Sorry this took a little longer—I had some trouble deciding which way to take the rest of the story, and along the way, I discovered a plotbunny for another fic, which I then had to scribble down quickly before it hopped away…

Warnings: -blink- Surprisingly, nothing. This chapter's clean. Kind of a feel-good chapter.

- The Sound of Silence -
Chapter Four

Hawkeye was antsy the next morning, fidgeting, his visible eye darting around constantly. Thomas, the orderly assigned to watch him during the day, had seen patients act like that before—it was usually right before they tried something really stupid. So Thomas kept his eyes on Dr. Pierce—Hawkeye, he reminded himself, he got angry if you didn't call him Hawkeye—and waited to find out what the source of the unrest was—though he already had an idea: Dr. Freedman had told him yesterday that Hawkeye would be getting a visitor today, and that there could potentially be trouble, not from the visitor but from Hawkeye. "No need to worry about it," Dr. Freedman has said, "just keep your eye on them."

The visitor was a tall man, a soldier—no, a doctor, there was that little whatever-you-call-it, the doctor-symbol, pinned to his collar, as well as the silver captain's bars—who made a bee-line to Hawkeye's bed and stood there with his hands shoved into his pockets. He looked young, as far as doctors went, but he had that same look in his eyes that everyone got after spending any amount of time too close to the war. Hawkeye went very still, and he and the visitor stared at each other in a very intense sort of way that made Thomas a little uncomfortable. To try to end the staring contest, Thomas folded the magazine he'd been reading, cleared his throat and asked the visitor, "You Dr. Hunnicutt?"

"That's me," BJ affirmed, his eyes not leaving Hawkeye.

Thomas cleared his throat again, and started to get up. "Well, they told me to ask you to try to not kill Captain Pierce—we kinda like him around here."

"I'll do my very best," BJ said as Thomas shuffled away to give them some privacy.

"He seems a little Radar-esque," BJ said as he wandered slowly over to the side of the bed, scuffing his boots on the floor.

Hawkeye nodded mutely, his eye wide and glazed faintly with tears, face sadder than BJ had ever seen it before. He finally choked out, "Listen, Beej…I'm sorry. I was stupid, and stubborn, and unreasonable, and—"

BJ smiled, lifting his hand up to stop the flow of words. When that didn't work—"I just went a little nuts, you know…had a little bit of my cheese slide off my cracker"—BJ said loudly enough to be heard over Hawkeye's litany, "Hey, jello-head—shut up."

Hawkeye did, blinking in surprise; and then, tentatively, he returned BJ's smile. "Do you think you can ever forgive me?"

"Consider it done," BJ said, dropping into the vacated chair. "I can't say that I understand what you're going through, but…I can understand why it would make you act…differently."

"Well-put, Ambassador. They should send you to the peace talks, and maybe we could all get out of here sooner."

"You'll be getting out soon…won't you?"

"Eventually. Sidney says he wants to keep me here until he's sure I won't…well, you know."

"Yeah." BJ averted his eyes—taboo, taboo, don't think about it, don't talk about, and maybe it'll go away. "Are you, uh, feeling any better?"

"A little. Sidney promised me a lollipop if I keep behaving like a good boy."

So they bantered, knocking the tennis ball back and forth; anyone who knew them well, had seen them interact before, would notice little difference in their behavior towards each other than at any other time before Hawkeye's accident; but with both, their words were slightly forced, strained, as if both were afraid to say something they shouldn't. It was as if a wall had begun to grow between them, a wall made up of the strain caused by Hawkeye's mistrust and BJ's uncertainty. They worked around the wall as best they could, but both knew it was there—and it terrified the both of them.

Two nurses stepped up to the foot of the bed, bearing fresh bandages. "Sorry, Captains," one said, "but it's time to change your dressings, Captain Pierce."

"They don't call me 'doctor' here," Hawkeye confided to BJ. It was said lightly, but BJ could see the pain in his friend's face. "I think they want to remind me that I'm a patient now, and don't know what's best for me."

The nurses smiled tolerantly. "Captain…"

BJ shifted a little uncomfortably. "I'll, uh…I'll go, then, if—"

"Wait." Hawkeye reached out to grab BJ's arm, fingers digging in like claws, his eye panicked. BJ saw him swallow hard before he asked softly. "Can…will you stay? I…I hate this part."

BJ looked up questioningly at the nurses; they both nodded, smiling with gentle understanding. BJ sat back down, firmly, resolutely; and when Hawkeye's hand quested down his arm towards his own hand, BJ wrapped his fingers around his friend's, offering freely whatever comfort Hawkeye would take, whatever light he needed to fight away the darkness. Not just because that was what a best friend was supposed to do, but because BJ had realized—during his private ranting and raving at Hawkeye's stubbornness and idiocy—that he needed Hawkeye now as much as Hawkeye needed him, and if it was left to BJ to pull Hawkeye back from the edge, he would do it gladly, willingly, because he had his own darkness to fight off, and he needed Hawkeye's light to do it.

&.o.&.o.&

"So you and BJ are talking again?" Sidney asked.

"I think I did most of the talking." Hawkeye reached up to rub gently at the right side of his face, released from its bandages. There were a few lacerations, and his eye was slightly red and swollen, but according to his doctor, he was looking much better than when he'd first arrived in Tokyo. "He's more the strong, silent type."

"Of course. What did you talk about?"

A faint smile crossed Hawkeye's face—the first genuine smile Freedman had seen from him since coming here. "He called me 'jello-head'. I don't think that even makes sense. And he asked me if I was going home."

"Oh?"

"Don't give me that all-knowing little 'oh'—I thought we were beyond that first-grade psychiatry."

Sidney leaned forward, draping his arms over his knees. "All right—then how did that make you feel?"

Hawkeye groaned. "Sometimes I wonder why anyone talks to you at all."

"So do I," Sidney admitted, leaning back with a smile. "Why do you talk to me?"

"Because everyone else only wants me for my body. You like me for my mind."

"Do you want to go home?"

Hawkeye sighed, switching effortlessly from joker to philosopher. It was a sort of controlled, refined schizophrenia. "That's the thing—and I've been thinking about it for a while. There's not much to do around here except think. I want to go home—I wanted to get out of Korea since before I got there, and right now I want nothing more than to leave this charming little slice of Hell, but… It's complicated, you know? I've met a lot of people over here, and I might not see any of them ever again. Take BJ—we live on opposite ends of the continent. We can write letters, have a few awkward phone calls, but it won't be the same. And I know I'm entitled to it, what with all I've been through, but it feels a little like cheating if I leave before the war's over. I wanna see how it ends, you know? You can't leave halfway through a movie, even if it's a terrible movie, because there've been a few good scenes, and it could get better—you have to stay around until the end, because it could turn out to be a great movie in the end. Now, I'm not saying there's any way the war could turn out to be great, but some good things could happen, and if I'm gone, I won't ever know what could've happened if I'd stayed around. Does that make any sense?"

"Yes, it does."

"Good—then could you explain it to me?"

"Hawkeye, your trepidation is understandable—you've given over two years of your life to this place. You can't just walk away from that without any hesitation, without any second thoughts."

"But I can't stay—that's impossible, isn't it? I mean…what could I do?" His eyes flickered down to the bandaged right arm, and then quickly away. "I can't operate." A flat, emotionless statement, an incontrovertible fact.

"I'm no expert, but isn't there a possibility that there's some sort of solution lying out there somewhere? And if nothing else, I'm sure you, of all people, will be able to come up with something."

"I'm not a scientist, Sidney. I can reattach limbs—I can't recreate them."

"Then maybe you should go back to school for a few years, learn something new. I'm supposed to encourage my patients to expand their horizons, after all." Hawkeye shook his head wordlessly, his face tight, pained, that not-Hawkeye look in his eyes, and Sidney decided he'd pushed it far enough for tonight. "What else did you and BJ talk about?"

"Nothing important."

Did I push him too far? Sidney worried. Did I lose him? "Why don't you tell me anyway?"

For a while, Hawkeye didn't say anything, his eyes dull, troubled; then slowly, softly, he began recounting the trivialities he and BJ had discussed, the commonplace topics—but at least they'd talked. And even more, Hawkeye mentioned the awkwardness he'd felt talking to BJ. "It wasn't the same," he said worriedly. "It was like we'd been away for a few years, and didn't really know each other anymore." He turned his eyes, the sad, questioning eyes of a confused child, up to Sidney. "How do I make that go away?"

"Keep talking to him," Sidney advised. "Talk about anything—weather, sports, music—just talk. Remind yourself that he's your best friend, and that you trust him. And if you ever want a more private place to talk to him, just tell someone from the horde of nurses and orderlies, and it'll be done. All right?"

"Yeah, all right. Are you leaving?"

"Is there something else you'd like to talk about?"

"No, no, go ahead…will BJ come back tomorrow?"

"I don't think I could keep him away," Sidney said, rising from his chair. "Sleep well, Hawkeye, and keep eating."

"Are you my doctor now?" Sidney smiled and started to walk away, but Hawkeye called him back: "Sidney—thanks. For…all the stuff you've done for me."

"Like you said: that's what they pay me for. And it's always good to help out a friend." That said, he turned and left his patient, softly reminding the orderly to keep a close watch on Hawkeye. There'd been that same look on Hawkeye's face, that haunting mix of desperation and peace, when Sidney had first arrived in Tokyo to see him, and there was no way to predict at any one moment what Hawkeye would do in the next. Just as there was no way of telling how far Hawkeye could be pushed before he reached 'too far', or what he would do when he came to 'too far'.

To Be Continued