Dear Helen,

It's over. The war, my R&R in Tokyo, this chapter of my life. Tomorrow, I'll be heading home. Home to a brand-new home. I think Richmond will be good. Linda is there, as you know, and I really look forward to seeing her, working together will be great. I wish I could be closer to you, though, but at least it will be easier to call now. And I'll come visit, I'll bring you Heath bars. And a hamster, Marshmallow II, haha.
There are so many things I miss already. BJ's big grin and stupid mustache. Colonel Potter's kind eyes. I miss the late shifts with Charles, he would always bring us a treat of some kind, something fancy I will probably never have again, but it was nice to just have those tiny moments with him.
I miss Pierce's… I miss Pierce. And stop it, Whitfield, I can hear you sing a little song about my booooyfrieeend from across the world. He is not. He is my friend and I miss him. I think he made me better. Korea made me better. That's a weird thing to say, but it's true. All of this has made me see things for what they are, it made me see me for who I am, made me understand what I want. I want to help people, I want to make a life for myself, I want a sense of control. That's not so bad, is it?
It's so stupid, though, I'm going home, but every time I think of the word home the first thing that pops into my mind is still our camp. That dirty, smelly, miserable place. Home.
Well, I guess that will stop once I get settled, and get my mind straight.

You know what? I still have a couple of hours to spend, I'm gonna go down to this cute little café I found. I'm gonna order lemonade and some kind of sticky pastry, I deserve that. I'm gonna watch the people in the street for a while, just sit still as they move around.

I'll call you as soon as I can, and I can't wait to see you.

Love,

Margaret

Margaret put the pen down, folded the letter, and put it in the envelope. Stupid, really, to write Helen one more time, Margaret would be back in the States before the letter had even made it halfway across the world, but she really wanted to post it before she left, and at least Helen would have one more letter with an exotic stamp on it. Maybe she would open it up and get the faintest whiff of Tokyo. And Margaret had come to depend on writing these letters, it had become a lifeline, yet another thing she had a hard time letting go of.

Margaret fanned herself with the envelope, the room was so very hot. A sun-drenched August-afternoon, and the city was boiling. She closed her eyes and thought of the air she soon would be breathing on the other side of the world. What would it feel like? What would it smell like? She had lived in many places, but nowhere else had the air felt like a creature, like it was alive, that was unique for Asia. It had been horrible a lot of times, neither of them had been prepared for how the weather would torment them. To be boiled alive under the scorching summer sun, when every piece of clothing you owned was soaked, the sweat stung your eyes and every movement felt like you were moving through molasses. When it felt like the crust of the earth was just inches thick, and the magma was reaching up for you. Or when the winter wind grabbed a hold of you, dug its claws in under coats and sweaters, down to your skin, to your marrow, turning you into a statue made of ice, one that would maybe thaw come spring.
Heat and cold and wind had sculpted them, wore them down to new shapes they hadn't expected. Another tribulation that had bound them closer together.
Margaret felt a sharp sting of melancholy, and the thread that still kept her tethered to camp stretched and pulled a little. She wouldn't experience that again, not share the torment of the summer sun or the winter wind with her friends.

She got off the bed and walked over to the open window. Wednesday afternoon, and the city was buzzing, humming with life and movement. Cars, bicycles, rickshaws, people going places.
So was she, soon enough.
She was gonna miss the city, she really was, the rhythm of Tokyo was quite addictive. Well, maybe she could come back some day. Or maybe not, maybe Asia was a closed chapter, reserved for the person she used to be, not the person she would become. The one standing still, the one in control.
That was okay.

She leaned out the window and took a deep breath. Exhaust fumes and humid heat radiating off the sidewalk, no scent of pretty yellow flowers. Maybe that scent could only be detected at the first light of dawn, in a secret little nook of reality, available only to those paying close enough attention. For those able to dwell in the moment between.
Margaret exhaled and smiled. Yes, for a few more hours she would just dwell in the moment. Everything was set and planned, nothing more to do now. Just the curtain call waiting to happen.

She could go to General Brixton's soirée tonight, if she wanted. Soirée, such a pretentious name for a group of rowdy people failing to use chopsticks while getting drunk on sake. That stuff gave you the worst hangovers, she had learned that the hard way a long time ago.
No, no soirée for her, no people sucking the marrow out of their last days on another continent, before obligations, work, family, and responsibilities took over once again. She had had enough of them. The red-faced men, getting louder and louder with each passing hour, whining about how war was hell, when so many of them had only experienced it from afar. The casualties nothing but statistics, just ink on paper. They hadn't seen the bodies, hadn't tried to put gruesome puzzles back together again, hadn't breathed in the molecules of shattered young men.
They hadn't seen the locals, left behind to deal with a land torn apart, deal with the losses of loved ones, the loss of everything.
The potbellied, pompous generals couldn't still smell the blood and the disinfectant; they couldn't still hear the choppers. She could.
She had spent way too much time of her R&R with them, the crowd she had once loved being a part of, right in the center of. She had been drawn to them all over again simply for the sense of familiarity, but they were all just poor substitutes for the people who were familiar for real.
The sleazy come-ons from men who knew her in another lifetime, the bad jokes she was supposed to laugh at, that whole game had lost its charm a long time ago, and she needed to breathe for a few hours. Stand still, she had been spun around too much, caught in a maelstrom, just spinning and moving ever since camp began to come down. And it would soon start up again, spinning her all the way across the world, soon the curtain would rise again, and she would make her entrance on a brand-new stage.

No, this last afternoon, and especially the last night, was just for her. Just for Margaret Houlihan, former Head Nurse at MASH 4077. That was something, that was for sure something.

She remembered standing at the window of another Tokyo hotel before it all began, her whole body filled with tiny bubbles of excitement, so eager for the whole experience to begin. So little was left of that person now, the one with her Class A uniform hanging crisp and waiting on the bathroom door, the one with her head filled with visions of all the heroic people she would get to help, to work with. All the pomp and circumstance she had heard her father talk about all her life; she would finally get to experience it firsthand.
Now, all that was left was someone still tethered to a dusty camp that wasn't even there anymore. Tethered to the people who indeed were heroic, each and every one in their own way, but not in the way her father had made her believe. No pomp and circumstance, just endless work, sights, and smells she could never have imagined.
Just tired and scared people doing what they could, giving every fiber of themselves for others. The glory washed away with blood from yet another broken teenager on the operating table.

All that was left was the essence of her, someone with a new way of seeing the world, a world that was full of shadows, gray zones and boundaries crossed. Someone with a head full of ghosts.

Yes, these last hours were to be spent in solitude. She wanted to be quiet, to sit in silence, watch the people on the street and think of her friends.
Was BJ watching Erin sleep? Maybe he was sitting quietly at her bedside, with a nightlight shaped like a moon casting friendly shadows on the wall, his breathing in synch with hers, her every movement like balm on his soul.
Maybe Colonel Potter was staying up late, sitting on the porch with Mildred, watching fireflies.
Charles was perhaps staying up late too, listening to his sister tell the tales of everything scandalous the upper crust of Boston had been up to, while swirling cognac in a crystal glass.
And Pierce, maybe he was laying in bed, down the hall from his dad, in the house with the wraparound porch the mist sometimes enveloped, and there once lived a family of badgers. Maybe the window was open, the ocean air cool against his skin, and he was breathing in the scent of salt and seaweed, feeling his childhood ocean clean the dust from his lungs. Clean the shadows from his mind.

Yes, she very much wanted to think about that, about all of them. Spend some time in the moment between, with the creature that was the Asian air pressing close against her, reminding her of what had been.

She wanted to spend one more night with the people closest to her heart, only them and no one else.

Her family.

Author's Note:

I am going to be completely honest; I'm writing this little end note with tears in my eyes. I am so emotional right now, so melancholy. And happy. This story has been a huge part of my life for almost a year, thinking, planning, writing, editing. And now it's out in the world.

It takes me back in time too. Some years ago, I wasn't doing great. I was going through a lot, and life just wasn't that much fun. Two of the things that truly gave me joy were watching MASH, and reading MASH-fanfiction. I could spend hour after hour reading my favorite stories over and over again, and I was just in awe that there were so many talented writers out there. I never thought I could write anything myself, though, I hadn't written anything since back in school. But one day, the idea for my first story, "Ghost", popped into my mind, and I grabbed a pen and a piece of paper and wrote the first sentence down. Then another one followed, and then another one.
And now, I have just published my fourth story here on AO3! Writing has given me so much joy, it feels like I have tapped into this big source of creativity that enriches my life so much, in so many ways.
Ever since I started reading MASH-fics, I often found myself thinking "I wish someone would write a 'Dear'-story for Margaret". Turns out I was that someone, and here it is. It took on much greater proportions than I could ever have imagined, and Margaret has been a companion for a long time now. She's been like a friend, a sister, and I honestly feel like I have processed a lot of my own issues through her, and digging deep into her psyche has been a tumultuous experience. I have laughed and I have cried with her on many occasions.

I wanna thank each and every one of you who have read this story, I am so grateful for every hit it got.

If you want to find out about my vision for what happens to Margaret and Hawkeye after Korea, check out my story "Moving Near the Edge at Night", it is a sequel of sorts to "Dear Helen", and ties in with some of the events mentioned here.
My other stories are "Ghost", as I mentioned, and "All Those Moments", they are other versions of Margaret's and Hawkeye's life after Korea, but have nothing to do with this one.

Again – from the bottom of my heart – thank you for having been on this journey with me!