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mash_slashA story I wrote for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
hawkeyesmartini's hashbash challenge. For those who weren't involved or haven't read it, here's one of my entries. Enjoy.
Title: Glare.
Author:mijmeraar
Rating: 13+
Word count: 1,023 words.
Challenge #: 6
Challenge title: Album Title (A Momentary Lapse of Reason)
Disclaimers: MASH is not mine. This story is fiction.
Pairing: Some B-eye
A/N: Much thanks tosarcasticsra for the beta.
There were split seconds; scattered snapshots; bittersweets. A hole in time, swallowing the war, and leaving beauty in its wake. They were exigent; like smiling after death, laughing despite the pain and making a wish in the face of hopelessness.
*
He wears high heels, a backless red evening dress and a gaudy string of pearls. There’s an M1 Garand clasped firmly in his hands and his knees clack together in the cold. Strangers draw near – halt, who goes there – and just because he looks the part, doesn’t mean he’s sitting pretty. There are snipers, (he heard through Spearchucker who heard through a passing Major) and nobody wants the night shift anymore because what you can’t see can hurt you. There are infiltrators, spies and other riff-raff and he’s a Klinger. They solve their disputes through free hotdogs with extra mustard.
Not life or death.
And Max isn’t a weakling, he can fight his own battles. But that’s the crunch, right there. This isn’t his fight to win; it isn’t even a fight, really, just a power play. Toddlers with their toy soldiers and rusted jets; they fall like dominos, without a sound. Only, Max isn’t behind a monitor, barking orders down a telephone wire to a boy who’s smeared in mud and his best friend’s blood. Max carries the stretcher that supports the best friend and hears him scream helplessly into the night. He’s following orders, tracing steps and there’s little that he can control anymore. Death looks over his shoulder, takes prisoners.
So he is crazy, and that is all he really knows. That’s all he really has any say in. He’s crazy and he’ll play their games. He’ll eat a jeep, lie through his teeth, dress like a woman and try Houdini style escapes that never succeed.
For Max, it’s Potter signing a three day discharge. It’s packing his things, saying farewell to Igor and Hawkeye and even Houlihan if she’s in an agreeable mood. It’s boarding the jeep, sitting back and looking to the road ahead. He’s holding on to the world that gave him up, because without that there’s never peace.
Three days, no wounded and no dress ups.
*
Sherman likes the uniform, the medals and the ‘Colonel’ next to his name. He enjoys swilling whiskey with big wheels and reminiscing on the good old days. There’s empowerment in the people you know, rather than the knowledge you hold and sometimes, that’s all anybody should need.
Sherman won’t listen to the impostors; he can see the man who clawed his way up, who earned the bird – and knows the man who stood on anything that moved in his way. He won’t listen to them blather in regards to conquered hills and successful death rates; he doesn’t pretend to believe in this war – police action – for acceptance.
His hands are stained enough.
The trouble with this war – with the war itself aside – is that it won’t be the last. The Great War was supposed to end them all, and so was the next, and Sherman prays each night that he didn’t know. War is eternal and time doesn’t stop for the fallen boys, it doesn’t allow for life. It moves on, when the world lingers, and pulls their souls along. Sherman thinks he’s old and knows it’s true; Sherman thinks he was old at twenty when they put a gun in his hand and aimed him towards the nearest German.
For Sherman it is the time that’s gone, and not the time ahead. For Sherman it is being ten, twelve and sixteen; when war was nothing but a word written in history text books.
Sherman kisses Mildred’s photograph, paints the glittery deception and sings along to dusty old records. He closes his eyes, passing through the memories of youth. He mounts Sophie, kicks her gently and races through the camp. Somewhere in the distance, past the hills, the flying artillery, he can hear his mother call him.
He remembers being reckless once. He remembers hope.
*
It had all the markings of dispute. Silent farewells, unwanted replacements and good old genuine denial. Except there they were, Benjamin Pierce and B.J Hunnicut; shaking hands, telling jokes and breaking all the rules. Before a breath was taken they were sewing up the wounded, saying goodbye to the dead and making Frank Burns’ life all that worse.
What better place for two devils than blistering hell?
Hawkeye threw words, B.J stood silent and the culpable went walking. They lounged in front of the swamp in bathrobes and geisha nightgowns, chugged lighter fluid and muttered quietly about their patients in post-Op. They stood back to back during surgery, sat shoulder to shoulder when they were done, and lay chest to chest at night because lonely cots chilled them to their bones.
They fought, because neither were right; they spoke phoney words because they didn’t know the truth. All they knew were dead bodies, severed organs and soulless eyes. Nothing was predictable, imaginable or paltry. Nothing was tangible anymore; they felt the droning call of surgery, days and night and all the minutes, seconds, moments in between. They forgot the wealth of existence, because war reminded them how easy it could be taken away.
For Pierce and Hunnicut the men, not the surgeons, doctors, sons, fathers, the men; it was the validation they brought to one another. It was skin on skin, hot breath and clasped hands. It was being together as one, being in love, when outside hate controlled their every move. Mapping out the other with shaking hands, warm mouths and innocent eyes; it was beauty in spite of the ugly world.
It was living the impossible, because reality had failed them.
*
There were moments they take with them forever; stories over a photo album; a smile to warm the naïve. Fake laughter, conjured happiness, the disguise of survival.
The moments, the small pause on reason; they would soothe the bruises of battle but never mend the shattered souls of war.
Children make believe. The ignorant are satisfied.
These men are neither, and the nightmares will haunt their waking days.
hawkeyesmartini's hashbash challenge. For those who weren't involved or haven't read it, here's one of my entries. Enjoy.Title: Glare.
Author:
mijmeraarRating: 13+
Word count: 1,023 words.
Challenge #: 6
Challenge title: Album Title (A Momentary Lapse of Reason)
Disclaimers: MASH is not mine. This story is fiction.
Pairing: Some B-eye
A/N: Much thanks to
sarcasticsra for the beta.There were split seconds; scattered snapshots; bittersweets. A hole in time, swallowing the war, and leaving beauty in its wake. They were exigent; like smiling after death, laughing despite the pain and making a wish in the face of hopelessness.
*
He wears high heels, a backless red evening dress and a gaudy string of pearls. There’s an M1 Garand clasped firmly in his hands and his knees clack together in the cold. Strangers draw near – halt, who goes there – and just because he looks the part, doesn’t mean he’s sitting pretty. There are snipers, (he heard through Spearchucker who heard through a passing Major) and nobody wants the night shift anymore because what you can’t see can hurt you. There are infiltrators, spies and other riff-raff and he’s a Klinger. They solve their disputes through free hotdogs with extra mustard.
Not life or death.
And Max isn’t a weakling, he can fight his own battles. But that’s the crunch, right there. This isn’t his fight to win; it isn’t even a fight, really, just a power play. Toddlers with their toy soldiers and rusted jets; they fall like dominos, without a sound. Only, Max isn’t behind a monitor, barking orders down a telephone wire to a boy who’s smeared in mud and his best friend’s blood. Max carries the stretcher that supports the best friend and hears him scream helplessly into the night. He’s following orders, tracing steps and there’s little that he can control anymore. Death looks over his shoulder, takes prisoners.
So he is crazy, and that is all he really knows. That’s all he really has any say in. He’s crazy and he’ll play their games. He’ll eat a jeep, lie through his teeth, dress like a woman and try Houdini style escapes that never succeed.
For Max, it’s Potter signing a three day discharge. It’s packing his things, saying farewell to Igor and Hawkeye and even Houlihan if she’s in an agreeable mood. It’s boarding the jeep, sitting back and looking to the road ahead. He’s holding on to the world that gave him up, because without that there’s never peace.
Three days, no wounded and no dress ups.
*
Sherman likes the uniform, the medals and the ‘Colonel’ next to his name. He enjoys swilling whiskey with big wheels and reminiscing on the good old days. There’s empowerment in the people you know, rather than the knowledge you hold and sometimes, that’s all anybody should need.
Sherman won’t listen to the impostors; he can see the man who clawed his way up, who earned the bird – and knows the man who stood on anything that moved in his way. He won’t listen to them blather in regards to conquered hills and successful death rates; he doesn’t pretend to believe in this war – police action – for acceptance.
His hands are stained enough.
The trouble with this war – with the war itself aside – is that it won’t be the last. The Great War was supposed to end them all, and so was the next, and Sherman prays each night that he didn’t know. War is eternal and time doesn’t stop for the fallen boys, it doesn’t allow for life. It moves on, when the world lingers, and pulls their souls along. Sherman thinks he’s old and knows it’s true; Sherman thinks he was old at twenty when they put a gun in his hand and aimed him towards the nearest German.
For Sherman it is the time that’s gone, and not the time ahead. For Sherman it is being ten, twelve and sixteen; when war was nothing but a word written in history text books.
Sherman kisses Mildred’s photograph, paints the glittery deception and sings along to dusty old records. He closes his eyes, passing through the memories of youth. He mounts Sophie, kicks her gently and races through the camp. Somewhere in the distance, past the hills, the flying artillery, he can hear his mother call him.
He remembers being reckless once. He remembers hope.
*
It had all the markings of dispute. Silent farewells, unwanted replacements and good old genuine denial. Except there they were, Benjamin Pierce and B.J Hunnicut; shaking hands, telling jokes and breaking all the rules. Before a breath was taken they were sewing up the wounded, saying goodbye to the dead and making Frank Burns’ life all that worse.
What better place for two devils than blistering hell?
Hawkeye threw words, B.J stood silent and the culpable went walking. They lounged in front of the swamp in bathrobes and geisha nightgowns, chugged lighter fluid and muttered quietly about their patients in post-Op. They stood back to back during surgery, sat shoulder to shoulder when they were done, and lay chest to chest at night because lonely cots chilled them to their bones.
They fought, because neither were right; they spoke phoney words because they didn’t know the truth. All they knew were dead bodies, severed organs and soulless eyes. Nothing was predictable, imaginable or paltry. Nothing was tangible anymore; they felt the droning call of surgery, days and night and all the minutes, seconds, moments in between. They forgot the wealth of existence, because war reminded them how easy it could be taken away.
For Pierce and Hunnicut the men, not the surgeons, doctors, sons, fathers, the men; it was the validation they brought to one another. It was skin on skin, hot breath and clasped hands. It was being together as one, being in love, when outside hate controlled their every move. Mapping out the other with shaking hands, warm mouths and innocent eyes; it was beauty in spite of the ugly world.
It was living the impossible, because reality had failed them.
*
There were moments they take with them forever; stories over a photo album; a smile to warm the naïve. Fake laughter, conjured happiness, the disguise of survival.
The moments, the small pause on reason; they would soothe the bruises of battle but never mend the shattered souls of war.
Children make believe. The ignorant are satisfied.
These men are neither, and the nightmares will haunt their waking days.
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