Archive of Our Own

It’s a sunny and mild September 15th, 1952, when you step out of the shaded officer’s club and into the warpath of one Dr. B.F Pierce. 

Pierce (“Hawkeye. Don’t let a little confusion throw you, Captain.”) is all motion and focused distraction. In the ten seconds you’ve known him, he already stands in stark contrast to the pressed suits and straight backs you’ve seen of army life so far. You think that this may be someone worth knowing. 

Pierce and the smaller guy, O’Reilly (“Oh, uh, everyone just calls me Radar, sir.”), are talking over and through each other, nervousness and agitation bumping heads before continuing ‘round and ‘round, and you’re struggling to keep up. 

You duck your head forward a bit, trying to get Pierce’s attention. “Can I help?”

He sidesteps your attempt at eye contact with ease, prickly energy not lessening a single degree as his gaze darts around the outpost. “No, no, no. Forget it.” 

Pierce invites you both back into the club for a drink, and you spend the whole time answering questions and playing verbal catch-up. Two men come flying in, throwing sloppy punches as they careen right into your table. Pierce and O’Reilly drift gracefully out of the way with barely a glance as you narrowly avoid a flailing fist straight to the face. 

You can’t help but feel that the moment summarizes this war perfectly. 

Now a jeep has apparently been stolen and the tension somehow ratchets up a few more notches. You don’t see what the big deal is; a jeep nicked by army personnel is still a jeep in the army’s possession, but O’Reilly looks like he’s about to vibrate out of his skin, so what do you know. Neither man has made much direct eye contact with you yet, but they seem to have their own problems going on so you follow along as best as you can and accept that this may just be your life for the next few months. 

“Rudyard Kipling.” 

Now Pierce is looking at you, and you kind of wish he wasn’t. A strange, unknowable parade of emotions marches across his face in quick succession. It’s oddly intense and doesn’t seem to match the - frankly silly - situation you all have found yourselves in, but then the tightness eases from around his eyes, and his shoulders drop a couple inches from where they've been strung up around his ears. He gives you a little half-smile. You honestly don’t know what to think of it, but you smile back. 

And then it’s onto a jeep, and into a war zone.

It’s September 30th, 1952 and you’ve woven yourself into the seams of the 4077th like you’ve been there from the very beginning. 

It’s horrible, frankly. War is hell, and all that. You had breezed through basic training, so you'd had the gall to think you could shoulder whatever awaited you a mere three miles from frontlines. That arrogance, that naivete, eats at you now. 

You’re exhausted. There’s a dull ache in your lower back that’s become a near constant, and you’re wildly out of your element. Nausea beats a steady march up your throat every time you step foot into the O.R., and you’ve just performed your second amputation in as many weeks. You can barely stand to meet the eyes of the soldiers in pre-OP; waiting their turn, waiting for their buddies’ turn, waiting to be thrown right back on the battlefield. 

It's heavy. It’s terrible.

These people you’re working with, though?  They keep this war from tripping over terrible and falling headlong into unbearable. Potter’s army-breed competence; Radar’s unique mix of backbone, kindness, and homespun Iowa naivety; Houlihan’s no-nonsense compassion and razor-sharp wariness; Father Mulcahy's soft tones and softer faith; Klinger’s desperation and wit. Virtues, flaws, and all, they’re great. 

Well, you could do without Frank Burns, but no war is perfect. 

You were right about Hawkeye though, that first day that already feels like a lifetime ago. He’s a person worth knowing and you two have been practically attached at the hip since that first disastrous jeep ride. 

That's not to say you didn't have some reservations at first. You like to think you're an easy-going guy, but you didn’t know what to do with this high-strung man who you’d be working and living with during your- hopefully- brief tenure here. This man who is effortlessly funny, who you can banter with as easily as breathing, but who also carries tension in the line of his shoulders and the set of his mouth. This man who wakes up every morning and stares at the creased calendar tacked on the post near his cot with the energy of someone already beaten by the day, just to jump up and drag you to the mess tent like a human-shaped whirlwind. 

You quietly think it’s well past time when he should have been allowed to go home –“Crabapple Cove, Maine. The most idyllic small town you’ve never laid your eyes on.”-, but when you ask how long he’s been here, he glosses over the question in that way he’s so good at, so you never really find out. And besides, the rules of the army’s point system seem to change week by week, so you don’t press on the wound. 

But as hours turned into days, turned into weeks, Hawkeye’s almost manic tension lessenes and lessenes until it’s something approaching normal for a bunch of civilians in a war-zone. You’re pretty sure he’s already your best friend.

It’s been two weeks since you’ve been forcefully volunteered into military service. It could be much better, but it could also be much worse. 

It’s October 10th, 1952, and Hawkeye is being court martialed. 

“Again, Frank?” Hawkeye shouts when Potter calls them in to deliver the order. “You’re starting to sound like a record on repeat.” 

“He’s done this before?” you ask him, reading the notice over his shoulder.

“Oh, once, twice, a dozen times. The man won’t quit.” He pivots towards Frank, batting his eyelashes at him. “He’s obsessed with me.” 

Frank’s face twists into a sneer. “Colonel Potter, I’d like to add charges of perversion to the order.” 

“Careful, Frank,” you say with an easy smile. “Two can play at that game. Who's tent did I see you walking out of this morning? Richardson's?"

Frank's face is turning a medically fascinating shade of red. "Now you wait just a-"

"Pretty sure it was Nurse Hammon's," Hawkeye jumps in. "The one with the pretty green eyes."

"Man has a thing for blondes, don't you, Frank?" you add.

"What would Margaret say, Frank?"

"What would your wife say, Frank?"

Just as you're sure you're about to watch a U.S Army Major have an aneurysm, Potter’s voice cuts through the office.

"Everybody pipe down. I have enough on my plate without you all ganging up on each other every five damn minutes."

Hawkeye waves the summons in the air. "Frank started it."

"And besides, these charges are ridiculous," you add. "This is all just gonna be a waste of everyone’s time.” 

“A waste of time?” Frank barks out a nasally laugh, face still bright red. “That’s rich coming from you, Hunnicut. Maybe if you-“ 

He’s cut off as Hawkeye snatches a paper manual off of Potter's desk and throws it right at Frank's head. 

“Zip it, Frank, before I use your sniveling face to earn my court martial,” he snaps, a nasty edge to his voice that you don’t think you've ever heard from him before. You raise your eyebrows at him in silent question, but he just huffs and steps back. 

Frank sputters and rounds on the Colonel, who silences him with a hard look.

“I'll not tell you all again to simmer down,” Potter rumbles from behind his desk. He looks tired. “Pierce, you’ve got your orders. Hunnicut, you’re coming as a witness. I want you both in that courtroom tomorrow at 0800 sharp. Dismissed.” 

As you and Hawkeye file out, you hear Potter call out, “Not you, Major. I want to talk to you,” but you don't hear more as the door to the office swings closed. 

*

The next day, Hawkeye breezes through the trial with bored obstinance. He's clearly not concerned with the outcome, and you wouldn’t be either if you were in his shoes. Frank Burns is the funniest joke the U.S. Army has ever played, so it’s hard to feel threatened by him when his tales are taller than he is. 

Hawkeye pats a sputtering Frank on the shoulder as you both head out. “Keep it up, Frank. I can’t wait to hear what you come up with at the next one.” 

It’s October 20th, 1952, and you’re in OR, playing jigsaw with some poor kid’s— “Johnson. His name's Johnson. He’s my buddy, please take care of him” — with Private Johnson's lower intestines.

The O.R., in this late-autum chill, is like every other day. Houlihan’s competence is clashing starkly with Frank’s incompetence. Klinger’s heels rap smartly across the packed floor as stretchers are carried past. Hawkeye is singing in a deep vrabrato from the table ahead of you. You’d like to join in like you usually do, but for once you don’t recognize the song. 

“Why don’t you believe me, it’s you I adore, forever and ever…”

“3-O silk.”

Some of the puzzle pieces that make up Johnson’s intestines have been torn and chewed out of shape. Some pieces are missing all together, and you’ve never been very crafty, so you bend and force the pieces together until you end up with something like a functional whole. It’s meatball surgery in its truest form, but it’ll have to be enough.

“How else can I tell you, what more can I do…"

Bullets dug out of pink organs plink sharply in the discard bowl.

“Okay, now the 4-O.”

Potter leans over your shoulder and frowns down at the bowl. He picks up one of the bloodied bullets between gloved fingers. 

"These are Chinese make," he says, tone thoughtful and slightly confused. 

"Yeah?" you say, only half listening as you dig out another one and quickly stitch the bleed. You're not sure why it matters. Their origin doesn't change the damage under your hands. 

"There was talk last week that the Chinese may get involved," Houlihan says from the table behind you. "But I wouldn't have though they'd have deployed already."

"That's because they haven't," Potter replies, still holding the bullet. "I have no doubt they'll get here eventually, but there hasn't been any movement on it yet." He lingers over the bowl for a moment longer, then drops the bullet back in and moves on.

You take special care in sewing Johnson up, an apology he’ll never notice, but one that may make the slightest bit of difference.

 It’ll have to be enough. 

“You did not! Who in their right mind makes a betting pool out of getting bombed?”

“We did! We did! Our dear boy, Charlie, was so bad at his job that I just had to take advantage. It’s not like the army is paying us.” 

“When was this?”

“Who knows? Two, ten, twenty years ago? Never did set my watch to military time.”

“So happened in the end?” 

"Oh, Frank convinced some idiot general to give him a big gun thinking he could shoot Charlie out of the sky.” 

“Now that’s something to place your bets on.” 

“A tragically missed opportunity.” 

“Did you win your pool?”

“Not a single one. Radar won all of them. I don’t know why I try.”

It’s December 2nd, 1952, and the cracks are starting to show. 

Hawkeye screams half the camp awake and meets your gaze with wide, exhausted eyes as he babbles about beaches and buses and old friends on a collision course with the tree line. 

“It’s just a dream,” you assure him. 

“I keep thinking we’re out of it, but what if we aren’t?” 

“Out of what, Hawk?” 

He blinks at you once, twice, then says, “It feels like something terrible is gonna happen.” 

Something terrible is already happening, you want to say. The evidence of it is smeared in red on the crumpled surgical robe you threw into the corner. On the two bodies cooling in the morgue. But you’re here to help, not hurt, so you don’t say it. Instead, you ease him back onto his cot and cover him with a blanket. 

“C’mon, try to go back to sleep.” 

Despite how shaken he looks, he’s asleep in less than a minute. You fight your heavy lids to stay awake for a little longer and make sure he doesn’t start sleepwalking again. After a while, you determine he’s not going anywhere and let his snores pull your eyes shut. 

*

“That dream could have been a warning,” Major Houlihan says the next morning over a man’s open chest cavity. There’s a flat quality to her tone, something too complicated for you to place. “A premonition.”

Hawkeye's shoulders are a rigid line across the table, and you shoot Houlihan a bullish look. Feeding into Hawk‘s particular brand of paranoia is not something any of them need right now. She meets your gaze, unimpressed. 

”Look, there’s no reason to make a big deal out of a little sleepwalking and one nightmare,” you reason. “It’s tension. You’ve been working too hard, and you’re not sleeping.” 

The stiffness in Hawkeye’s shoulders eases a bit as Houlihan hands him a scalpel and you both go back to tag-teaming this atrial transplant. 

“Frankly, I think I’m pregnant,” Hawkeye says. 

There was too long of a pause for that joke to land, but you’ll take it. 

*

You know things are getting dire when you lay there and listen to him willingly engage in a conversation with Frank Burns. No wit, no sarcasm - a completely genuine back and forth about fathers and the things they can take away from their children. 

It’s downright ominous. 

When the screaming starts again a couple hours later, you’re not even surprised. 

*

It’s not until Sidney arrives that you feel you can relax a little. You don’t know what he and Hawkeye talk about; you don’t ask and he doesn’t offer, but when Hawk walks into the Swamp that night, his shoulders seem more stooped with fatigue than fear. 

You hand him a martini dirtied with the last of your precious olives in hopes it will take the rest of the edge off. You both drink in silence until Frank comes in and falls face-first onto his bunk.

“Put a sock in it tonight, will ya, Pierce?”

You’d normally throw something at him for that, but he’s so obviously exhausted that his barb sounds more like a plea than anything, so you don’t bother. 

Hawkeye doesn’t say anything either, just blinks down as his half-filled glass slowly. You consider him, and then, after a moment's hesitation, stand and drag your cot over to his. It screeches terribly against the packed dirt floor, causing Hawkeye to jump and Frank to groan and bury his head under his pillow. You push the two bunks side-by-side and plop down on one before you can think better of it. 

You don’t know if this is the right move and embarrassment heats your face. But Hawkeye looks so pathetically grateful that you decide to push past the feeling and allow this, just this once. 

You fall asleep to the sounds of cicadas and Hawkeye’s breathing less than a foot away. It doesn’t stop the nightmares - he wakes up twice throughout the night - but you nudge your arm against his, half asleep, and he settles a lot faster than before. There are no screams, and you wake up the next morning feeling more rested than you have in months. 

It’s December 18th, 1952, and something is different. 

It’s inching towards midnight, buckets of rain are kicking up a humid racket against the canvas roof of the Swamp, the noise just held back by the radio playing showtunes in the middle of the rickety table. Frank’s made himself scarce for the night, so Hawk has invited Klinger, Radar, and Rizzo over for a game of poker –“You want to win your money back from last week or not? Trust me, Rizzo isn’t as good as he thinks he is, and Radar only ever wins when there's a full moon out”-. 

You’re right in the middle of draining everyone’s paycheck with a straight flush –”Sorry, Hawk, no one ever said poker was a team sport”- when the steady stream of banter and good-natured ribbing suddenly stops and the game hits a wall. You glance up into the silence, confused, to see everyone staring at the radio. 

Radar suddenly makes this strange choking noise which pushes your confusion into outright alarm, but when you focus in on the radio it just sounds like an announcer going over the usual war-time updates. 

“What’s up, fellas?” you ask. “Did I miss an emergency announcement or something?” 

No one answers. You send Hawkeye a questioning look, but the man has his gaze glued to the opposite wall with his jaw clenched. His cards are a mangled mess in his grip. 

“Fold.” Klinger’s voice is tight as he throws his cards on the table and marches right out of the tent. He forgot his scarf, and you’re just about to call after him when Rizzo picks up the still-chattering radio and throws it with full bodied force against the packed ground. The announcer's voice cuts out as it shatters into a dozen small pieces of metal. 

You shoot to your feet. “Hey!” 

“Watch it, Rizzo!” Hawkeye snaps.

“Shut up, Pierce,” Rizzo mutters with surprisingly little heat as he stomps his way out of the Swamp. He slams the door on his way out, which is apparently Radar’s cue to trip over his feet as he gets up from the table. 

“Hold it, hold it,” you call out before the kid can reach the door. “What’s gotten into all of you? You look like you’ve been drafted or something.” 

Radar keeps his back to you as he stutters out, “It- it’s nothing, sir, I just gotta- gotta do some paperwork- there’s a lot of paperwork I got to get to Potter by tomorrow, so yeah. I gotta…gotta go do that. Goodnight, sirs.” 

Then he’s out the door and it’s just you, Hawkeye, and your useless winning hand. You turn back to Hawk, who is now staring at the table like he wants to throw it through the tent walls.

“Okay, your turn. What the hell was that?” 

Hawkeye apparently decides to let the table live to see another day because he just shoves himself out of his seat and makes a beeline for the still, but not before he rips the calendar of all things from its post and tears it right down the middle. 

God, you’re so confused, and getting more and more worried by the second. It makes you feel jittery. “Hawkeye.” 

"I know, Beej,” Hawk sounds exhausted as he takes the decanter of gin and takes three long, liver-shriveling swigs before throwing himself facedown on his cot. “Listen.” His voice is muffled. “I know that probably seemed really crazy, but don’t worry about it, alright? We’re all just a little on edge — war-zone and all that. Rizzo's always been a sore loser so...let’s just go to sleep.”

He’s normally a better liar than this. You want to argue and demand more of an answer than that, but Hawkeye looks so damn defeated in that moment that it makes your stomach twist, so you find yourself saying softly, “Okay, Hawk,” before extinguishing the lantern and settling the Swamp into darkness. 

You blindly get dressed for bed and lie down on your own cot where you stare at the shadowy tent ceiling in silence for what feels like hours. 

The rain outside has stopped. 

*

BJ dreamt in choppy, distorted flashes. Standing outside of himself in places old and new. He was in the OR, hands sterile and raised. He was knee-deep in warm surf under a shining sun. He was peering out of a school bus window that had fogged over with condensation. 

*

A group of chattering MPs passing by the tent walls wakes you after what must have been only a handful of hours. The watery morning dawn filters dully through the mosquito mesh of the tent. Frank and Hawkeye’s cots are empty. The strewn cards and shattered radio pieces have all been cleaned up. 

As you get dressed and head out the door, you notice a new calendar hanging on the post, identical to the first one in the way all army-issue things are. It reads July 8th, 1950. You don't know why that feels off.

The mood of the whole camp is in the trenches that day. It’s like a switch has been flipped, and suddenly the 4077th is as somber and tense as you had originally feared a M.A.S.H. unit would be when you first got your orders. Even the weather is depressing, overcast and gloomy and there's an odd summer chill in the air. 

You can hear shouting coming from Potter’s office as you pass by. Radar is standing just outside, face pale and clearly eavesdropping, but before you can go over to him, Hawkeye practically kicks the door down as he storms out, Klinger following closely behind. You hear Houlihan and Frank’s raised voices for just a second before the door swings shut. 

“Hawkeye,” you call after him. 

He ignores you and stomps away, kicking over an empty fire drum for good measure. Klinger’s expression is dark as he marches off in the opposite direction. You meet Radar’s gaze for just a second before the kid sighs and disappears into Potter’s office, leaving you alone in a camp that’s undergone a radical personality shift.

You keep your head down in the O.R., then post-op, then the mess. When you return to the Swamp later that evening, Frank is nowhere to be seen and Hawkeye is passed out on his cot, empty martini glass dangling precariously in his hand. The decanter is laying in a pile of shards near the stove. 

You gently take the glass from his hand, sweep up the remnants of the decanter, and decide that you’ll get your answers out of him tomorrow.

With nothing left to do and a migraine brewing in your temple, you pack it in early, hoping that a good night’s sleep will help the sense of wrongness you feel in your gut. 

It's October 20th, 1952, and you're coming to a stumbling stop at the finish line of a 12-hour O.R. session when Klinger lays another beaten and battered soldier on your table. 

"Sorry, Doc," Klinger chatters, sounding as cold and exhausted as you feel. "Last one, scout's honor." 

The man's abdominal cavity is shredded in a few places, but you're quickly able to get the damage under control. You're just about to close up when blood starts pooling bright red in his left hypochondriac region. You start looking for the damage quickly; blood supply is low, and if you can avoid using another unit then all the better. 

Houlihan is passing by, and in your periphery you see her glance at your patient then do a quick double-take. She steps up next to you and says, "Check his splenic artery." 

She says it with such quiet confidence that you immediately follow the order. You gently move the stomach aside, lift the spleen, and there it is: a burst artery steadily pooling blood. An easy fix, if you're quick. 

"You may want to consider a career change, Major," you grin. "Doctor Houlihan has a nice ring to it."

She rolls her eyes and heads back towards Potter's table, but you clock her proud smile under the mask before she could fully turn away.

It’s a sunny and mild September 15th, 1952, when you step out of the shaded officer’s club and into the path of one Dr. B.F Pierce. 

Pierce —“Hawkeye. The pleasure is all mine, BJ.”— is the antithesis of G.I., throwing his arm around your shoulder and chattering away a mile a minute as if you've known each other for years. He doesn't call you Captain once, and you're surprised by how much of a relief it is. You hadn't realized how exhausting the U.S.-patented military sensibilities you've been entrenched in for the past few weeks were until Hawkeye threw it all out the proverbial window.  

 The smaller man, O'Reilly, —“You can call me Radar, sir. It's nice to meet you.”— is equally warm, offering to take your bag as you all make your way to a waiting Jeep and asking about how your flight was.

"You're gonna love the Swamp, Beej," Hawkeye prattles on, and the nickname falls from his lips so naturally. "There I keep six honest serving men who taught me all I know about distilling terrible gin."  

"Rudyard Kipling," you shoot back, seamless.

He grins at you. "You do know your Kipling! We're gonna get along just fine." 

What follows is a perfectly pleasant two-hour ride to your new home with the 4077th —“Just a slight detour, we figured you'd enjoy the scenic route.”—, by the end of which you're pretty sure you and Hawkeye are already best friends. 

So why do you feel so uneasy?

It’s February 19th, 1951, and the United States Army has declared Hawkeye dead. 

A clerical error, one that is fixed with a quick call to I-Corps before his father was informed, thankfully. When Hawkeye tells you about it, you laugh through the tight feeling in your chest and go on with your day.

It’s December 18th, 1951, and you find yourself staring up at a clear and cloudless morning sky, wondering why you keep expecting it to rain.

It’s December 26th, 1950, and you’re in the mess hall, trying to figure out if this sinking feeling in your stomach is because of Igor’s might-be-chicken-á-la-king, or because of something else entirely.

It’s February 25th, 1952, and something is wrong, wrong, wrong. 

It's August 3rd, 1951, and you're in th-

Wait.

It's September 1st, 1950, and you can't help but be impressed at this prank. It's understated, incredibly elaborate, and very, very clever. You honestly didn't think Hawk had a subtle bone in his body. 

You're still trying to figure out how he's getting the fake newspapers in, or where he's hiding all the fake calendars - you don't even know where to start with the fake radio broadcasts-, but once you do, your retaliation prank will be a thing of legend.   

It's September 28th, 1950.

It’s May 3rd, 1950.

It's April 30th, 1950, and you don't think this is a prank anymore. 

It's December 1st, 1950.

Your hands won’t stop shaking.

It's September 14th, 1950. 

You're losing your mind.

It's January 4th, 1952, and the sheer relief of it just being 1952 is enough to make your knees wobble. 

You have no idea happening to you, but you're starting to get the picture and it's as impossible as it is nauseating. You don't know what to do with this- this rut? This endless stream of out of order days? This complete and utter disregard for sane and linear time? How can this be happening? Why to you?

At least, you assume it's only you. Everyone else is acting normal - or as normal as it’s possible to act when you throw a bunch of unwilling civilians three miles away from the frontline. 

Hawkeye shoots you a lot of concerned looks and has tried to pester you into explaining why you're acting so weird but you brush him off, sometimes too coldly, but you can't help it. You can't stand how he checks the calendar- like he's always done every morning- and doesn't even react when it shows the wrong day, month, year!  When even the radio and the newspapers announce the wrong date, no one reacts. Everyone just goes about the daily monotony involved with running a completely normal, mundane M.A.S.H. unit. 

It's insane.

It’s terrifying. 

So, it's only you experiencing this. You're going crazy. You know you're going crazy, but you have no idea how to get yourself out of this. 

It's October 20th, 1952, and you're so caught up in the tangle of your thoughts that you're halfway into embroidering a whole new organ for the soldier on your table when you come to the cold, gut-punch realization that you've done this before.

Private Johnson, with his baby face and his friend who loves him and his shredded 1000 piece puzzle of a large intestine, lies beneath you yet again. And he's not a repeat offender; these are the same injuries, the same torn vessels. You'd bet that even the serial numbers on the bullets that have reduced Johnson to this are all the same too.

And for the first time since your residency, you almost freeze. But freezing and giving into the breakdown you can feel looming means that Johnson may not survive this time around, and you wouldn't be able to live with that. So, you square your shoulders and get to work.

As you weave, your memory of this day is coming back in familiar but new pieces. The sound of Klinger's heels are interwoven with Father Malcahy's quick steps; Frank's whining panic –"That bleed wasn't there before!"--; Margaret's steady commands for –"Gloves, Baker, new gloves now!"--; Potter requesting his instruments from Charlene with quiet patience as the new - not so new anymore, not from your point of view- nurse settles into her role. 

Hawkeye is singing that song again; –"Why don’t you believe me, it’s you I adore, forever and ever..."-. But you’ve lived this day before, so this time you know the words. And for some reason, you feel this desperate need to reach across this yawning divide between you and them. To prove that you've been here before, that you've known this day. 

So you join in. 

"How else can I tell you, What more can I do…"

You don't expect your little effort to be noticed - why would it be? You sing with Hawkeye or even Potter in the O.R all the time - but it is. Hawkeye actually drops his scalpel as his head whips up and his eyes meet yours over two bodies and a foot of empty space. Even past the mask covering half his face, you can clearly read the stunned horror growing in his eyes.

And it makes no sense for him to look at you like that over a song, so for a weightless second you almost ask him, can you see what's going on here? 

You don't ask, but like always, he hears you anyway. He nods once then looks away, accepting a new scalpel from Abel. It all only lasts a second, because there are kids bleeding out under you both and you still have work to do, but it's enough. 

And for the first time in days, some of that unbearable tension drains from your shoulders.  

*

Hawkeye grabs your arm the moment you both scrub out of the O.R. Your trembling fingers twist tightly into the coarse cloth of his sleeve as he pulls you towards the Swamp. 

You both bang through the door, and Hawkeye motions you to sit on his cot as he moves towards the still, tossing out over his shoulder, "Clear out, Frank. We need a minute."

You can physically hear Frank's sneer from behind the magazine he's reading. “Why should I, Pierce? Well, I should think I have just as much of a right to be here as you." 

"I'm serious, Frank. Go give Margaret a migraine or recite the pledge of allegiance fifty times, or whatever you do for fun."

Frank opens his mouth, bad comeback undoubtedly on his tounge, before he shoots a look at you and snaps it shut. He's giving you this assessing look, the poor cogs in his mind are clearly working overtime, and it's flat-out unnerving to see Frank's eyes light up with gleeful understanding. "Oh, I see," he giggles, tossing his magazine aside. "Hunnicut has finally decided to join the party, huh? Well, I think-"

"Frank," Hawkeye interrupts pleasantly. “Do you think if I kill you where you stand, you'll still be here when the day resets?" 

Frank sputters and heaves out of his cot. "Now, don't think you can go around threatening me like that, mister!" he shouts. "I still outrank you!"

You've officially decided that being confused is a waste of your time. Luckily, there was always anger to fall back on.

"Frank.” Your voice is flat in your ears. "Fuck off, or I'll throw every single thing you own into the minefields. May even throw you in too." 

You’re dead serious, on both parts probably, and Frank must see it on your face because he hems and haws but very deliberately makes his way out the door. When you both are alone, Hawkeye hands you a brimming martini glass and pulls up a chair so close in front of you that your knees knock with his. He tosses back his gin in one long gulp, before pinning you with a look that seems to be one part sadness and one part poorly concealed rage. 

It's oddly familiar. You think this may be the expression he’s always worn in quiet moments, you just never had the context to recognize it for what it is. 

"Alright, Beej, I want names. Who told you?"

And here you thought Hawkeye was here to explain things, not give you more questions. "Told me what?"

"You know.”" Hawkeye waves his empty glass around vaguely. "About all this."

"The date is wrong," you blurt out, and God, you really hope you and Hawk are on the same page here or else you're about to earn yourself a permanent spot in Sidney's rotation.

But Hawkeye just looks even more solemn as he nods. "Yeah. Yeah, it has been for some time, Beej." 

Relief and dread are a strange mix in your stomach. "For how long?"

Hawk blows out a breath. "For you? I'd guess a little over a week or so, right?" 

You nod. "And for you?"

He laughs, and it's just so brittle and bitter. "We're gonna need more gin." 

*

It was Radar who had noticed it first. The way he tells it, he just woke up one morning, around three weeks into the war, to find himself under a constant feeling of deja vu, the days overlapping over and over until he finally started to pay attention to the dates.

— "That was about the time people started calling me Radar. A guy can only have the same conversations with someone so many times before you just kinda start jumping ahead of what they're saying, y'know?" —

Thinking he was going crazy and not knowing what else to do, Radar went to Hawkeye and Trapper. 

"We were worried about the guy, obviously," Hawkeye says, taking a drink from his second martini. You're still nursing your first in a tight grip. "But you know how it is, it’s a war zone. Most of us aren't suited to being here in the first place, and he was just this young kid. We weren't surprised to hear he had cracked up a bit, is all." 

The very next day, Trapper received a letter from his wife that he had already gotten the week prior, the same letter word for word. Hawkeye got the same paper from Crabapple Cove, the date stretching back over two weeks. The radio said it was July 29th, 1950, and every calendar in camp agreed. 

"At first we thought it was some crazy-complex prank," Hawk says. “But while Radar is many wonderful things, he just wouldn't have the chops for something like that. Jones was out too - he had only been in the unit for less than a week, and Frank genuinely never crossed my mind, so that left Henry." 

Henry promptly kicked them out of his office, and apparently complained to the nurse he was with that night about how his clerk and doctors were already cracking under pressure only a few weeks into the war. Said nurse then told the other nurses, who told the privates, and so on. By morning everyone in camp was in on it, although none of them had known what 'it' was."

"We thought that was how it worked, y’know?" Hawk says, head bowed and staring into his empty glass. "Once you're told about it - once you become aware of it at all - that's it, you're trapped in-" 

"What? No," you cut him off, setting your own glass aside. Your heart is pounding. "That makes no sense. What even is 'it'?"

Hawk holds up his hands as if in supplication, and you hate it. "We don't know. We never really knew what to call it, and since we thought that talking about it would drag someone else into it, we just got used to keeping it under wraps.” 

“You thought? So what, you think it’s something different now?”

“Not really,” Hawkeye shrugs, breaking eye contact to stare at the tent wall. “We thought talking about it was causing people to get stuck, but I’m not so sure anymore. Others have gotten stuck without anyone saying anything to them about it.” 

His gaze zeros back on you. “That’s what happened to you. right? No one told you about all this?”

“No.”

“Good. I don’t think word-of-mouth is what’s causing this anymore, but everyone stuck knows better than to go blabbing about all this to whoever passes by.”

"What does that even mean?" Jittery energy skitters down your spine and you jolt up, spilling your martini over Hawkeye’s legs but unable to stay sitting. You start pacing in tight rounds as agitation settles deep into your lungs. "Who else is this happening to?"

Hawkeye tisks at his sodden pants but stays slumped in his chair. He shrugs. "It's happening to all of us, though not everyone is aware of it. Those of us who've been here since the beginning know about it, obviously. There are a few nurses and a couple of privates who came a bit later who also got stuck." 

He sighs. "Potter’s stuck too. I hate that it happened to the guy, but there would have been no way we could run this hellhole if our own commander-in-chief didn't even know what year it was." 

You don't know what to do with that. "So-" You stop, swallowing dryly. "So, what happens to anyone who isn’t stuck?"

Now Hawkeye gets up, setting his glass down and starts pacing too. "They go on about the war, I guess. Serve their time and leave." He pauses and flaps his hands at you. "We’re pretty sure time is passing normally for everyone else, so don't worry. Your family is fine. My dad still writes as if nothing is out of the ordinary. I still get newspapers and magazines from home, it's a lot of repeats, obviously, but...yeah." 

Dread is settling heavy around your shoulders now, wrapping around your neck. There's a nervous energy gathering in your chest, down your spine. It feels like grief, it feels like betrayal, and the anger comes easily.

“Why am I here, Hawkeye?" you ask through fear and teeth. "If you knew what this place was, then why did you even let me step foot here?"

But Hawkeye was already shaking his head, still pacing furiously. "I couldn’t do anything about it, Beej, I’m sorry. I can’t just change your posting, or reverse your draft orders. For all I knew, you’d never even get stuck like the rest of us. It’s not like it happens that often.”

You can barely hear his words over the buzzing energy flitting up and down your spine, in your head. You step into his path, grabbing him by his upper arms and shaking him. "Don't give me that, Hawkeye. You could have given me something!  A warning, a sign, anything!" 

You need to lower your voice, you need to loosen the tight grip you have on Hawkeye’s arms but you can’t. You can't. You’re angry, and you’re confused, and you’re scared, and you need answers.

You need a way to escape this.

"Aren't you listening?" Hawkeye snaps, yanking his arms from your grip and stepping right up in your face, matching your anger beat for beat. "We've tried that and more when new people got assigned here, and it never worked! This place is a- a glue trap! You walk right into it and it's done! You can’t leave! You could chew your damn leg off and it still won't do you any good!"

"That's not what you just said!" You're shouting now, but you couldn't speak calmly even if you cared to try. "I replaced Trapper in case you've forgotten. People have left, either for reassignment or been shipped stateside! People come in and out of this camp all the damn time!"

Hawk's face twists a bit at the mention of Trapper, and suddenly you're alone in your anger as all the energy seems to drain out of him.

"I– well, all of us— had thought for a while that it had stopped. That time was moving forward normally again. It does that sometimes- the days pass in the right order for a bit before everything starts jumping around again. But this time felt different. Beej, weeks passed and Henry even got his orders home, but we all know how that turned out." 

He laughs bitterly and steps back a bit. You watch as his eyes grow distant and glassy. "You know, for once we were all hoping for the day to reset. To see if he'd come back. But it didn't, and neither did he. I went to Tokyo for a whole week and got piss drunk, and it still never reset. Then Trapper got his orders and left- still no reset. Then you came, and still time was just marching forward like it was supposed to. It had never gone forward for that long before, and we really thought that maybe all of this could be over."

He drops back on his cot, a cut marionette, and stares at the canvas ceiling with swimming eyes. "Well, the rug sure got pulled out from under us for that."

The anger sledging against your ribs drains away slowly as the silence between you both stretches. You're staring at Hawkeye, trying to think of what else to say. He's avoiding eye contact, much like the first time you met - the actual first time you met; you're suddenly aware that you have two very different memories from that day -  and God, does all of this really throw that strange day into a new light. 

Finally, when it looks like Hawkeye has nothing left to say, you ask again, "How long have you been here?"

"Years."

You don't respond. 

You can't find the words. 

You and Hawkeye get blinding drunk for three straight days.

You don't know if the days passed normally, or if you were in a whole different year during that time. 

Just the way you wanted it.

BJ dreamt of the mess tent that night. The scene was lit with a strange silver glow that cast everything in cold starkness. He spotted Hawkeye off to the side with Potter and Klinger, heads bent as they chatted quietly to each other. They seemed to be waiting for something; Klinger kept throwing glances at the flaps leading into the tent. Curious, BJ peeked inside. 

The mess tent was brightly lit, but the edges of the space were dark and blurred in that way dreams could be. Major Houlihan sat at one of the tables, facing an older man whom BJ didn’t recognize. Behind him was another stranger holding a…camera?

“I feel as old as I’m ever going to get,” Houlihan was saying with a wide smile. The man didn't respond for a moment, and in that time the smile slid right off her face. “Older than I ever intended to be.” 

BJ blinked and wakes up. 

Day four is on October 15th, 1951, apparently, and you've been called to speak with the Colonel.

"Park it, Hunnicut." Potter waves you towards a seat as you come into his office. 

You fall into the chair with a groan, nursing the most miserable hangover of your life. Potter’s expression is flat as he pushes a glass of water and two pills across his desk towards you.

"You're the best boss I've ever had," you say with complete sincerity as you down the painkillers. 

"If these were the calvary days, I'd assign you to a straight week of mucking out the horses' stables for the way you and Pierce have been kicking around," Potter says, crossing his arms over his desk. "If we had gotten even one batch of wounded during your little drinking spree, I'd have spent my whole salary buying the local's livestock and making you do just that." 

Bitterness washes over you, filling your lungs and clogging your throat. You lean back and close your aching eyes against the office lights and try to breathe through it. 

"What? A man can't have a drink after learning he's stuck in some insane, never-ending war zone?"

You hear the colonel sigh. "I know how you're feeling, son. Believe me, I do. But we all have to hold it together here. Lives are at stake."

You snort, keeping your eyes closed. "Are they? Lose a patient, the day resets, and they're alive again. What's it matter?"

You don't mean it. You don't. But your chest feels heavy and your stomach churns with something that should be rage, but is starting to feel more like despair. 

"I know you don't mean that, Hunnicut, so I'm not gonna string you up by your ankles for it," Potter says, an edge creeping into his voice. "But if I hear you say anything like that again, I'll have you shipped to another M.A.S.H. unit across the country faster than you can blink."

Your back straightens and you open your eyes. Potter is staring you down, his gaze sympathetic but uncompromising.

"I don't care if it doesn't stick," he says. "I'll send you off every damn day until it does, understood?" 

You nod, shame pushing your grief aside for the moment. "Sorry, Colonel."

Potter visibly softens. "I'm sorry too, BJ. If I could have spared you from all of this, I would have."

There's something cloying about receiving sympathy from a man who's stuck in the same sinking boat as you. You avert your gaze. 

"I know."

The Father's tent is warm and humid, late golden sunlight streams through the openings in the canvas. You have no idea what day it is, but you pick at your sweaty collar and think it must be mid-summer. 

"I would be lying if I told you I knew what to make of it, BJ," Mulcahy says, pressing a warm mug of tea into your hands. "There are a great many mysteries in the world, and when faced with the unknown, I find it more imperative than ever to look to God."

"Look to God for what?" You take a sip of fragrant chamomile in an effort to not roll your eyes. "I can't think of any scripture that would explain this."

"God hardly owes us an explanation for his miracles," Mulcahy says mildly, laying a gentle hand on your shoulder.  

"Miracles?" You scoff, wanting to shove his hand off your shoulder. You don't. "Feels more like a punishment to me." 

Mulcahy shakes his head, and sits next to you on the cot with his own steaming mug. "We are not punished by God in this lifetime, BJ. The afterlife is where we experience His reward or judgment."  

He continues on when you don't respond. "I'll admit, knowing that and feeling it are very different things." He stares down into his mug, and his voice goes soft. "This has tested my faith in a way nothing else in my life has. In the beginning, when we were all scared and didn't know what was happening to us, I was sure that this was punishment. That perhaps we were all dead and this was Hell.

"But then I started paying attention to what these repeat days were giving us. This unit has an amazingly high survival rate. Now, I don't want to sell short you doctors and the miracles you yourselves perform - we had a high rate even before all of this started. But now? With the opportunity to correct your mistakes? A torn artery that went unnoticed the first time is caught on the second. A boy that had died in triage is moved up the list the next time around.”

He looks over at you. "Do you understand what I'm saying, BJ?"

"And what about us?" you ask, feeling strangely apprehensive. "What do we get out of this?"

Mulcahy chuckles and throws you an amused smile. It makes him look young. "Well, I've heard there is some type of reward given for faith and good works."

"You know what I mean." 

He hums and looks up across the tent to the window and the sunset beyond. "Sometimes God demands us to give all of ourselves to aid the greater good. I don't mean to sound callous, BJ, but when I think on all the lives that have been saved here, I can't help but think that we’re a small price to pay."

You snort, a small smile crawling across your face. It's sardonic and stiff, but it's also the first one in days. "That's very altruistic of you, but I don't feel like I'm part of some plan of good works. Most days I just feel like I'm drowning."

Mulcahy smiles back and shrugs, something soft and compassionate in his gaze. "Much of scripture is built on sacrifice and the willingness to follow through with God’s plan. I believe it was Alan Watts who said that to have faith is to trust yourself to the water."

He stands and takes your empty mug before making his way over to the stove. Before long, you have another steaming cup in hand and you and Father Mulcahy sit in comfortable, contemplative silence as the sun sets. 

“I stole a grenade and almost blew the Father and me to Kingdom Come when I found out. Trust me, Doc, you’re doing just fine.”

You were right, it is mid-summer; July 30th, 1952, apparently, although not for long as night falls like a dark and humid blanket over camp.

"How do you keep track of the days?" you ask Hawkeye as he bangs through the Swamp's door.

"I don't," he says, making a beeline for his footlocker. 

"What do you mean you don't?"

"I mean I don't," he repeats, his voice getting that annoying snippy quality it gets when he doesn't want to talk about something. He pulls out a ball of blue yarn and his knitting needles. "I did at first, but after a while it got both confusing and depressing, so I stopped. Go ask Margaret." 

"How do you know how long you've been here then?"

He shrugs. "I just go by the gray in my hair at this point."

*

You knock on Houlihan’s door and she opens it immediately, despite the late hour. She’s still fully dressed as if she was expecting you, and you get this sudden swell of paranoia that maybe you've lived this day before and not known it, but you quickly shove the thought out of your mind. That way even more madness lies. 

"Captain.” She gestures you inside. 

"Major. Sorry to just barge in."

"It's alright," she says, facing you in the middle of the room. Her voice is calm, but her shoulders are tense. "I figured you would stop by sometime soon."

"Because of the-" you gesture vaguely. No talking about it directly; there are rules now. 

"Yes.” Her lips press together, a small crack in her otherwise smooth demeanor. "I'm sorry." 

You wave her off. If you dwell too hard you'll end up right back at the still, and you don't think Potter will hold back from throwing the book at you a second time. 

"Hawkeye says you've been keeping track of the days. How?"

Her furrowed brow adds another crack to the facade. You quietly think she'd benefit from hitting something, but you're not here to volunteer so you keep your mouth shut.

“I was, yes,” she answers. “Nothing complicated, just a tally of the days and a journal keeping track of the dates and what happened in them. We all kept track that way at first, but the others eventually stopped. I didn't though. I'd thought there might be a pattern."

"A pattern?" 

She nods while moving towards her vanity and opening the left drawer. "I wanted to see if there were dates we were revisiting more often than others. We've lived through November 18th, 1950, nine times; February 6th, 1951, six times; and so on. There are some days we haven't experienced at all. I was trying to see what was special about those dates."

She pulls out three red notebooks and hands the first one to you. You take it eagerly and begin flipping through. Inside are hundreds of entries; some long, some very brief. Each page had a date written at the top with a small tally mark next to it, following a brief description of the events of the day. It's not much, as she said, but it's something and you're more than happy to latch onto it. 

"Did you find one?" you ask, skimming an entry that reads September 30th, 1951 III. 

"A pattern? No. The date will jump back as early as July 8th, 1950, and has only gone as far forward as May 11th, 1953. I thought the pattern was in the specific days we kept repeating, but when I realized we were looping through only two and a half years over and over again, it made sense that we were experiencing some days more than others. It's simple probability." 

She shrugs then, and it doesn't even look defeated like Hawkeye's did. It’s just brutal acceptance. "I've only been vaguely keeping track for the past couple of weeks. The days started moving forward again, so for a while there didn't seem to be a point." 

Her logic is sound, but it isn’t what you want to hear. 

"There could still be a pattern here," you argue, reaching for the other notebooks. She hands them over easily. "I'm not even going to get into how insane all this is, but it has to be caused by something. What if there is a pattern somewhere? If time is the problem, then time must be the solution, right?”

But Houlihan is shaking her head and takes a step back from you, leaving the notebooks in your hands. You can suddenly see every point of stark exhaustion in her face, normally hidden behind sharp impatience and rigid control. The walls are back up and there's a sudden distance separating the two of you.

"I'm tired, Hunnicut.” She says it like she's losing something. "I'm sick of being everyone's walking calendar, and I'm sick of being the only one aware of exactly how long we've been here. It's been nearly three and a half years, you know, and I'm starting to think that ignorance really is bliss."

You feel the air leave your lungs at that. Hawkeye had said it had been years, and considering all the gray in his hair, a part of you feared it had been literal decades. But three and a half is real and tangible and, in a strange way, just as horrible. 

Three years in a war that’s only gone on for seven months. God.

"I'm sorry," you breathe. Sorry for their lost time, sorry for every minute they've spent in this hellhole. 

Sorry for yourself, who is now stuck in it with them. 

Now she's the one waving you off. "Well," she says briskly. "Misery loves company, I suppose." 

You snort. "You sound like Hawkeye."

Houlihan rolls her eyes, but the corner of her mouth twitches upwards. "It was bound to happen sooner or later."

"Tragic."

"Very."

You hold up the notebooks. "Mind if I hold onto these? I can take over camp calendar duties."

She agrees readily, and you see yourself out soon afterwards, clutching the notebooks firmly under your arm. 

You spend the next five days obsessively reading the journals between O.R. shifts. The date jumps back to January 19th during that time, so you mark the date down carefully  and write a three paragraph summary of the events of the day. You decide you're going to start a running list of the date every day, whether time jumps or not, on top of a daily summary and a running tally for repeat days. You also start comparing the entries to figure out what dates no one has experienced yet. 

Hawkeye loudly wants nothing to do with it, but he never once complains about your new borderline-manic hobby, and even gifts you a new notebook (it's purple, your favorite color) when you've scribbled over every loose sheet of paper to be found in the Swamp. 

You're not surprised when, six days after you spoke, Houlihan joins you at a lone table in the mess tent, a new notebook in hand. From then on, you both find a few minutes a day to compare dates and summaries, keeping each other on track and adding new insight to the events of the day. 

You don't know if there really is a pattern to look for; a large, sinking part of you is becoming sure that there isn't. But it helps keep the dread in the back of your mind at bay, and it brings a new, determined light to Margaret's eyes, so you consider it time well-spent.

BJ knew he was dreaming before he even opened his eyes. It was the middle of the night and the Swamp was pitch black, although he could see perfectly fine. He peered around and saw Hawkeye fast asleep in his bunk, and a quick glance to the other side of the tent revealed Frank, also asleep. More notably was the thin, silvery line stretching mid-air from one side of the tent to the other, passing alongside Hawkeye’s cot before it disappeared into the tent’s wall. 

He stepped closer to get a better look, taking in the ethereal glow and watched it cautiously for a few long moments, but it didn't seem to do anything but float there. Hesitantly, he reached out a hand and touched it with the tip of his finger. It was solid under, neither hot nor cold, and the steady glow didn't change at his touch. It looked kind of like a thread, or a very thin, steel cord. Emboldened, BJ gave the cord a small tug; it bent under his fingers easily, and when he let go it snapped back into place with a resonating ‘thwang’ sound that seemed to echo into his very brain. 

Frowning, BJ glanced back where the thread disappeared into the wall before he drifted to the Swamp’s door. He peeked your head out, and yep, the line went straight through the tent and continued on, stretching out to the far distance.

He pulled his head back in the tent and stared at Hawkeye sleeping soundly while the silvery line glowed gently by his head. Giving into cliche, BJ pinched himself and was only rewarded by a slight sting in his side. He felt solid and awake, but an inherent part of his hindbrain knew he wasn’t. BJ’s always been a pretty straightforward dreamer; his subconscious jumbled up his thoughts and experiences from his day and spat them back out in a loose picture format. He’s never had any dream like this though, and he’s also not used to his dreams being so…structured.

He should probably follow the thread or something, that seemed like the dream-logic thing to do. Decision made, he turned away and jumped as he spotted the bunk in the corner where a perfect copy of himself was sleeping deeply. BJ opened his mouth to say something, but no sound came out. Startled, his eyes whip down to look at his hands, half expecting for them to be see-through or something like that, but they looked and felt just as solid as the rest of him. He hesitantly reached out with his foot and lightly kicked Hawkeye’s bunk. He felt the impact as his foot met metal, but neither the bunk nor Hawkeye shifted an inch at the contact. 

BJ huffed silently and drifted over towards his own bunk, morbidly curious as he gazed down at his own sleeping body. It’s breathing, and BJ doesn’t feel very dead despite how strange this is, so he dismissed that thought. 

Just as BJ started to wonder why his stressed-out subconscious was having him watch a dream of himself sleeping of all things, he saw Klinger creep in through the door and over to his bedside. BJ stepped out of the way quickly, not wanting to find out if Kinger would phase right through him not or. 

“Sir. Captain Hunnicut, sir,” Klinger whispered as he nudged the copycat’s sleeping form. BJ watched himself waken quickly - God, this was weird - as Klinger told him that he had a call coming in from Hawkeye’s father, of all people. BJ watched as dream-him nudged Hawkeye awake and they both scramble out into the cold. 

BJ followed them out, curious despite himself, and passed by the silver thread on his way towards the clerk’s office. Its line stretched across camp in a straight line, heading in the same direction as their little entourage. It still wasn’t doing anything though, just hanging in the air at shoulder-height, so BJ decided to stick with his dream-self and see how this played out. 

Banging into Klinger’s office, dream-BJ and Hawkeye questioned why his father would be calling in the middle of the night. BJ watched as Klinger picked up the phone and gestured it towards his dream-self.

“Go ahead.” Hawkeye shrugged. “Tell him he was always like a father to me.” 

It was clear that dream-him couldn’t hear a word Daniel was saying, and as the line fizzled out BJ watched himself shrug and say, “I only heard ‘how’ and ‘why’.”

With nothing left to do, dream-him headed back to the Swamp, but BJ decided to stick near Hawkeye, who was clearly worried about this strange call from his father. As Hawk took vigil near the phone, BJ spent his time experimenting in this dream world. 

It was all so weird. This almost out-of-body experience was far beyond any normal dream BJ has ever had, but he’d also never been trapped in an insane time loop before either, so his mind got over how strange it all was pretty quickly. 

BJ reached out to push over the stack of papers on the desk, and while he could feel the papers under his fingertips, they didn't budge. He waved a hand in front of Hawkeye’s face, but he didn't react. He tried to speak - nothing. With a silent huff, he settled in to wait.

Dawn saw no call and a groggy Hawkeye slinking off to the showers. The silver thread was definitely following BJ, and he watched it warily as it ran right through the shower walls, casting a faint glow against the steamy air. He was so distracted by it that he didn’t notice that someone else had entered the tent until he stepped right through him. 

It felt like nothing, and somehow that was worse than whatever he had been expecting. BJ shuttered as goosebumps crawled over his skin and he scrabbled out of the man’s path. He didn’t seem to notice that he'd just walked through someone and carried on, making his way around the stalls and peering over them one-by-one. Hawkeye raised an unimpressed eyebrow at him. The man coughed and said he was looking for a Captain Pierce. 

“You got him,” Hawkeye said. 

The man blinked. “You can’t be Pierce.”

“You mean someone pasted my face in this mirror?” 

The man shook his head slowly. “Somethings wrong, boy, real wrong. You’re not dead.”

“Don’t jump to concussions, I have a very good tailor.”

BJ snorted silently and moved around to the side of the man, craning his neck to read the paper he’d just put in Hawkeye’s face. It was a form, army-official; ‘Pierce, Benjamin Franklin. Captain-

“This is a death certificate!” BJ and Hawkeye said in unison - or silently said, in BJ’s case. 

BJ stared at Hawkeye’s name on the form, a chill running down his spine as he connected the dots on what Daniel was trying to tell dream-him over the phone. 

The man took the paper back. “Just a copy, sir, they send the original to the next of kin.”

“Who would have been notified by now by telegram,” Hawk said pointedly as he scrambled to wash the shaving cream off his face and threw his shirt back on, clearly making the same connection that BJ had. “No wonder my father didn’t ask for me. He thinks I’m dead!” 

As the two men squabble back and forth, BJ startled as a feeling of deja-vu washed over him like vertigo. He knew what happened here. Hawkeye had told him about it - when had that happened again? His hands jerked reflexively towards his coat pocket for his journal, before he remembered that this was just a dream and he didn't have his notes with him. He definitely remembered Hawkeye talking about this though, back before he became aware of the loop. 

But BJ never got a call from Daniel. In fact, he was pretty sure that Hawkeye had caught the mistake and got the problem straightened out with I-CORPS well before his father received the death notice. 

BJ frowned as he followed slowly behind the pair. Why would his subconscious recreate an event he wasn’t even involved in? And why like this; so detailed and with BJ as a passive observer? It didn’t make any sense. 

He followed Hawkeye into Potter’s office where Frank was prattling on about his calisthenics class.  Hawkeye knocked on the doorframe. 

“Excuse me, Colonel, I waited until Major Burns was talking so I wouldn’t interrupt.” 

“Pierce hasn’t exercised once!” Frank accused. “Hasn’t done so much as a squat thrust.”

Hawkeye opened his mouth to respond, but BJ let the words wash over him, taking a few steps off to the side and settled in to see how this played out. 

He observed quietly as the day passed by, as every attempt Hawkeye made at reaching his father was stonewalled in one way or another. He watched dream-him work to keep Hawkeye’s spirits up, planning a wake disguised as a party and stepping in with a joke whenever he got too maudlin. 

BJ cheered him on as he watched him attempt to pull Frank’s cold, dead heart out through his kneecaps. The sight of the two wrestling throughout the mess tent over the money was the best entertainment he’d had in weeks. 

He watched in solemn silence as Hawkeye packed his bags and laid amongst corpses. 

“I’m tired of death,” he said. “I’m tired to death.” 

The sound of incoming choppers makes BJ’s stomach jump, a learned response that echoed in Hawkeye’s expression. 

“Wounded,” he said with finality.     

Dream-him - BJ was just going to call him Hunnicut from now on - nodded. “Klinger says it’s a lot.”

“I don’t care,” Hawkeye stated, but BJ was not convinced, and from the looks of it, Hunnicut wasn’t either. 

“I really don’t,” he continued. “They’ll keep coming whether I’m here or not. Trapper went home, they’re still coming. Henry got killed and they’re still coming. Wherever they come from, they’ll never run out.”  

BJ watched in shock as Hunnicut left the bus - too quickly, too easily, but his voice wouldn’t work when he tried to call him back - and Hawkeye told the driver to take them home.

The bus started to rattle through the camp and BJ sank onto the same bench Hawk was draped across with his eyes covered and mouth twisted into a pained frown. It hurt to see him like this, and BJ compulsively reached out to grasp the arm covering his eyes, giving it a gentle squeeze that he didn’t react to. 

“This isn’t one of your better stunts, Hawk,” BJ told him, ignoring the way his voice disappeared into the void. “Can’t say I blame you for trying though.” 

Despite appearances, he was not the BJ Hunnicut of this dream. He’d been in this war for far too long, and even that didn’t hold a candle to how long Hawkeye had been stuck here. Dream-him may not get it, but he did.

It wouldn’t work though, and he knew that Hawkeye knew it. He also knew that Hawk would never look the other way when injured and dying men were about to land on the 4077’s doorstep. 

Hawkeye took a deep breath and his expression twisted and twisted before smoothing out into an unhappy frown as he called out, “Pull over”. 

The bus jerked to a stop and Hawkeye got off just as the first chopper touched down.                  

*      

You open your eyes to the green ceiling of the Swamp and the early dawn light. Waking had no particular feel to it, you were dreaming vividly one moment and you were awake in reality in the next. You feel pretty well-rested, despite your overall confusion and unease. 

You look over and see Hawkeye still asleep in his bunk. Frank is no where to be seen, he must have already left for the mess. You habitually glance at the calendar, noting that the date was June 22nd, 1951. 

“Hey, Hawk.”

“Mhmph,” he grumbles, turning his back to you in a clear message of ‘shut up before sun up’.

Uncowed, you try again, lobbing your pillow at his head. “Hawkeye.”

“What?” he moans, blindly throwing your pillow back and you. It sails over your head and lands on the dirt floor. “What do you want?”

“Do you remember that time when I-Corps said you were dead?” 

That wakes him. Hawkeye’s head snaps up with an audible crack as he looks wildly at the calendar. “Yeah, why? What day is it?”

“June 22nd,” you say before he can get too worked up. 

He slumps back into his cot with a relieved sigh. “Thank god. Thought I was gonna have to make a supremely expedited call to my dad.” 

“So they did tell him you had died.”

“Yeah.” Hawkeye groans as he sits up fully, blinking against the morning light. “The first time it happened, dad called Trapper in the middle of the night, trying to find out how I managed to kick the bucket in a MASH unit of all places. But the phone lines were down, so Trap couldn’t hear what dad was saying. By the time we figured out that the army had graciously declared my services nullus via mortis, the lines were so weighed down that I couldn’t get up with him. It was a whole thing.”

He stretches and heaves out of his cot, throwing on his bathrobe. “Now whenever February 19th comes around, I try to call him and I-Corps as soon as I can. Sometimes I can catch dad before he reads the telegram, sometimes I can’t.”

All of that checks out, both with what you remember of that day and also with what happened in your dream. Trapper wasn’t there though - it was you Daniel had called - and you doubt your imagination is good enough to come up with all those other minute details on your own; the call in the middle of the night, the phone lines being down, the look on Hawk’s face as he resolves to get off that bus. 

“Why the sudden curiosity?” Hawkeye asks. 

You wave him off, not ready to share whatever it was you just saw when you don’t even understand it yourself. “No reason, I just remembered that day and wanted to know what happened the first time.” 

Hawkeye hums as you both get ready to face whatever horrors awaited you in the mess tent. 

“You’ve lived this day before, right?” you murmur quietly over Hawkeye’s shoulder. “You know what’s wrong with him. You can save him this time.” 

Hawkeye’s expression is already grieving, his gaze never leaving the man’s pale face. “I’ve tried twice now. He never… I don’t know why.” 

Your eyes cut over to him in concern. Hawkeye is many things, but you’ve never known him to be a defeatist where his patients are concerned. 

“You have to try,” you argue. 

He shoots you an impatient look over his face mask and you feel your shoulders loosen. “Of course I’m going to try,” he says. “I’m just getting sick of reruns of this particular episode. The ending never seems to change, no matter how many times I hack at the script.” 

Well you’re not going to accept that, and you’re not going to let Hawkeye accept it either. 

“We’ll do it together.” You guide him towards the sink by the small of his back. “Scrub up, let’s get to work.” 

His gaze is still bleak, but he nods and sticks his hands under the rush of cold water. 

You and Hawkeye work together like a well-oiled machine; a united front, just as you always have and always will. You’ve seen the miracles Hawkeye can tease out from between 4-O silk and the determination to spit in death’s face. You’re no slouch yourself, and you’re determined to perform perfectly now. Between the two of you, Gilis’ operation is practically textbook; a rarity in a land of war and meatball surgery. Done in record time with no new complications. 

He still dies. 

“You stood me up last night.”

You’ve never seen this woman before in your life. 

“Sorry?” 

She rolls her eyes. “I don’t want an apology, doctor. I want an explanation.” 

You don’t even know what year it is; you were called to triage and rushed out of the tent without checking the calendar. You’ve definitely never met this woman - a nurse, by the looks of it - and you’ve certainly never made plans. Although it sounds like you will one day; maybe tomorrow, maybe ten years from now. 

“Uh,” you say intelligently. “I’m married.”

She scowls. “I’m aware of that, yes. What exactly are you implying?” 

You don’t know what you’re implying, and you don’t know what she’s implying either. This is already agonizing, you should just bite the bullet and get it over with.

“I’m sorry, who are you?” 

She doesn’t even look offended, just hurt and bewildered, and now you feel terrible. 

“Sorry, sorry,” you rush to say. “I just don’t—“

Her friend scoffs and pulls her away before you can explain yourself, not that you have any idea what you would say. 

“What an ass,” she says as they walk away. “He was the one who offered!” 

“All of the doctors are like that,” the friend says. “If it’s not a tryst in the supply shed then you may as well not exist.” 

You’re still staring after them when Klinger comes up behind you. 

“You’re gonna have to think on your toes better than that, Doc.” He pats your shoulder consolingly. “Look on the bright side; if we ever get out of this, you’ll be an expert at improv.” 

BJ recognized the Officer’s Club despite the darkness as most of the lights were cut off and the proprietor started closing down. But while the club was dark, it wasn’t silent; a phonograph near the tables was spinning soft jazz into the air. The thread from last time was nowhere to be found and he had to squint to see without the aid of its ghostly silver glow. He silently scanned the tables until his eyes alighted on a single lone patron, hunched over and scribbling on a scrap of paper.

BJ drifted towards him, scanning his face in the low light, but he didn't recognize him. He recognized what he was doing though; all draftees have the same kind of intensity in their expression when they write a letter home. 

BJ leaned over the man’s shoulder to see what he was writing. He normally wouldn’t intrude, but he couldn’t see Hawkeye or anyone else he knew here, and he was familiar enough with these strange dreams by now to get the sense that there was something he was supposed to be gleaning from all this. 

The letter was addressed to a girl named Becky. She just turned seven, and the man writing, her father he presumed, would have given anything to be there. BJ thought of Erin and felt a moment of pure solidarity. And then he goes on to write about the horrors of the war; the way the wounded never stop coming and what it’s like performing surgery on a man who had spent nine hours bleeding in a minefield.

In a letter home.

To a seven-year old.

What the hell is wrong with this guy?

‘I’d like to be able to tell you when I’ll be coming home,’ he wrote. ’But for now, all I can do is stay here and make the best of it.’

The moment he finished writing and looked like he was about to sign off, the needle on the phonograph jumped. The record screeched for half a second then the song began repeating in on itself, sounding the same few notes over and over again. The curly haired man didn’t outwardly react to it beyond absently reaching over and unplugging the whole thing.

BJ watched with a frown on his face as the phonograph kept spinning. 

"Beej, get up."

You are not getting up. It's barely dawn so you are not getting up. 

"BJ!" Hawkeye shouts right in your ear, shaking your shoulder hard and nearly tipping you out of your cot. "I know you're awake, get up!"

You are not going to kill Hawkeye. He's your best friend and you are not going to kill him.

Hawkeye kicks your cot, raising his voice to new decibels. It really shouldn't be possible for a human being to sound like this. "It's November 16th and we only got one shot at this, now get the hell up!"

That catches your attention and you crack your eyes open against the pink morning light, glaring at him. "What's special about November 16th? What year?"

Hawkeye hops around as he tries to flap his hands and put on his boots simultaneously. "1950, and November 16th, my friend, is the day you taste the food of all foods. The meat of all meats. A meal so delicious, so savory, that it could make even McArthur come to his senses." 

You're scrambling into a pair of pants before he's even finished speaking. 

"I'm in. You can explain on the way." 

*

November 16th, 1950, was apparently the day of the coveted Adam's Ribs Delivery (trademark pending).

“Come on, move it! We need to get to acquisitions now, now, now!”

You’ve heard less urgency in Hawkeye’s voice during a shelling. He pokes and shoves you into the hard edges of a waiting Jeep before jumping in the driver’s seat and peeling out of camp in a billow of sepia dust.   

“Alright, alright,” you laugh. “I get the enthusiasm, but what’s the rush? They’re already at acquisitions aren’t they? It’s not like they’re going anywhere.”

The wind whips Hawkeye’s hair into a frenzy, making him look that much more manic as he grins. “Oh, they’re there all right. Forty pounds sitting nice and cozy in their cradle. The problem is that in about six hours we’re going to get a flood of wounded in and they’ll go to waste. The war stole my ribs from me before I could even take a single, succulent bite, and my world has been cold ever since.”

He whips his finger in your face, causing the vehicle to swerve a bit. “I will not suffer the same loss again, Beej, you hear me? Never again.”

The Jeep gives a tortured screech as Hawkeye slams to a stop in front of the supply depot. You jump out and start to follow up to the door when Hawkeye veers to the right and towards a smaller building set off to the side.

“Hawk, supply is over there.”

“We’re scaling the chain of command, Beej. Those ambulances will be here in five hours and twenty-eight minutes. We don’t have time for petty squabbles with lowly, demanding, box-moving corporals.”

You’re not gonna ask.

Hawkeye whirls into the sergeant’s office like a hurricane. “Supply sergeant, sir. Captain Benjamin Franklin Pierce of the 4077th variety. I need a package labeled ‘Urgent Medical Supplies’ with an underlined emphasis on the ‘urgent’.” 

The sergeant opens his mouth to reply, but Hawk is already cutting him off, “No, we don’t have a S47-19J.”

“Well, I can’t g-“

“You can and you will.” Hawkeye leans over the man’s desk, practically bracketing the guy in. “That’s a strong accent you got there. Chicago?”

The sergeant grins. “Joliet.”

“Just a hop and skip over then.” Hawkeye leans even closer, dropping his voice low and sultry. “Ever heard of Adam’s Ribs?”

The man’s gaze darkens, an excited gleam entering his eyes as he leans right up towards Hawk’s face. The air between them becomes charged and you raise an eyebrow. They’re pulling out the night picture act for some ribs? You know the army is full of freaks, but christ alive. 

“How much you got?” 

“Ten pounds.”

Your eyebrow climbs higher at that, but you pointedly continue to not get involved in whatever this is. 

“I’ll take five pounds and a quart of sauce.”

“You’ll take one and a cup of sauce.”

“Two pounds, one cup of sauce, and one cup of coleslaw.”

“There is no coleslaw.”

“You ordered in from Chicago and didn’t get any coleslaw?”

*

You’re sitting squeezed shoulder to shoulder between Hawkeye and Mulcahy in the mess tent as you and damn near half the camp wait with bated breath for Igor to come back. 

And come back he does, sweeping through the tent doors holding the steaming pan of ribs aloft with all the fanfare it deserves. Cheers are called and hands clap as the pan is set down. There’s enough for everyone to get three ribs with a generous drizzle of sauce. Hawkeye looks like he’s about to shed a tear. 

The ribs are exquisite. Tender and tangy, and so perfectly cooked you would never have guessed they flew a thousand miles to land on your plate. You and Hawkeye toast to your success with bones picked clean. 

The ambulances won’t arrive for another thirty-five minutes, and life is good.

“I’m telling you guys, it’s aliens! They fuckin’ probed us and now we’re stuck in this shit so they can study our brain waves or somethin'.”

“Shut up, Rizzo.” 

It’s April 18th, 1951, and your blood-slicked gloves squelch wetly as they hit the wood panel wall. 

You lean against a gurney to try to catch your breath and not be sick all over the hallway outside the OR, but it’s a losing battle because you don’t understand. 

You’ve lived this day before, you’ve had that exact same guy laid prone on your table, you knew exactly what was wrong with him -a missing right leg, two shredded kidneys, and a circulatory system stumbling headlong into sepsis- you know what it is and how to fix it. He was going to make it this time. You didn’t miss anything -  you likely performed the surgery better than you did the last time. He was going to be alright.

But he wasn’t. None of your knowledge, none of your cursed foresight saved that man. He died, slipping away quietly right under your scalpel. Again.

You’re so swept up in your churning thoughts that you don’t notice Radar until he’s right next to you, a concerned frown on his face and a fresh pair of gloves held out in hand.  

“I told Colonel Potter you were taking a 10 minute break,” he says.

You ignore the gloves and face the kid head on. Radar’s been doing this a long time - too long - but you feel nauseous whenever you follow that line of thought too closely, so you plow right ahead. You jab a finger towards the OR doors. 

“That man in there was supposed to survive. Why didn’t he?”

Radar’s eyes flick up and down the hallway, looking out for listening ears with a quickness that comes from years of practice. You’re lucky the hallway is empty; you have enough on your conscience as-is. 

“I’m sure you did your best in there,” he says, voice just above a murmur. 

You guilty lower your voice to match his. “It’s not about doing my best, Radar. It’s that I knew exactly what the problem was but it didn’t matter.”

“Yeah, that happens sometimes, and it’s always really tough.” He waves the gloves at you insistently. You take them just to get him to stop. “But that doesn’t mean you did anything wrong.”

“Didn’t do anything- he’s dead, so clearly I did something wrong!” Your voice raises and Radar shushes you until you’re back to a whisper. “I knew about his shredded kidneys this time before even opening him up!”

Now Radar is starting to look impatient, fingers fiddling with his clipboard. “I hear what you’re saying, BJ, but that’s not always how it works.”

“But I’ve done this before!” you hiss as much as you can while still whispering, flinging the gloves to the floor because it’s better than punching something. “I’ve done this day! I’ve done that same operation on that same patient! I fixed him up in record time, so why did he die?” 

Radar frowns up at you, looking like he doesn’t know why he has to explain this. “I mean, yeah, we’ve done this day before, but knowing what happens doesn’t always mean things are gonna end up the way we want them to.” 

“What do you mean? If I know exactly what’s going to happen and when, then why wouldn’t I be able to control it?”

Radar’s frown deepens as he waves a hand around vacantly. “I mean - you can sometimes, but not all the time. Y’know how the repeats affect us, but not always the things around us? It’s like that.”

Impatience is knocking against your throat, begging you to say things you shouldn’t, but you swallow it back with effort. You shouldn’t be laying your failures across this kid’s shoulders anyway.

“I’m still not following.” 

Radar hums at the wall with a pinched look of concentration, visibly trying to find another way to say whatever it is he’s trying to say.

“I guess it’s like…knowing the future doesn’t always change what happens. I think it mostly just changes you.” 

Before you can say anything, he pulls a second pair of gloves out of his pocket and hands them to you just as Potter calls you back into the OR.

It’s November 9th, 1952, and you're eagerly tearing open the letter you just got from Peg. 

Hawkeye is already sniffing like a bloodhound around the cookie tin the letter was attached to, but you’ve already told him under no uncertain terms that you will maim him if he touches a single morsel. Although, from the way Hawk is staring at the tin, he may be deciding that swiping a snickerdoodle would be worth never performing surgery again. 

Peg’s letter tumbles out along with a colorful crayon drawing from Erin. A single glance at the familiar drawing tells you that the letter is a repeat, but you’re trying your best to not let that get you down. 

Digging around in the crate you use as a bedside drawer, you pull out the original drawing and lay the two side by side. They’re similar in every way; down to the thickness of the wax in areas where Erin’s little uncoordinated hand bore down too hard on the paper. A perfect copy, oddly amazing to look at. 

The quiet click of a metal cookie tin being opened sounds across the room, and you make sure to toss the drawings out of the splash zone as you lunge to draw first blood on your bunkmate. 

It’s December 5th, 1952 and the 4077th is being interviewed. 

You, Hawk, and Klinger are loitering outside of the mess tent, waiting to be called in. Klinger has produced a stack of discarded medication labels, and he and Hawkeye are in the middle of a very imagination-forward game of Go Fish. Your name is up next, so you hang by the tent entrance and don’t join in. 

“Got a two?”

“Nope. Try the war down the street.”

You’re pretty sure they dubbed the sulfasalazine as the two’s and you can clearly see three of them over Hawkeye’s shoulder, but Klinger swiped twenty dollars from you during last week’s poker game with a four-of-a-kind and was a sore winner about it, so you don’t rat Hawk out. 

The air is chilly and still and the interviewer’s voice floats out of the tent easily, followed by Margaret’s response.

“I feel as old as I’m ever going to get.” 

Your ears prick and your spine straightens as you stare at the green tent doors. A hazy dream from many months ago floats back to you and you realize that you’ve experienced this day before, just not in the way you’ve become used to. There’s a loaded pause and you can picture the wide grin unhinging from her face as she says, “Older than I ever intended to be.” Even the tone she says it in is the same. 

Margaret exits the tent ten minutes later. You stare down at her in bewilderment, hoping that your calendar partner can explain this all away, but she just raises an eyebrow at you and gestures towards the tent. 

Head spinning, you walk in and give the most distracted interview of your life.

It’s October 5th, 1951, and this day follows closely on the heels of October 4th, 3rd, 2nd, 1st, and so on. The date’s been marching along to a very normal, very sane drum for nearly twelve weeks now.

It’s electrifying. 

“Don’t get your hopes up,” Hawkeye had said, three weeks in. “It’s done this before, remember? And the only thing we got out of it is you being stuck with the rest of us.”

But Hawkeye, at his core, wants so badly to be an optimist, and you catch his gaze lingering hopefully on the calendar as five linear weeks turned to six. 

*

“Now, I ain’t saying I want the madness to continue,” Goldman says as you all stumble back from a late night at Rosie’s. “What I am saying is that it’s a lot harder to clean house at the poker table without a bit of, ah, clairvoyance.”

“Have you ever considered just getting good at poker?” you ask, slinging Hawkeye’s arm over your shoulder as he drunkenly shuffles into you for the third time. 

“‘Have you ever considered’,” Goldman mocks. “Being monstrously good as gambling ain’t the brag you think it is, big shot. Besides, I learned from the best.”

“Jones lost all s’money the m’ment t’day stopped repeating,” Hawkeye slurs. “I wouldn’t call ‘im t’best.”

Goldman twirls his dog tags as he walks, causing them to flash silver in the moonlight. “Ah, but no one did it quite like him. You bozos knew he was cheating and still lost a month’s wages.” 

*

Week twelve crawls into week thirteen and then fourteen. Margaret grips her pen tightly as you and her add the date to your respective journals. 

She hasn’t said it, none of them have. Burned once too many times, you suppose. But you haven’t experienced this many days in order in over two years now, so after a long moment of hesitation you say, “Think this is it?”

“No.” She answers quickly and definitively in a tone that suggests she was just waiting for you to ask. “No, it’s done this before.” 

“But not for this long.”

She chews her lower lip, plastering on a flat smile as a nurse passes by the table and greets her. The smile falls as soon as the nurse turns her back. “Not for this long,” she agrees. “But we’ve experienced these days before.” She flips rapidly through her notebook. “November 5th, twice. November 4th, five times. The 3rd, once, just six months ago. The 2nd, eleven times, and so on. And that’s just for November. Why now?” 

“Why whenever?” you retort. “Why at all? Why even try to find an explanation for something as unexplainable as this?” 

She shakes her head. “I can’t buy into that. There has to be a point.”

*

Hours later, you’re elbows-deep in the chaos of triage when Hawkeye shouts your name in a tone that sends you running immediately.

Radar lays under his hands, hit by mortar fire on the way to Seoul. He’ll be okay - you never consider any other outcome - but you shouldn’t have let your guard down. You, thankfully, aren’t there when he and Hawkeye blow up at each other in front of all of post-OP, but somehow your ears are still ringing from it. 

The next day is June 12th, 1951. 

It’s August 4th, 1952, and Margaret just tied the knot. 

“How does that even work?” Hawkeye grouses. “You’re just gonna get ticked off when the date jumps right over your anniversary and he doesn’t even notice.” 

Margaret glowers, and you’re pretty sure that you standing between the two of them is the only thing saving him from a swift punch to the nose. You sling the last of her bags into the back of the jeep as Hawk opens the driver door with a flourish. 

“You lot better pray that the date straightens out,” she says tightly as she gets behind the wheel. “If I wake up tomorrow here instead of Tokyo, I will set this whole camp on fire.” 

“Understandable,” you and Hawk say in unison. 

It's August 8th 1952, and Major Charles Winchester the Third is familiar. 

You have to squint at him for a while before you make the connection; those strange dreams you’ve been having in this stranger place. You saw him, years ago, back when they first started. He had been talking to Hawkeye in the dream, but it was so long ago that you don’t remember what he said. There’s no mistaking him though; he looks exactly the same as he had then, but you’re pretty positive the two of you have never met. 

You stare at him for so long that he raises an unimpressed eyebrow at you. 

“Yes, can I help you?”

“Have we met?” you ask, just to be sure.

His eyes flicker from your feet to the top of your head and his eyebrow somehow looks even more unimpressed. 

“No, I should think not. I cannot imagine we’ve ‘run in the same circles’, as you’d say.” 

Okay. So he’s familiar, pompous, and a jerk. For a moment, you're tempted to test out for yourself if telling someone about the loop is enough to get them stuck in it. You don't, of course. Purposely getting someone stuck in this glue trap is grounds for a well-deserved ass kicking from the others. But even without all the poorly concealed warnings —“Yes, Beej, this is a threat. Don't let the cat out of the bag- you're my best friend, but I'll still slap you into a whole 'nother war.”—, you would never be so cruel.

You hope you wouldn't, anyway.

Still, you and Hawk have never had to live in such close quarters to someone who is blessed with linear time before. He's going to think you're both crazier than McArthur by the end of the week.

Do you and Hawkeye still fully plan on using the time jumps to mess with him? 

Absolutely. 

It’s August 9th, 1952, and Frank, of all people, gets to leave. 

Hawkeye destroys the Swamp in enraged retaliation. You watch him silently from your cot, his incoherent screams ringing sharply in your ears as something just two steps to the right of rage simmers in your gut.

And as the tent comes down around your shoulders, and Hawkeye throws Frank’s footlocker right through the screen door, you think that this is a perfectly reasonable reaction, all things considered. 

“It’s time to up the ante.”

“What do you mean, Hawkeye?” asks Mulcahy, cradling his coffee in the chilly morning of the mess tent. 

Hawkeye ignores him and turns to you. “We’ve just been breaking him in, but he’s not a new model, he’s a Major. It’s time to use our misfortunes to our advantage.” 

Malcuhy looks confused, but you and Hawkeye have been operating on the same wavelength for years now, so you immediately whip out your notebook and turn to your notes on Charles Winchester III.

“He plays the french horn,” you read.

“How do you know?”

“Saw it in a dream once.” 

The two other men don’t even blink at this - a testament to the years of insanity you’ve all been embroiled in. 

Hawkeye hums, fingertips drumming on the tabletop. ”Noted, but I don’t think we can do anything with that right now. What else you got?”

“He would sell us to the Chinese for his vinyl collection.”

“Well I could have told you that.”

“Don’t you gentlemen think that you should lay off Major Winchester?” Father Mulcahy says. “I know he’s rather eccentric, but you both remember how difficult it was to adjust to life here. I don’t think practical jokes will help him along any faster.”

There are so many scratching things you want to say to that, but you manage to bite your tongue just in time. Major Winchester is not stuck in the loop and will likely experience a very reasonable sixteen to twenty-four months of war before going home relatively unscathed by the experience. You would kill to be him, so a few pranks here and there seem like a perfectly reasonable alternative, if you do say so yourself

Hawkeye says, “He called your last sermon - and I’m quoting here - an ‘overinflated exercise in religion self-flagellation’.”

Mulcahy sputters into his coffee. “Self— he— overinflated? Well, I should say—“

“Don’t get too tied up, Father,” you say without looking up from your notebook. “You know how those Presbyterians can be.” 

“This whole miserable camp is Presbyterian!” Mulcahy huffs as he stomps out of the mess tent. 

You regard Hawkeye from the corner of your eye. “Do we even need a prank anymore? You just sicced the Father on him.” 

*

The problem with waging a prank war with someone who, unlike yourself, experiences linear time, is that neither of you ever sees the other’s retaliation coming. So imagine you’re you, coming off of a grueling O.R. shift, and you fall into your waiting bunk to find the mattress has been replaced with bags stuffed with the enlisted men’s mildewing laundry. The smell hits you like a tank and you roll onto the floor, gagging over the sound of Charles’ smug chuckle. 

You’re an easygoing guy. Reasonable, even-tempered, jovial, even. But it’s been a long and hard day, so tomorrow, when you carefully tease off the cover of Charles’ New Yorker magazines and replace the inside pages with the Quickie pictures Hawk keeps squirreled away, you’re not thinking about the fact that the date has jumped forward by four months. 

Charles’ shriek of “Hunnicut, we had a deal!” follows you, Hawkeye, and a flurry of thrown magazines as you both flee the Swamp in a fit of giggles. 

“What deal?” Hawkeye laughs you as you both catch your breath. 

You shrug. “Beats me.” 

*

Eight backward weeks later, you’re sitting on the latrine when all four walls around you topple over like a house of cards. You’re squinting in the sun, pants down and knees pressed together as passing nurses and MPs shriek and laugh. A shadow casts over you and you look up to see Charles smiling down at you. 

“Maybe next time you will learn to keep your surgical instruments to yourself.”

You have absolutely no idea what he’s talking about. Looking around at the collapsed latrine, and at Zale grinning off to the side with his hammer still in-hand, you think that maybe you’ve underestimated Charles Winchester III. You also think that if you’re going to suffer through retaliation, then you want to actually remember when a prank war is on.

You hold a hand up to him. “I can’t speak for Hawk, but you and I are under a ceasefire. Deal?”

He looks pointedly between your hand and the collapsed latrine with a look of disgust and does not shake on it. Instead, he turns on his heel and walks away, throwing out a satisfied, “Deal,” over his shoulder.

It’s March 27th, 1952, when Radar escapes and you use your shaking fists to send Hawkeye and the still crashing down. 

Potter’s office is cold and dim. You ignore the light switch in favor of anonymous shadows and sink to the ground. The whiskey decanter is heavy glass in your hand. The cold metal handles of the cabinet are digging into your back, and you wonder about time and its order. You’ve determined in the last few days, weeks, months, that time isn’t the straight line you’d always thought it was. It doesn’t merely skip forwards and backwards. 

You don’t think it’s truly disjointed either; that the moments of your life are scattered like poker chips across the floor, ready to be picked up and experienced at random. You think it’s more like a squiggl, messy and overlapping - something Erin would throw in yellow in the corner of her drawing and call the sun. So messy and with so many overlaps that sometimes you feel like your days are past, present, and future all at the same time. Everything that is happening right now will happen, and has already happened. You are a doctor in the army in 1950, and you’re graduating with your MD at home in 1951. You are in Korea, will be in Korea, have been in Korea. 

You take a long, scalding gulp of whiskey and wonder at the implications of it all. You wonder if it’s always been this way and you’ve just never noticed, or if there’s a special reason you’re all trapped in this purgatory, this fake world you’ve found yourself in. You wonder how much time you’re losing, both by being in the army and by the fact that you’re aging in the loop. You think about how Hawkeye, Margaret, and Klinger have been here for a year and aged five. You wonder if Radar’s mother will notice that her son looks either nineteenth or twenty-four depending on the lighting. 

You wonder about time outside of purgatory, in the real world. You think about Erin, who is growing until she’s not. She’s two years old and she’s one, and she is a toddler and she’s just being born and she exists and then she doesn’t. You wake up one morning and she’s learning how to walk. You wake up the next morning and she’s taking her first breath, and either day you are not there to see it, and sometimes you can’t breathe through everything you’re continuing to lose.

There’s a shuffle to your right, and you look up to see Hawkeye in the doorway. He’s hunched and wary with his stupid helmet and bruised face, and you’re laughing but, God, it’s not funny, and the universe itself must realize it because the next thing you know there’s an arm around your shoulder and a hand gently pressed to your forehead. The whiskey bottle has rolled away and you’re sobbing into the musty threadbare robe on Hawkeye’s shoulder. 

“I’ve been gone so long, Hawkeye. A lifetime. Erin’s lifetime. What am I gonna do? I need to go home.”

Time is moving and slowing. It’s stumbling forward and skipping back and spinning on its axis. Your heart churns as the days spin around and around, and you hate. You hate the loop. You hate this camp. You hate the military, and you hate the mailman who delivered your draft assignment. You hate Trapper, and Frank, and you especially hate Radar. 

But you’re not alone. Under the bubbling rage that never quite goes away, you’re so relieved that you’re not alone that you feel as if your body could pool to the floor if you don’t hold yourself together tight enough, if you don’t experience it hard enough. You can’t imagine doing this by yourself, and you wonder how Radar could bear it those first few weeks on his own. 

Sorrow leaks out into the dark office, yours and Hawkeye’s both, and it’s not quite catharsis, and it’s certainly not healing, but the rage is slowly folded up and tucked away until next time. It feels like a kind of reset, like the strength to go another day, and you squeeze your friend’s hand tightly in gratitude.

“I’m sorry, Hawk. I’m sorry.”

It’s exhausting to obsess over a single problem for forever, so you don’t. 

The urgency of the situation comes and goes in waves. The days grow hazy and eventually you run out of space in your brain to remember when you’ve repeated this day or that before, so you use the journal to remember for you. 

Some dates or situations stick out, bringing reality sharply into focus, but it’s like some part of you has rolled over and accepted the situation; has pulled a protective curtain between you and this shivering anxiety that threatens to drive you crazy. 

You and Margaret still meet and still diligently keep the tally of the days, but overall you and everyone else are getting on with this strange version of life. 

It’s March 11th, 1951, and it’s the eighth March 11th, 1951 you’ve lived through. In a row. 

In. A. Row.

You’re beyond over with this day, and the poor suckers stuck in purgatory with you are over it too. Restlessness itches its way over you all, drawing confused looks from everyone not in purgatory. You stitch up the same foot laceration for the eighth time. You tell Abel to increase the dose of antibiotics on Corporal Jennings in bed eleven before you even lay eyes on the bullet wound that has festered overnight. You pass a patient with a complicated gut injury off to Charles, knowing from your first attempt that he will be much better suited to treat it.

Both Charles and Abel give you odd looks throughout the whole shift, but you’re so beyond caring that you don’t even consider how strange it all must look to them. 

You’re leaving the OR when a passing MP glances back at you and whistles. “Dang, Captain. Those jowls were smooth as a baby just yesterday. Wish my beard grew in that fast.”

“It’s a curse, trust me.” 

What the MP doesn’t know is that it actually is a curse and his yesterday was actually eight days ago. So now you’re in the Swamp, straddling a chair in front of your tiny mirror with low quality shaving cream on your face. You’ve always cared a normal amount about your looks, but this is the first time you’ve actually had to keep up appearances. 

Hawkeye is lying on the edge of his bunk, idly flipping through a magazine with his feet kicked up onto your back. 

“Y’know, the last time we had a string of repeats like this, we set the camp on fire,” he says.

The blade in your hand twitches, nearly taking your tasteful mustache clean off your face, and you know if your heart of hearts that’s exactly what Hawkeye was hoping for. 

“You what?” 

“Okay, not the whole camp,” he concedes. “But we did make a giant bonfire of all the furniture.” 

“Seems to be a running theme.” 

“May as well be. It’s not like it matters. I tossed that chair you’re sitting in and watched it burn to cinders. And here it is, nary a scorch, nary a scuff, and right back here in its proper place the next day. The flat circle of time. Everything is reset.” 

You look down as the worn wood under your elbows, whole and unscathed. Your face in the mirror is not so lucky. Dark circles hang under your eyes as smile lines and crow's feet cling to their corners. There are two faint wrinkles between your brows, and your hairline is a bit further back than it was when you first got here, much to your dismay. The overall image of you is tired and older than your thirty-two years (Thirty-five? You push the thought away).

You return to shaving and after a moment, add, “Not everything.” 

“No,” he agrees, always weirdly cavalier - or maybe resigned - to their situation in the buildup to the moments when he’s loudly, violently not. “A shame you’ll have to wait for it to grow back then.” 

You know what he’s going to do before he even finishes the sentence, but you’re still not fast enough. His foot nudges you forward and the razor eats half of your mustache in one fell swoop. 

“Maybe, uh…Maybe if he knows, he can get more out of the time he has left,” Hunnicut said.

“Yeah, or it could take the life out of the time he has left,” Hawkeye retorted.

“If it were you, would you want to know?” 

“Would you want to tell me?” 

Hunnicut and BJ both looked away, neither sure what to say. 

It’s August 15th, 1951, and it’s a hot one. 

You, Hawkeye, and Klinger have set the poker table in the leaning shadow outside of the Swamp to escape to boiling humidity inside. Even in the shade you’re actively sweating, and Klinger has abandoned the little satin number he was wearing for an army reg tank top. 

You’re definitely not winning this time, and based on the poorly concealed gleam in Hawk’s eyes, you think he’s the one about to decimate your paycheck. 

“Radar hasn’t written,” Klinger says, apropos to nothing. And as the company clerk and army-certified postman, you suppose he would know. 

“And?” Hawkeye says, going for casual and missing the mark by a country mile. Trapper John may as well be sitting at the table himself for all the effect he’s suddenly having on this conversation. You toss back your martini like the world’s dirtiest shot. “He’s probably busy soaking in Iowa sunshine and mourning the loss of his Ni-Hi.” 

Klinger hums noncommittally, also going for casual and actually succeding. “Ever noticed how no one who got shipped stateside has ever written? Or called. Not even a little note on a carrier pigeon.” 

“And?” You echo, an edge of your own creeping into your voice. You and Hawk both are being too defensive, you know that, but you really wanted to just enjoy your poker game, damnit! Not every conversation has to center around purgatory.  

“Think they’re alright?” Klinger asks, dropping casual in favor of worry. You can see the ghost of Henry Blake sitting right in the middle of the question. Table’s getting crowded. 

“Of course they’re alright,” Hawkeye snaps, immediately mangling the cards in his clenched hands. The U.S. Military is not gonna have any cards left if he keeps doing that. “They’re probably just off, living life and enjoying the privilege of linear time and not getting bombed every other week. If I got to leave this place, I wouldn’t look back either.”

That’s a bold-faced lie, but you’re not going to call him on it. And that seems to be that because you all go back to your game. A few minutes of quiet stretch as Hawkeye straightens out his cards and proceeds to pocket all your spending money without so much as a smirk. 

You’re shuffling cards for the next round when Klinger says, “Suppose they forget? When they get out?” 

Neither of you have anything to say to that. It’s just another question with no answer added onto the pile already weighing on your mind.

"You’re a doctor of medicine! You cut into a healthy body and you’re gonna hate yourself for the rest of your life.” 

“I hate myself right now! I hate me, and I hate you, and I hate this whole life here! And if I can keep that maniac off the line with a simple appendectomy, I’ll be able to hate myself with a clear conscience.”

“Alright, you want to play God, you do it alone!” 

What is this? What is this?

Bj remembered Colonel Lacy and his shredded battalion passing through camp. He remembered his own disgust and Hawkeye’s downright poisonous ire, but he didn’t remember this. 

Hawkeye never mutilated that man. BJ wouldn’t have thought him capable of such a thing, but here it was, playing out right in front of him as he’s forced into the role of a bystander in his own life. 

BJ knew these weren’t simple dreams, had known it for years now. They’re too detailed, too specific, too impossible in their implications. It’s like being able to see the future, but for some kind of parallel universe; so similar to his own, but different in all the ways that mattered. Too different to understand what it was supposed to mean. 

Hawk wasn’t going to go through with it. He couldn’t, it was wrong. But the thread was here, as always, cutting across the room and leading straight into the OR. Hawkeye followed it, sterilized hands raised as he kicked the OR doors open. Hunnicut stared after him for a whole minute before he turned and stomped out of the building. BJ, nauseous, heart pounding, followed him and left Hawkeye behind to his grizzly task. 

It was late and the camp outside was deserted. A breeze swept through the camp, not even ruffling a single strand of hair on his head. The other end of the thread stretched across camp, towards the Swamp where this whole fucked up situation started. Hunnicut’s shoulders were tight and he was muttering to himself as he headed back, unknowingly following the thread as Hawkeye had before.

BJ stood there, not knowing what to do next. He’d always stuck close to Hawkeye or whoever else seemed to be the star of the dream, but the thought of rejoining Hawk in the OR made his jaw clench. He couldn’t watch his best friend degrade himself like that. To see the line drawn in the sand and watch Hawkeye stomp all over it.  

BJ turned and walked out of camp. And he kept walking until he woke up. 

You’re on the edge of your bunk, lying in wait as Hawkeye shuffles in from a night shift in post-OP and you’re speaking before he’s even fully through the door. “You drugged a man and removed a perfectly healthy appendix.” 

Hawkeye freezes, and the brief flash of pain across his face tells you everything you needed to know. You had hoped that what you saw was wrong and had never happened, but they’re not just dreams are they? They’re something else. 

“How do you know that?” he asks slowly, face pale. 

“Did it help?” 

The sallow cast to his face is replaced by a splash of angry color across his cheeks. He stares at you hard, jaw working furiously. You stare right back, wanting to understand, but for once, you and Hunnicut had proved that you actually were the same person, despite your doubts. Neither of you can justify this.

Hawk yanks off his coat and sits on his bunk to face you. The standoff only lasts for a few more seconds before he folds and looks away. 

“No.” 

“You shouldn’t have done it,” you say. “It was wrong.” 

“We knew that,” he snaps. His flick towards the still, but the swill at the bottom is a long way off from being gin, so he doesn’t reach for it. “Don’t preach to me, BJ - sanctimony doesn’t suit you.” 

You know what he’s doing, but you’ve had hours to cool down and build your defenses against his needling. You’re here for information, not to fight. 

“Whose we?” 

“Oh, so your source was only interested in sending one culprit to the stand? Trapper, obviously. We saw a general-shaped problem and we did what needed to be done.” 

Another idiosyncrasy. Another time Trapper acted as a stand-in for you. Why? It has to be because of the loop. Every jump forwards or backwards carries everyone in camp with it; otherwise Trapper or Jones or dozens of other people would materialize out of thin air every time the calendar said 1950. 

You say, “It didn’t need to be done. You were shortsighted and let your arrogance get the better of you, and that led you to doing something you regret, just like it always does.”

Hawkeye rolls his eyes. “Make that supercilious. You’re really monopolizing words starting with ‘s’. And I never said I regretted it, I said that it didn’t help.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Ah, see? You don’t know everything. Why don’t you save the sermons for Father Mulcahy. You’ve met Lacy, in case you’ve somehow managed to forget. I was a good boy this time around and his appendix is right where it was since the day he was born.” 

“That doesn’t change what happened.” 

“Sure it does.” Bitterness creeps into his voice. “He got a second chance at throwing a dozen kids into a meat grinder over a hill with a number on it. Lots of generals have killed for that opportunity, you know.”

“But you still did it. The problem fixing itself doesn’t change that.” 

“I guess I did and I guess it doesn’t. What do you want from me, BJ? I know it was wrong, I don’t regret it, I won’t do it again. So what now?”

What now, indeed. You don’t know what you want from him. Does it matter that he’s not sorry? Does it matter that he won’t do it again? Does anything truly matter in this place? You don’t know.

When you don’t respond, he says, “What I want to know is how you know this. You weren’t here when that day first rolled around, and Trapper and I never told a soul what happened that night.” 

You knew he would ask, and after the last few hours of contemplation you’ve managed to come to a decision. He’ll believe you, you don’t doubt that, and it’s well past time you called in for backup - and Hawkeye is your man. Your cohort, best friend, and partner in crime all rolled into one. What you saw last night doesn’t change that. 

You’re starting to think that nothing can. 

You take a deep breath and tell him about the dreams.

“You can see the future and you didn’t warn me that Igor was serving salisbury steak last night?”

“We’re not going over this again.”

“I’m just saying, give a guy a heads up next time. I’d like to dodge that bullet if I can.” 

Hawkeye stood in the middle of the tent, talking to that man from the Officer’s Club, the one with the honey-blonde curls. 

The first thing BJ noticed was how much younger Hawkeye looked here, with jet black hair that had yet to be carded through with gray, and big blue eyes that weren't quite as shadowed by dark circles. This must have happened years ago. 

BJ still didn’t recognize the other man was, and he wasn’t sure what they were talking about, so he habitually plucked at the silver thread and settled in to watch as the dream played out. 

“I don’t like the movie, I get up and leave,” the man said. “I don’t like the war, I’m going.”

Hawkeye scoffed. “Oh, come on, Trap.” BJ startled at that and focused on the other man intently, getting  his first look at John “Trapper” McIntyer as Hawkeye continued, “You gotta stick around and see how it ends.” 

BJ blinked in surprise; he was going AWOL. A big mistake on McIntyer’s part, he thought with no small amount of smug amusement. Whatever Trapper is trying to do here would just be slapped down by the desertion charges the Army would issue him, and then where would he be? 

“Oh, but it doesn’t end.” McIntyer’s smile was more sardonic than triumphant. He leaned in close, looking Hawk straight in the eye as he said, “It’s continuous. When it finishes here, they take it on the road. I can catch it anytime, anywhere.”

Hawkeye pulled back from him, not seeming to know what to make of that. BJ wasn’t really sure what to make of it either.

It’s January 15th, 1953, when the shelling starts. 

You, Margaret, and Klinger are thrown to the ground in a hail of dirt and debris. The line between regular army and civilians is never more apparent than in these moments; Margaret is on her feet and tearing through camp towards the OR before your mind fully registers what’s happening. 

Another shell lands barely twenty feet away in a blast of mortar and heat. It’s scorching and terrible and you grind your face into the ground in terror, covering your head until the ground stops acting like it’s going to come apart under you. You stay there for fifteen precious seconds to be sure there’s no follow-up before you roll to your feet and pull Klinger up with hands that shake. 

Klinger shouts something that you can’t hear over the sounds of screaming and explosions. He pushes you towards the OR before he darts off in the opposite direction, disappearing almost immediately in the smoke. 

You take a stumbling step then run. 

The camp is in chaos as people react wildly to the bombing for a few messy seconds until their training catches up with them. You can see Margaret’s hazy outline up ahead as you close in on the surgical building. Your heart pounds and your ears ring, but this isn’t your first rodeo either, and you developed a system for shellings.

Get to your patients. Find Hawkeye. 

It’s a simple list - you’ve always been good at prioritizing. 

Your feet slide in the mud as you round the mess tent. Potter’s voice rises from somewhere over the din, shouting orders that can still be heard even as another bomb hits across camp. MPs and army personnel storm into the surrounding tents in response as a wave of people in white scrubs and coats stream in the opposite direction to converge on the hospital. 

Post-OP is in ordered pandemonium as doctors and nurses rush to stabilize the patients with practiced efficiency. Another shell rocks the building and you dive for the nearest patient, shielding him with your body as dust rains down from the ceiling. 

The patient, a staff sergeant who’d arrived just yesterday from battalion aid, looks up at you with wide, terrified eyes. You wait for the walls to stop shaking and then immediately ease off of him to check his IV lines.

“I know,” you quip. “I don’t like this much bass in my music either.” 

The man - boy, really, they seem to get younger with every year you get older - shoots you a bewildered look, but you’re already turning away to check on the patient in the next bed.

Charles is shouting from the next room and your stomach drops as you remember that he was in the middle of a surgery. Klinger arrives and zips in and out of your awareness, pulling more penicillin and gloves out of mid-air and reminding you so much of Radar that you swear you can see the boy lingering in the corners of the room. Margaret is issuing orders with Baker and Miller acting as relay. The patients are agitated and frightened as the nurses do their best to talk them down. 

A shell shrieks as it lands somewhere close by, setting off another round of dust and screams, but you can barely hear it over the klaxon going off in your head. The OR is short one loud voice and a pair of skilled hands.

You’re missing half of your list. 

You catch Klinger by the arm, keeping your voice low as you ask, “Have you seen Hawkeye?” 

His harried expression goes stiff and worried as he shakes his head. “I’ll ask around—“

There’s a deafening explosion right outside of the building. The doors blow inward in a rush of smoke and dirt. The lights swing and flicker wildly. People are screaming and you’re rushing to pull bed sheets over exposed wounds. The ceiling feels like it’s going to come down any second and Hawkeye is out there somewhere and the klaxon is blaring, blaring, blaring--

The doors, barely on their hinges, bang open once more as two figures stumble out of the smoke, carrying a body between them. The first one in is Bigalow, sweat and dust caked on her face, followed closely by Hawkeye. There’s blood coating one side of his face and neck and the klaxons blare louder for a split second before cutting out. They both sink to their knees and Hawkeye is screaming for a litter “Now, right now!” as Bigalow puts her face in her hands. 

You’re across the room between one blink and the next, gripping Hawk’s shoulder. He reaches back and grasps your wrist, squeezing tightly before letting go. He leaves a sticky red handprint behind on your skin that you fight to ignore as you and a corpsman move to pry the body from their grips. 

“Beej,” Hawkeye pants, his voice raspy and singed. “It’s Kellye.”

Jesus. You don’t even recognize her under the blood and charred skin. 

Everyone gasps as you and the corpsman lay the stretcher on one of the OR tables. Kellye doesn’t make a sound, doesn’t even twitch. Hawkeye and Bigalow try to follow you in, but they’re both quickly pulled away to be treated. 

The whole OR grows silent as Kellye’s clothes are cut away and the damage is revealed. Margaret breaks the stillness by taking position across from you. Her arms are rigid as she raises sterilized hands, ready to assist. 

It’s not the first time the 4077th has had to work on one of their own, and everyone else falls in line quickly. 

Your mind is quiet and removed. You don’t know this person, it’s just another unfortunate who stumbled too close to a land mine, although normally said unfortunates don’t even make it all the way to your operating table. You’ve seen fourth degree burns before only in textbooks, so you’ve never dealt with something like this. 

And never on someone you kn—

Your eyes snap back to the anonymous skin under your hands as you cover weeping blisters that radiate heat. You cut away large swaths of skin that you don’t have the grafts to replace. You amputate four fingers. 

You don’t notice when the shelling stops. You don’t even notice Father Malcuhy approaching until he’s right next to you, murmuring prayer after prayer as grief pinches his eyes shut. 

You’ve never been a praying man, but you pray now.

* 

You’re still praying, hours later, as you sit sentry beside Hawkeye’s bunk. His skin is pale and clammy under the bandages, the result of a mid-grade concussion and blistering burns on his hands. The head injury is messing with his memory and he keeps jolting awake to try and run back outside.  

“Lay down, Hawk.” Your voice is hoarse and your heart is shredded. All you can hear is the dull klunk of Kellye’s pinky finger landing in the discard bin. 

Hawkeye looks at you with glazed eyes that won’t quiet focus. He looks devastated.

“There’s something wrong with Kellye.” 

“I know. She’s been taken care of.” 

“We have to go get her. She’s trapped under there.” 

“We got her out, Hawk. She’ll be alright, just lay down for me.” 

He searches your expression and seems mollified by what he finds. He settles down on his bunk and will stay there until you both repeat the process all over again in twenty minutes.

You close your eyes and pray and pray. 

Please. Please reset. Just this once. 

*

It does reset. 

It’s Janurary 15th, 1953, and you’re woken before sunup by the blare of Klinger’s trumpet.

You’re on your feet by the end of the first note and pulling the blankets from Hawkeye’s curled up form. The bandages and burns from before are still there, and you don’t know why that’s so crushing; you and everyone else stuck in the loop have always continued on as you all were. Injuries and aging and everything in between. 

—“Everything is reset,” Hawkeye had said, over a year ago now. —

—“Not everything.”—

The shelling will start very soon and you‘re looking around frantically, wondering where you can safely hide him, when his eyes snap open on the trumpet’s second note. Hawkeye scrambles out of bed before you can stop him. You move to lay him back down, but his eyes are clear and his balance is steady as he latches onto your arm and pulls you out of the tent.

There’s a crowd gathering at the tent pole. Charles stumbles in behind you groggily, and you spot Margaret on the other side in the early dawn light, but Klinger hits the horn again before you can get her attention. 

Potter’s voice bulldozes over the confusion. “Come on, people, let’s move it! Bomb’s away, let’s get this place locked down pronto!” 

“Colonel, what’s going on?” Charles calls. 

“Word from I-Corps. We have shells heading our way and I want us well out of the blast zone before they get here.” 

“But—“

“This isn’t a democracy,” Potter interrupts. “To your stations! I want all tents from the eastern perimeter to the latrines cleared out. Now go!” 

Everyone stuck in the loop is moving before he’s finished speaking, faces grim, while everyone else follows along a second later. 

“I’m sick of being grateful that he’s stuck too,” Hawkeye mutters as you both head for the OR. “Can you imagine trying to convince him to start a lock-down otherwise?”

You’re both passing the nurses tent when Kellye steps out; healthy, whole, not a disfigured husk under your scalpel. You‘re so grateful, you feel like you could cry. Hawkeye’s grin is so wide it squints his eyes. 

She has three duffle bags slung across her back and an arm full of linens, but still stops and does a double-take as she passes. 

“Hawkeye! What happened to your head?” 

*

The 4077th gets through the shelling with no injuries or casualties. 

Word on the front lines is Colonel Potter is up for a commendation for his quick, life-saving action. Hawkeye ribs him about it that night in the mess tent, but he doesn’t look very honored or amused. 

You grab your tray and sit down next to Margaret just in time to see her jot down today’s date and circle it violently over and over again in bright red ink. She nearly tears the paper in the process and slams the book closed before the ink even has the chance to dry. 

You pull out your own notebook and do the same. 

It’s September 16th, 1952 and you and Hawkeye are kicked back in the sunshine. The sky is a crisp, clear blue, and your martini is extra dirty. The radio is playing tunes under the rustle of people going about their day and you have a fresh newspaper in-hand. 

Hawkeye stretches like a long-limbed cat and scoops up his glass for a refill. You tip your hat down over your eyes and bask in the sun.

This day is just as beautiful as it was last time.

BJ stood off to the side as gas canisters went flying and Hawkeye and Margaret faced off. The thread felt like cool nothingness under his fingers.

“He ran out on me!” Margaret shouted. The military facade had been cracked down into dust, revealing familiar facets of anger and hurt and devastation underneath.

But Hawkeye wasn’t listening, too caught up in his own spiral. “We’ll be here forever! We’ll be here longer than forever!” 

It ached at something deep in BJ’s chest to see them like this. He opened his mouth to say something, knowing it’d do him no good but needing to try anyway, when Hawkeye surprised him by pulling himself out of his own head and focusing on Margaret.

“What do you mean he ran out on you?” 

“He lied to me,” she gritted out. “He kept saying we could work things out, and then to prove it he went sneaking off!” She cut the air with her hand, a sharp, pained gesture. “He couldn’t even face me, the dirty, miserable weasel.” 

BJ watched as Hawkeye’s grip on the jeep‘s sidebars tightened. “What are you gonna do?” 

“Get a divorce, that’s what!” Anger flared above the rest for only a moment before her expression twisted, carving away the other emotions on her face until only devastation remained. “Get a divorce,” she choked out. 

BJ stepped closer to them, laying a hand on each of their shoulders as Hawkeye tried to comfort her even as his jaw twitched over clenched teeth. BJ could see him getting worked up again and felt his shoulders tense as Hawkeye restarted his spiral. 

“This damn war,” he muttered. “We’re helpless here, and we just gotta sit here and take it.” His gaze drifted away from Margaret and landed on the jeep.

“Hawkeye,” BJ said in useless warning.

“This has got to stop,” he seethed, as if in answer. “This has got to stop right now. Today. This minute!”

BJ’s stomach plummeted and it was a mad scramble to jump into the jeep before he could be left behind. Hawkeye threw the vehicle into gear and hit the gas, jerking them both back as he peeled out of camp. BJ heard Margaret shouting behind them, her voice fading as they sped away. 

“Goddamnit, Hawkeye!” BJ shouted at him, gripping the armrests tightly. “Are you out of your fucking mind?” 

Hawkeye, predictably, doesn’t hear him. He tried to grab the steering wheel, and although he can feel the hot metal in his grip, it didn’t budge no matter how hard he pulled. 

“You can’t go to Panmunjom! And you can’t ju—”

A bright flash of silver in the corner of his eye caught his attention. It was the thread, running down the road on Hawkeye’s side of the jeep, holding place parallel to his head. BJ looked forward and saw it stretching into the distance, the jeep following along its path like a child’s toy at the end of a string. He remembered that one dream he’d had, months ago now, where he’d walked right out of camp and kept walking. The thread hadn’t followed him out, and it didn’t appear at all in that one dream in the officer’s club, so he had assumed that it only manifested in the camp, but now he wasn’t so sure.

Hawkeye jerked the jeep around a sharp turn in the road, the momentum of it careening them both sideways. BJ’s eyes were still on the thread, and he watched as it bent around Hawkeye when he swung into it, molding to the shape of his head for a bare instant before he straightened and it smoothed out again. That’s when BJ made the connection.

The thread was never following the camp, or even him. It was following Hawkeye. 

He was still frowning at that thin silver line when the jeep slammed to a stop, throwing him and Hawkeye forward. All thoughts of the thread left his mind as two MPs stepped in front of the vehicle. His heart was pounding and he glared at Hawkeye in disbelief as he lied his way through the checkpoint. BJ had to scramble into the back seat when one of the MPs hopped in, and he continued to glare as the jeep pulled up to the tent hosting the peace talks. 

Hawkeye kept up the act the entire way in, bypassing three more MPs, a dozen generals, and a lifetime in the stockade by the skin of his teeth. The thread followed, bending right around them both from where BJ was practically glued to Hawkeye’s back. His fingers twisted into the back of Hawkeye’s scrubs as he tried to pull him to a stop. 

But he doesn’t stop. Doesn’t stop moving and doesn’t stop talking - and if there was ever one thing BJ could never protect Hawkeye from, it was his own mouth. 

“Say it all together now: howdy!” 

BJ could tell the exact moment this act was going to drop. It was something in the change of Hawkeye’s inflection, in the seamless way he could go from jovial to cutting between one syllable and the next.

“Come on, it’s just one little word! I mean, you can’t even get together on one little word?”

“Hawkeye, stop it!” BJ hissed. His grip on him tightens as the MPs in the corner start to straighten. 

He saw the thread twist and warp around him as Hawkeye slammed his hands down on the table, leaning in and staring at the Chinese generals with wide, unblinking eyes. 

“You know what to do, why can’t you just do it? People are dying out there! You gotta stop it!” 

The generals behind them shifted, and the MPs started forward with hands resting on their guns. BJ’s heart was racing so fast he felt like he was about to pass out. His fingers were digging into Hawkeye’s waist so hard that he was sure they’d leave some nasty bruises if the other man could actually feel them. 

Hawkeye was going to get himself imprisoned. And then when he got there and opened his big fucking mouth, he was going to be institutionalized. And that’s if the idiot didn’t get himself shot right here and now. 

If Hawkeye noticed the rising tension in the room, he didn’t show it. A crazed look seeped into his wide blue eyes as he leaned further over the table and shouted right in the general's face.

“You can’t wait anymore! You can’t!” 

Silence stretched for an endless moment, and BJ wished more than anything that he could speak in this place. He couldn’t say or do anything here. Hawkeye was never meant to act as a one-man show for this exact reason. He needed someone to deflect his intensity; to turn his insubordination into a joke with a well-placed bit. But BJ was useless here, unable to do his job and draw away the brass’ ire. 

Hawkeye didn’t seem concerned as the MPs grabbed both of his arms and dragged him away. He immediately fell back into that facsimile of humor that was starting to sound more and more fake everytime BJ heard it; “Now get back to work and don’t make me come here again.”

BJ didn’t take a proper breath until he and Hawkeye were out of that tent and back into the bright mid-day sunshine. He felt like he’s aged a decade and his fingers cramped as he untwisted them from Hawkeye’s shirt, not leaving a single crease behind.

The two MPs kept their hold on Hawkeye’s arms, dragging him back to the waiting jeep. They came to a stop in front of it and BJ sucked in a tight breath, wondering if he was about to watch his best friend get arrested, when the smaller of the two leaned in and said, “Damn, son, that was something else.” 

The other MP nodded stoically, casting a glance back towards the tent. “You better head on back before they remember that people usually get thrown in the stocks for stunts like that.” 

Hawkeye snorted, all traces of that fake joviality gone from his face, leaving behind a deep-set fatigue. “Yeah, yeah. I’m going.” 

They both climbed back into the jeep and Hawkeye pulled out, heading back up the way you both came. BJ sank into the seat, exhausted. 

“Jesus Christ, Hawk,” he murmured soundlessly. “What were you thinking? Do you have any idea how badly that could’ve gone?” 

Hawkeye stared straight ahead at the road, face blank all the way back to the 4077th. The camp was deserted and they were both frowning around in confusion when a figure decked head to toe in red stepped out of the mess tent. 

“Howdy, stranger. Come here often?” Hunnicut leered. 

BJ startled, staring at him. In all of the tension and anxiety of the last hour, he had completely forgotten that this was a dream. BJ swallowed dryly and followed behind them as Hunnicut guided Hawkeye through the door of the mess, hand resting lightly on the small of his back. 

An anti-green party, Hunnicut had called it. Fitting, as he took in everyone’s vibrant red clothing and badly dyed hair. Hawkeye smiled and laughed, full and bright, and it was such a sudden shift from his earlier mood that BJ found himself drifting, unfelt and unseen, right up to his face. His eyes scanned the minutiae of Hawkeye’s expression, the twinkle in his eyes, the boyish tilt to his grin, looking for any signs of the fake humor from before. 

It was still there, smaller than before, but there all the same. Hawkeye was genuinely happy; BJ didn’t think he’d be able to fake the way his eye positively sparkled, but the tension was still there in the corner of his mouth. Hunnicut leaned in and whispered something BJ couldn’t hear in Hawkeye’s ear that sent him into peals of laughter. The tension grew a fraction lighter, and BJ knew Hunnicut saw it too before his dream-self turned back to Potter with an easy smile and shoulders that seemed lighter than before, mission accomplished. 

It should’ve been a relief, but BJ couldn’t help but feel that something was still off. Hunnicut was turning away too quickly. Doesn’t he see what BJ was seeing? It felt like he was moving on before the real problem could be uncovered. 

Like taking your eyes off the ball before it’s landed in the net. 

*

You wake to an icy dawn, Hawkeye’s laugh still ringing in your ears. 

You ease up, glancing at the calendar; January 27th, 1952. A shiver wracks you as a cold breeze sails though the tent wall and creeps up your spine; it had been the dead of summer when you fell asleep last night in nothing but a tank top and your boxers. You scurry back under your blankets, trying to salvage whatever warmth was left in your bunk until you could work up the nerve to search for your coat in the bottom of your footlocker. 

“I can hear you shivering from here, Hunnicut,” Charles drawls from across the tent where he’s straightening the collar of his jacket in the mirror. “What would possess you to dress in your undergarments in the dregs of winter, I’ll never know.” 

“Well,” you chatter. “They say that cold therapy is good on the muscles.”

“Yes. And I’m sure they also say that hypothermia is good for the hands of a surgeon.” 

He heads towards the door, but not before he scoops up the blanket from his own bunk and tosses it your way. You open your mouth to express your undying gratitude, but he’s already out the door and gone. 

Huh.

It’s October 7th, 1952, and Margaret is nine months into her year-long blanket project. Well, nine months from your non-linear perspective anyway. You’re both in the mess tent, her knitting and you struggling your way through a mug of something pretending to be coffee. 

Nurse Jamie slides in next to her, blinking down at the large blanket in Margaret’s hands. “Wow, Major!” she exclaims, shocked. “You just started that, what, three days ago? How do you already have so much of it done?”

Margaret laughs nervously. “Oh, you know. Steady focus makes for quick work.”

“She’s got magic fingers,” you say with a sidelong leer, wiggling your mustache at them.

Jamie snorts and Margaret sends a sharp elbow right into your ribs. 

BJ peered over Hunnicut’s shoulder, stomach sinking. That baby face was going to start haunting his dreams, although he supposed it already had. 

Johnson was paler than he’d ever seen him, and he swore the boy’s intestines were even more disintegrated than usual, something he hadn’t thought possible. 

BJ had recognized battalion aid immediately. Soldiers swarming in and out of a ransack building with only a lone doctor in the middle of it all. Hunnicut looked exhausted, fighting against the frontline with everything he had and working at a speed that BJ rarely saw in himself. Sweat beaded down his forehead only to be quickly swept away by a pale-faced corporal BJ didn’t recognize. Shrapnel was picked out with delicate hands, clinking sharply in the discard bin. 3-O silk was pulled through pink organs quickly turning beige in the humid air. Segments of the bowel were cut away, beyond saving. 

Clean, skilled surgery, considering the circumstances. BJ would be proud of himself if Hunnicut wasn’t clearly losing. 

“Check the spleen,” BJ breathed silently. “Check the spleen.”

“Pack this,” Hunnicut told the Corporal, who blinked at him rapidly, before he swung down to the spleen. BJ paced behind them, his brow furrowed. He’d worked on Johnson a few times now, the loop really hated the poor guy. He could perform this surgery in his sleep (ha.), but whatever trouble Johnson ran into in this reality, it definitely left him in worse shape. 

BJ was so focused on the operation in front of him that he didn’t notice the Lieutenant until the man ran right into him. It was like getting lovetapped by a brick wall. BJ hit the ground with enough force to knock the wind out of him and was just barely able to jerk his right arm out of the way before it was stepped on. The Lieutenant didn’t stumble or even blink, continuing right along as if he hadn’t just mowed a guy over. 

BJ’s head fell back in the mud as he laid there and caught his breath. He hated battalion aid, in dreams and in the waking world. 

The Staff Sergeant who was on anesthesia suddenly straightened. “I don’t hear a pulse,” he said, panicked and loud where a trained nurse would be steady and discrete, but this was battalion aid and no one even glanced in their direction. 

BJ shot to his feet as Hunnicut tossed away his scalpel and immediately started compressions. BJ turned, mouth open to call Hawkeye in for backup, before he remembered that Hawk, and even himself, weren’t really here with Hunnicut. 

“Pack that and staple the bowel,” Hunnicut ordered the Corporal. “Two more units of blood, or we’ll lose him.” 

The Corporal froze, empty hands shaking. “Uhh, Doc, I- I don’t—-“

Hunnicut didn’t stop the compression, keeping even timing between each pump. “Now, Corporal, we‘re running on empty here.” 

The man swallowed visibly then scurried away. BJ watched him go grimly, giving the chance of him coming back with the blood 50-50. 

“Come on, kid,” Hunnicut panted. “Come on.”

“I still don’t hear anything,” the Staff Sergeant said. 

It wouldn’t work, BJ knew it. Johnson’s organs were cascading, failing one after the next as shock and blood loss unraveled all of Hunnicut’s work. He needed someone to do compressions and someone to pump oxygen and someone else to stitch the rest of him back together, but all Johnson had was Hunnicut and that wasn’t going to be enough.

If they had gotten him to the 4077th, he would have made it. BJ knew that from experience. But here? With screams and gunfire sounding right outside the tarp door? With mud and blood seeping into their boots? These kids didn’t stand a chance. 

The crack of Johnson’s ribs signal the end of the Hunnicut’s fight. BJ could see the regret in his eyes, could feel the echo of it in his own chest. But there was no time to mourn on the front lines; the corpse that once held Private Johnson was lifted away barely thirty seconds later and another man quickly took his place. 

Heart in his throat, BJ drifted to a nearby corner and stared at the plywood wall until the dream ended. 

It’s the end of November 12th, 1951, when you barrel through the Swamp’s door just in time to see your patient swing his cane at Hawkeye’s head. 

You practically fly across the room as Hawkeye narrowly avoids the blow, and you have your hands around Basgall’s throat before he can even think of trying again. You’re screaming and shaking him until he’s a trembling mess at your feet but you don’t care. He’s injured, he’s your patient, and still you don’t care because how dare he? 

One misplaced blow is all it would have taken and then Hawkeye would be gone and you don’t know what would have happened after that. You just know that you would be here and he wouldn’t and you would do anything to keep that from happening. 

—“Everything is reset.”—

—“Not Everything.”—

(“Henry got killed and they’re still coming.”)

(“And what was it that got to you? The rage?”)

(“No. The fear.”)

“I ought to break your neck!” 

“Beej!”

The hands on your shoulders are familiar and you know that voice as well as your own. Hawkeye pulls at you as MPs pour into the tent. Basgall is wrenched out of your grasp and sobs as he’s pulled from the room. Hawkeye is shouting orders after them, but doesn’t leave as his hands twist into your jacket. 

“Sit down, sit down.” He pushes at your shoulders until you comply, sinking down onto Charles’ bunk with wobbly knees.

“What the hell was that?” Hawkeye demands, one hand still on your shoulder and the other fluttering up to press against your forehead. You close your eyes and lean into it. “Great save and all, but after all that talk of keeping your cool? Jesus, BJ.” 

Keep your cool? Charles lost a patient two days ago and saved the very same one yesterday, but Henry Blake never came back. What does it mean? What would have happened if you had shown up just a few seconds later?

Maybe it would have been fine - Basgall was injured and Hawkeye has a long reach and a mean right hook - but maybe it wouldn’t have been, and then what would have happened? 

You’re terribly, desperately afraid to find out. 

“Sorry, sorry,” you pant. “I don’t know what came over me. I just…” You wave a hand vaguely, knowing you have to put this weight in your chest into words but not knowing where to start. 

”I should say,” Hawkeye mutters, eyes tracking the MP’s path back to post-OP through the tent’s mesh. “Look, not to sound ungrateful, but Basgall is our patient. You can’t just throttle him, no matter how much of a bastard he’s being.”

“And he can’t just assault doctors whenever he doesn’t get his way.”

The eyebrow Hawk raises at you is all irony. The downside of being on the same wavelength is that you know exactly what he’s thinking. You scowl and look away. Hawkeye huffs and pulls away from you to start pacing. You miss his hand on your forehead immediately. You don’t want this to become a fight.

“I don’t know what’s gotten into you lately, Beej, but you have got to pull yourself out of it. You can’t lumber around acting like this.” 

On second thought. “That’s rich coming from you, you know that, right? As if you don’t lose your head and make it everyone else’s problem every other week.” 

“Oh?“ Hawkeye’s tone is spotted and brightly colored, warning of poison. “And what about you? The 4077th’s veritable short fuse, ready to take a swing at the slightest provocation.” He jabs a finger toward the surgical building where Basgall could still be heard arguing with the MPs. “That’s quite a reputation you’re building. I’m sure Erin would be proud.” 

You see red for a split second and it takes everything you have not to jump up and prove him right. Hawkeye shoots a knowing glance down at your balled fists, and you swear if he smirks in that smarmy way of his then you’ll definitely hit him.

He doesn‘t though. If anything, he looks exasperated as he sighs and sits on Charles’ footlocker, knocking your knees together. “Talk to me, BJ. What’s going on with you?”

“What kind of question is that?” you ask bitterly. “What’s going on with any of us? You throw a bunch of people into purgatory and expect them to be fine with it?”

“Purgatory? Is that what you think this is?” 

“Well what else am I supposed to think? Or do you think it’s normal to fight a two-year war for five?” 

Hawkeye pinches the bridge of his nose, looking too tired to deal with you, which just pisses you off. “We’re not dead, Beej.” He tosses a hand out to encompass the whole camp. “This isn’t hell or purgatory or naraka or yomi or whatever other idea that's wiggled into your brain.” 

“And how would you know? You’ve never had any answers for what’s going on either. This whole camp, spending years rolling is baseless speculation. It’s useless, all of it.” 

“You think I don’t know that? Need I remind you that I’ve been stuck in this hellhole for years longer than you have? You think that I haven’t laid up at night, thinking the exact same thing? That I haven’t wanted to get up and walk into the minefield, just to see if I’d bounce back the next day like Kelley? You’re preaching to the choir, pal.” 

You swing to your feet, that same jittery energy sparking up your spine like it does everytime you and Hawk have this argument. The same build-up, then overflow, then cool down - just to start the cycle over again. Loops within loops. 

“We have to do something, Hawkeye!” You don’t mean to sound more desperate than angry, but it’s all you’ve been for a very long time. “How long do you think we can afford to be here, huh? How long before we grow old and wither away in this fucking camp?” 

Your throat tightens and it gets hard to speak. “I can’t remember what shade of blonde Erin’s hair is. I can’t remember if Peg’s eyes are green-hazel or brown-hazel. Do you think your father remembers what you look like? Do you think he’ll know you when he sees you?” 

Hawkeye looks away, expression pained. When he speaks again, his voice is soft. “You’ll see them again, Beej. I promise. But you can’t go back to them like this; short-fused and swinging. You’re better than that. Erin deserves better than that. You have to find an outlet or something.”

You scoff and shake your head. An outlet. What a joke. This whole place is a joke. 

“I mean it, BJ,” Hawk insists, his gaze level and serious. “I need you to keep it together here. You lose your head, they’ll ship you off and you’ll just end up right back here the next day. And it won’t get better from there, I promise you.”

There’s an ocean of experience behind his tone. Terrible, dark, deep enough to drown in. You ask the question with your eyes, but he pulls out the old playbook and side steps by staring over your shoulder. Instead, he says, “This isn’t purgatory. We’re alive. We deal with death often enough to know the difference.”

“How do you know?”

His gaze is flat and distant. “Because if we aren’t then there’s no point.” 

*

It turns out Father Malcuhy is one hell of a boxer. He says you have the makings of one too, but as you stare down at the broken bag pooling sand at your feet, you don’t think it’s your speed. 

You are trying though.

“For me, music was always a refuge from this miserable experience. And now it will always be a reminder.”

It’s December 25th, 1952, when you keep a dead man alive for hours because all you can think about is Erin and of children being left behind by their fathers on Christmas Day. 

It’s wrong, you know it is. And you know that everyone else knows it too, but you do it anyway. 

You nudge the hands of the clock past midnight and call the time of death.

The day doesn’t reset. 

BJ was knee deep in the roiling surf, sea spray glittering under the warm sun. He’s on a beach, and a quick glance showed that nearly the entire camp was here with him. Most were gathered in a large crowd on the sand, watching a volleyball game that seemed to be getting more rowdy by the minute. Others were scattered about in small groups, enjoying the water and sun. BJ saw Klinger and Soon-Li collecting shells down the shoreline. 

He turned, automatically looking for the thread and found it a few yards away on the sandy beach. BJ followed it with his eyes until he spotted Hawkeye in the middle of the volleyball game. He jumped, clumsily spiking the ball over the net then scrambled to catch it when Baker sent it right back. He missed and the game unraveled even further; Hawkeye dove for the dividing net, trying to tackle Hunnicut through it while each side accused the other of cheating. Everyone was laughing and BJ felt warm in the sun’s rays. 

“Alright everyone,” Potter called from the tree line. “Let’s pack it in, it’s about time to head back.” 

Groans resounded, but everyone fell in line pretty quickly, breaking down the volleyball net and packing up with an efficiency that could only come from one too many bug-outs. 

BJ waded to shore and fell into step next to Hawkeye and Hunnicut as the two chattered back and forth, feeling contentment settle over him. He wondered when this would happen; it was clearly a great day for everyone, and he’s looking forward to experiencing it for himself. He traced the thread absently as he walked, watching as it bent and curved around Hawkeye every time he brushed against it. 

Glancing ahead, BJ could see everyone heading towards a bus sitting on the side of the dirt ro—

“Attention, incoming wounded. Everybody line up for a serving of triage, the lunch rush is on.” 

“You think one day everyone is gonna get to leave and it will just be us stuck here?” 

It’s January 30th, 1952, and Nurse Baker got shipped stateside just hours ago. You’re happy for her. Really, you are. 

You and Hawkeye are kicked back in your cots, tossing a ball of red yarn back and forth like a basketball, embarrassingly sloppy trick shots and all. You attempt to toss the yarn over and under your shoulder simultaneously and consider his question. 

You make an active choice in not mentioning that either one of you could be sent home before the other, assuming it even stuck. You’ve tried to imagine it before, but the thought makes you actively nauseous. 

When you have managed to consider it, you wonder which of the two of you you’d send home, if you were suddenly imbued with that power. On your good days, you hope it will be Hawkeye, who has been here far too long and looks more worn down with every repeating day.

On your bad days, you pray fervently that it’s you. You wonder if that makes you a bad person. 

You’re not going to throw all that at Hawkeye’s feet though, so instead you say, “Imagine. Full monopoly of Rosie’s.”

He laughs. “Korea wouldn’t know what to do with us.” 

It’s a hot July 21st, 1952, when the conversation of the points system comes up.

You’re not really paying attention in the moment, kicked back as you are in your cot, re-reading Peg’s latest letter when Potter’s words filter through and recognition rushes right to your head. You toss the letter aside and are right on Hawkeye’s heels as he stomps out of the tent. Your mind is turning, wondering if you can talk him down before he gets it into his head to go to Panmunjom. That whole situation turned out fine in the dream, but that reality isn’t your own, not really, not in the ways that matter,  so you’d like to avoid the risk if at all possible. 

”Hawkeye.” 

“If the next words out of your mouth aren’t an absolutely scaving critique of so-called police actions, then save it.” 

“You’re gonna need a seat for that one. How much time you got?” 

He doesn’t look amused, pacing in tight circles and kicking over every gas canister within reach. You sigh. “Even if they hadn’t moved the goal post, your ticket home wouldn’t have been punched. You know that.”

“Trapper’s did.”

“Right,” you grit. That man’s name really shouldn’t be able to set you off like it does, but the perpetual anger simmering inside of you demands a scapegoat and McIntyer isn’t here to do anything about it. “And it didn’t for Sergeant Gines.” 

Gines had fallen asleep on the plane to Guam and had woken up in his cot the next morning. He’d been…upset. When the dust had settled, his weapons were confiscated and he was placed on medical watch for a whole week, after which Potter had given him four days on R&R in Tokyo. 

You don’t want to see what Hawk would do if he got his orders home just to end up back here. And a loud, selfish, part of you can’t bear the thought of him leaving you behind. 

Hawkeye rounds on you, seething and snapping. “That’s not the point! The point is that even without this insane mess we’re all trapped in, the army will never let us go! We’ll be here forever!” 

A gas canister flies right past you, cutting off your reply as Margaret stomps by, right on schedule. Their angry back-and-forth plays out the exact same way as it had in the dream and you use their distraction as an opportunity to dart over to the jeep and take the keys out of the front seat. Pocketing them, you scurry back over. 

The pain on Margaret’s face isn’t any easier to witness the second time. You pull her into a tight embrace, one that she returns immediately. Hawkeye hovers like a flighty bird over your shoulders and drapes an arm around you both. 

“I’m sorry, Margaret,” you say into her hair. 

“He said I was spacey,” she spat. “That I was forgetful and airheaded! Me! Can you believe that?” She pulls away from you both, wiping at her face furiously. “I don’t know what I was thinking, marrying him. How can I possibly keep up when the damn date is all over the place? One day I go to bed and everything is fine between us, and the next day I wake up and we’re apparently in the middle of an argument that I haven’t even lived through the start of! God, sometimes I just want to—“

She pulls up short, cutting herself off with a deep frown that makes Hawkeye stiffen and your stomach drop. 

“It’s this place,” Hawk mutters, as if to himself. “We’re helpless here. Living through the same two years over and over again. This has got to stop. Someone needs to make all this stop.”

He ducks towards the jeep like he knows you’ll try to stop him, but you don’t bother. Margaret calls out as he jumps behind the wheel and then freezes when he realizes he can’t go anywhere. You slowly walk over to him, jeep keys burning a hole in your pocket. Hawk grips the steering wheel with both hands and bends to rest his forehead against it. His hair hides his eyes from you. His knuckles are pale and trembling. 

“I can’t do this anymore.”

(“I’m tired of death. I’m tired to death.”)

Your chest aches. You don’t think you can do this anymore either. 

“Come on, Hawk.” You gently pull him from the jeep, winding your arms around him and Margaret both. You won’t let him risk imprisonment in Panmunjom, so you don’t have the hours needed to plan and execute the same party that Hunnicut did. Instead, you do the only thing you can think of and lead them both to Rosie’s. 

*

The beauty of having a breakdown in the middle of a Monday is that the bar is deserted when the three of you trudge in. You order a whole bottle and three glasses and that’s enough of a hint for Rosie to deliver the goods then leave you all alone. 

Hawkeye, who has apparently buried his feelings between here and the jeep, naturally tries to take control of the mood, coming out the gate strong with a joke about the “vintage” whisky. But you remember how you felt when you watched Hunnicut throw his party; like there was a large, Hawk-shaped problem filling the room, trying to be heard even as it was being pointedly swept under the rug. A moment of levity to avoid the hard conversations. 

Maybe Hunnicut could afford to take his eyes off the ball - that version of you isn’t trapped in the loop, as far as you can tell - but you’re starting to suspect you don’t have that luxury. So, you down your shot of whiskey and talk about the loop. 

It tanks the mood immediately and the other two drag their feet in the conversation, too conditioned from their early-days rule of keeping their mouths shut, but you persist. You vent openly, loudly, uncaring of what Rosie might hear. You talk about the frustration and despair you feel at working on the same boys over and over again; how pointless it all feels. You talk about how you worry you’ll never get to go home, how it keeps you up at night. You talk about your daughter, and how you worry that one day you’ll forget all about her. 

It doesn’t take long to get results. Hawkeye has never been able to withhold his opinion on something for more than a few minutes and soon enough he’s pouring his fears and anxiety out onto the tabletop. Margaret remains more reserved, despite how slurred her words get as one whisky pours over into three, but her expression has smoothed out and the mask remains off.

Klinger comes in about an hour later, takes one look at you all, leaves, and then returns a few minutes later with Abel, Goldman, and Gines in tow. Potter walks in soon after, presumably looking for Klinger, and shakes his head at you all before he squeezes into a table more built for four than seven. He doesn’t drink, but seems content to sit there and listen while everyone vents and gripes and rages at the world around them. 

The table is loud and rowdy in a way only the 4077th can be. Rosie and the handful of enlisted men who have wandered in are looking at your group like you’re all insane, but how can you care when the whisky is a warm buzz in your brain and Hawkeye’s knees are bumping against your own as he throws back his head and laughs at Able’s joke.

It’s not a red party, but you think it’s exactly what you all needed. 

It’s October 4th, 1952. You’ve been in Korea for seven years, seven months, and sixteen days.

Not according to the calendar, of course, but you’ve never been tempted by the whole ‘ignorance is bliss’ play like some of the others have. You have a towering stack of notebooks in the corner that tell you exactly how long you’ve been here, you don’t even need to count Hawkeye’s individual gray hairs. 

The thing about being in a never ending war for so long is that it has a funny way of changing people. You’re a different man now from the one who fell headfirst into the glue trap all those years ago - in ways both good and bad.

You think your temper has gotten shorter. That your jokes are meaner; that your patience is finer than 2-O silk. You don’t think you’re ever cruel, not intentionally anyway, but you’ve gotten self-aware enough to know that being in Purgatory hasn’t had the best impact on your mental or emotional wellbeing.

You don’t think you’ve lost an ounce of your compassion though. Every loss on your operating table hits like a sledgehammer to the ribs, leaving you breathless for just a moment before you’re forced to process, grieve, and move on in quick succession. 

You think you may have forgotten what your wife’s voice sounds like. Maybe. You can see her clearly in your memories, but they’re getting yellowed and faded with age, and you think you don’t have her cadence and tone quite right.

You think you’ve formed bonds that run deeper and stronger than you ever would have been capable of in the real world. These people, your friends that you’re stuck here with, continue to amaze you in different ways, no matter how many times you’ve all lived a certain day. You’re honored and grateful to know them.

You think you’re in love with your best friend. Maybe. Probably. You’re going to need a few more years to fully unspool that train of thought. It’s okay though, you’ve got nothing but time.

You think you were once an easy going guy, content to take things as they come and do your best with what was clearly in front of you. You don’t think that anymore though. Being in Purgatory has put you in a state of near hyperfocus. You keep track of every looping day, noting and noticing the similarities and differences; the nuances and minuscule results made by seemingly innocuous changes.

Being in purgatory has shown you how small changes lead to larger ones. 

Being in purgatory has made you observant. 

It’s March 1st, 1953, and Hawkeye’s patient has died right under his hands. 

He freezes, one hand slightly raised, the needle and thread clenched in between his fingers still connecting him to the lung he was trying to weave back together. A fine tremor shakes its way from that raised hand, up his arm, across his shoulders, and disappears down his spine. 

Then he stretches the tension out of his neck, snips the thread binding him to the once-was soldier, and begins to quickly and quietly sew up the body. When he’s done, he nods to Abel and she sweeps the dead man away. A new patient takes the place of the previous and Hawkeye gets back to work. 

The whole affair is over and done within less than three minutes. It’s quiet. It’s quick and unobtrusive, professional and dispassionate. It’s exactly how the Chief Surgeon of a MASH unit should respond. 

It’s something that would have crept under your radar in the real world, unnoticed in the din of the OR and your own thoughts. But purgatory has made you observant, so you see the whole reaction - or rather, the lack of one. 

You stare at Hawkeye as he calmly starts to scalpel into the leg of his current patient, and you start to worry. 

"Hawkeye, do I need to remind you that you don’t take lives, you save them,” Mulcahy said.

Hawkeye leaned back in his chair, bundled against the cold and rain. He looked exhausted and BJ’s fingers itched to reach out to him, to wipe the fatigue and desolation weighing under his eyes, but he knew it was no use here. 

The thread ran straight down the middle of the tent, bisecting to two men in its silver glow.

“I’m also in weapons repair,” Hawkeye finally replied. “I fix people up so they can go out and get killed, or…kill other people. I can’t deny that.”

He blinked and the desolation flickered out; in its place a numbness that was becoming gut-twistingly familiar. 

“And I can’t live with it either.”

It’s May 2nd, 1953, when you cut that poor kid down from the helicopter and leave him to die. 

You never experience that day again.

It’s barely dawn when Margaret kicks her way into the Swamp. 

“It’s May 13th,” she announces, ignoring the wave of groggy groans she gets in response. You squint up at her as she materializes by your bunk.

“May 13th, 1953.”

She says it with an emphasis that says you should be having some kind of reaction, but all your sleep-fogged mind can do is blink up at her.

Charles’ voice is muffled by the pillow he’s slung over his face. “As much as we enjoy your presence, Margaret, we are perfectly capable of reading a calendar.” 

“Don’t start with me, Charles. I still haven’t forgiven or forgotten your paperwork mixup from the other day.”

“Maybe if those nurses you’re so proud of knew how to read there wouldn’t have been a mixup.”

It’s too early for semi-hostile bickering. You pull your blanket up over your head just for Margaret to yank in back down without care for the sunlight stabbing your eyes. 

It’s Hawkeye who makes the connection, suddenly sounding much more alert than you are. “May 13th, 1953, huh? That’s a first.”

“All dates are a first,” Charles says, exasperated. “Whatever is wrong with you people simply must be studied.” 

“Like your taste in music,” Hawk says, but your mind is fully awake now and running too fast to pay attention to the ensuing squabble. Margaret had told you when all this first started that the date had never gone further than May 11th, 1953. You look over at the calendar and yep, there you are, existing solidly in May 13th. Why? Why would the parameters of the loop change all of a sudden? What’s special about this day? 

You meet Margaret’s knowing gaze and see the same questions swirling there. 

*

Everyone is on edge that day. The original members of the 4077th have always acted as a tuning fork for newer personnel, so anytime the ones stuck in the loop are on eggshells, the others seem to pick up on it and start spiraling too. 

You zip through the day like a live-wire, your hypervigilance rising to previously unknown heights and undoubtedly pissing off anyone who has to deal with you. Hawkeye reacts to this like he always does; tearing through the camp like a comedic tornado. As always, it helps to ease the unbearable tension in your shoulders and you lace your fingers with his under the mess table in thanks.

You keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. For something drastic to happen to explain the break in the tentative rules the loop had established with its victims, but there’s nothing. No new patients arrive; the ones in post-OP are recovering as expected; nothing from I-Corps; no movement on the frontlines. Nothing, nothing, nothing, there is nothing special about this day. 

You go to bed later that night with a single, salient thought.

What the fuck?

“My friends, for your amusement and bemusement, I give you the—”

It’s May 18th, 1953, and you dream of another reality every night now.

There were rays of sun on BJ’s face and warm salt water lapping at his ankles. 

“Beej!” Hawkeye called from the beach. “Come on, Yvette rigged up a volleyball net.”

BJ took one last look at the horizon and started wadding to the shore—-

It’s June 12th, 1953, and Able gets her orders to go home. 

“Just say goodbye! What’s the big deal?”

“What do you want me to say it for?“

It’s June 21st, 1953, and Margaret wants to bury a time capsule. 

You don’t know how you feel about the idea. You would rather forget every moment you spent here before you’d leave a piece of yourself behind and buried.

You bury a piece of Henry Blake instead. 

BJ was sitting in the middle of a rattling bus, voices singing loudly around him. It was dark and lit lanterns swayed gently overhead, clashing warmly with the cool light of the thread. 

He settled into the seat and was just about to silently join in when a man’s voice called from right outside of his window, causing Charles in the seat in front of him to jump and the bus to lurch to a halt.

Hawkeye shouted something from the back of the bus and the thread emitted a bright flash of silver light. BJ instinctually turned toward it—-

It’s June 30th, 1953, and the 80% of the Chinese infantry have suddenly withdrawn from the frontlines.

There was a baby crying somewhere behind him, and in the silent darkness of the bus, it was the loudest thing BJ had ever heard.

It’s July 1st, 1953, and something is coming.

You come awake with a freefall jolt, choking on air and scrambling madly out of bed, kicking over your footstool along the way. Your bleary gaze lands on Hawkeye’s bunk just as the man’s head swivels your way, wide awake at the ruckus and honing in on whatever sound you just made. He calls your name but you ignore him. 

You’re trying to catch your breath but your throat is too tight and your lungs have gone MIA under the realization pressing into the very core of you. 

It was Hawkeye. Fucking Hawkeye.

Your mind is whirling, piecing together what you just saw despite the fact that it was impossible, impossible, impossible—

You flash on the image of that poor baby, the way its mother’s face went gray. The way the entire bus fell silent except for the almost physical sound of something in Hawkeye cleaving right down the middle. 

The frantic rush for safety.

The days-long noise of the breakdown that followed. 

It wasn’t his fault. Even as your stomach turns and something like betrayal takes root behind your lungs, you know it wasn’t his fault. But you can’t deny what you saw; that thread, silver and glowing and leading - always leading, always, it never pointed anywhere else - to Hawkeye. The sight of it flashing and unraveling in that moment, getting tangled and looping in on itself. 

The endless stretching of time. 

The kaleidoscope of overlapping years that followed.

You think back through hundreds of strange dreams, acting as a spectator in hundreds of seemingly random scenarios. Of a reality that exists two steps to the right of your own; just similar enough to be almost prophetic - something you‘d learned to use to your advantage - but now you see them for what they are. 

Not prophecy. A warning. 

(“That dream could have been a warning. A premonition.”)

Margaret had told you exactly what was going on years ago, whether she knew it or not. Hawkeye is the cause of all of this. The glue trap. The years you’ve lost to blood and war and death. The reason you can’t remember your daughter’s hair color or your wife’s voice.

Hawkeye is still looking at you, his expression growing more tense the longer you go without saying anything. You open your mouth, and you don’t know what’s going to come out of you. You don’t know, you don’t know, you just know that it will gouge, splinter, hurt—

You breathe in—-

(“She smothered her own baby!” And Hawkeye sobbed and sobbed and sobbed.)

—and your mouth snaps shut. 

The betrayal trying to burrow into your chest disappears in an instant as shame settles in its place. How could you? How could you even think to throw this in Hawkeye’s face? To tear him down so completely? Hawkeye, who has been trapped here from the very beginning. Who has been holding his own sanity together with 2-O silk and desperate, trembling fingers. 

Hawkeye, who loses a piece of himself with every patient he can’t save, with every friend who leaves, with every year he’s trapped here.

Hawkeye, who would never wish this endless war on anyone.

You swallow past your sandy throat and rasp out, “Just a bad dream, Hawk. It’s fine.” 

His frown deepens, always so perceptive to those he loves, but you double down by laying back in your cot and turning your back to him, letting Charles’ snores fill the silence you’ve left behind. Hawkeye lets you have your moment, settling down onto his creaky bed, but you can tell by his breathing that he hasn’t gone back to sleep. You’re struggling to get your own breathing under control as you think about what to do next.

You know what’s happening now. After years of floundering and baseless speculation, you see the dreams and the thread for what they are, and you know immediately you can never let Hawkeye find out. You don’t know how he’d react (you do, it’s just too terrible to think about). And you can’t tell anyone else either. 

Your friends aren’t the only ones stuck in the loop. There are plenty of people in this camp who have been stuck here for years longer than they should have, and you’ve seen for yourself the mob mentality this camp can fall into. Fights that have broken out; group protests over this or that condition; a towering pile of furniture set alight in the middle of it all. Just the thought of that rage being turned on Hawkeye is enough to make your fists clench under the blankets. 

No. No. You’re keeping this to yourself. 

Your realization has cranked your hypervigilance into overdrive. You don’t know when that dream takes place, it could be days or years from now. As the days march linearly forward, your ear stretches for any hint of a beach trip as the days grow hotter.

You don’t have to wait long. Tomorrow is July 4th, and when Klinger suggest a trip down to the coast for Independence Day, Potter agrees. 

The sun is warm, so much warmer than you got to experience in the dream, but you can’t settle enough to enjoy it. 

Every attempt you made to stop this outing was stonewalled. You couldn’t explain to them why the 4077th shouldn't have a lovely beach day without sounding insane, and eventually Potter had said that if you didn’t want to go so badly then you could stay behind with the nurses and enlisted men. And as much as you didn’t want to go, you didn’t dare not be there with the others, so you shut up about it from there on. 

And now here you are, on the cusp of everything that went wrong and will go wrong, and you can’t relax enough to enjoy the day. You ignore Margaret’s questioning glances, and can feel Potter’s concerned gaze on you when he thinks you aren’t looking. Hawkeye tries to help by pulling you into a volleyball game. You miss the spike and tackle him through the net, trying to force some levity past the churning in your gut, but it doesn't work. Their concern is wasted on you - the real trouble is heading their way. 

The afternoon stretches on and you groan up at the sky. You’re pretty sure the 4077th had been packing up to leave by this time in the dream, but when you leave the game to find Potter, he’s still kicked back in the sand. 

“When are we heading out, Colonel?” you ask. 

Potter gives you a scrutinizing look, and you straighten your shoulders and do your best to hide your nerves. “There’s no rush, BJ,” he finally replies. “Heaven knows we all need a good day. Whatever’s picking at you, put it aside for now and enjoy the waves.”

You grind your teeth and nod before turning back. You can only pray that this diversion from the dream won’t ruin your plans. You rejoin the others by the nets, and Hawkeye, who can read your anxieties like a well-worn book, immediately pulls you into another rowdy game of volleyball. You appreciate the distraction, but it’s simply not possible for you to relax, not today. This is it. Eight years of purgatory and it all culminates here, on the coast of Inchon, July 4th, 1953. 

The sun is low on the horizon when Potter finally calls everyone in. You step onto the waiting bus first and make a point to sit at the very back, stretching your legs over the remaining seat to discourage anyone from joining you as everyone files in. Margaret and Potter share a seat towards the front. Hawkeye is ribbing Goldman jokingly as they both squeeze into an available seat towards the front. The energy in the bus is high as bottles are passed around and the windows are lowered to let the breeze in. Your attention feels like it's stretched in opposite directions, keeping track of where everyone is sitting while also scanning the roadway for the trouble you know is coming. The bus rattles over potholes and mortar as the sun sets and lanterns are lit. 

“Beej, heads up!” Hawkeye throws you a beer like it’s a football. It sails neatly over everyone’s heads then lands with a shatter at your feet when you’re too distracted to catch it. A chorus of good natured groans sounds around the bus as you play it off with a grin that doesn’t fool Hawkeye for a second. He uses his long, pointy limbs to elbow his way to the back and squeezes into the nonexistent space between you and the window. 

“You know damn well there’s not enough room back here. Go back.” You keep your voice light and laughing even as your heart pounds. You don’t want him back here when the refugees come. You don’t want him anywhere near that woman and her baby. 

Hawkeye doesn’t go back, instead holding out a new bottle of beer. “Let’s hear it. You’ve been acting weird all day.”

“Have not.”

“Have so.”

“Haven’t ever.”

“Have done.” 

“I’m fine, Hawk. Just tired.” You make a show of closing your eyes and stretching your feet out into the aisle. Cool condensation drips down the bridge of your nose as Hawkeye presses the bottle to your sunburned forehead. 

“No you’re not,” he says, voice low with all the confidence of someone who knows you better than you know yourself. “You’ve dreamt this day and it’s got you worried.”

You open your eyes and don’t deny it, scanning his face for a moment for any hint of recognition, but you don’t find any. There’s nothing in his expression that even suggests he knows what’s going to happen. How his entire world is going to fall apart in a matter of hours. How he’s going to spiral and drag the whole camp down with him. Nausea lurches in your stomach and all the beer you drank today is going to make a reappearance if you keep up that train of thought. 

It’s not going to happen, you won’t let it.  

You hate to ruin the festivities so early, but Potter called you all in hours later than you were expecting, and now you don’t know when exactly the refugees will show. You need your backup. “We’re going to get wounded very soon,” you whisper. “Stay up front and help out.” 

Hawk’s expression goes grim and he stands, plucking at your sleeve. “Come on then.”

“I think I’ll stay back here,” you say, casually crossing your ankles.

He frowns down at you and you give him a knowing look. He scans out of the windows warily and doesn’t let go of your sleeve. “Why?”

“Just trust me, alright? Divide and conquer. I’ll stay back here, you stay up there. Deal?” 

“Fold, unless you promise me you don’t have an extra ace up your sleeve this time” he says, clearly not wanting to move. But he does trust you, despite everything, and is quick to defer to your dubious expertise where the dreams are concerned. “Call if you need me,” he murmurs before heading back to his seat near the front. 

Everyone’s spirits remain high as they ride along. Zale starts up a shanty from his place behind the wheel, and the others pitch in off-key. You and Hawk are the only ones not singing, sitting in silent sentry as the bus inches towards Uijeonbu. You sit on the edge of your seat, tension buzzing up your spine, and wait. 

And wait. 

And wait.

The sun sets fully, making way for dusty moonlight and shadowed trees, and you all haven’t picked up the refugees yet. Hawkeye shoots you questioning looks over his shoulder and you wonder if maybe all of your worry was for nothing. Maybe what you saw in that other reality won’t come to pass here. Or maybe you all had missed them? The 4077 didn't leave Inchon this late in the dream. You don’t know how you feel about the change. You don’t want for you and your friends to have to dodge Chinese infantry, and you especially don’t want to have to deal with that refugee woman and her baby, but what will happen to all of those people if you all don’t cross paths? Will they just not make it? How would you even be able to find out?

Hawkeye’s head suddenly whips towards the front right as Zale hits the breaks. You stand to get a better look out of the windshield and see the shadowed form of a man standing in the middle of the road and waving his arms. 

Potter steps out to meet him and after the two exchange words, the man waves to the treeline where a shambling group of people make their way towards them. It’s the refugees and the G.Is, together as one group instead of two. They must have run into each other and kept heading north in the extra hours the 4077th was at the beach. Unease pricks at you at the change, but the dreams have always had idiosyncrasies that didn’t match your timeline, so you push your worry aside and help gather the group onto the bus, guiding the three refugees to the back seat where you’ve posted up. 

The whole group is more ragged than they were in the dream. The two injured soldiers, a Private and a Captain, are barely on their feet. The Captain is placed in a seat with Charles, but the Private has to be dragged up the bus steps by his Lieutenant and Potter before his legs give way and they lower him gently into the middle of the aisle. Hawkeye gets to work on him immediately, removing his helmet and calling for plasma while you make a beeline for the back of the bus. 

Your heart pounds and when you smile to the refugees in greeting it takes everything you have to make it genuine and not a grimace. You kneel in front of the woman and coo at the baby boy in her arms. “Hello there,” you say, ratting your dog tags in front of his face. The baby gives you a wide, toothless grin, catching the chain in his little fist, and your anxiety eases for a moment as heart practically melts. “What a charmer,” you laugh, turning your face up to his mother. “He’s beautiful.” 

She doesn’t seem to understand you, but the idea must have gotten across because she gives you a small smile and bounces her baby slightly. You turn to Soon-Li, asking her to ask what the baby’s name is and she does. After a quick back and forth, Soon-Li says, “His name is Dong-Hyun, and that is his mother, Seo-yun.” 

You thank her and turn back to the small family, greeting them both by name. Dong-Hyun is just as fascinated with your dog tags as you had hoped he’d be, refusing to relinquish them when you lean back. You and his mother laugh, and you take a leap, gesturing to hold him. She hesitates, but her sweaty hair and dirt streaked face speak of the exhausting and fraught hours they’d spent in the woods before you all had shown up, and after a moment she hands her baby over to you. 

You take Dong-Hyun in your arms, immediately positioning your hands to support his head. Muscle memory from when you held your own daughter, and as Doug-Hyun blinks up at you curiously, the smile you direct at him is effortlessly warm. Your clear experience with infants seems to put Seo-yun at ease and she settles back in her seat. 

“We’ve been dodging Chinese infantry for miles,” you hear the Lieutenant tell Potter. “We got them off our trail, but lost a man about a half-mile back. I don’t know which direction they’re in now.” 

“Alright,” Potter replies. “We‘ll kill the lights and keep it moving. If they show up, we’ll deal with it then.” 

Everyone quiets and the bus goes dark. You shoot the refugees a reassuring smile as Soon-Li explains the situation in a quiet whisper. The bus cranks to life and starts crawling down the road. All the added bodies and excitement makes the air inside the bus hot and humid. You bounce and rock Dong-Hyun as Charles announces the injured Captain as tentatively stable. Hawkeye seems to be having less luck with the Private; his ear is pressed to the man’s chest, and whatever he’s hearing has his brow furrowed. 

Dong-Hyun falls asleep in your arms and you feel a thrill of relief. Your plan is working; all you all have to do now is get past the infantry and keep little Dong-Hyun quiet and peacefully asleep. And as the bus continues on with no sign of Chinese soldiers, you’re starting to think that the small changes you’ve seen in this day will add up to something positive for once. 

Those hopes are dashed against the rocks as dim lantern-light flickers from deep in the trees up ahead. 

The Lieutenant, who had been scanning out of the windshield, spots it immediately and orders the bus to halt. Potter turns to face everyone and says in a quiet voice, “We got trouble up ahead. Everyone pipe down and keep away from the windows.” 

The bus, already quiet, goes grimly silent as the bus pulls off the road and into some bushes. You can’t even hear anyone breathing past the loud drum beat of your heart. Seo-yun tugs at your sleeve, gesturing for her baby, but you don’t dare hand him back to her. Instead, you plaster a reassuring smile on your face and keep rocking him gently. She frowns, but when she sees her baby sleeping peacefully, she nods and settles back, one hand resting on his little arm. 

Your heart is pounding so hard it’s a wonder it doesn’t wake the baby. You know what’s coming, but you still jump when voices start calling from within the forest. Sticks crack under boots and the underbrush rustles as the infantry picks their way through the forest. You don’t know how well the bus is hidden; this small forest is different from the arid dirt and bushes where the 4077th had hid in the dream. You can only hope that the dark trees provide better cover, and that the soldiers, who are looking for injured people on foot, won’t think anything of another broken down bus in the bushes. 

Lights suddenly flicker against the windows, causing a quiet gasp from a few people. Shadows pass against the windows and everyone presses down even lower. You hug Dong-Hyun to your chest and can see Hawkeye practically draped over his patient, hand poised over the man’s mouth, ready to clamp down should he make a sound. 

The bus doors rattle as someone tries and fails to pull them open. Zale has the door lever in a tight, two-handed grip, looking like he’s holding his breath. A shadowed head presses against the glass, but the air inside the bus is so humid that the windows have fogged from the inside. You don’t know if it will be enough to hide them, and you squeeze your eyes shut as Seo-yun clutches at your arm. 

After what is definitely the longest ten seconds of your life, the shadow pulls back and walks away, shouting something towards the trees. There’s a brief call back and then the sound of footsteps as the infantry moves on. 

Everyone in the bus is frozen in place, not daring to move even as the footsteps fade into the forest. Your arms are rigid and you have to remind yourself to keep rocking your arms. Little Dong-Hyun sniffles but thankfully stays asleep. Tension is thick in the heavy air, but after another minute, Hawkeye eases upright and Charles climbs back into the seat with the injured captain. You see Margaret’s head swiveling, getting an idea of where everyone is. Her eyes linger on the baby for a moment before she faces ahead. 

Minutes inch by. Lantern light flickers deep in the forest, and faint voices can be heard in the distance. The injured Private lying in the aisle groans, causing every head on the bus to turn, but Hawkeye leans back over him, resting a hand over the man's forehead and shushing him quietly. The Private settles down without fuss. Hawk keeps a reassuring hand on the man’s face and looks down the bus at you, brow pinched and seeking reassurance of his own. You glance down at Dong-Hyun, still quiet and peaceful, then back up at him, nodding shortly. He nods back and shifts his focus back to his patient.  

Potter, Zale, and the Lieutenant start discussing the route back to the 4077th and a shivering giddiness spreads over you. It’s working. The baby and the private are being quiet, the bus is a dark, incompressible blob amongst the trees, and the Chinese infantry is slowly moving on. You’re all going to make it out of this. Dong-Hyun and Hawkeye are going to make it out of this—

A hand, glistening darkly with blood, slams against the bus’ front windows. Everyone gasps and Potter gestures frantically at Zale to open the door as the hand pounds on the glass again and again. In your arms, Dong-Hyun’s face scrunches up. 

“Let me in!” a voice, distinctly American, calls. 

“Open it!”  Potter whispers to Zale. The door opens with a painfully loud creek and a soldier stumbles inside. He’s caked in dirt and mud. One hand is pressed against his stomach and there’s an odd bend in his left leg, right at the knee. His eyes are blown wide, set in a round baby face that’s familiar even under the sweat and blood splatter.

“How could you leave me out there?” Private Johnson shrills at the Lieutenant. 

Hawkeye is across the aisle in an instant, pressing a hand tightly over Johnson’s mouth. Shut up!” he hisses. “There are Chinese outside! You’ll lead them right to us!” 

Johnson rips his face from Hawk’s grasp and glares down at his Lieutenant. “You dirty fucking—-“

“We thought you were gone, Johnson,” the man whispers. “Now sit down and shut your mouth, that’s an order.” 

Johnson shakes his head, eyes glazed and unfocused as he takes a shaky step back. “No, no. You’ve had it out for me from the start. You don’t—“ His gaze drifts down to the man lying in the aisle and he stops, voice going small and disbelieving. “Terry?”

Potter’s hand clamps down hard on Johnson’s shoulder. “Son, you want us all to make it out of this?” he asks lowly, voice shaking with repressed anger. “Then sit down. Now.” 

Raised voices sound from between the trees as lantern light flashes across his and Johnson’s face, causing them both to duck away from the windows. Johnson’s leg folds and he goes down with a gasp and a heavy thud that jostles the bus. 

Everyone freezes. You neck creaks as you slowly look down at the baby in your arms. It feels like the world is moving in slow motion as you watch Dong-Hyun open his mouth and start to cry.  

It’s the loudest thing you’ve ever heard. More lights flash in the forest and someone starts shouting nearby. Your arms feel stiff and bloodless as you start rocking Dong-Hyun and his mother leans over your shoulder, shushing him quietly. But he doesn’t settle; his cry pitches up into a scream, a damning wall of noise as footsteps rustle in the forest. 

“BJ!” Hawkeye whisper-shouts from where he’s crouched next to Johnson. “Keep that baby quiet!” 

You want to snap back that you’re trying, but your throat is full of glass and the baby in your arms is wailing ceaselessly. No amount of rocking, no amount of cooing will calm him. His mother pulls at you to take him away, and your arms tighten instinctively. 

“Beej!”

More shouting from outside. Someone on the bus whimpers. Klinger has both of his arms around Soon-Li. Charles’ forehead is pressed to the floor. Mulcahy is right beside him, eyes closed, mouth moving silently. Hawkeye’s stare is bright blue and scorching. You’ve never felt such intense fear and dread before.

Dong-Hyun’s cry petters out, just for him to suck in a deep breath and start up again. A shot rings out from the trees close by, maybe a hundred feet away. Heads whip towards the sound, but your gaze is trapped on the wailing baby in your arms. Every soul on this bus needs him to stop right now, but how? Everything fell apart so quickly. This is just like the dream. You don’t know what you were thinking; if Dong-Hyun’s own mother couldn’t get him to stop, then what made you think you would do any better? Because you’re a father? Because you held Erin for all of five seconds before being drafted? 

Another warning shot cracks through the air. Your mind is stalling, trapped in a loop of its own. It’s just like the dream. You stare down at Dong-Hyun and you know how to make him stop, but you can’t— couldn’t— won’t. You’d never be able to live with yourself. Would never hold your daughter again without thinking of little Dong-Hyun and you can’t, you can’t, you can’t—-

You can’t carry that kind of stain. Not even for Hawkeye. 

Panic floods you and you thrust Dong-Hyun back into his mother’s arms. She immediately crushes him to her chest. Her face is pale and terrified, eyes locked on the trees outside the nearest window. Her son’s cries are muffled and multiple people around the bus breathe a sigh of relief, but you can see she’s holding him too tightly. His head turns back and forth, trying to find a way out of his mother’s hanbok as her eyes fill with tears and she squeezes harder. You feel paralyzed, unable to move a muscle as you watch the dream play out. Just as much as an impassive bystander now as you were then. 

You didn’t save yourself by giving him to her. Whether you kill him yourself or stand by and let his mother do it - there is no difference. 

You tear your gaze away, eyes latching desperately on the shattered beer bottle at your feet as a hush falls over the bus. Trees and bushes rustle with Chinese soldiers. Another bout of gunfire sounds, further away this time as the infantry tries to smoke you all out. Hawkeye’s gaze is blazing a hole into the side of your head, but you don’t dare look at him, keeping your gaze fixed firmly on the dark glass. Your thoughts are distant, muddied. You feel a lot like that bottle actually, sharp and jagged, and you know in your bones that looking at Hawkeye right now will split you right down the middle. 

The footsteps and shouts are getting further away and you start to wonder at the 4077th’s incredible luck to have dodged that bullet twice, but thinking feels like pulling your brain through a meat grinder, so you go back to staring at the glass. The complete silence in the bus means you can hear with perfect clarity as the injured man - Private Terry - takes his last, rattling breath.

It breaks you out of the blanket of fog threatening to smother you, and you look down the aisle at him. His face is pale and lax, and you find yourself glancing, unbidden, to Hawkeye for confirmation. No patient is truly gone until Hawkeye Pierce gets that particular expression on his face - anger, self-loathing, grief - and he’s wearing it now. 

The man had died in the dream too, you suddenly remember, his passing overshadowed by the tragedy of Dong-Hyun and Hawkeye’s erratic behavior. Another reality is playing out in their own, but this isn’t a one-to-one recreation, is it? There’s an extra person here now, someone who wasn’t in the dream because he had died months before in a ragged battalion aid station. Someone who has appeared on your table over and over in the loop, and who you’ve saved just as many times. 

“Terry?” Johnson whispers. He grips Hawkeye’s shoulder tightly. “What’s wrong with him?” 

Hawkeye shakes his head, that blankness seeping into his eyes. His voice is just a breath of sound as he says, “He’s gone, Johnson. I’m sorry.”

Johnson’s knuckles whiten in Hawk’s shirt, eyes glinting oddly in the moonlight. “What does that mean?” 

If the Private’s grip is hurting him, Hawkeye doesn’t show it. He doesn’t respond either, just stares at Johnson quietly. The private’s face twists into a snarl as he shakes Hawkeye roughly. “I said, what does that mean? What’s wrong with him?” 

“Enough,” whispers Charles, voice firm despite how it trembles at its edges. He reaches across the seat and peels Johnson’s fingers from Hawk’s shoulder. “And for God’s sake, lower your voice!” 

The Private moves to grab Hawkeye with his other hand, but Charles jerks him back by the wrist until he falls onto his backside. The Lieutenant behind him clamps a hand on both of his shoulders and holds him there. Johnson’s breathing is picking up, and with the infantry only a few hundred or so feet away, it’s way too loud. People start shifting nervously and Potter whispers from the front, “Where not out of the fire yet, people. Keep low and cut the chatter.”

But you recognize the light creeping into Johnson’s eyes as the man stares down at his friend’s still form. It’s the same one you see every time you have to inform a poor boy that no, his injuries are not severe enough to get sent home, and yes, that does mean he’s going back to the front. Wild, desperate, beyond reason. 

“No,” he chokes out. “No. You let him die. You all left him behind to those Chinese just as much as you left me.”

“Johnson, I told you. We—“ the Lieutenant starts, but Johnson brushes him off and staggers to his feet. 

“This has to stop,” he warbles, swaying as he grips his rifle. “This all has to stop. I won’t let you get away with this. Not you, and not them neither.” 

And then Johnson, this kid you worked to save time and time again, lunges for the door, hollering at the top of his lungs. He tramples his Lieutenant and dodges Potter’s arms as he streaks out of the bus and onto the road. 

“COME OUT, YOU GOOK BASTARDS!” he bellows, firing two shots into the air. “GET OUT HERE AND FACE ME!” 

Potter whirls towards Zale. “Drive! Get us out of here!” 

The bus roars to life and careens into motion as shouting starts up again from the forest. A bullet ricochets off the side of the bus. Another shatters the back window, causing you and the refugees to scream and duck. You don’t know if it’s the infantry or Johnson shooting at you, but in the end they’re one and the same. The bus was slow before, and now it feels like it practically crawls down the road. You feel trapped. You want to be on your feet, running under your own power to safety. 

You want to be far, far away from the corpse in Seo-yun’s arms. 

Movement draws your gaze to the window. Silhouettes pour out of the treeline to the right of the bus. The gunfire is deafening as more windows shatter and people scream, barely heard over the wind whistling loudly against the jagged glass. Seo-yun sobs, clutching her son’s body with one hand and gripping your arm with the other, but you can’t stand to have her hands on you, no matter how unfair that may be. You have to stand and move and be useful before you do something suicidal like jump out of the window. You tear your arm from her grip and stumble towards Hawkeye. 

He’s still kneeling in the aisle, hauling Terry’s body into a vacant seat so it doesn’t get tripped over. The movement of the bus rocks you nauseatingly and you fall to your knees beside him, helping to tuck the dead man’s feet up on the seat. More bullets spray the side of the bus and something hot and molten clips your ear. You hiss and Hawkeye’s arm snakes around your head a half-second later, pulling you down to the floor. You blindly bury your hand into the front of his shirt and pull him down with you.

“Stay down!” Potter orders from the front. “Get as low as you can. We’ll make it out of this.” His voice is a lifeline that you grip onto as Hawkeye clutches your head. “We’re closing in on the Inchon checkpoint. Everyone just—-“

The windshield explodes inwards in a hail of bullets, and Potter goes down in a spray of red. 

You’re paralyzed again, watching numbly as he hits the floor and doesn’t get up. Margaret screams and chaos overtakes the bus as Zale struggles to keep it on the road, one hand clutching his side. Blood seeps sluggishly into the black rivets of the bus floor. Hawkeye’s body is a hard line against your own, and the hand covering your head shakes wildly. Potter is a still, blurry shape in the corner of your vision that your mind won’t let you look at directly. 

You were right. This isn’t a one-to-one recreation of the dream. 

It’s so much worse. 

The others must feel just as trapped as you do, because people start jumping seats and clawing at the windows. Bullets ricochets sharply and people are screaming and you and Hawkeye just lay there, a cold island in the middle of it all. 

Beside you, Hawkeye suddenly stiffens, going ramrod straight with a sharp intake of breath that immediately launches your heart into your throat. You lurch upright, thinking he’d been shot, but he just gazes around with a confused look before his expression smooths out.

“Oh,” he breathes. There’s a hurricane of emotions swirling behind that simple exclamation. He looks over at you and his gaze is wild, desperate, beyond reach -terrifying-terrifying. His dog tags flash bright and silver in the bouncing moonlight, casting something like sunspots in your eyes. “It’s worse this time.”

“What?” You can barely hear him over everyone’s panic, and you have to squint against the glinting light. 

“It didn’t happen like this before.”

You feel your eyes widen as you meet Hawkeye’s gaze, and you recognize the look on his face immediately. It’s probably the same one you had on your own face that night when you dreamt of this day and finally, finally, put the pieces together. You feel a horrible surge of gratitude and crushing despair. 

Gratitude that you’re not alone in this; that you have someone else who knows exactly how horrible and wrong and unnecessary this all is. 

Despair because you would have done anything - anything - to keep Hawkeye from realizing his part in it. 

The chaos in the bus fades into a buzzing background noise. The silver glare coming off Hawk’s tags is unnaturally bright, more like a spotlight than a piece of stamped metal. You squint past it and fight to hold his gaze. You don’t know how to respond to his sudden revelation. What could you even say? That it wasn’t his fault? How could you possibly say that, when you yourself feel the weight of Dong-Hyun’s death pressing on your soul?

“Hawk…” Your mouth opens and closes a few times, but that’s all your mind can come up with. Fog seeps through your thoughts and you can recognize the symptoms of shock setting in.

Hawkeye doesn’t seem disappointed at your lack of response, as if he already knew that nothing you said would absolve him of this. But you don’t believe he needs absolution; you didn’t before and, despite everything, you don’t now. He didn’t do this on purpose, you know he didn’t. And he doesn’t know about Johnson or your own role in everything that sent the events of this day spiraling into unknown horrors. 

You have to tell him it’s not his fault. You have to tell him what you’ve done. But your vocal cords are paralyzed along with the rest of you. Dong-Hyun’s cry suddenly echoes in your head, clear and loud as if he were alive right behind you, and Hawkeye flinches. Before you have a chance to fully register that, the glaring light grows brighter, flickering and blinding and otherworldly in a way that causes dread to pierce the fog blanketing your mind. 

“Hawkeye, what’s—“

The silver light of the dog tags flashes—

— No. Not the dog tags.

The thread. 

Your hand shoots out and clamps onto Hawkeye’s arm as the light surges. It outshines everything, sweeping away Hawkeye, the 4077th, the bus, all of Korea in a flash of silver.

You squeeze your eyes shut and then you’re gone too.

It’s a sunny and mild May 15th, 1951, when Hunnicut steps out of the shaded officer’s club and into the warpath of one Dr. B.F Pierce. 

Pierce - Hawkeye - (“Hawkeye. Don’t let a little confusion throw you, Captain - don’t call me that -) is all motion and focused distraction. In the ten seconds that Hunnicut has known him, he already stands in stark contrast to the pressed suits and straight backs he’s seen of army life so far - as if he could be anything else-. Hunnicut thinks that this may be someone worth knowing — he is, he is, he is —.

Pierce and the smaller guy, O’Reilly (“Oh, uh, everyone just calls me Radar, sir.”), are talking over and through each other, nervousness and agitation bumping heads before continuing ‘round and ‘round, and Hunnicut is struggling to keep up. 

He ducks his head forward a bit, trying to get Pierce’s attention. “Can I help?” -please, Hawkeye, let me help —

But Pierce sidesteps his attempt at eye contact with ease, prickly energy not lessening a single degree as his gaze darts around the outpost. “No, no, no. Forget it.” — let me help —

Pierce invites them both back into the club for a drink, and Hunnicut spends the whole time answering questions and playing verbal catch-up. Two men come flying in, throwing sloppy punches as they careen right into their table. Pierce and O’Reilly - it’s Radar. he already told you that - drift gracefully out of the way with barely a glance as Hunnicut narrowly avoids a flailing fist straight to the face. 

He can’t help but feel that the moment summarizes this war perfectly - it really doesn’t. you have no idea what’s coming. this isn’t right - 

Now a jeep has apparently been stolen and the tension somehow ratchets up a few more notches. Hunnicut doesn’t see what the big deal is; a jeep nicked by army personnel is still a jeep in the army’s possession, but O’Reilly looks like he’s about to vibrate out of his skin - this isn’t right - so what does he know. 

Neither man has made much direct eye contact with him yet - you can’t avoid this, Hawk. this isn’t right - , but they seem to have their own problems going on, so he just follows along as best he can and accepts that this may just be his life for the next few months. 

“Radar!” Pierce - Hawkeye. - grabs the boy by the shoulders. “If you can keep your head while all about you are losing theirs, then you probably haven’t checked with your answering service.”

‘Rudyard Kipling’, Hunnicut wants to say. 

“This isn’t right,” you say instead. 

Hawkeye blinks up at you, and the series of emotions that parade across his face are achingly familiar; confusion resting just above loss, anger, and despair. The same dregs, a loop of its own - maybe even the original. Experienced over and over again in the eight years you’ve known him. Hidden behind the jokes and the pranks and the love he pours out to you all, time and time again. 

“Come again?” he asks. 

“This isn’t right, Hawk. This has to stop.”

(“This has to stop,” Hawkeye seethed as he lunged for the jeep.)

— “This has to stop,” Johnson warbled as he lunged for the doors. —

His eyes go flinty. “I don’t know what your problem is, stranger, but good taste cannot be suppressed. You should’ve done the assigned reading before they shipped you out.” 

He starts to turn away but you grab his shoulder and pull him around to face you. 

“Hey!” Radar protests, but you ignore him. 

“Look, Captain, those bars are too shiny and new to scuff them up this quickly,” says Hawkeye, that false levity entering his voice. “How about we all spend the ride back in a time-out and try again later.”

The annoyed confusion in his eyes isn’t faked. For all his play-acting, for all the times he lied his way out of a dangerous situation by the skin of his teeth, Hawkeye Pierce has always worn his heart on his sleeve. And he may not remember it, but you know him better than anyone. And you know with nauseating clarity that right now, he doesn’t know you.

Despite your conviction that he didn’t create the loop on purpose, this throws you. How do you get him to remember? How do you even begin to explain this without getting yourself shipped off to your own lockdown with Sidney?

You squeeze his shoulders. “We have to find a way out of this, Hawk. It isn’t fair. Not to us, not to anyone.”

The annoyance fades from Hawkeye’s expression as he glances back and forth between you and your hands. “I must admit, I’m not usually the one on the back foot. Who are you?”

“BJ. You’re best friend.” You and Hawkeye are many, many things to each other, some of them too complicated to label, but right now that’s the bare bones of it.

Radar gasps, and you’re not even surprised that he’s connected the dots so quickly. This boy who sussed out the loop weeks before everyone else, and who understood it’s rules with a clarity that took you years to grasp. “Gosh. You’re stuck too, sir?” 

You nod. “I’ve been here in Korea with you all for over eight years.”

Hawkeye rears back. “Eight.” The word sounds like it’s been punched out of him. ”We’ll be stuck here for eight years?” 

We already have, you almost say. But you’re starting to suspect that even that isn’t accurate. You were just on a damned bus not fourty-five minutes ago, and now you're here, back at the start of it all and going through the same motions. Was that actually your first time experiencing that night in Inchon? How many times have you been dragged back to the beginning and forgotten? Does it even matter?

Yes. Yes, it matters so much, but not right now. Right now, you need to get Hawk to snap out of it. 

He hasn’t shaken you off yet, but you loosen your grip anyway, letting your hands rest lightly on his shoulders. You don’t know how to approach this, you’re far from a psychiatrist, so you fall back on the dreams and Sidney‘s expertise. “Tell me about the bus.” 

“The bus?”

“The beach in Inchon and the bus ride after. Tell me about it.” 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You do.” 

Hawkeye’s brows pinch together. “Best friend is a lofty title considering who’s plane I just missed. You claim to be an expert in all things me, then prove it, stranger.” 

Yeah, that’s fair enough. You cast around for something to say, feeling far out of your depth. “You're from Maine where you live with your dad. You got drafted in February, 1950, and you’re the second biggest prankster I know.”

“Just the second?”

“I’m the first.”

“Ah, arrogance becomes him,” Hawkeye says to Radar before turning back to you. “But I’m not bought. You could have found that out in the yellow pages.”

You shrug, exasperated. “Your favorite color is blue.”

“And it was orange last week, and army green before I got here. Try harder.”

You grind your teeth and try to hold onto your temper. Big guns, is what he’s telling you. Fine. 

“You became a doctor because it was what your father did, but you didn’t fall in love with it until your second year of medical school when you took your first course in thoracic surgery. You fell out of love with it by your second amputation here.” 

They both go quiet. Radar wrings his hands and shuffles from foot to foot in the corner of your eye. Hawkeye takes a single step away from you, which feels so wrong it makes your fingers itch. He looks more troubled than confused, and when he doesn’t say anything, you continue.

“You sleep on your back when you have nightmares and on your stomach when you don’t. You’ve reduced homemade gin down to its bare essentials. You sniff your food before each bite because Igor gave you food poisoning your first week here. You once arranged to have Frank shipped to the 8063rd because—“

“— The Spam trade would be worth ten times more than his skills as a doctor,” Hawkeye finishes slowly, his gaze growing distant. 

Your heart leaps. “On my first day here, we were shelled on the way home. And you told me that the worst part of the war was that—“

“— You would get used to it.” He still isn’t looking at you, but his head turns slightly in your direction. “Did you?”

“Yes. I didn’t want to, but yes.”

He hums and nods at that. You take a step closer and he doesn’t move away. “You found out I was stuck in the loop because of a song. I never asked you how.”

Hawkeye hesitates, eyes flitting from side to side, unseeing as his mind is cast back through the tangle of years and years. After a moment, he says, “Because that song was released in 1953 and you were singing it in 1952.” 

His eyes meet yours. “BJ.”

You could happily drown in the relief that fills you. There’s something intimately wrong with Hawkeye not knowing you, and you can’t stand being in the middle of all this without your backup. You don’t know how Hawk could stomach it, those first few weeks before you became aware of the loop. How Radar could stand it, those weeks he was in it alone?

You step forward and cup his face in your hands, uncaring of who might see. His jaw is rigid under your fingers. “You once asked me what I would do if you were dying.”

Hawkeye’s throat bobs as he swallows. “And what did you decide, Beej? You gonna let me lay there?”  

”No. And I’m not gonna let you bleed out either. We’re going to get out of this. We’re going to go home.” 

He reaches up and grasps your wrists. “I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t know how to stop this.”

“We can’t change what happens. What has already happened. It’s done.”

“What happened?” The question is barely a breath of sound as dread and trepidation makes his voice shake. 

You want to hide you both from this, but you can’t. “Tell me about the bus.”

“The bus…” Hawk murmures, gaze growing distant once more. “The bus…Inchon. We were at the beach.” 

“Yes.”

“It was getting dark and we left on the bus. We picked up some refugees and some G.I.s. One of them was wounded?” He glances at you for confirmation and you nod. 

“Chinese infantry was in the area. We had to be quiet, but it was so loud. There was—“

You can see the moment it all comes back to him. His face drains of color and his hands go cold and clammy where they’re holding your wrists. 

“Oh my god.” 

Your throat is tight. “I know.”

“There…there was a—“ His hands shake.

“I know.”

“She- she killed—“

“Oh, geez,” you hear Radar say faintly. You ignore him and crush Hawkeye to your chest, eyes stinging. Hawkeye feels like he’s falling to pieces in your arms. His breathing is loud and labored, and his eyes are glazed. You squeeze your eyes shut and try to hold you both together.

”I- I,” he stutters. “I didn’t mean for her to— I just wanted—“

“I know, Hawkeye. I know. It wasn’t your fault.”

It’s the wrong thing to say. Hawkeye jerks out of your hold, wiping at his eyes furiously. “No! No! That didn’t happen! It didn’t happen! It didn’t have to happen!” 

“But it did, and we can’t change it. I’m so sorry.” 

“Why?”

It’s the wide-eyed, childlike plea of someone who has seen the worst humanity has to offer over and over again and demands an explanation. It’s the same question that has been stomping your heart into gristle for eight long years. 

It’s a question you don’t have an answer for, but Radar does. Had the entire time, you just couldn’t accept it. 

“I think there are some people we’re meant to lose,” he says, fiddling with the cuffs of his sleeves. “You know, like, it’s their time. I don’t think there’s anything we can do to stop that. If it’s their time and all.”

“Why not?” Hawkeye cries, causing Radar to flinch a bit. “If we can’t save them, then what’s the point?”

“Uh, because the loop doesn’t change what happens, not really,” he replies. 

“It changes us,” you finish. 

He bobs his head at you, relieved. “Yeah, yeah, you get it.” His gaze flickers between you and Hawkeye as his brow furrows and an unhappy frown carves deep lines into his young face. “I dunno what you two are talking about exactly, but whatever you’re trying to change, it won’t work.”

“What won’t work?” Hawkeye demands. “What’s happening?” 

“The baby, Hawkeye,” you implore. “It started with the baby.”

Hawkeye rounds on you, seething and grieved. “Oh, so what? We just let a 6-month old be suffocated by his own mother? Is that really what you’re suggesting, BJ Hunnicut?”

“We can’t change what happened,” you plead, feeling exhausted and at your limit. “What originally happened.”

“And what are we if we allow him to die?!” Hawkeye roars, his voice cracking across the compound and causing the people passing through to stop and stare. 

Radar scurries away to run interference and you want so badly to follow him, but Hawkeye is nowhere near done. He stalks right up to you and grabs you by the shoulders, shouting, “If we just allow any of them to die? What does it mean if we do nothing, huh? If we sit back and allow her to— it— it’s no different than if we had killed him ourselves!”

It’s so similar to the thought you had on that bus. You squeeze your eyes shut and try to not be sick as he shakes you. 

“What then, BJ? What am I supposed to do with that? How can I live with it?” 

“You have to,” you grit out. 

“How?” He’s practically screaming now, gripping your lapels and begging for a proper answer. “How? Could you?” 

No. You couldn’t- can’t live with it.

Hunnicut had been so blindsided when Hawk had driven that jeep into the officer’s club. So uncomfortable to even exist in the same room as him at the psychiatric hospital. But the loop has changed you, irrevocably. You get it. You get it. The OC isn’t enough, was tame in comparison to how you want to drive a jeep into a minefield and never look back. 

Your throat closes and tears sting your eyes. You pull Hawkeye’s hands from your shoulders and wrap them in your own, squeezing tightly. “I tried, Hawk. I tried to save him and it made everything worse.”

He freezes. “What do you mean?” 

You close your eyes again, stomach churning as you remember the bus you were on less than an hour ago. The one that you seem to remember but Hawkeye doesn’t. Or maybe this Hawkeye, here and now, hasn’t even experienced your version of that night. You’re not sure. You don’t know how all of this works. Never have, not really. The notebooks you and Margaret kept for nearly a decade feel like such a joke in the face of all of this. 

“I tried to save him, Hawkeye,” you rasp. “I swear to you, I tried. I delayed the bus, and I held him in my arms for hours, and we almost made it out.” Now it’s your hands that are shaking, and Hawkeye is the one squeezing back. “I thought I could keep him quiet, I thought— I don’t know what I thought. That- that I could do a better job than his mother, but I-I couldn’t. He was so loud.”

Hawkeye nods, eyes bloodshot and watery. “The loudest thing I’d ever heard.”

You nod back. The glass is back in your throat and you have to force your next words out. “I couldn’t keep him quiet, Hawk. And I couldn’t…couldn’t—“  You swallow and take a deep breath. “I couldn’t. I gave him back to her and she killed him.” 

She was scared, and the soldiers were going to find them, and she killed her son. Again and again. A hideous, recursive cycle. How many times have they put her in that position? 

Hawkeye looks gutted. He opens his mouth, but you talk over him, needing him to know how bad it was. “The infantry found us and fired on the bus. We— we lost Potter and— and I don’t know who else. I couldn’t look.” 

Hawkeye’s arms envelop you and you return the embrace just as hard. 

“You’re right,” you croak. “There’s no difference.”

Hawkeye shakes his head against your neck and his hold on you tightens. “That day hasn’t happened yet.”

Yeah, you had thought the same thing when you saw that dream. The monsterous urge to fix things before they go to hell. It doesn’t work, it doesn’t work.

“No, no,” you say. “Hawk, you’re not listening.” You pull back and grab his face one more, forcing him to look at you. “We’re not changing anything! It will happen and it’s already happened. Just like with Gillis, and Johnson, and Ramirez, and all those other kids who landed on our table and didn’t pull through. It’s a war, Hawkeye. We were never going to save everyone.” 

“I know that!” Hawkeye spits. “I’m not a naïve child, BJ. I know that this is war and that we were always going to spend every second of it with our backs against the wall. But…but we can’t just sit back and do nothing.”

“We won’t. We’ll do what we’ve always done - our damned best. But we can’t keep trying to change what’s meant happen.” 

His eyes cut away and you move your hands from his face to slide down to his shoulders and say, “What if the loop stops and we’ve made things worse? Hawkeye, I was in a bus full of corpses less than an hour ago and suddenly I was here. What if everything hadn’t reset? What if that’s all we were left with? We— we lost Potter. And I’m sorry, I know it’s terrible, but between Dong-Hyun’s life and the lives of everyone on that bus…” You trail off, unable to say the words no matter how much you believe in them. 

“Dong-Hyun,” Hawkeye said faintly. “That was his name?” 

Glass grinds in your throat. “Yeah.” 

Hawkeye turns away, nodding almost absently. After a moment, he says quietly, “It wasn’t your fault, Beej.” 

You scoff. “Yes, it is. You just told her to keep him quiet. I handed him over to her knowing damn well what she was going to do. I can’t hide from that, Hawkeye.” 

Silence falls. You don’t know what to say to make this better, and it’s clear that Hawkeye doesn’t either. 

“It will happen and it’s already happened,” he eventually murmurs. “If that’s true, then he was dead and gone before anyone even got onto that bus. Just like Tommy was gone before the bullet that killed him was even manufactured.” 

Is that how it is? If they’re dead at the end, then they’re dead at the onset? You’re not sure you buy that. Everyone dies. Even a time loop couldn’t stop you from aging within it. 

“You had nothing to do with his death the first time it happened,” Hawk continues. You can physically see him turning the logic of it in on itself. Willing to take the blame pointed at himself but turning it away when it looked at you. You know the feeling. “And if it wasn’t your fault when it was set in stone then it’s not your fault now. Nothing’s changed.”

Nothing but them. 

“It wasn’t your fault either,” you say. 

You believe that, you always have, and you need Hawkeye to believe it too. 

He doesn’t look at you, keeping his eyes skyward. “I’m tired, BJ.” 

“I know.”

You know and you know and you know.

“Set it down, Hawk. We need to stop this.” 

“You’ll have to set it down too.”

You know that. You don’t know if you ever will.

Hawkeye blows out a breath, causing you to startle. Radar creeps into view, looking worried and stressed out. Hawk looks over at you both and says, “I don’t know what’s happening, or when or why this all started, but I think we’ve been trapped in this for longer than we think.”

And there’s his dog tags - the thread - again, reflecting the sunlight so brightly that you have to squint through it. Radar doesn’t seem to notice and is the one to nod back at Hawk’s statement. 

“And you think this is it?” Hawkeye asks.

You think back to the four weeks that time moved forward as it should. The day the date passed May 13th, 1953, and the way it’s moved forward ever since. You think of the Chinese's retreat and of the unbroken peace talks. Of Johnson appearing on your operating table over and over again, as if time itself was begging you to help it untangle the thread, a catalyst to set things back to how they originally were before the situation wildly over-corrected itself. 

“I think this whole operation has been falling apart for a long time now,” you reply, closing your eyes against the glare. Even with them closed, you can clearly see him give you that considering nod of his. 

“Okay.” 

The ensuing flash of silver filters through your eyelids as a bright, deep-set crimson.

You blink the afterimage of the tags away in the humid darkness of the bus. 

You’re not seated in the back anymore. You’re towards the front, crouched down with Potter and the injured Lieutenant. Potter is staring over your shoulder towards the back seats, his mouth a thin, tight line. 

It’s dead silent. You can see Margaret in your peripheral, but the expression on her face isn’t something you can look at for more than a second. Your eyes sting.

Dong-Hyun is a presence, long-past and lingering, in the shadowed corners of the back seat. You don’t turn to look at him. 

Leaving the Lieutenant with Potter, you keep your eyes down and feel your way towards the middle of the bus until your hands land on Hawkeye’s arm. He’s stiff and frozen where he stands, eyes glued towards the back of the bus. You don’t know how he can stand it. 

He resists your effort to turn him away from the sight with more strength than you’d have thought possible, but between you and Charles, you both manage to get him to face forward in his seat. Charles retreats immediately and you join Hawkeye, huddling you both as tight as you can against the window and lacing your fingers together. There are no bullet holes. No additional bodies inside or out of the bus. The thread has unwound and led itself to its natural beginning/present/end. 

Hawkeye’s unblinking gaze drifts out the window. Neither of you speak as Potter quietly tells Zale to start driving. 

It’s July 25th, 1953, and the war is over. 

It’s been one year, three months, and twelve days since you arrived in Korea. 

It’s been eight years, three months, and twenty-eight days since you’ve arrived in Korea. 

You and Klinger are huddled on your bunk, staring at Charles’ pilfered pocket watch, watching as it slowly runs its race towards midnight, centimeter by centimeter. Its face is cracked, but it still fills the silence with its rhythmic tick tick tick. 

Hawkeye is across the Swamp, lying quietly on his bunk he’s done for days now. Enforced R&R courtesy of Potter after the death of Dong-Hyun. It’s the last thing he needs, but nothing you said would convince Potter otherwise.

Hawk stares with worn eyes at the drab green canopy above, knuckles pale where they’re twisted in the sheets. The silence is worrying, but you can’t begrudge him for it; you’ve been quiet too. 

You can feel Klinger’s shoulders tremble ever-so slightly next to you. You wish Radar was here, and immediately take the thought back. 

The second hand ticks steadily towards its final goal and you hold your breath. 

It’s July 27th, 1953. 

The war is still over. You’re still holding that breath.

It’s July 28th, 1953. 

It’s a wonder you haven’t suffocated right there in the middle of camp. 

It’s August 1st, 1953. 

You never thought you’d make it this far forward, from the looks of it, no one else has either. There’s a tension in the camp thick enough to swim through. It’s as if everyone collectively agreed to not draw attention to what was happening. As if speaking of the possibility of it finally being over would burn the bridge before you all even got the chance to step foot on a single, life-saving plank.

It feels like fear.

It feels like hope. 

It’s August 4th, 1953 and the first chopper touches down to start the ferry line that’ll send the enlisted men to Seoul.

Then to Tokyo. 

Then Stateside. 

There's a million and one things to do, but the entire camp is there to watch the first chopper make its landing. Those stuck in the loop or those who exist outside of it, doesn't matter; the desperate hope you see in everyone's faces is the same. 

They all leave, one by one. 

*

You realize that you’ve never seen Klinger smile without it’s manic edge until he wraps an arm around Soon-Lee’s waist and drives away from the choppers, further into Korea.

*

Father Mulcahy grips your hand tightly, not a trace of worry in his eyes. He hides his hearing loss so well, you’d never have guessed there was a problem if it weren’t for the dreams. 

“Have faith. I’ll pray for you both to have a safe trip home.”

His voice is soft and soothing, and you’re determined to hear it again someday. 

*

Margaret pulls you and Hawkeye into a crushing hug. You and he hug back just as tightly until you all are practically glued together. Major Houlihan, your calendar partner and confidant. The thought of never seeing her again is more than a shame, it’s an injustice.

“Margaret, I—“

“None of that,” she sniffs, pulling away. You see Hawkeye turn his head to swipe at his eyes. “I’ll be here a while yet, but I will call as soon as I’m back home. I expect you both to pick up.” 

“You bet,” you say as Hawkeye pulls her into another hug.

*

Charles’s ride pulls up with a squeak in its breaks and he grimaces. 

“Well,” he says briskly. “This has been the worst experience of my life, and you both are without a doubt the strangest pair I hope to ever meet.” 

“Well, I imagine so,” Hawkeye says with equal aplomb as he slings an arm across Charles’ shoulders. “Who could top us?”

Charles pinches Hawk’s sleeve between his fingers and pulls the arm away. He makes a show of wiping said fingers off on his coat, but he’s not a good enough actor to hide the hint of warmth in his voice as he says, “I shudder to think.” 

You clap his shoulder as he passes by and then he’s gone. 

*

Colonel Potter presses his forehead to Sophie’s snout. With the war over and the 4077th packed away into crates, a wall that you hadn’t known existed has come down in his expression. His eyes are shining and you recognize the look in them. In how this parade of goodbyes feels like relief and grief in equal measure. 

“Boys, I don’t know what’s waiting for us on the other side of that ocean. And I don’t know how I’m going to reconcile what has happened here when I’m all the way over there, or if such a thing is even possible. But if this is truly the end of the line, then I want you both to know it has been the highest honor of my career to serve with you both. You are the finest caliber of surgeons I’ve ever known, and the finest  caliber of men I will ever meet. I pray you both find peace in your homes and in the rest of your days.” 

*

“Told you it would just be us left,” Hawkeye murmurs as you both watch Potter disappear with the caravan. 

“Rosie’s is closed.”

“The war’s last middle finger for the road.” 

Chopper blades sound in the distance, fast approaching, and your stomach drops. “Come on, your ride’s here.” 

Hawkeye’s fingers entwine with your own as you both take your time making it to the chopper pad. It’s a beautiful day; sunny and hot but with a cool breeze, and not a cloud in the sky. A perfect day to leave Korea behind. If it’s actually over, that is.

Hawkeye’s grip tightens. “What’s the date?” 

“August 6th, 1953,” you say immediately, hand drifting to the pocket where your notebook used to be. You and Margaret had burned the journals just yesterday. The collection was quite large, and the glowing embers you and her threw into the air afterwards was as close to a prayer that you could manage at the time. 

You wait for something, not a joke, maybe, but a comment or quip, but Hawkeye only hums and squeezes your hand. 

He doesn’t believe it’s really over. There’s a solemn air about him, a grimness that’s lingered since Inchon. He’s been burned too many times by the loop, and you can’t say you’re 100% confident in all this either. You don’t think you’ll relax until you touch down in San Francisco. Maybe not even then. 

The chopper descends just as you’re both cresting the hill and this is it. You pull Hawkeye to a stop and press your shoulders together to keep your joined hands out of sight, unwilling to let go just yet as you both watch it land. You don’t know what to do, what to say. You’re terrified to be left alone here.

You’ve never experienced a single minute of this war without Hawkeye by your side. 

The worry and dread you’ve been trying to hide from Hawk’s perspective gaze rears its ugly head. What if it isn’t over? What if it all starts over again? What if time folds in on itself once more, but everyone is gone and it’s just you here, living an endless spiral of days in this empty camp? It’s not even the real 4077th anymore - the camp you’ve spent eight long years in burned to ash overnight with no goodbye and little fanfare. What if—-

Hawk squeezes your hand again and you take a deep breath. Right, it doesn’t matter in the long-run, not really. The 4077th was always what it was because of its people, and those people are well on their way. 

The chopper doesn’t even shut down. Its blades whirl and its engine revs loudly as the pilot shoots Hawkeye an expectant look. It’s not going to sit and give you the years you’ll need to say goodbye to him. This is it, and your stomach drops impossibly further. You feel rabid with how much you don’t want him to go, but the helicopter only carries one and you don’t dare to trade places and leave him here. This war caught him in its loop once already, and you don’t trust it to let him go. And a part of you that has grown bigger than yourself thinks that Hawkeye deserves to be the one doing the leaving for once. 

Hawkeye ignores the chopper and pulls you into a hug that is every inch as desperate as you feel. “You will call me,” he grits out. “As soon as you get home.”

“I will,” you promise, cupping the back of his head.

“I mean it, Hunnicut.” A tremble shakes its way into his voice. “The moment those size twelves hit the foyer, I want those fingers spinning the dial.” 

You hug him tighter. “Aye, Captain.” 

The pilot guns the engine and you glare at him over Hawkeye’s head. He’s tapping his wrist pretty aggressively for someone who isn’t even wearing a watch. Hawkeye pulls away but you’re still hanging doggedly onto his forearms. It’s strange how a part of you had accepted that you’d be here forever, but now that it’s over, you find that eight years wasn’t enough. There’s a lump in your throat and your eyes sting. You think of Trapper and Radar and Jones and Baker and the dozens of other people who left and never wrote. This could be your last chance. 

“Hawk, I don’t know what this place would have been if I hadn’t found you here. I can’t even imagine it. I…” Words fail you, even now. 

(“Just say goodbye! What’s the big deal?”

“What do you want me to say it for?”

“Because it shows you know I’m going.”)

It appears that no version of you in any timeline can truly say goodbye to Hawkeye Pierce.

You didn’t create a note out of boulders in this timeline. You’re still not sure if you and Hunnicut are literally the same person, but that goodbye in the dirt was for them, and you felt you didn’t have the right to make it your own. 

Hawkeye starts to respond, eyes swimming, but you grasp his face in both hands and say, “I love you. You’re the best person I’ve ever known. Goodbye, and see you later.” 

Hawkeye is blinking rapidly as he swallows and warbles out a simple, “Same here.” 

See? Not so easy, is it, Hawk? But that’s alright. Hawkeye has said everything you’ve ever needed to hear a thousand different times, in a thousand different ways over the years. In the warmth tucked between the jokes and flair. In the way it was thrown out bluntly in every fight and vulnerable moment. Felt in the way his hands have cradled your own, time and time again. 

He pulls you into another hug, brief this time, because you’re both stalling and the pilot won’t wait forever. His fingers twist into your sleeve one last time and then he turns away and hops into the co-pilot seat. 

You raise your hand up to him and he lowers his down to you as the chopper lifts off. It kicks up a storm of billowing brown dust as it lifts off, forcing you to break his gaze and cover your eyes. The helicopter lifts up and up, and all too quickly, Hawkeye is a speck on the horizon. 

You stand there and stare up after him for a long time, throat dry. Your ride won’t be here until the morning and you still have a laundry list of things to do before then. Finally, finally, you turn away and head back down the hill and towards the scaffolding that once housed the MASH 4077.

Your boots hit the last paving stone step, but before you can touch down into camp, a bright line of silver flashes in the corner of your eye.

You flinch and whirl toward—-

Peg doesn’t notice him at first. He has to call out for her, and even when he does, she still startles and has to do a double-take before her expression transforms into the widest grin he’s ever seen. 

“BJ!” She practically leaps into his arms, kissing every part of his face she can reach, and he’s laughing and kissing her back and twirling her around right there in the middle of the SFO terminal. It’s nearly perfect, almost everything he’s wanted since he got drafted, but there are no little arms around his neck, no liting voice in his ear.

“I missed you so, so much,” BJ says, voice shaking. “Where’s–“

“She’s with mom,” Peg interrupts with a teary smile. She ducks and takes his carry-on from him. “Come on.”

BJ feels like his feet can’t carry him fast enough. Peg’s heels rap smartly against the tile in a way that immediately reminds him of Klinger, but he quickly shakes the thought away as he rests his hand against her lower back. She laughs as he pushes her along and they leave the terminal. 

Two corners and a long hallway later, and there she is; barely reaching her grandmother’s knees, sandy-blonde hair held back with a bright yellow ribbon, chubby face turned away from him. His feet are rooted in place and now Peg is the one pushing him forward. 

BJ sinks to his knees in front of his daughter. It feels like there’s glass in his throat and his chest aches and aches. “Hello, sweetheart.” 

Erin doesn’t look at him, just presses her face further into the folds of Barbara’s skirt. “Come now, dear,” his mother-in-law says, taking a step away. “You know who this is.” She looks down at him with a frown. “Though I can’t say I blame her. I barely recognized you myself, BJ. You’ve gone gray on us.” 

“Thank you, Barb, lovely to see you.” BJ only has eyes for Erin though, who has turned her back to him now that she can no longer hide behind her grandmother. BJ swallows and tries again. “It’s so good to see you, sweetheart. Daddy missed you so much.”

Nothing - tough crowd. His fingers practically vibrate with the need to pick her up, but he holds back with surprising ease. He‘s spent nearly a year getting a rise out of Charles Winchester III, and that has taught him patience and perseverance. 

“I brought you a present.” He pulls out the stuffed bear from his jacket. It’s a small, cheap thing he picked up during his layover in Guam. Maybe it would have meant more if he had brought her something from his time in Korea, but in the end he‘d brought very little back with him. The less reminders, the better. 

Erin peaks over her shoulder, looking at the bear then up at him. He expected - dreaded - her to be wary of him, but she just looks shy, much to his relief. 

“Do you remember me, baby?” It seems too much to ask; she was so small when he was shipped off. But Erin, bless her, nods. 

“Peggy has put your picture everywhere,” Barbara explains. “In the nursery, in the playpen, on all the bedside tables.” 

She says it so casually, as if it’s not the greatest gift he’s ever been given. BJ looks up at Peg, who gazes back down at him, eyes glistening. “I wanted her to know you,” she says. “For when you got back.” 

The glass makes a reappearance in the back of his throat as he looks back down at Erin and holds out the bear. “Would you like this?”

She nods again and takes it from him. She fiddles with it, stroking its fur as she glances at him periodically. “Thank you,” she says without prompting, and her voice is even sweeter than he’d ever imagined.

Adjusting back to civilian life is…interesting. 

There’s both too much and too little to do. He cleans gutters and fixes lawnmowers, and the work around the house is a never-ending list. He goes back to work and the surgery is clean, orderly, and unrushed. There are no shellings, no mortar fire. The surgeries he does perform are routine and, dare he say, boring. 

The boredom is familiar. His surroundings both are and aren’t. In the OR, he keeps expecting to turn and hear Hawkeye at the table behind him, singing that new song over the radio that Peg hums while doing the laundry. 

“How else can I tell you, What more can I do…“

There’s talk of rising tensions in Vietnam. 

The signs are too new, too freshly experienced, for anyone to ignore. BJ tosses the newspaper aside and stands abruptly, turning towards the phone and the one person who will be just as angry about this as he is. 

BJ hears the paper rustle as Peg picks it up. Ridiculous,” she mutters a moment later. “Sticking our noses into one conflict then the next.“

She crumples the paper and throws it into the waste basket. “This has got to stop.” 

Stomach twisting, BJ shakes his head and walks past the phone and up the stairs to bed. 

Erin, when not hiding behind her grandmother, is a curious and bold child who is not afraid to make her displeasure loudly known. 

BJ can’t be in the room when she screams like this. A high-pitched, shrieking wail that sets off a strange jittery feeling in his gut. Peg shoots him odd looks when he hurriedly hands Erin off to her, but thankfully never questions it when he practically flees from his own daughter. 

It’s sometime in late Janurary when the phone in the kitchen rings. 

BJ passes the morning paper off to Peg and heads towards it, stepping right on one of the small wooden blocks strewn around the living room as he goes. His answering “Hunnicut residence” is a little hissed, but the pain in his foot is completely forgotten as Hawkeye’s frazzled voice filters over the wire, immediately setting off familiar klaxons in his head. 

He sounds downright frantic, words flying at light speed, causing a crackle down the line that distorts whatever he’s trying to say. The crackle seems to be mirroring itself in BJ’s spine and he needs to loosen his grip on the phone before he breaks the damn thing.

“Hawk- hey, just- Hawkeye! Slow down, I can’t hear what you’re saying.”

“Are you listening to me? He was right!”

“Who?” you ask, baffled. “About what?”

“Klinger! At that damned poker table! He—-“ The line crackles horribly and BJ grimaces as he holds the phone away from his ear. A hand alights on his shoulder, causing him to jump. 

“What’s wrong?” Peg asks, frowning between him and the phone. 

“I…I don’t…” He doesn’t know how to explain what’s wrong with Hawkeye - hasn’t even been able to bring him up since he got home. It’s not that he doesn’t want to talk about him. God, BJ wants nothing more than to invite him out to Mills Valley and introduce him to Peg. To show him their home here, to see him holding Erin. To sit with him on the sunset-lit front porch, chatting the evening away.

But Hawkeye wasn’t at his best when they all left Korea, and BJ would hate to have Peg’s initial impression of him to be skewed by him tripping up your front steps in a panic a mere six months after BJ got back. 

He had hoped that being back home in Maine would bring Hawk peace. That his father and Crabapple Cove could quiet that whirling mind of his, but it sounds like it’s done the exact opposite, and guilt twists sourly in BJ’s stomach. 

He’s been meaning to call him, but in the havoc of coming home, getting settled in, going back to work, cleaning out the gutters, and getting to know his daughter- well, he’s been busy. During nights when dreams of Korea kept him awake and Hawkeye was all he could think about, he told himself that he and Hawk had spent nearly every day in each other’s personal space for over a year. That they both could use a few months to acclimate to civilian life on their separate ends of the continent. 

Now he wishes he had at least sent him a letter. 

“BJ!” Hawkeye’s voice shrills over the line. “I’m asking for confirmation here! They didn’t remember! I didn’t either! Now are you with me or not?”

“No, Hawk, I’m not with you,” BJ says, annoyed and concerned in equal measure. “Slow down and use your words.” 

There’s a brief pause then Hawkeye snorts. “Yep, there’s that father-of-a-two-year-old tone. Not that she’s actually two, but the tone never really goes away. I got the proof standing right behind me— Dad, stop.”

A headache is brewing in his right temple and BJ sighs right into the phone. Hawkeye’s cheery cadence is familiar and faked and reminds BJ of dark gray walls and windows with bars. He’s clearly having an episode, some kind of setback in his recovery.

In quiet moments throughout the day when he has nothing but the war to occupy his mind, BJ regrets how he reacted to Hawkeye’s breakdown. Regrets not visiting him sooner, and how he allowed Hawkeye to needle him into an argument to avoid telling him that he was leaving. 

(“I just figured there was something we should say to each other.”

“So tell me when you see me. I’m not gonna be here forever, I can promise you that.” )

BJ shakes the phantom words from his mind. This feels just like stepping into that small dark room in the psychiatric hospital. “Hawk, let me talk to Daniel for a minute.” 

The next snort is bitter and derisive. “I know that tone too. You clearly don’t remember, and this lovely and condescending conversation isn’t cutting it, but don’t worry. You did it for me, I’ll do it for you. Hang tight, I’ll be heading your way.” 

BJ would have jumped at the offer ten minutes ago, but now he just feels a sense of dread. “I don’t think—“

”Hawkeye,” an older, harried-sounding voice cuts in from the background. “Hawkeye, hang up the phone and let’s just— No, you’re not— Hawk— Ben, please, I’m telling you to—“

BJ hears a muffled tussle over the line and then it goes dead, leaving him and Peg staring at the phone in bewilderment. 

BJ can’t sleep.

Hawkeye’s words are a persistent buzz in his ears. The anxiety in his voice echoes in BJ’s stomach, causing it to swoop and twist. 

He should have called him back. BJ should have more patience, should call him back and helped him work through it, should convince him that—

“You should pay him a visit.”

BJ turns over and looks at his wife, surprised. Peg watches him from her side of the bed, eyes glinting silver-y in the moonlight. 

“Like, fly over to Maine?”

“Yes,” she says simply. As if dropping all of his responsibilities and spending $150 on a ticket to Maine is a reasonable thing for a married father of one to do a mere six months after he returns home from war. 

“I just got home.”

“So did he. It sounds like he has…a lot to adjust to.” The way she says that last part is odd, hesitating. “It must be hard.” 

You turn away to stare at the ceiling instead. “Yeah, well, he went through a lot there at the end.” That greatly underserves what went down, but BJ can’t think of that trip to Inchon without feeling nauseous.

 He hears that baby’s cries in his dreams sometimes. 

“I’m not talking about him.” When you don’t respond to that, she says, “You don’t talk about it.” 

“What’s there to talk about?” 

“Everything, I suspect. I’ve tried to bring it up a few times, but you always seem to have somewhere else to be.” 

“Then how do you know there’s anything to talk about?” BJ keeps his tone intentionally light, not wanting to start a fight.

“Because you’re different than you were before,” she says in that gentle-blunt way of hers. “You’re calmer but quieter. You don’t like sweet things anymore. You’re not interested in any of the same hobbies you had before you left. You don’t speak the same way.” 

She rolls closer, lifts a hand, and gently traces the newfound lines around his eyes. Different. That’s certainly a way to put it. He feels older than he is, looks it too. He barely recognizes himself in the mirror.

“Your letters were strange.”

That throws him, and he turns his head to look over at her. “Strange how?” 

“I don’t know. They were…” She seems to cast around for the right word. “Shifting. Erratic. The way you wrote - I don’t know, the tone, or the words you used, or maybe the writing style - changed every other letter. I nearly wrote back a couple of times just to accuse you of having someone else write for you, but I knew you’d never do such a thing.” 

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” And he really doesn’t. He’ll have to go back and reread what he sent to get an idea of what she saw behind his words. He knows she has all of his letters stacked neatly in her jewelry box. 

They’re both quiet for a while, and just as he’s sure she’s fallen back asleep, she says, “Visit Hawkeye. I think it would be good for you to talk to someone who was stuck over there with you.” 

The word ‘stuck’ sits oddly in his mind. And as much as he doesn’t want to leave her and Erin so soon, he does care about Hawkeye and wants to do better by him. Maybe a trip to Crabapple Cove is exactly what they both need. 

And he’s tired. He thought he would have left this kind of bone-weary fatigue back in Korea, but it looks like it’s followed him home. 

“Okay.”

As if waiting for his agreement, the buzzing anxiety calms somewhat. 

The phone rings again the next day. 

BJ stares at it with trepidation. The house is empty, with Peg at a luncheon, and Erin with John and Barbara. There are no distractions, no reason for BJ to not pick up the phone. There’s no reason to feel like this at all. It’s just Hawkeye. Unwell, yes, but Hawkeye all the same. That should be enough. 

So why does he feel so uneasy?

He picks up the phone. “Hello?”

“Say that again, but without the crushing dread this time,” Hawkeye says, his voice easy and jovial. BJ has turned his face towards that tone without fail since the moment he stepped foot in Korea, and will continue to do so. 

“Hey, Hawk,” BJ sighs, leaning against the wall and absently fiddling with the phone’s coiled cord. 

“Hey, Beej. Listen, I’m—“

“It’s fine,” Bj interrupts. “Don’t worry about it.”

Now it’s Hawkeye’s turn to sigh. There’s a short pause, and BJ imagines their position mirrored; Hawk with his back against wood-paneled walls in a small but warm home in Maine. Leaned against either side, a simple wall between them rather than a country. BJ feels himself start to relax. 

“Let me try this again, sans dramatics and hovering fathers,” Hawk says. “I’d like to come visit you.” 

He tenses. ”I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he says carefully 

“Why?”

”You don’t seem…I just don’t think it’s a good idea.”

The joviality evaporates, just like that. “Is that how it is then? You don’t call, don’t write. You think you can shove all those years in Korea into a box and never open it again?” 

Years for him, maybe, but BJ was only there for fifteen months. Fifteen months of boredom and blood and misery. The memory of it is heavy and stiff. Like a corpse, long dead, being dragged behind him. Why would he want to bring that kind of rot into his home? Why is Hawkeye the one dragging it in?

He doesn’t know how to mesh those two lives together. Doesn’t know how he’s supposed to squeeze Korea and all of its blood into his modest two-story home.

“I meant to write, Hawk.” 

“Sure,” he scoffs. “They always do.”

Being compared to Macintyre never fails to set something simmering in his gut, and Hawkeye has always wielded that blade well. “We’re not doing this,” BJ grits. “Stay there and I'll write, okay?”

“I don’t need you to write to pacify me, BJ. I'm not calling to be impudent or impertinent or irreverent. I haven’t even started in on insolence yet. I'm trying to pull the wool from your eyes here, but you gotta let me in the doorway to do that.“

BJ pinches the bridge of his nose. He’d actually missed Hawkeye's word games, or at least he did when he’s also in on it. From the other side of the isle, they’re absolutely grating.

“Just say what you’re trying to say, Hawk. Tell me right here and now. What’s so important that you need to fly across the country to say it to my face?“

There’s clear hesitation over the line, then, “I can’t.”

“Why?”

“Because you’ll think I’m crazier than you already do,” Hawk says, and the bluntness of it makes BJ cringe.

”I don’t—“

“Save it, Beej.” He sighs again and now BJ can clearly picture him running a hand over tired eyes. ”Sorry. I know I'm messing this up, but I don't know how you did what you did. And we’re out of it now and not exactly face-to-face, so I don’t know if it will even work.”

BJ keeps quiet, knowing that Hawk will talk himself to his point eventually 

”Okay, okay. No reinventing the wheel. Do you remember your first day in Korea?”

BJ has had too much Hawkeye Pierce exposure for the non-sequitur to throw him. “Kinda hard to forget.” 

“You came in at a rough time,” Hawk allows. “Henry died, Trap left, shelled on the way to camp, two hills lost and a whole lot of wounded streamlined directly to us. I don't think we ever gave you enough credit for how adaptable you were. You rolled with everything we threw at you. For a while, at least. 

“What’s your point?” BJ says. He straightens up from his lean against the wall and shifts on his feet, uncomfortable. 

“Lots of wounded,” Hawk continues, the words drawn out and considering, as if BJ is supposed to glean what he’s saying under the surface. ”Just kids, all of them.”

There’s something like a flash in his mind's eye, bright and scorching. Bright like the sun in Korea on a cloudless day. Bright like operating lights. BJ sees a sudden image of blood red against surgical white before it’s gone in an instant. He blinks away sunspots and pulls the phone away from his ear, scowling down at it.

He doesn’t appreciate rot being dragged into his home.

“The point, Hawkeye.” 

“Do you remember that one patient you had - a difficult case, intestines shredded to hell - a jigsaw puzzle, you described it.“

There were so many of those cases. BJ would have lost his mind from the beginning if he internalized them all. 

“His buddy was yelling at you from two tables down before Able could get him under anesthesia,” Hawkeye continues in a prompting tone. “Took you seven hours to piece him back together. What was his name? Jerry? Jones? Jeremiah?” A sharp, clicking sound over the line, as if Hawkeye literally snapped his fingers. “Oh! Captain Johnson.”

”He was a Private,” BJ corrects distractedly. That snap echoes down the line strangely, creating something like feedback for two seconds before silencing. There’s another flash, and BJ squints through the image of moonlight filtering through a foggy window.  His eyes trace a water droplet as it makes its slow crawl down the pane. 

“Was he?” Hawkeye asks casually. 

“Yeah, and he wasn’t in the O.R. It was in battalion aid. 

“You were never sent to the front.” 

There’s something in his tone. Like a trap snapping closed

“Yes, I was, Hawk. We all were sent at least once over the years.” 

”Not you. I was only sent once, and I definitely would have remembered you being there with me.”

BJ’s feet move and he paces in front of the phone. This conversation is getting old very quickly. “Fine, whatever. Johnson. What about him?” 

“How did he die?”

BJ's jaw twinges as he grinds his teeth. “His body was assaulted by ammunition, just like everyone else over there. What are you getting at? What’re you doing?” His tone is waspish and he’s so, so sick of this.

He can’t keep fighting with Hawkeye. They’re meant to be better than this.

“He was wounded with his squadron, then?” 

“What? No.” BJ pinches the bridge of his nose. “He was on a hill. Can’t remember the number.”

He can see it clearly. Johnson's skinny form  standing alone in shadows. Disappearing into the distance as he hoists his rifle up into the air. 

“By himself?”

“Yes.” 

“Odd, don’t you think?”

And despite BJ’s general annoyance and unease with this conversation, it is odd. What was a soldier doing out in the field alone? It doesn’t make sense, but he had definitely arrived to the O.R alone. The 4077 rarely got shipments of one; the army likes to claim it created the buddy system. But why wasn’t the other soldier, his friend, with him?

“Yeah,” BJ says slowly. “Maybe his squad was sent to another MASH. Or maybe they were DOA. I don’t know - maybe anything.”

“Maybe,” Hawk says agreeably. 

BJ remembers a dark forest and heavy humidity. 

“He died in the woods.” He doesn’t know how he would know that, but it springs forth, fully formed and demanding to be said.

“You said he died in battalion aid,” Hawkeye corrects softly. 

“No.” BJ shakes his head. He feels the latex gloves on his hands. Cold inside with sweat and warm outside with fresh blood that pours and pours from a body riddled with bullets.

He shakes the image away. There’s a headache pulsing behind his left eye, and the urge to hang up knocks against his temples, but he stays his hand. He doesn’t know what Hawkeye is getting at, and he doesn’t know if Daniel is conveniently nearby to run damage control if BJ hangs up and spends another six months ignoring his calls. “He died in operation. His friend was making a ruckus two tables down, remember?”

The next flash is blinding and BJ’s dining room is swept away. Battalion aid was hot and stinking and poorly lit. The bullet-ridden man lays before him, eyes closed and gasping as he bleeds out on a gurney. His circulatory system slows to a crawl and his organs cascade into failure. His squad-mate should have been back with a unit of blood by now.

BJ buries his hands in the man's abdomen and fails to pull out a miracle. 

Hawkeye’s voice echoes down a long, dark tunnel. “But he also died in the woods.” 

The world around them shifts in a silver flash. The dim of battalion aid is replaced with the crisp, stark lights of the O.R. BJ weaves together a puzzle with pieces missing. Then it shifts again and they’re in the narrow aisle of a bus, the new darkness hiding the blood even as it illuminates the pale, round face under him. Then they’re back in the O.R, a different table. Then they’re in triage. The hallways of Post-Op. The ambulance. 

Over and over. A different place, a different time, but the body under his hands remains the same. The world shifts faster, scenes flipping rapidly over and around themselves until it’s all a sickening blur. Johnson's wounds open and close with every shift, the new blood cast in a ghoulish light as the thread flashes again and again.

Every stich undone. Every life saved reset.

Everything is res—-

BJ's careful stitchwork disappears and his hands hover uselessly over Johnson’s chest. Heart pounding, his gaze drifts to the man’s face. The soldier's eyes are open and staring straight at him, the dark brown pupils filmed over in death even as his body continues to gasp.

He gazes at BJ steadily with no expression on his gray face. 

“Yes,” BJ says faintly, to Hawkeye and Johnson both. That blank gaze holds him in place as the thread stretches and lengthens and grows more tangled with every shift.

There’s no recrimination in Johnson’s hazy eyes. He just lays there, waiting.

“Yes,” he repeats. “He did.”

Johnson was under his scalpel in the O.R., and under his bare hands in battalion aid, and left behind in a hail of gunfire in Inchon.

BJ's heart climbs into his throat. There’s something looming in the back of his mind. An open door. A precipice.

His headache spikes. “And in battalion aid.”

The thread flashes a final time, brighter than any before, and the world around them disappears, leaving BJ and Johnson behind in a dark void.

Johnson stares at him evenly, and neither of them look away. 

Hawkeye’s voice is right in his ear and painfully soft as he says, “There are no forests in Uijeongbu. You’d have to head South to Inchon to find those.”

The gray chest under his palms stills. 

“Yeah, that’s where we were.”

“The beach trip. The bus. Where Johnson died. Where..." Hawkeye's breath stutters over the line. "Where Dong-Hyun died.” 

The precipice. The looming edge. 

Johnson’s eyes slip closed. 

“Yeah,” you breathe. “Oh my god.” 

You book the flight and leave out that afternoon. 

“My friends, for your amusement and bemusement, I give you the human person.”

You slip and stumble up a damp, but well-cared for, wooden porch, nearly braining yourself on the banister in the process. 

“Thumbs and fingers flexing madly, struggling to keep aloft the realities of life.” 

Anxiety is buzzing up and down your spine, pooling heavily in your gut, and oh, the feeling is familiar, familiar, familiar. 

You have no explanation for it. You haven’t stepped over the precipice yet. You can’t do it alone. You and him have always been a team.

But a door has opened in your mind, yawning and waiting for you to take the step through. Waiting for you to step into something so much bigger than yourself-- and somehow that feeling is familiar too. 

“Ignorance, death, and madness.”

The front door swings open before you have a chance to knock, and the wide blue eyes peering back at you seem even brighter than you remember them being the swimming heat of Korea.

“Thus, we create for ourselves the illusion that we have power.”

The unbearable buzzing in your chest calms immediately.

“That we are in control.”

“Beej.”

“Hawk.”

“That we are loved.”

And eight years, three months, and twenty-eight days comes rushing back.