Disclaimer: MASH isn't mine. Obviously. Way before I was born!
AN: One-shot. HM. Short and (hopefully) sweet… The song "Why Should You Come When I Call?" put it into my head…it isn't mine either. Please R&R! )
…X…
…Why Should You Come When I Call?...
…X…
She sat in her tent, brushing her golden brown hair, waiting. Waiting. Knowing somehow, that a glance, a sigh, a hand tightened to a fist, was enough. Knowing that somehow, he always understood.
A shadow in the night. A wingless phantom.
Slowly she turned off the light and slipped into her bed. Soon…soon…
The door opened and he slipped inside, no harsh words or mocking smile, nothing but two hands to pull her to his chest, two arms to clutch her to him, holding her safe, making her complete. Nothing but a soft kiss on her forehead, a gentle surgeon's hands smoothing her worried brow, her name called in a breath of air.
The war receded, the world receded, and her fear and despair were held off once more.
She watches him in the operating room, laughing and joking, fearless in the face of death, once more fighting the battles he knows how to fight. Belonging.
She wonders, with a frown, why he comes when she calls.
She doesn't dare say the words aloud, the words that would make those night visits real. For now they lay in the land between night and day, dreams and reality, in the twilight of lost souls, and she is afraid to break that fragile peace, but cannot help but wonder.
There is no answer to her silent question, but…
His eyebrows draw closer, eyes sharpening in renewed concentration. The glow fades from his face as he struggles desperately. Others help, but it was over before it began.
The child dies on the table.
He keeps working, but she sees it now, as he must have seen her. The tension in his shoulders, the inescapable fear fluttering across his face. He doesn't joke anymore, and he forgets to smile when someone else does.
She glances at the others—how can they not see it? Perhaps, she realizes…perhaps because he's calling out to her.
Tonight she will visit him, and hold him, and be the shadow of the night. The phantom.
Why should I come when you call?
Because you called.
Because you came.
Because I can.