I used to tell people I don't feel a thing, I don't allow myself to. I used to tell myself that, over and over again. I made my skin hard, cast myself in ice and iron for protection.
It was a lie, though, I feel everything, always have, and I can't even hide it anymore. In fact, when I feel the iron, the ice, close in, it scares me more than anything.
She stared at the bloody fabric.
Her arm was stretched out, ready to throw her bloody scrubs in the hamper, but her hand didn't let go.
All the blood.
Ken's blood.
Blood of Ken.
His name was Ken.
He had laughed when he was brought in. Joked. The last of the batch, he could wait, it wasn't that serious. Until it was. A geyser of blood, making Kellye gasp, Hunnicutt swear and then it was over. Everything was red and everything was over.
His name was Ken, and he had winked at Margaret in a parody of a flirty face, asked if he could step outside for a smoke before they put him under.
"What do you think my answer is gonna be?"
"I think you're gonna say yes, and also come with me and maybe fool around a little, because you have never seen such a handsome mug in your life and is actually quite smitten."
She forced her hand to let go and let the bloody scrubs fall. What was life just seconds ago, warm and pumping, was now cold, drying fast on the white fabric.
His name was Ken.
The taps were hard to turn, and the water was too hot. It hurt her hands and turned her skin a dark pink, but she kept her hands under anyway. Scrubbed harder. There was a numbness creeping into her, something cold was taking over, and the scalding water held it at bay. Until she turned the tap off.
The wind hit her face as she stepped outside, blowing dust all over the compound.
His name was Ken, and he would never get dust in his eyes again.
The dust formed twisters, shapes. Over in the corner was a tall one, moving, billowing, beckoning. Maybe he was standing there, having a smoke after all.
One for the road.
Margaret rubbed her lips together, felt the dust that had gotten stuck in her lipstick. The lipstick she wore even though no one could see it under her mask, but she liked how it made her feel. She could rub her lips together and remember that not everything was blood and destruction, there were still beautiful things in this world. Things that made you feel human. The shade was called 'Tango Pink', it was a happy color, not red, not like blood.
She could smell the blood. She always could, under the lotions and the perfume she knew she used too much of. Under the new shampoo she bought in Seoul that smelled like green apples and crisp spring mornings. Under the scented soap that smelled like roses and lazy summer Sundays and was worn down to a small nub. Good til the last fragment of fragrance that made you think of other things than the red stickiness that covered everything. It was always there, though, underneath it all, there was always the blood. Like the particles from every wound in the OR had coated the inside of her nose with a sheer film. So she would always remember each and every one of them, always carry them with her.
She reached up and grabbed a strand of hair, held it under her nose, and inhaled. No apples, only copper. Iron. She couldn't feel the strand of hair between her fingers. She tugged at it. Nothing. She reached her hand into her sleeve and pinched. Her fingers felt big and strange, and she couldn't even tell if she had grabbed skin or not.
His name was… For a second her mind went blank. She searched for it, the name, but it kept slipping away, like the last sliver of a dream, fading out of existence as soon as you tried to catch it.
Ken. His name was Ken.
The mess tent was full of people. Everyone at her table sat close together, like they always did, it seemed like everyone always craved physical closeness.
She wasn't even sure how she had ended up there, had just followed in the backwaters of a group of nurses running by, laughing as the wind tried to take their hats. Their voices, talking, laughing, sounded like a babbling brook. No, they sounded larger, like a river. It had swept her up, pressed in on her. So close, but very far away, like the sound came through ice, strange and distorted.
Once, back in another lifetime, she had lived close to a lake. In the winter when the ice lay thick, the lake sang. Moaned. Sometimes, there had been shots under the ice. Like bullets fired, rolling through the frozen waters. And sometimes, the lake sang. Like big creatures, whales maybe, or something ancient, was moving under there, singing to each other, telling each other stories about the great depths and the wonders that dwelled down there. It had been strange and beautiful.
"Hey, Margaret!" Pierce was waving something in front of her face. "Hey Margaret, I found a wishbone. A bone made of magic!"
"Did you find it in your pants," she asked, but wasn't even sure her mouth was moving, that her throat made any sounds.
The murmur of people, the living, breathing, pulsating people pressed even closer. There was a thrumming in her ears, against the numbness of her skin.
She couldn't feel herself. Couldn't catch her own thoughts in the river of others. It was like being tossed around in a maelstrom, like she was caught under the ice. She couldn't tell where she ended, and the next person started. It was terrifying.
She stood up quickly, too quickly, felt eyes on her. Her own eyes met Pierce's, and she opened her mouth, wanting to say something, ask for help. But she couldn't, of course she couldn't, even if her mouth had worked, all her words were lost, lost under the ice somewhere. Lost in the depth, among the ancient singing creatures, beautiful and strange and indifferent to what was going on at the surface.
But she tried, oh how she tried to make him understand anyway.
And he did.
She hadn't been back in her tent for more than five minutes when there was a knock at the door, and there he was. Arms crossed to keep the wind out, scarf wrapped around his neck, and a question in his eyes. She backed away from the door, and he stepped inside, closing it behind him without letting his gaze leave hers.
She held her hands out to him.
"I can't feel," she said, her voice sounding strange and hollow in her head, "I don't even know if I'm here."
That explained nothing, not really, but it was true, it was all there was.
He walked up to her and grabbed her hands, pressed them against his chest.
"I feel you," he said, "you're all here."
"I don't know why… I… I wasn't like this."
The words made no sense, and she couldn't catch the right ones, didn't even know what she wanted to say. It felt like she was dreaming, his hands squeezing hers were big and hers felt tiny, like she was stuck deep inside herself and couldn't reach the surface.
"I know. Neither of us were."
She looked up at him and met his eyes. They were small and tired. Worried. He was really worried about her, that was something that could happen now. Not before, not when she was cast in ice and iron, and the two of them were on different sides of a border she couldn't even remember anymore, but then the ice had begun to thaw. It was supposed to stay that way.
Her gaze melted into his, his eyes were like small puddles of warmth, a glimpse of the cerulean sea in a world of gray and red, of dust and blood. Blood growing cold and hard on what was once soft, white fabric. She wished she could step into his warmth, into cerulean waves that would thaw her from within. She drew her hands free from his, reached up and pulled his head down towards her. Up close, she could see tiny speckles of lavender in his eyes, like a field of violets in the cerulean sea. The dark shadows under his eyes were like tide pools, though, deep and secretive.
She stood up on her toes and kissed him, wanting the warmth inside of him to be hers too. He kissed her back, his lips was dry, and she could feel the cold wind on his cheeks. She wanted to make them warm, chase the cold away, make both of them warm.
He drew back, now there was a shade of 'Tango Pink' on his lips too, placed his hands on her shoulders, another question in his eyes. She moved her own hands in under his jacket, under his shirt, pulled his t-shirt up from where it was tucked into his pants. She needed to feel his skin, his warm, living skin, the blood pumping underneath it.
"Margaret, are you sure you want this?" He sounded a bit out of breath, he grabbed her chin and the ocean wave of his gaze bore into her.
She nodded. Yes, yes, she wanted this. Wanted to feel him, feel herself against him. Just feel. They kissed again, and it was life. The opposite of blood drying on white fabric, blood being mopped up from the floor, blood leaving a body with a speed that shouldn't even be possible. The wave of him erased the thought of how thin the line between living, breathing and just a body truly was.
They kept each other's gaze almost the entire time, except when she pressed her face close to his skin, breathing him in. The scent of army soap and the last traces of aftershave. And underneath, she found the scent that was just him, the pure essence of him. Like fresh air. Like rain on the first leaves of spring. Like salt, like a breeze from the cerulean sea.
His tasted like salt too, everything about him was like a wind blowing in from the sea, where the ancient creatures sang their songs about the blue and the dark and the freedom underneath.
He moved slowly, carefully, except when she told him not to be careful anymore. He waited for her, made sure she was there with him the whole time, he didn't let the cold maelstrom carry her away, made sure she was engulfed in the same wave.
Afterward, he grabbed her face with warm hands, and leaned his forehead against hers.
Her skin felt like hers again, like she was close to the surface. She could feel the blood course through her, warmth seeping into all the places he had touched her.
It hadn't been just for fun, it had been beyond stress relief, but she didn't have the words for what it had been.
She was able to find other words, though.
"His name was Ken," she whispered and the pain that shot through her was sharp, making her gasp, but it also soothed.
Finally, with his warm breath against her face and the wind moaning outside, she began to cry.
Author's Note:
Margaret of the earlier seasons puts up such a strong facade. Declares how she is just fine, nothing happened, I don't feel a thing. But we all know she feels so much, we see it in her eyes. So she wears an armour of ice and iron to protect herself, be the ice queen she claims to be.
Here, I wanted to show how far she has come, how much she has melted, let her walls down. The ice is not a protection anymore, it scares her. And I wanted for her to be able to ask for help. Of course, this is still Margaret Houlihan we're talking about, so she does in in her own kind of backwards way. Since both her and Hawkeye are very physical persons, I figured, this was the kind of comfort she would feel comfortable with asking of him, and getting.
I aso wanted this whole chapter to feel a bit surreal and dreamlike.