A brief thank you to Olive Drab for the thought of Hawkeye being treated as a chocolate bar. The rest of you will understand in a second, because it was just too good an idea to pass up.
- In Love And War -
Chapter Seventeen: Fade to Black
"So," I said slowly, carefully, wanting to make sure I had it right, "you're friends now?"
BJ and Trapper looked at each other, nodded, shrugged, and Trapper said, "Something like that."
"More like we've come to a truce. You two will remain best friends, and I won't interfere with that; you and I will…whatever…and he won't interfere with us."
"It's simple, and easy to remember."
I looked back and forth between them. They were sitting together on Trapper's cot, facing me on mine—they were within two feet from each other and not fighting, which was the really amazing part. And they both sounded honest, sincere—sounded like they meant what they were saying. If they said they'd made peace, who was I to doubt them? It was what I wanted, wasn't it? Yes, it was. So smile; be happy; thank them, and get on with your merry life. "Okay…" I said, and I didn't sound nearly as certain or confident as I'd hoped to. I'd gotten so used to them bickering and fighting…this just seemed wrong. "I just…I feel a little bit like a candy bar."
Trapper snickered. "Whaddya mean?"
"You do resemble chocolate," BJ said with a smile.
"You're—you're breaking off pieces of me, the pieces you each want, and…and I don't want to be shared, portioned out like a—like a bar of chocolate!"
"What do you want?" BJ asked seriously, his head tilted slightly to the side like a curious puppy.
I scrubbed my hands over my face. I don't know what I want was the first thing that came to mind, but I went with the second thing: "I want you two to be friends with each other and with me. And if you can't be friends, then at least be friendly or pretend to be friends. No more fighting—over me, or over anything else. And don't share me—no plans or routines on when either of you 'gets me'—which, by the way, will get you a poke in the eye if I ever hear something like that again—I get to decide who I spend time with and when. I'm not a candy bar or a toy for you two to share."
They were both silent for a while; then BJ nodded and said, "Okay. That's fair."
"It…it is?" I stammered, surprised. I'd been expecting them to argue, or at least to say that they hadn't been treating me like a prize to win…but they had been, and they knew it. It would only have made me angry if they'd argued. It was good to have two friends who knew me better than I knew myself.
"I think so," Trapper agreed.
"You're entitled to some terms, and those are fair enough."
"Should we shake on it?" Trapper suggested, and BJ agreed that it seemed like a good idea. They crossed their arms to shake each other's hands and extend one hand to me; I stared for a minute or twelve, and then finally extended my hands, clasping one each of theirs, and we all shook firmly.
"Now that that's done," BJ said cheerfully, standing up, "let's go—breakfast is getting cold."
"Or getting away," Trapper muttered, but he followed BJ to the door, leaving me and my spinning head to bring up the rear.
Igor was back to serving food, since BJ and Trapper had finished their week of servitude, and so I once again sat sandwiched between the two of them, still confused, meekly sniffing my food while they chatted cheerfully over my head. I was almost glad when Potter stepped up to the head of the table with a gloomy, "I've got bad news, boys. Fighting's started up again, and most of it's near the 8063rd. They're getting flooded with casualties again, and they need help. Pierce, I know you'd just love to volunteer, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to say no. McIntyre, Hunnicutt, since you're both still on my black list, I'm sending you."
"Both of us?" Trapper exclaimed, looking alarmed. "Colonel—"
"Don't argue!" Potter barked. "You're going, and that's final! And if I hear one bad report about either of you, you're both going on report! Got it?"
"Got it," they both mumbled.
"You leave A-SAP, with Nurses Graham and Baker. Move!"
Muttering apologies to me, they both jumped up and hurried from the tent with Potter hot on their heels. I finished eating, managing to clear and calm my head a little with the sudden peace and quiet now surrounding me, before wandering outside. The nurses and a few corpsmen were packing a jeep with some supplies, and BJ and Trapper were being lectured by Potter.
"…some shelling, and the fighting could come closer. They can't bug out, because they're getting too many wounded—they need to stay right where they are. Just…watch yourselves, boys. We want you back in one piece."
"The easiest way to ensure that would be to not send us," BJ suggested. He was looking a little pale—this would be the first time he was sent out of the camp to help, and add to that that he was moving closer to the fighting…I couldn't say I blamed him for being a little pale.
Potter glared sternly, but chose not to acknowledge the comment. "I don't want you two making asses of yourselves like Pierce did—show Sam Harbourn that we don't all have our thumbs in our ears and our feet in our mouths here at the 4077th."
"Give my love to Uncle Sam," I said cheerily, and Potter turned to glare at me while Trapper smirked and BJ smiled tightly.
Klinger stepped up with a salute, nearly knocking off his wide-brimmed, flowered hat. "Everything's packed except the captains, sir."
"Good," Potter said, and gave Trapper and BJ a final glare. "Behave. Now, move out!"
BJ sketched a quick salute—he was still doing that every once in a while, and I'd almost come to think of it as adorable—and he and Trapper climbed into the jeep, Trapper driving; BJ, gentleman that he is, gallantly offered the passenger seat to Nurse Graham, who tittered something about how polite he was, and I felt an insane surge of jealousy. You and I will…whatever…, which, as far as I was concerned, translated into I'm yours, take me at the soonest possible moment, but don't worry, because I'll be yours forever—how dare Carrie Graham even look at him—he, BJ, my Beej—like that? The insane jealousy was followed by an insane urge to go slap the woman and stake my claim on BJ in some public and intensely humiliating way. Somehow, I managed to keep control of myself, and twiddled my fingers at BJ when he turned in his seat to wave goodbye to me. I stood there even after the jeep had roared out of sight, smiling slightly, with a single thought swirling through my head: He's mine…he's mine…he's mine…
(AN: BJ POV. Wow—all caps there.)
We passed through checkpoint after checkpoint, warned each time that we were driving towards the fighting when anyone with half a brain would have been driving away from it; Trapper, who may have had half a brain, kept driving us towards it. Without Hawkeye around, we let the act drop—there was no point in pretending to be good old chums when the only one who needed to believe it was far away, back behind the trail of dust. None of us spoke much—there was nothing to say, until the shells started going off all around us, and then it was screaming from the nurses, and me shouting for Trapper to pull over, and him shouting back that there was nowhere to hide even if he did, and that it was easier to just drive on through, the North Koreans couldn't hit a speeding jeep if their lives depended on it. Since it was our lives that depended on the jeep not getting blown up, I was still rather fond of the idea of leaping out and cowering in the nearest hole. The shelling didn't stop until we were about ten minutes away from the 8063rd, and I was sure I'd gone deaf, my ears ringing, my whole body covered in dust, a painful bruise on my shoulder where a big tree branch, flung into the air by an explosion, had nearly knocked me sideways into Nurse Baker's lap. We could still hear shelling in the very near distance as we pulled into the 8063rd, and I sincerely hoped that this was as close to the real fighting as I was ever going to get.
The place was packed with wounded; the Chief Nurse, who looked utterly relieved to see us, dragged Trapper off to scrub in, and asked if I wouldn't mind helping with the wounded in the compound—a mix of triage and pre-op and pure hell, with all the screaming and shelling and wounded dying before I could get to them. I would have thought it almost pointless, if it weren't for the few kids that made it into O.R. and had the chance to live.
"Doctor!" someone shouted, and I spun around, looking for the owner of the voice: finally saw him, a corpsman, kneeling next to a single wounded man in the shade of the Officer's Club. I noticed—crazily, pointlessly—that the O-Club here didn't have an "and Enlisted" sign nailed to it, and then I wanted to scream at myself, because why the hell did that matter, there were people dying on every side, shells exploding left and right, coming closer and closer, and more wounded pouring in every second, and more kids, innocent kids, dying before I even knew they were there.
A shell to my left; I dropped down to the ground, crawled the rest of the way to the corpsman and the wounded soldier. I lifted the pressure bandage, and blood spurted, covering my face and chest, and I shoved the blood-soaked bandage back down, adding the pressure of my own hands, and told the corpsman at my side to go get someone, anyone, to help carry the litter, this kid was top priority, he needed to be operated on now if he had any chance of living—
A deafening boom, and I couldn't even hear the ringing in my ears anymore; a hand grabbed at my arm, and I twisted around just as the world fell on me, and everything went black.
(cruelly…) TBC