Warnings: Slightly less angsty, but I'm not very nice to BJ. Other than that, this chapter is pretty harmless.

- The Sound of Silence -
Chapter Three

"Come on, Frank," BJ snapped. "We've got patients backed up."

"I'm going as fast as I can!" Frank wailed, tiny eyes slightly panicked above his surgical mask.

"Well, do it faster! You've been working on that kid nearly an hour."

"Colonel!" Frank whined desperately.

"He's right, Burns," Potter barked. "Speed it up. The luxury of time is one thing we haven't got right now. Radar—"

"He's the phone, sir, I've got Major Freedman on the line."

"Sidney?" Potter asked as Radar put the phone up to his head. "How're things up there? Good, good…listen, you're in tight with a few of the generals, aren't you? Well, we're up to our chins in patients—"

"Those of us who have chins," BJ added.

"Oh, phooey!" Frank shouted, and subsided to mumbling to himself, though he grew steadily louder and more furious, until he finally shouted at BJ, "—And what makes you so special, huh? What've you got that I haven't got?"

"Skill, Frank?" BJ suggested. "Patience, Frank? A brain, Frank?"

"That's enough, Hunnicutt," Potter said tiredly. "What? Oh, sure, Sid. Radar, give the phone to BJ."

"Sidney!" BJ shouted with forced joviality, tucking the phone between his head and shoulder as he pulled shrapnel out of a kid's thigh. "How's he doing?"

Freedman's voice sounded tinny and unfamiliar, but BJ could hear the beginnings of exhaustion. "Well, physically, he's fine—or as fine as can be expected. But mentally…" A sigh. "Nothing's ever easy with Hawkeye. I'm having a little trouble, and I thought it might be good for him if you were up here."

"I'd love to, Sid, but it's like Colonel Potter said, we've got patients—"

"I've got two surgeons on a chopper heading your way. They should be there within the hour. And then I want you on that chopper. You'll stay here a week, maybe more if he needs it. I've already talked to Sherman—all you need to do is get on that chopper."

"Sidney, you've got yourself a deal." Radar took the phone back and scurried off, and BJ met Potter's eyes across the O.R. "Well, Colonel?"

"It's fine by me, just don't stay longer than you're needed. We need you, too."

"Where's he going?" Frank demanded.

"Back to Tokyo."

"Tokyo!" Margaret cried. "But Colonel, that'll leave only you and Major Burns here, and with all the patients—"

"We're getting two replacement surgeons," Potter interrupted. "One to replace Pierce, and one for as long as Hunnicutt's gone. That suit you, Major?"

Margaret sounded a little flustered as she said, "Well, I suppose it'll have to, won't it?"

Back to Tokyo, BJ thought. Sidney thinks I can help…but what can I do? I don't know how Hawk's mind works—if anyone does, it's Sidney, and if he can't do it…

"Doctor," Nurse Able prompted, "the patient…"

"Right," BJ said, shaking his head to clear it. "Right. Move your hand a little…there!" He pulled out the last piece of shrapnel and dropped it into the bowl with relief. "Corpsman, another patient!" Until the replacements arrived, he was stuck here, healing nameless people, tending to the endless flow of bodies, when the only body—or mind, if it came to that—he really cared about healing was miles and miles away.

&.o.&.o.&

"Why don't we go for a walk, Hawkeye?" Freedman asked from the foot of his patient's bed.

"A walk?" Hawkeye repeated sweetly, mockingly, looking pointedly at his shattered leg.

"I have a nice wheelchair here just waiting to be used. The nurses say some fresh air would be good for you, and there's a nice little park out back, with a path and trees and some fountains… What d'you say?"

"Do I have much of a choice?"

Freedman smiled. "Not really, no."

"Then lead on, McDuff."

It was a nice day outside, one of those neutral days—warm, but not too warm; breezy, but not too breezy; quiet, but not too quiet. In silence, Freedman rolled his patient down the peaceful stone paths until they came to a duck pond. There, watching the ducks, was a tall man in fatigues, hands shoved deep into his pockets, who turned with a small, forced smile when Freedman cleared his throat.

"Oh," Hawkeye said blandly. "It's you."

BJ lifted a hand, ran it through his hair, let it fall back to his side. He couldn't think of anything to say, not with Hawkeye looking at him so hostilely, as if BJ were a bug who'd landed in his coffee. Finally, trying to smile, he agreed, "It's me."

"Well, now that we have that established—driver, I'd like to go back to my suite."

"Not yet," Freedman said lightly. "The air is good for you. Walk with us, BJ."

"Walk with you, maybe," Hawkeye muttered. "I seem to be a little impaired in that particular area."

"Hawkeye," Sidney said, pushing the wheelchair forward; BJ fell into step next to it. "Would you care to repeat what you told me yesterday?"

"No, I think I'd rather not."

"I'd like you to."

"Sorry, honey, I'm just not in the mood."

Freedman and BJ exchanged glances, BJ's worried, confused, hurt; the psychiatrist asked Hawkeye, "Then is there anything you would like to talk about?"

Enunciating crisply, Hawkeye said, "Not particularly."

They walked along in silence until Freedman said, "I told BJ some of what you told me yesterday—"

"Oh, wonderful, that's just wonderful—what ever happened to doctor-patient confidentiality?"

"He's here to help you, Hawkeye. We both are. But in order to help you, you have to let us in. You can't be afraid to talk."

Hawkeye twisted around in the wheelchair to stare up at Freedman. "Fear, Sidney? You want to talk about fear? Let me ask you—have you ever had a bomb go off in your face? There's fear for you. You see the flash and think to yourself 'I didn't realize it was the 4th of July.' But then comes the explosion, the skull-shattering boom, and do you know what comes after the boom? Anyone? Anyone? No? Well, then let me tell you—nothing. You're deaf and blind and numb, and you think to yourself 'Dear God, this isn't right,' and for that one instant, the world just stops, and you realize it's the end of the line, th-th-th-that's all folks."

"But it wasn't the end for you," Freedman said softly.

Hawkeye's voice was thick, heavy with tears he refused to shed. "No. Seems not."

"Sidney," BJ asked suddenly, tightly, "is it possible to have a minute or two alone with him?"

"Of course," Freedman said gently.

"Of course," Hawkeye echoed, his voice layered with sarcasm.

There was a bench at the side of the path; BJ sat on it, and Sidney placed Hawkeye near it before wandering farther down the path, just far enough to give the two the illusion of privacy. Hawkeye let his hand fall onto the wheel of the wheelchair, pushed at it, moved forward a little; pushed it again, made a half-circle, another push brought him full-circle, and again, around and around and around and around—

"Would you stop that?" BJ snapped.

"Why? Does it annoy you?"

"Yes, it annoys me."

"Oh." Hawkeye kept spinning.

BJ reached out and grabbed the arm of the wheelchair, the place where Hawkeye's right arm should have rested. Two similar, yet very different, shades of blue met: one confused and desperate and hopeful, so hopeful, the other tired and beyond hope, lost in the darkness, that unforgiving silence, with no hope of any way back to the light. It chilled BJ, made his voice tremble as he whispered, "I didn't abandon you," trying to convince himself as much as Hawkeye—but he saw the lie in the words even as he said them.

"Didn't you? Then why am I trapped up here while you're down there?"

BJ frowned in confusion. "I'm right here, Hawk." A desperate plea for forgiveness—I'm here now.

"Only because Sidney was afraid I'd get creative with a pencil. If he hadn't brought you here, you'd still be there, cutting up patients and reading your letters and having a merry little time."

"Hawkeye, I want to be here. I…I want to help you."

"Sure." Hawkeye pushed fiercely at the wheel, yanking the chair from BJ's fingers and continuing to spin.

BJ sat there, staring at his friend in grief, not knowing what to do, what to say, to fix this. He could fix Hawkeye's body, that was easy, a cut here, a stitch there—but his mind? BJ didn't know any more about Hawk's mind than anyone else, and how could he fix what he didn't know, what he couldn't recognize? "I'm not going to leave," he said softly.

"Why not? There's nothing to keep you here. I'm certainly not asking you to stay." To himself, in a whisper BJ couldn't hear because of the desperate screaming at the back of his head, that terrible sound of the silence, Hawkeye added, "Not anymore."

BJ waited for the words to come, the proper parry to throw into the swordfight that was conversation with Hawkeye—parry, riposte, feint high and strike low, dodge, always moving, fast-paced, you had to be quick to keep up with him. But the words wouldn't come, and BJ finally rose slowly, tiredly, and went to get Sidney. BJ couldn't decipher the shades of darkness in the wounded man's eyes, and Hawkeye didn't see the tears on his friend's cheeks.

&.o.&.o.&

Freedman lowered himself into the chair, crossed his legs and frowned faintly down at his patient. "BJ tells me you're not talking to him anymore."

"Indeed," Hawkeye agreed tersely, rapping his knuckles on the bed frame.

"Any reason why?"

"I'm not feeling particularly amicable towards him at this point in time."

"He really did come to help you, Hawkeye."

"After abandoning me."

"You keep saying that—he abandoned you. It sounds so vague, so undefined."

Hawkeye turned to face him with a tight, mocking smile. "You want to tell you in what way or ways I feel he abandoned me?"

"It might make things a little clearer."

"Well then, let's start at the beginning. One would think the main purpose of a best friend, which is what I would consider BJ to be under normal circumstances, is to help and comfort the other part of the duo when he needs it. As you may have inferred, dear Freud, I happen to need a little bit of comfort at this particular time in my life, and the one who should be here to give me that comfort decides to go gallivanting off to stitch up people he doesn't even know—half of which he probably can't save anyway—instead of being here, to help me. You'd think as his best friend, I'd have some sort of privilege over strangers. But I guess that's asking too much."

Sidney was silent for a moment, staring thoughtfully at his patient; and then he said, "Hawkeye, I'm going to ask you to do something that may be difficult for you: I want you to try to use logic and reason. Two things you seem to be presently incapable of. What would you have done, if he was in your place and you were in his?"

"I would have stayed here, with him. Helped him. That's what best friends are supposed to do."

"Even if you knew that dozens of men would die because you chose to stay here?"

"People wouldn't die—"

"No? You think the whole world stops just because Dr. Benjamin Franklin Pierce is having a little trouble coping? The war's still going on, Hawkeye, and we're in the middle of a big push—that means lots of wounded, and every surgeon's needed. The 4077th was already shorthanded with you here—they couldn't afford to lose BJ, too. And I know for a fact that BJ did everything he could to stay here—I believe he even offered to give his house, his wife, and his daughter to General Hammond—but they couldn't spare him. It took two MP's to get him on the chopper back to Korea. He did not want to leave you here—he told your doctor that you couldn't be left alone in your present condition, and that you'd most likely crack if you didn't have a familiar face around. But they made him leave." Though his voice hadn't risen any louder, Sidney was worked up, angry at Hawkeye's thick-headedness and his insistence on being blindly stubborn; he leaned back in his chair, forcing himself to breathe calmly, and waited for his patient's reaction.

Hawkeye avoided looking at him, but Sidney could still see his eye, could see the thoughts as they flashed through Hawkeye's mind, the shifting colors like the tide of the ocean. Finally, eye dark with confusion and regret, Hawkeye whispered, "I didn't know."

"No. You didn't know, because you didn't want to know. You were much too happy with being angry at him, because it spared you from being angry at yourself. Am I right?"

Hawkeye didn't answer the question, but Freedman could see the answer in his eye. Bullseye. "Is he still here?"

"No, he was worried he'd punch you if he stayed around any longer, so he went to his hotel room." Freedman smiled, a sad little smile. "You can be quite cruel when you put your mind to it, you know."

"Will he come back?"

"I might be able to arrange that, unless you plan on breaking the poor boy's heart again like you did today."

"Was I really that mean?" Hawkeye asked, his voice shaking, his eye full of pain and the self-loathing Sidney had come to recognize all too well.

"Yes, Hawkeye, you were. But you're lucky—he still thinks of himself as your best friend, and it's in the nature of friends to forgive and forget. However, I have the feeling he'll have a few words for you when he comes in tomorrow. If you'll excuse me…"

Hawkeye didn't watch Sidney leave; he was too lost in his own thoughts, eyes flickering and changing, colors swirling, darkness flowing over only to be pushed back by light, tears glimmering occasionally and blinked quickly away, face changing little but eyes showing all the emotion he'd once been able to hide so well.

The world kept turning.

To Be Continued