Hey, guys! Here's the next chapter! Thank you for all the reviews! Loved all your suggestions. I don't want to give to much away about what I got planned but I don't think any of you will be disappointed. Well, I hope not anyway! Please keep reviewing and let me know what you think!

Enjoy!

Dreaming Reality

B.J was woken again by someone entering the tent but this time he knew it wouldn't be his wife and his heart broke just a little bit more.

"Oh, I didn't mean to wake you." Margaret told him. "I just thought I would bring you some lunch."

B.J looked at the tray in her hand and his stomach cramped at just the thought of eating anything. "I'm not really hungry."

"You hardly touched your breakfast, this morning..." She replied and moved closer to him. "You've got to eat...You got to keep your strength up."

"Margaret, I can't..." He shook his head.

"B.J." She sighed and sat beside. "Oh, B.J...I don't know what to do."

He looked at her. "You don't need to do anything."

"But I want to." She told him. "I want to help you."

"I appreciate it, Margaret but unless you can tell me this is all a mistake then there is nothing you can do."

"I can help you pack." She announced. "Klinger is working on getting you home right now...I can make sure you're ready to leave straight away."

"What if I don't want to go home?" He asked, quietly, staring at his hands.

She frowned at him. "What are you talking about? You have to go home?"

"Go home to what? An empty house?"

"To Erin."

"She doesn't need me...She needs her Mom!"

"She needs to her Daddy too!" Margaret gripped onto his arm to stop him from standing up. "Now more then ever."

"I don't know if can do it, Margaret." He whispered. "I've forgotten how to be a Father...I don't know what food she likes or dislikes...I don't know what bedtime story will put her to sleep...I don't know anything about her!"

"Of course you do!" She insisted. "You're just scared but you'll be fine! I know it!"

"How do you know it?"

"Because I've seen you with the children that get brought into here." She answered. "You're so good with them and they all love you!"

B.J wouldn't look at her, his eyes glued to his wedding ring.

"B.J, if there anyone who can do this then it's you." She told him. "It's not fair that you have to but you do have to."

When he did look up at her a few tears fall down his face. "Erin deserve more then just me."

"Oh, B.J! Never underestimate the bond between a Father and a Daughter." She put an arm around his shoulders. Normally, she would debate with herself, whether she should be showing affection to someone who had a lower rank then her, especially a male but this time she didn't care. B.J was a good friend and he was hurting; she wanted to help him.

"Peg would like you, y'know." B.J said after as he pulled back, wiping away the tears. "You two would have got along brilliant."

"Really?" She asked, a little surprised.

He nodded. "You both have the same sense of humor."

She smiled slightly. "Tell me more about her."

"There's not a lot to tell." He shrugged. "She the kindest, the smartest, beautiful person I've ever met."

"How did you meet?" She questioned.

"Her Grandmother and my Grandmother grew up together and were best friends...Peg's Mother moved to Oklahoma when she got married and whenever they came to San Francisco for a visit, our families always had a get together..." He explained. "We always got a long really well but one year when we were 15 and Peg was staying with her Grandma for the whole summer and we became closer...We started dating but then she had to go home...By the time the next summer came around, her Grandma got sick and Peg asked her parents if she could move down to help take care of her...She ended up transferring to the same school as me and We haven't been apart since, until I was drafted."

"Oh B.J." Margaret placed a hand over her heart. "That's the most romantic story, I think I've ever heard."

He pushed himself to his feet and started to pace around the small space between his and Hawkeye's tent. He kept clenching his hands together tightly at his sides as he tried to keep a hold on his emotion.

"Y'know, my friend Leo, who was the best man at our wedding used to tease us...He used to call us the Prince and Princess of Mill Valley and said that we were living a fairytale..." B.J told her. "This is not a fairytale ending... and this should not be our ending, we were meant to grow old together."

Margaret stood and reached out to touch him but he kept moving.

"We had our future planned out and then this god forsaking war happened," he continued. "And everything got blown to hell."

"I know its not what you want to hear right now but you have done a lot of good while you've been here." Margaret informed him.

"Why because I'm surgeon?" He asked, finally stopping to look at her. "If it wasn't me, then there would have been some other doctor here."

"Yeah but he might not have been as good as you." She replied. "But that's what I'm talking about... You've done a lot of good for this camp, for these people...for me."

"Margaret," he sighed and dropped back down on the cot. "I appreciate..."

"I'm serious!" She insisted. "Before you and Colonel Potter came, the only friend I had was Frank Burns...Do you know how lonely I was?

He could remember when he first arrived at the camp and the Major Houlihan he had met then was different to the Margaret Houlihan he knew now.

"The thing is B.J, you've become a very good friend to me." She sat beside him and took his hand. "And I'm so sad that you're leaving but I'm even sadder about the reason why you're going home...I'm going to miss you."

"I'm going to miss you too." He whispered.

"I'm really going to miss your pranks," she told him and nudge his shoulder with hers, teasingly. "I know that you're the mystery prankster."

He looked at her in surprised but when he opened his mouth to say something, she held up her hand.

"And don't try to deny it."

"How did you figure it out?" He asked.

He had played a lot of pranks during his time in Korea; a lot of the time he had help from Hawkeye and sometimes Margaret and even Charles. There were times when he had pull jokes and didn't hide the fact that it was him. Then there were other times when he worked alone and left no trace that it was him behind the joke.

"When you filled Frank's bunker with water...He told me that you and Sidney Freedmen help him out of the water..." She smiled at the memory. "I had thought that it was Sidney behind it all, since the jokes had pretty much started around the time he arrived but then a few days after he felt, someone put tiny holes in Franks mug, so it would leak when he drank out of it...So, that just left you."

B.J could not help but smile when he picture Frank's face as he tried to drink his morning coffee that day.

"Didn't Frank work it out?"

"Are you kidding? He believed that the Chinese had sneaked into camp, filled up his bunker and shouted Air Raid in an attempt to drown American Soldiers."

"You're not serious?" He stared at her and then shook his head. "I'm sorry but that man had more then one screw loose... How did you put up with him so long."

She shrugged. "I used to believe that he was the kind of man I wanted to be with."

He turned a little so he was facing her. "Are we talking about the same Frank Burn?"

She sighed a little. "Like I said, it was a lonely place."

"Yeah..." B.J agreed, quietly. Even though he had made some truly good friends, none of them could fill the place that was left when he had to leave Peg and Erin back in the states.

"But then you turned up..." She smiled softly when he frowned at her. "I heard the nurses talking about you a few days after you arrived...how handsome you are...how kind and funny...I assumed that Pierce had another buddy to go and hit on my nurses with but then something happened."

"What?"

"You walked into the Mess tent and they invited you to join... They flirted with you but you didn't even notice...Then one of them asked about where you from, straight away you whipped out our photos and told them about your family back home..." She placed a hand on top of his. "I wanted that...I wanted a man who would talk and smile about me, like you did about Peg."

"I did notice but I just didn't care."

"She really was a lucky a woman." She gave his hand a squeeze. "There's not many men that can stay as faithful and devoted as you..."

He pulled his hand away and stood up, turning his back to her.

"B.J?" She also stood up. "Did I say something wrong?"

He shook his head and stepped over the still but this time, he did pour himself.

"I don't really feel like talking any more." He told her, wincing as the gin burned his throat.

"Oh..." she said in surprised, she thought he was starting to open up to her. "Well, if there anything I can get you?"

"No, I'm fine."

"Well, I'll be in my tent if you need anything."

Margaret waited for a few seconds but when she got no response, she decided that maybe she should give him some space.

When he heard the door closing behind the Major, he refilled his glass. He stared down at the clear liquid before turning and throwing the glass across the tent, causing it to smash into the door.

He wanted to hit out and break anything and everything that was in reach but he didn't have the energy. He sank to the floor on his knees and cried because he was never going to make love to his wife ever again and the last woman he did make love to, wasn't her.

TBC

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