head sharply, sending a large chunk of flame red hair into his eyes.
Somehow this small action pulled him from his reverie. He stood up straight suddenly as a hand was placed on his shoulder and whipped around to face the culprit. A younger man stared back at him through grime and mud, his pale blue eyes twinkling urgently.
"Are you alright lieutenant?" he asked softly, an expression of worry filtering its way through the gunk on his face. The lieutenant looked at him with an expression of confusion for a mere moment, as if trying to place who the other man was. He was carrying a rifle over his shoulder and a bag similar to the one the lieutenant carried. His uniform was similar too, though he wore the single bar of a private and it was coated in a dark red stain. For a moment the lieutenant wondered if the other man had been eating cranberry sauce with the skill of a toddler, but blanched as he remembered the real reason.
"Yeah, Zander. I'm fine," he responded, using the private's nickname rather than his rank. Exhaustion seemed to have taken all authority from his voice. "How's Soup doing?"
"Not so good sir. Doc say's that he's leaking more blood than a-"
"Whatever metaphor Doc used, I'm sure that it is not a good one," the private and lieutenant shared a small smile before both turned to look at the other two men of the company. One was holding a makeshift bier and the other was unconscious on top of it. The lieutenant's smile faded quickly as he turned back to the private.
"How long does he have?"
"Not long enough to get to one of our units."
"Which is the closest?"
"There's a MASH not ten minutes away," the private pointed at the hill beside them. "In that direction."
"Any minefields?"
"Not sure, we haven't been this way for a while."
The lieutenant sighed. "Well, at last pass were there any minefields?"
"I think that they were planning on clearing it out," the private frowned. "But it's highly unlikely that they did. A MASH is not exactly a tactical position."
"And since when do they do anything that they say they are going to?" the lieutenant replied with a chuckle. The private force a smile onto his face, but did not hold it for long. He could guess what the lieutenant was planning.
"How long to get there?"
"Ten around the hill, three over it, but we have to take into account that the hill is a potential minefield," the private replied, practically watching the wheels turn in the lieutenants head. The lieutenant turned to the man on the bier and sighed before looking back up the hill. He had to think about all of his men, not just the wounded corporal.
"Double time it around the hill," he ordered, a bitter taste crawling up into his mouth. "Maybe we'll get lucky and there will be a jeep on the road." The private paled, but saluted nonetheless before going back to the other two men and relayed the order. The lieutenant shook his head and hunched over once more before going off at a double time march. Once again he questioned his sanity, as he had done since his arrival in hell.
"So let me get this straight," Hawkeye began after a few moments of silence. Meg smiled benignly at him, knowing fully well that she had completely unnerved the doctor. His confused expression had deepened throughout her story. "You're here to look for your fiancé-"
"Who disappeared, yes," Meg's eyes flashed with amusement.
"And Alex came to make sure that you didn't do anything stupid?"
"Exactly," she answered simply, standing up as if to leave. "But now that you know practically all my cousin's past and a small part of mine, I must go and make sure that she hasn't killed anyone while I have been sat here drinking this," she glanced at the martini glass that Hawkeye had just taken from her, "imitation of booze..."
With that, she turned and walked out of the tent, leaving a very astonished Hawkeye and BJ to their own devices.
"I can't believe it," BJ said after a few moments, an extremely contemplative look on his face.
"I know," Hawkeye replied, more angry than anything else. "I can't believe that she called out gin imitation!" With that, he slammed the martini glass back beside the still and threw himself back on his cot.
Meg smiled blandly to herself as she crossed the compound to Alex's tent, feeling more and more disgusted with herself as she did so. She had just spilled everything that made Alex who she was to a pair of complete strangers. This was why she hated alcohol so damned much. It always drove her to do or say stupid things.
Meg shook her head angrily as she knocked on the door tot he VIP tent. Alex didn't answer her. For a moment it occurred to Meg that she would have to tell Alex what had just happened, yet if she did Alex would be rather unpredictable. Her anger at Frank would not have subsided just yet, and for that very reason Meg came to the conclusion that she would have to remain silent.
She knocked again, more forcefully this time, as Alex had not answered. She had a nasty habit of sulking, which Meg thought was rather unbecoming for a twenty eight year old.
"Alex, open the damned door!" she ordered forcefully, placing her hands on her hips and assuming a posture of condescendence. For a moment there was complete silence before someone moved around from the side of the tent.
"Your observation skills need work Meg," Alex said, poking her head around the canvas. She blinked once at her cousin and smirked before leaning back against the wall off the tent. Meg frowned at her and walked around the tent, noting that Alex was wearing her black toque on her head.
"Yeah well, I need to work on my observation skills, you need your personal skills working on."
"Ha ha. Got me there," Alex replied flatly, keeping her eyes pinned on the compound rather than meeting Meg's eyes. "I do need to work on communicating with our species." She blinked once before glancing at Meg's shoes then turning back to the compound. "But I refuse to speak with Ferrets."
Meg rolled her eyes, but Alex kept on talking.
"My incredibly devious mind has kicked in and decided that I need to get revenge for that situation."
"Punching his face in not enough?"
"On no, violence is never enough. Pranking is the only way to deal with it now..." Meg shuddered. This was going to get nasty. "You see what I have planned is-"
She didn't have time to announce what her plans were, as a large amount of people hurried past towards the entrance to the compound.
"What the hell?" Meg asked, her eyes locking onto Alex's before the two of them sped off after the crowd. From what they could see a small group of people were collapsed at the entrance, from exhaustion or some other reason. As they approached, Alex felt a gnawing sensation start in her stomach. These were Canadian uniforms. She twitched even more, seeing the rifles that they were carrying.
Sniper rifles.
-+-+-
The lieutenant fell to his knees three feet short of the MASH sign, exhaustion claiming him finally. Barely two feet behind him, the three other men of his company found their way to the ground, relieved that they had gotten there in time. They to collapsed into silence, glad to be where they were.
But for the poor lieutenant, the silence was not to last. The vibrations of feet through the ground pulled him groggily from his silent sleep, and the heavy mumbled voices caused him to protest forcefully. He flailed one arm up and around, smacking someone with a lot less force than he thought he had done.
"Someone get him sedated!" shouted a voice. Someone turned him over so that the sun was in his eyes, blinding him.
"He's exhausted, probably petrified," said another voice. He frowned slightly, the accent had been vaguely familiar. He opened his mouth to speak but all that came out was a garbled mess.
"Soup, help, shot, blood."
Someone blocked out the sun with their head, causing the lieutenant to frown as his eyes adjusted once more tot he change in light.
"He's fine, they've got a doctor looking at him now. What I want from you Jason, is an explanation as to why you left this shoulder wound untended for so long?" she asked. Jason's frown intensified. Her voice was so damned familiar.
"Who are you?" he managed to croak out.
"What, you don't recognize your own sister!" she asked. The lieutenant started slightly, Alex's green eyes flashing with mirth.
"Alex?" he asked incredulously. "But I thought-"
"That I was at home hiding with Meg? No such luck Jason." she turned her head away and glanced at something just out of his vision. "Look I have to go and help out with Corporal Campbell. One of the other doctors will be right over to help you." With that she was gone, disappearing off into the sun with barely a sound. Jason could feel something crawling up into his head, fogging over his senses and slowly drowning him in sleep.
-+-+-
Waking was not a pleasant thing in Korea, but doing so to the stabbing pain in the back of one's head made it twice as intolerable. So it was for Second Lieutenant Jason Lexington as he opened his eyes briefly. A stabbing sensation just above the base of his skull caused him to wince his eyes shut immediately, yet a small amount of detail burned into his brain. He had seen light from a window above him, seen a window across from him; he knew that there was as little as two ambulatory people in the room. His every bone ached, every muscle screamed. There was something horribly wrong with him.
Attempting not to groan or attract attention, he raised his head half an inch, opened his eyes slightly, and looked around the room. There were twenty or so beds in the small makeshift room, each one filled with injured men, the majority of which were unconscious. The people he had seen moving before were in fact women, more importantly nurses; each wearing American uniforms. He let out a sigh of relief before dropping his head back to the pillow and fully opening his eyes. The dull ache that had been in the base of his skull was now spreading around to his eyes, making them water slightly.
He was beginning to have difficulty focusing on the ceiling when a cup was thrust across his vision.
"You need to drink," snapped a woman. Jason had to resist the urge to jump up defensively, as he had not seen her before. "You managed to make yourself so dehydrated that you would have died were you any further away from here."
He reached up and took the glass before letting her help him up into a sitting position and looking at her face.
"Alex, you're a life saver," he croaked, his throat unwilling to respond to his need for communication.
"I know, it's my job," she frowned at him slightly, "Now, drink. If you don't I'll-"
"Make me eat dirt?" Jason chuckled after taking a sip of the water.
"Yeah, though that would have to wait until you had recovered a bit." Alex smiled slightly. "I'm glad that you're alright."
"I'm a survivor eh? I'd survive no matter what."
"Sure, I suppose you would," Alex's smile faded slightly. "Your men came out fine."
"Even Soup?"
"Corporal Campbell will have to go home, but yes, he's fine. One of the best doctors here worked on him." Alex looked away slightly, staring at some point far away. Jason frowned at this, expecting her to have been a lot more lively than she was.
"What's wrong Alex?"
"I'm tired is all," she turned back to him with a forced smile before standing up. "You drink that and get some sleep, eh? I'll be back for duty at oh-one-hundred hours." With that she took off out the door, leaving Jason slightly mystified as to her actions. His sister had always done that to him though, ever since she had been little. Once she had asked for his help with her chores, only so that she could do his. Alex's had entailed doing the laundry and washing some dishes, while Jason's had entailed some large amounts of repair work around the house. At the time he had been unable to use one of his hands, having accidentally sliced it open when working in a saw mill. She had only done it as a favor to him, even though at the time she would have done anything to go and play out in the field behind their house with their Labrador, Moxie.
Jason smiled to himself as he thought of this, glad that his sister had been here when he had trudged into the camp. His eyelids were slowly being pulled shut by lead weights, and he barely had time to lie down before sleep took him over.
-+-+-
He awoke later to high pitched screams. His immediate reaction was to jump up and see what was going on, but he felt that he could no sooner do that than swim across the Pacific. Instead, about halfway through the action of sitting up, his body threw itself sideways. He ended up with his head and top half of his body on the floor while the rest was still hooked onto the wire frame cot.
"What the hell is going on out there?" he heard Alex say to someone else as the noise got closer.
"I don't know, it sounds like Frank though," replied a male voice.
"Oh god, I hope not..." Alex groaned, pausing slightly as Jason pushed himself up off the floor. She was quickly beside him, helping him back into his bed while chiding him too.
"What the hell did you do? You're not supposed to get up! What did you think you were doing!"
"Didn't think, reaction, sorry!" Jason replied disjointedly while Alex took a breath and backed away. She was about to respond as the doors to post-op crashed open. Jason wheeled around to look, and had a sharp shock. He had never known that people could be green!
Standing in the door was a man with green covering him from head to toe. It looked slightly runny as well, as if he had gone swimming in a particularly scummy pond. He stomped across the room, spraying green everywhere, and stopped right in front of Alex and the man she had been talking with.
"Which one of you did this!" the green man yelled. "I know one of you did this!"
"Did what Frank, painted you green?" asked the man calmly. Alex was trying desperately not to laugh.
"You know fully well what you did Pierce, stop acting like you don't!"
"Hawkeye did nothing Frank," Alex managed to say around a fit of giggles. "It's not his fault that you're green with envy!" There was a moment of blubbering from the green man.
"You did it! You put the helmet filled with green paint above the tent door!"
"Absolutely not! I would never do anything that juvenile. After all, Major Burns, I am a major as well, and can't be seen acting that way around junior officers!" Alex's voice had taken on a sarcastic tone as she wiped tears away from her eyes. "Then again, I wouldn't walk into a room after painting myself green either. It destroys a persons credibility. Unless you're pulling for a section eight..."
Frank blubbered for a moment before storming off out of the room, still sending little droplets of green everywhere. As soon as he was gone Alex burst into a fresh fit of giggles, and was joined in by Hawkeye, the other nurse and the majority of the conscious patients in the room. Jason was the only one who was completely lost in all of this.
"What just happened here?" he asked.
"Some serious payback, my dear brother," Alex gasped as she finally stopped laughing, seating herself on the end of Jason's cot. "Ah, revenge is so sweet!" Jason nodded slightly.
"I think I understand," he replied nervously, shifting as far away from his sister as he possibly could. "So, why did you need to issue payback?"
"Because Ferret Face is a major jerk," Hawkeye replied for Alex. "And if she doesn't need to blow off steam at him, I don't know who does." Jason eyed Hawkeye with a small amount of nervousness. For some strange reason he didn't like the doctor. Alex just beamed at him, which made Jason roll his eyes.
"As long as you don't get into too much trouble, eh?" he grumbled warningly. Alex continued to beam as she stood up and brushed off her pants.
"I think that I'm going to go and celebrate," she announced. "Do you want to come with me brother?"
"Sleeping is good, I think I'll do that," Jason replied, keeping as much sarcasm from his tone as possible as he lay back down. He felt very exhausted all of a sudden. Alex just shrugged and skipped off. She seemed very happy with herself.
For that one fact, Jason was grateful. Alex needed to be happy at least once in her life.
"You know what," Hawkeye said as he placed a clipboard down on the desk beside him, "your sister isn't half bad."
"No, she isn't is she." Jason yawned widely. "Pity that she's crazy."
-+-+-
Alex wrung her hands together as she walked around the compound, her mind drifting too her brother's sudden appearance. She wanted to know why he hadn't gone to a field unit rather than walking the immense distance that he had come to get to this MASH. It was eating through her brain like a mouse through cheese.
Well, it couldn't be too horrible. The worst she could think of was that something had happened back home to Meg's mother and he wanted to tell her in person rather than letting the horrible mail system deal with it.
She sighed and looked upwards, her eyes drifting past one of the hills nearby. A flash of light caught her eye and made her look back, hoping to spot just what it was that had made the light shimmer so. For a few moments, she looked and found nothing.
"Well," she muttered, "that was odd..." With a shake of her head, Alex began to walk back to her quarters. Two sets of eyes watched her warily, one much further away from the other and the closer with much more hatred.
The latter followed her, as stealthily as can be done in combat boots and green paint but with much ferocity, catching up with her only as she reached the door to her tent.
"Major!" Alex turned to look at Frank as he seethed towards her. She resisted the urge to smile, as he was still slightly scummy looking, and managed to look like she could not see the green paint still stuck in creases in his face.
"Yes? Anything I can do to help Major Burns?"
"I want you to tell me the truth, here and now!" his voice became conspiratorial, not losing any of the anger which it still held.
"All right," Alex replied, a smirk forming on her face, "But if its too close to the core, I won't answer." He eyed her carefully, obviously not quite sure what to believe.
"Did you have anything to do with the... incident this morning?"
"What incident?" Alex batted her eyelashes.
"You know, the paint incident?"
"Oh!" Alex backed off and began to talk rather loudly, "the incident in which someone hung a helmet filled with green paint over your door and waited for you to walk in! No I had nothing to do with that. Now, if you don't mind..." She pulled away and began to walk into her tent. Frank grabbed her arm and pulled her back.
"I know you did!" he hissed, "and I'll prove it!"
"You do that," Alex snarled back. "You'll have a hard time doing it!" With that she wrenched her arm away and stormed into the tent, slamming the door shut with enough force to make it wobble slightly. Frank was left for a moment contemplating what on Earth had just happened before a few quiet chuckles broke him from his reverie. He wheeled around, his eyes beady eyes flashing as evilly as they could and promptly stormed off to Margaret's tent for some well needed comfort.
And that was when it happened.
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No one had really been expecting it. They we're always on high alert for the little glitches and things, but this was not exactly little. A loud crack shattered the otherwise calm air and was swiftly swallowed up by the roar of a loud explosion. The lights and telephones immediately went down in the office, causing Radar to fall out of his chair in shock and Potter to let out a stream of potential curses. A few people moved out of their suddenly dark tents to see what had happened, a few of the more quick witted realized that the camp was on fire and went to deal with it. Hawkeye emerged from post-op in time to see these people fall over each other in a search for buckets and water to douse the flames. No one could truly tell what had happened, only that it needed to be dealt with.
For moments that seemed to drag on for an eternity they milled around like a ruptured ant's nest, frightened by the sudden circumstances that brought them into the light. Then came the child with the magnifying glass.
No one heard the first shot, but they all saw the blood blossom into the air like a mist. Whoever had been hit went down in a ragged pile, dead before they hit the ground. Hawkeye pulled himself back in against the door as another shot cracked right beside his head. He didn't have any time to be afraid as he pushed his head out once more.
"Get inside!" he yelled at the top of his lungs. "There's a sniper!"
-+-+
Alex felt, rather than heard the man collapse beside her. She whipped around, her body moving with speed but her mind sluggish, and fell to her knees beside him, immediately checking for a pulse. She could hear people yelling as she tried to get a strong enough grip on the man's throat to feel the pulse in his carotid artery, but the blood prevented her from even holding her fingers steady for a second.
There was a momentary pause as she looked at the man's face, and found herself unable to recognize him. Slowly her sluggish mind caught up to what she was seeing. He no longer had a face to recognize.
She pulled her hands away and looked up, realizing that she was the only one in the group of people who had not left to duck for cover. Dragging her eyes back to the dead man in front of her, she found herself standing, running away while leaving him there.
Stop it. He's dead.
She forced herself to look towards her destination, not where she had been. Live in the future damn it, you don't even know the guy. She could feel tears stinging her cheeks but couldn't assimilate that she was crying.
Less than ten feet away another man stumbled with blood spraying from his chest, and Alex felt a rock crash through her shoulder.
-+-+-
Meg watched the young man go down, her eyes completely on him. She hadn't even noticed Alex before she ducked down beside him and applied pressure to the wound. Her hands were covered in blood already, but with the oozing that was coming out of the man's chest she found that she didn't really want to worry about any cross contamination problems right now.
For a few moments everything was still but then a puff of dirt made Alex jump to attention once more. She grabbed the man's arm and began to pull him with her towards the half open door of the post-op.
If someone were to ask Meg later what had happened in the five seconds between Alex dragging the man along and her slamming the doors of the post-op shut, blood flying from her hands in a vehement attempt to keep herself from hurting someone, she would have told you that she could not remember.
"Damn it!" Alex yelled, still shaking blood from her fingers and angry tears streaming down her cheeks. "The bloody bastards... I'll kill them, I'll..." she trailed off with a low whine of pain and sank to the floor. "What the hell happened?" For a moment no one answered. Hawkeye and Meg exchanged a glance as if they were asking each other what had happened.
"The generator exploded," someone began softly, " I saw it happen. The sniper took a pot shot at the generator and it just exploded."
"They do that," someone else responded. Alex recognized him as one of Jason's squad, Zander, she thought he had been called. "They like to draw people out and then take pot shots at them. It happened to us once..." He shrugged nervously and looked at his feet. Meg looked to Alex and saw her staring at the man she had dragged into the building.
"Who was he?" she asked softly. Hawkeye grabbed the man's dog tags and sighed slightly.
"Private Jacob Barrington." he was silent for a moment and looked slowly to catch her eyes. "He only got here last week." Alex nodded and turned away slightly. She was incredibly pale.
"I don't feel so well..." she said softly before throwing up, the image of the faceless solider pushing it's way to the front of her mind. Meg was immediately at her side, gripping her shoulder for support. She couldn't understand why Alex whined and attempted to pull away from the grip until her finger slipped through a hole in the shirt.
"Oh Jesus," she whispered, letting go of Alex's shoulder and pulling down the collar of her shirt. "She's been hit."
A/N: Well, appauling cliff hanger I know. The story should move pretty well from now on, but I don't know when it will be finished. I hope that you all have enjoyed this addition. Tell me if you didn't so I can fix it. Tell me if you did to make me write more!
A great thanks to you all!