Author's Note: I realise that this story changes tense and perspective between characters. Just wanted to let you know that this is entirely intentional! ;-D Thanks to everyone who reviewed! (((((Lucy and AEM1)))))) I'll try to stop with the annoying footnotes thing from now on!
Tears.
It's cold. High above them, the callous stars wheel. They don't sparkle like they do in the poems. They're simply there. Cold, like the night air. He sits in the middle of a ring of stones, leaning against the basketball pole. He hunches over, hiding his face in his hands like a little kid. He rocks slowly backwards and forwards, his teeth clenched tight into the fabric of the shapeless army jacket to muffle the sobs. Even though it's freezing, his jacket is unbuttoned, and beneath it he wears only the thin surgical shirt, the crisp white crumpled now, marred by the sprawling pattern of the kid's crimson blood. Somehow, they never think of him crying. It's not supposed to work like that. To them, he's the cynic, the bastard, the one who isn't supposed to give a damn. The curly head is bowed to his chest, the slender hands twist and writhe, clenching and unclenching in an agony all their own. And he cries. Only Hawkeye knows. He knows, and he has no words to say. He kneels before his brother in blood, and suddenly, Trapper is somehow a thing of fear, untouchable. Between them stretches a vast distance which Hawkeye can never bridge. Never, because even though it's the same every time, with each new death the pain sharpens anew."There was nothing else you could do..." "He was dead already..." "Should never have been brought in here in the first place..." "There are certain rules about a war..." "You did everything that was humanly possible." He knows how futile it sounds. So he says nothing. The tears slip from between Trapper's fingers, and in the chill of the before-dawn air they turn to ice. Tiny beads of glass, frozen upon the gaunt cheeks of Trapper McIntyre, the doctor who doesn't care.
BJ looks so vulnerable when he cries. He crouches on his cot, all softness and pain. It's a strange thing, to see a big man like that lose control so completely. It's frightening. And when he's like this there's no way of talking to him, no reasoning. Behind that quiet, gentle man there's this incredible anger, and it doesn't matter that I'm his best friend in the whole goddamn US army, because times like this even that's not enough, and he hates this war, and this place, and the food, and the stench, and the blood of children, and me most of all. He cries more than Trapper ever did, and somehow it's the more frightening for that. Because when BJ's crying, it's purely and obliviously selfish. He doesn't cry for the soldiers, not really. He cries for him. For the young man with the soft voice who's being gradually eaten away from the inside. When BJ cries, the intensity of it is frightening. Because you know that for every tear that slips down those clean-cut, respectable cheeks he's losing something. A bit of himself, and some days I don't know if he'll ever get it back. I think the difference is that Trapper and I were already corrupted when we landed in this sewer. BJ wasn't. He was... perhaps not innocent, but hopeful. So goddamn optimistic and proud and warm, and alive. And the difference is that now, with BJ, I'm slowly watching him die. Watching him following the same road that the rest of us all took. And I want to scream at him not to follow, to go back while he still can, but I know it's futile. You can see the bitterness in his eyes now, which never used to be there. You can chart the progress of this war, days, weeks, eternities, by the thin strands of grey in his honey-blonde hair. And when BJ cries, that's the worst. The days when he gets a letter from home telling him that the baby has cut her first tooth. And to me, it's incomprehensible, because I'm not a family man, can't understand how he can get so worked up over something so distant. Blood... death... ashes... these are real, these are here and now and painful. But BJ still remembers a time of golden sand and garden hoses, tiled roofs and table cloths and strawberry ice cream, and to see him slowly losing that is a reminder to the rest of us of what we won't admit, even to ourselves, that we've already forgotten. And BJ cries. He lies there and sobs over a lock of Erin's hair sent in the mail. And even when he's silent with his face turned towards the canvas wall, I can still hear him crying.