Disclaimer: These charachters and such-n-such are not mine as much as Hawkeye has a second cousin named Ed (ha! bet I made ya look that one up!)
A/N: Hey everyone! Want a person to thank for me putting up this chapter? Sure; thank 'Hawk's Soul' and their review. I was just randomly looking through my stuff I have on the internet, and found that I had a new review. So I read it, and got reemed out by Hawk's Soul for not writing a new chapter nore telling people that I wasn't going to continue. C'mon people, why wouldn't I want to continue a great story like this? So immediately I sat down and started writing. And here we are; a brand new chapter (that, I might add, is a heck of a lot longer than any of my other ones), that you can all enjoy thanks to Hawk's Soul. See what reviewing can do! So, my dear, avid friends and readers, please, read and review, and you'll never know what will happen next... read and review! ThAnKs!
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"Me?" Henry looked at Hawkeye for a long moment.
"Yes," Hawkeye furrowed his brow, "Did you have a choice if you wanted to live or die?"
It was another long minute before Henry finally opened his mouth and replied, "Yes. I did have a choice."
"And you chose to die!" anger suddenly burst through Hawkeye's voice, "How could you do that to everyone? How could you do that to your wife? To your kids Henry! To Radar. You know he never really did get over you dying like that? How could--"
"Shut-up Hawk," Henry sighed as if he'd heard the rant a million times over, "Do you honestly think it was easy? Do you think that I didn't think about all of those things, and more!"
"Then why?" Hawkeye still clutched the soft teddy bear in his hand.
Henry's voice caught in his throat, "My son."
"Andrew?" Hawkeye remembered the small boy that was born back in Illinois just after the war had started..
A tear fell down Henry's face as he nodded, "Yeah. Little Andy. He-he died."
"Henry…" Hawkeye's eyes were wide, "I didn't know…"
Henry shook his head and took a deep breath, "I didn't want you to know. Or anyone at the 4077th. That- that was why I was going back to the states. Not because I got my papers…. Because…" Henry bit his lower lip to keep himself calm.
"How?" Hawkeye shook his head, confused, "When? You should have told us Henry! We would have helped."
"How could you help?" Henry asked, "There was nothing anyone could do. Lorraine just woke up one morning to feed him and-- and he was gone. It happened about a week before I left."
Hawkeye stared blankly at Henry, a mixture of emotions running through him; deep sadness for Henry's loss, confusion on why some children die so suddenly for no reason and anger at Henry for not telling them.
"Why did you choose to die?" Hawkeye whispered.
"My son needed a Daddy," Henry feebly attempted to wipe the tears from his face as he started at Hawkeye.
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"What's going on?" Charles asked as he stood in front of Colonel Potter's desk; only moments before being called in urgently.
"There's expected to be more heavy bombing out by the 8063rd," Colonel Potter spoke at a fast clip, "Their whole camp is being moved twenty miles up the road."
"Hunnicut and Houlihan," the words immediately came to Charles' mouth.
"They're not sure where they are," Colonel Potter shook his head, "They were sent out into the surrounding areas to check on the villagers."
"Blast it!" Charles fumed, "Why would they just send people out? Don't they know it's a war?"
Colonel Potter remained silent for a minute before replying, "I talked to I-Corp not too long ago as well. This shelling is going to be brining in a large amount of wounded in about five hours. I want someone to go and see if they can round up Margaret and BJ, as their camp is more concern right now with gathering all of their wounded and moving them to their new camp. But I don't want to send you or go myself because of our own wounded."
"Why not--" Charles didn't even get a chance to finish his sentence.
Fore walking into the room was none other than Klinger in a bright orange spaghetti strap evening gown; complete with small sequins and sparkling, dangling earrings.
"Kind sir, I would like directions to the new ball in town please--" Klinger said in as delicate of a voice that he could muster.
"Klinger!" Colonel Potter had barely noticed his attempt at insanity, "Just the person we need."
"I need an escort, but aren't you a little old…" Klinger started, raising an eyebrow.
"Klinger!" Colonel Potter bellowed.
"Err--- yes sir?" Klinger swallowed hard.
"I want you in regular cloths and back in my office quicker than I can say demoted or you aren't going anywhere for a very long time!" Colonel Potter shouted.
Klinger spun on the heel of his bright red high-tops to face his commanding officer, saluting him; his earrings dangling, "Yes sir!"
He marched clumsily out of the room.
"I swear that boy is going to cause everyone around him to get a Section 8," Colonel Potter muttered.
Charles and Colonel Potter knew even before they could feel it that something had happened. They didn't even have to look at each other to know something terribly wrong had just gone on outside. Fore even inside their secluded office, the screams of horror from the people outside in the camp echoed into their ears.
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Margaret ran to catch up with BJ, "BJ! Stop! BJ! Captain Hunnicut!"
BJ stopped in his tracks, breathing hard. Margaret ran to in front of him.
"What is the matter with you!" she cried out.
"How can you do it?" BJ panted, "How can you just go from this dead person to the next without thinking about who it is, or who it could have been."
"Let me tell you this buster, it's not as easy as that," Margaret said, anger etched in her voice at the ignorance BJ held, "Don't you think that I'm scared that every body we turn over will be Pierce's? Don't you think that I'm scared that every time a plain goes by we're all going to die?" tears were now coming down the Major's face, "Don't you think that-that--- that I'm scared…"
Silently BJ pulled her into a hug. The two stayed together like that for a long moment while Margaret cried into BJ's strong chest.
Finally she moved away, "I have an idea. That might help."
"Humm?" BJ mumbled, fearing to speak for he was sure his voice would just come out in a squeaky mess at that point.
Margaret took a deep, shaking breath, "Lets go down to the camp. Find-- find where they put Hawkeye. Say good-bye. Then we won't play these games with ourselves that maybe he's really alive somewhere."
BJ nodded, "Ok.
It didn't take long to get back to the camp, and it took an even shorter time to find Major Dream as over half the camp was gone at this point along with pretty much all of the wounded.
"What's going on?" BJ asked.
"We're bugging out," Major Dream replied, "Bombings are getting closer again, so we're moving out about twenty up the road. Did you guys need something?"
"Umm yes," Margaret stepped forward, "We heard that a Captain Pierce was-- was listed as one of the casualties that were killed. We were wondering if we could see where he was."
Major Dream looked down at the clipboard in his hand before looking up, "Come with me."
Both Margaret and BJ looked at each other a moment and followed the Major, surprisingly not to the aid tent or the surgical tent, but to his office. Once in, they saw a number of boxes stacked around.
"I'm sorry for the mess," Major Dream spoke, "Our storage tent was levelled, so we're using pretty much any room to store things around here."
"That's ok," Margaret whispered.
Major Dream began looking through all of the boxes, and soon pulled out one from near the bottom. Opening it up, both BJ and Margaret strained to see inside, but were surprised to seemingly see nothing. However there was one thing inside as Major Dream reached his hand in, and pulled out the silver, shinny dog tags that read 'Captain, Benjamin Pierce MD'.
"What is that?" Margaret asked; knowing full right what it was.
"It's all we have," Major Dream began to explain, "Captain Pierce along with two other that were in the deceased list we only found the dog tags of. Pierce's ones were found just off the road near a pile of rubble and near a little girl that was dead."
"S-so, there's no-no body?" Margaret's heart was pounding as she forced herself to spit out the sentence.
"No," Dream shook his head, "There isn't."
"Where were the dog tags found?" BJ asked.
"I, we--" Major Dream was startled by the sudden energy of the two people in front of him.
"Where?" BJ shouted, "Damn it, it's not a hard question!"
Major Dream looked back down at his clipboard, "About a mile up the north road."
"Come on," BJ looked at Margaret and headed towards the door.
"Wait!" Major Dream called out, and the two stopped, "You guys can't go back out there. Don't you remember what I just finished telling you? This place is going to be in even more ruins soon. You need to leave."
"I am not going to wait around, and sit on my hands until some poor solider drags in my best friends dead body through the doors of a Mash unit," BJ said, dangerously quiet, "I am going to go and find him."
"What do I tell your commanding officer?" Dream asked.
BJ didn't have to think about this for even a second, "Tell him I've gone to bring Hawkeye back."
...to be continued...
A/N: Want to know something funny? At the end of the last chapter I wrote that I knew what was going to happen next excetra, excetra. I'm pretty sure I did at that time, but I completely forgot. So this whole chapter was very spontaneous, and I wrote it all up on the spot, not quite sure what was going to happen next. And I have no idea what is going to happen in the next chapter either. Maybe that will keep me writing it quicker; because I'm like you and want to know what's going to happen! Anways, did you like it? Love it? Hate it? Want to kill me because of it? Lemme know! You've read, now review! ThAnKs!