mash_slash | A fic and a tiny complaint. (Reply)

Complaint first: The Hallmark Channel, once my favorite place to watch M*A*S*H, since they show eps IN ORDER showed a season 11 in the middle of season 10, and skipped two season 10s altogether. Now all I know is that Klinger is a sergeant and I don't know how he got that way.

And now the fic: Mostly a Hawkeye character piece, with a tiny bit of slash and a tiny bit of Hawkeye/Margaret.

If not for Korea, everything important in Hawkeye Pierce’s life wouldn’t be the way it was.

If not for Korea, Hawkeye would be much the same man he had been. Scratch that--he hadn’t been a man. He’d barely been out of med school, barely started on his life. And while the numbers said he’d been an adult for a decade, his experiences said he’d been the next step up from a college kid. He would have grown up more, matured probably. Instead, he was forced to become immature and insane to keep his sanity, forced into seeing too much too soon and becoming older than anyone had a right to be.

If not for Korea, Hawkeye’s nightmares would be much the same they had been--public nudity and death of another parent being the extremes. Now they were filled with blood and guts and destruction and death. So much death. Childhood friends and new friends and nameless young men and teenagers who were too young to be there and--and children.
If not for Korea, Hawkeye wouldn’t have the friends he had now. He’d send Christmas cards to Tommy Gillis and have what he thought were best friends from Crabapple Cove and Boston both. Instead he sent Christmas cards to Trapper John McIntyre, the sort you send to people who were once friends but now are mostly memories. He had what he knew were best friends, from California and Iowa and Missouri and New York and Massachusetts and Ohio--all over the place. These people were true friends, and even though some were thousands of miles away, Hawkeye still knew what was going on in their lives through regular letters and random phone calls. The friends from before just didn’t understand.

If not for Korea, Hawkeye wouldn’t have fallen in love with the people he had. After Carlye in med school, it had been a long string of meaninglessness. He’d fallen in love in Korea--with a Korean woman, with Margaret just a little. With others, but especially one other, who couldn’t love him back anymore. Hawkeye sometimes dreamed about a meeting between them, but that was more painful than the nightmares.

If not for Korea.