(no subject)

[ebcahavoc.livejournal.com]

this is a mulcahy fic i wrote over the summer, it's post war, so it has spoilers for Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen, i own nothing. hope you enjoy!


It has taken a long time for the man named Francis (who has never had children) to get used to not being called “Father.” He is accustomed to the silence by now, but at first, as the world’s volume was fading slowly, the quiet would press against him, choking him and making him question his purpose, his life, and his faith. It was then that he would ask a god perhaps as deaf as he questions he could not even hear himself ask.

After the war he had nobody to whom to return. He avoided the other clergy at his church, moving away almost before they knew he had returned. Instead, he moved back in with his mother, letting her coddle him. She let him become a son again, since he can no longer be a father.

She took care of him – he, the man who, though always shy and reserved, had always cared for others above himself. Looking at this quiet man who shook when he thought nobody was looking, his mother realized that she had lost the boy who, three years ago, idyllically went off to serve God and his country. He had been replaced with a man who smiled only to put others at ease and who wore a cross out of habit, rather than love.

It was she who arranged for him to take sign language classes, ironically held at the local church. She did not attend them herself, hoping that to give Francis space would give him the ability to heal, to allow him to come out from the shell he’d been hiding in since his return from Korea.

Francis. It’s funny how his birth name seems so inappropriate to him, the name with which he grew up. But he introduces himself at the classes as Francis, and he tucks his cross into his shirt. He says (slowly, sign is a new language, and although he has always taken naturally to language, he has only just begun with sign.) only that he is recently returned from a post in Korea. That’s all he’ll say, not what he did. Once somebody asked him how many men he’d killed. Francis had not known the word for “kill” and when it was explained he could do nothing but stare, naïve blue eyes wide behind his glasses.

He has become strangely infatuated with the sign-language teacher. His name is Andrew, and he is thirty-one years old. His sister is deaf, and he has known sign all his life. Francis had never had much interest in people, sexually, and as such he did not recognize his feelings for Andrew. An unused musical instrument becomes rusty without use, and Francis’s old penchant for romance is the same way.

Francis had always known that he had preferred men over women, but even when he was younger he had preferred God over both. He had not entered seminary to escape those feelings, like so many of the other priests-in-training had, but rather to further explore his love affair with God. Except now he cannot help but feel that God has betrayed him, and although he denies and hides this feeling it creeps up at him and preys on him when he is alone, or when he is lying awake at night. Nights are the worst for him; when he is trying to sleep, his memories from Korea return. He is grateful, realistically. He knows how lucky he was to be stationed with people who became a family to him. But at the same time he feels left out – unlike Hawkeye and BJ, he cannot call them on the phone, reminisce and feel like he belongs.

But around Andrew he fits in. And on a whim one night, several months after his first class, Francis asks him if he wants to have a drink. Ever since the war, though he doesn’t drink excessively, he views it as a sort of escape. He relishes in anything sweet or flavored, with flowers and cherry garnishes…such a welcome change from the turpentine of the Swamp and Korea. He is alarmed when Andrew accepts. Relishing in a strawberry daiquiri (Andrew asks for a martini dryer than a desert - Francis thinks of Hawkeye.), Francis and Andrew make conversation. Andrew asks Francis about his time at the war, and he answers that he was stationed at a MASH unit. Francis tells this man who has never fought for his country about last rites and losing his hearing, and what that meant for him. Tells him that he used to be a priest; he pulls the crucifix out of his shirt as proof.

Andrew smiles. A priest, eh? he signs. Francis nods. But…lately I feel that I can never go back to that life. The war changed me. And I think I have to grow, and accept the fact that I am not who I was when I left. Francis’s hands flutter like birds, and there is a lyrical quality to his movement, though he remains silent. His lips no longer move when he signs.

Andrew kisses him. And Mulcahy, no longer a priest, kisses him back, one hand on Andrew’s face, the other, curled around his cross.


feedback appreciated! :)