Thank you all for participating in my little "poll" and for your wonderfully overwhelming support; I'm going to put my idea into action, and I'll explain it to you once we get there (which will be in a few more chapters).

- In Love And War -
Chapter Twenty-Five: Drowning

I closed my eyes, the hopelessness threatening to overwhelm me. I thought I'd had it under control, but this latest news… "How did it happen?" I asked softly.

Trapper looked utterly miserable, facing the wall of Sherman's office and holding tightly onto it as if he were about to fall, his forehead pressed against the wood. He turned his head in order to look at me, his face pale and drawn, eyes reddened. "I left for a minute, just a fucking minute—I had to use the latrine. Klinger was outside the door the whole time. Margaret musta…" He had to pause, take a deep, calming breath. "She musta left some of her peroxide layin' around, and he got his hands on it. Klinger heard him, but…" He turned his face back to the wall.

"Is he stable now?"

"He didn't ingest enough of it to do any serious damage," Sherman said from behind his desk, holding his head in his hands, "and it was diluted. Shouldn't be any lasting effects—at least," he added with a pointed look at me, "none that we can fix."

They'd done what they could—the rest of it fell to me. Wonderful. "Is he awake?"

"He should be by now. Radar got his hands on a tent, so we moved Hawkeye in there—nothing in it but the bed, but…I had them put restraints on him." This said with an apologetic look at Trapper's back, but the captain seemed to be absorbed in boring a hole through the wall with his eyes—if he stared hard enough, maybe he'd be able to see through it, to the tent where Hawkeye lay now, restrained and under guard, riding out the aftereffects of peroxide poisoning, alone.

I sighed, pushing myself away from the table I'd been leaning on, and started for the door. "Then I'd best go talk to him."

"You want me to come with you?" Trapper asked softly, hopefully—though whether he hoped I'd refuse or accept, I wasn't sure.

"No, I think it'd be best if I went alone. I think you might…exacerbate the situation." He looked like he was going to get angry, so I explained quickly, "You're too close to him, Trapper. You can't handle anything related to Hawkeye dispassionately. And I have the feeling he won't tell me anything unless we're alone—you know how he likes his secrets."

He nodded absently, and didn't argue. That was good—I wanted to save all my arguing for Hawkeye. I turned to Sherman, asked him softly if anyone had told BJ; he shook his head grimly, and I asked him not to do so yet, and to keep anyone who might tell him away—I wanted to be the one to tell BJ.

There was nothing, now, to keep me from going to Hawkeye.

I didn't want to go. I didn't want to look into his eyes again, the eyes of a friend, and see someone I didn't know, someone I didn't want to know. I didn't want to hear his list of reasons for downing the bottle of hydrogen peroxide, the litany of ways the world would be better off if he weren't in it; didn't want to have to refute each of those ways, to take him through an It's a Wonderful Life-like scenario, to engage in endless philosophical discussions until my head ached and I was left with my own desire to down some peroxide just to escape the melancholy that always tailed after Hawkeye. I didn't want to know what was so terrible that it could break such a strong, vibrant spirit as Hawkeye's, because then I would have to face it, look at it and not allow myself to be broken; and I wasn't sure I was strong enough to face it. I didn't want to go. I had to go.

He was lying in the exact center of the big VIP bed, arms spread slightly to accommodate the restraints around his wrists, staring up at the ceiling. He didn't move when I entered and walked to the wooden chair that had been placed at the side of the bed, but he said softly, "I'm playing connect-the-dots with the flies on the ceiling. So far I've made a bunny and Santa Clause."

"Why did you do it, Hawkeye?" I asked softly, reasonably.

"Because there aren't enough of them to make a naked woman." He turned his head to look at me, his mouth smiling but his eyes blank. "Oh, you mean why the other thing?" I nodded, and he turned his face back up to the ceiling. "You gave me the idea for it. You said I should just put the whole world aside and work on fixing mine. So I did."

"You wanted to fix it with hydrogen peroxide?"

"To each his own."

I stared at him for a long time, at the man who looked like Hawkeye and even tried to sound and act like him, but was not Hawkeye in so many ways, too many to count. Finally, softly, I asked, "What changed, Hawkeye? What happened?"

"Sidney, I'm past caring. I told you, I'm cracked. Broken. Numb. It doesn't matter anymore."

"It matters to me."

He turned towards me again, surprise flickering across his face. "Why?" he asked blankly, sounding patently confused.

I almost smiled at the innocent, childlike confusion. "I, like many people in this camp alone, happen to care about you. I have a vested interest in seeing that you remain in this world, because your very life makes the world a little brighter. You give hope to these hopeless people just by living. Can't you see that?"

Eyes back up to the ceiling, but I could see them filling slowly with tears. "It doesn't matter anymore."

"Why? Tell me why, Hawkeye. Please." I didn't tell him that if I knew what was wrong, I would be able to help him—until I was sure that statement was true, I wasn't going to say it.

His eyes closed, and he bit his lower lip, pain in every line of his body—he was not unfeeling, far from it. He just couldn't handle the strength of what he was feeling. "It hurts," he whimpered.

"What does?"

"I do. Everything hurts, and I just can't take it anymore." A tear slipped down into his hair. "It hurts too much. I—I feel like I'm drowning, and…I can, I can see the surface, I can see the sun above me, and I know that if I kick my legs I can break free, but there's…there's something around my legs and it's pulling me down, and I can't fight it, I—my arms don't work, and it's dragging me down deeper and deeper—" A ragged sob burst from him, the tears flowing freely. "God, Sidney—I'm losing my mind, and there's nothing I can do about it!"

"You can do something, Hawkeye—you have to. I'll help you if I can, but…you have to help yourself."

He was sobbing softly, his eyes squeezed tightly shut. "I can't—I can't!"

"Why?"

A whisper, a frightened child: "I'm scared."

I reached out to wrap my fingers around his, and he responded with a crushing grip, a drowning man who's sensed his salvation. "I'm here, Hawkeye. Let me help you."

He nodded jerkily, took a moment to compose himself; I busied myself loosening his restraints—I needed him to trust me, and that was impossible while he was tied down like a wild animal. He rubbed distractedly at his wrists as I sat back down, and then turned to look at me. "If I tell you," he whispered, eyes wide and scared, but I could see in them that he trusted me, "you have to promise not to tell anyone."

"I specialize in secrets."

He rearranged himself to a more comfortable position, sitting up straighter, avoiding my eyes. He finally glanced at me and murmured, "It's big, Sidney. Bad."

"I'm not here to pass judgement."

"Right," he said with a nod that was probably meant to bolster his courage. He closed his eyes again, tilting his head back against the pillows. "BJ…" A chocked noise came from his throat.

"Is it about BJ?" I asked gently.

A wry laugh. "It's all about BJ."

"Tell me," I encouraged.

"I…" A pause, and then the words came in a rush: "I love him. Loved him."

It really wasn't as surprising as it should have been. I'd seen much stranger things, and if it was true what they said—that politics make strange bedfellows—one could argue that war was the greatest of politics.

He'd opened his eyes to look at me, anticipating the judgement I'd promised not to pass, the condemnation, the disgust. But I only nodded in understanding, and it encouraged him to go on.

"I was stupid enough to…to tell him, and stupid enough to believe when he said my stupid feelings were reciprocated. Romantic that I am, I started thinking—you know, about what it'd be like after the war. He's married and he has a kid, but…I just, I got this picture in my head, of a little house in Crabapple Cove, near the ocean so we could watch the sun rise…a big yard, with a little stream or a pond…a dog for him and a cat for me…"

"That sounds nice," I said sincerely, almost made hopeful at the dreamy contentedness in his voice. That vanished quickly enough, though, as did the small, genuine smile that had curved his lips.

"But it seems the shell knocked some sense into him, since he's decided it was all a mistake. He no longer wishes to see me. Thus, I am bereft, empty, and uncaring enough to want a way out, and swallowing peroxide was the most easily available way to achieve that."

"But it didn't work," I said softly.

A grim smile passed across his face. "No. It didn't. So here I am, bereft, empty, broken, numb, and with stomach pains. It's amazing what medicine can do these days, but—unless I'm mistaken, and, please, tell me if I am, I hope to God I am—there's no medicine to fix a broken heart." He rubbed at his face, laughing hollowly. "I sound like a teenage girl who's been dumped for the first time." He turned his eyes to me. "Well, go on. Tell me it'll pass. Tell me it won't hurt as much as time goes by. I'll get over it, I just have to ride it out now. There are plenty of other fish in the sea. Tell me it wouldn't've worked anyway—against God's will, after all, Sodom and Gomorrah and all that. Degeneracy. Perversion." Eyes back to the ceiling, and a painful swallow. "I can't feel it now, Sidney…right now, it doesn't hurt. But it will, and…I know I won't be able to handle it once it starts hurting again. I…I can't face it, Sidney. I'm not strong enough."

"I'll help you through it, Hawkeye," I promised, taking his hand again. He was the sort of person that needed human contact to remind him that he was real, that life wasn't all just a nightmare. "Just tell me what to do."

He turned his face back to me. "I…need to know why," he whispered.

"I'll go talk to him now." I paused. "Unless you want me to stay…?"

"No," he murmured, shaking his head. "I'll be fine."

"Do you want me to send Trapper in? He'd like to see you."

He turned his face away. "No. I…I can't face him yet. Not yet."

I stood up and rested my hand on his shoulder, said softly, "You're stronger than you think, Hawkeye."

He smiled weakly. "If you say so." He crossed his arms over his stomach and closed his eyes, the brief glimpse of the "normal" Hawkeye gone, leaving its grim, unfamiliar shadow in its place.