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BJ hadn’t realized that packing up the Swamp would be so difficult.
He hates goodbyes and always has, but saying goodbye to a canvas tent on a patch of dirt should not make him this emotional.
It’s the only real goodbye he’s willing to say today (because he’d never actually say goodbye to Hawkeye, and it’s killing BJ to leave Hawk behind with so many things left unsaid, but how can everything between them be conveyed through a simple goodbye?)
The Swamp may be a canvas tent on a patch of dirt, somewhere in the middle of nowhere, but it’s also the closest thing he has to a home in Korea. He doesn’t want to leave it any more than he wants to leave Hawkeye (and the two are inextricably linked in his mind, where one cannot exist without the other).
But the Swamp, like Hawkeye, is staying, and BJ is going (whether he wants to leave Hawkeye or not). Leaving people is just another part of the war BJ hates, especially since all he ever seems to do is leave.
They have to bug out, and Hawkeye, being the wonderfully stubborn jackass doctor that he is, is staying.
Hawkeye has made his choice, and maybe he is right, but it doesn’t make this easier. And BJ has to actively restrain himself from running back to post op and doing something stupid, like demanding that Hawk let him stay, or bodily dragging Hawk with him, or grabbing onto him and never letting go.
BJ is fairly certain that even if he’s leaving, a part of him is going to be here as long as Hawkeye is, but he does have to leave, and he’s running out of time.
BJ tosses his own things into his footlocker haphazardly, reassuring himself that he can always sort them out later. Others (but not Hawkeye, BJ thinks) may not be so lucky.
So he packs his things, and tries not to remember the last time he had to pack (and the last time he left someone he loved behind). Frank packs his own things, arguing with BJ all the while about whether the still goes with them or not. BJ knows that the still is Hawk’s prized possession, his second-favourite roommate, and (though he’s never said as much) the one remnant of Trapper John McIntyre. Once Frank is gone, the still is smuggled out with Radar’s help, and BJ breathes a bit easier.
Radar goes, and leaves BJ standing in the middle of the Swamp, which is almost empty. The cots are gone, the still is no longer standing, and both BJ and Frank’s personal effects are long gone.
BJ has already left Hawk behind in what used to be post op without a real goodbye, left him with nothing more than the promise of what he’ll say to Hawk the next time they see each other (if there will be a next time). But Hawk’s things are still scattered around the Swamp, and he’s not leaving post op anytime soon.
Nobody asks BJ to do it, and it isn’t expected of him, but he knows Hawk would do the same for him.
He packs Hawk’s footlocker.
The two of them are as close as any two people can be without being married, and Hawkeye knows BJ better than anyone else on God’s green earth with the exception of Peggy, so why does opening Hawk’s footlocker feel like some gross betrayal of privacy?
He opens it anyway, only to find Hawk’s beloved Hawaiian shirt right on top, in a messy heap, and has to swallow hard against the lump in his throat.
It shouldn’t be this hard.
And BJ doesn’t have the time for this, doesn’t have time to linger nostalgically over everything he’s ever seen Hawk wear, doesn’t have time to fold up Hawk’s clothing perfectly before placing it in the locker. But if Hawkeye dies, someone will pack his things anyway, and BJ would rather it be him than some stranger who doesn’t know Hawk from Adam (though everyone in Korea must know Hawk, he’s fucking notorious).
He pulls out the Hawaiian shirt, intending to fold it, grinning to himself as he does, because the shirt is as much Hawkeye as the still is, just another piece of the puzzle that is Hawkeye Pierce. Impulsively, he buries his face in it, the way he’s nestled into Hawk’s shoulder a thousand times, and inhales Hawk’s scent.
He tries not to think about what will happen if he really has just seen Hawkeye for the last time. He’s already caught a glimpse of it, that time when Hawk was accidentally declared dead. It was a joke then, but it’s real now, and it isn’t funny anymore.
BJ can’t imagine turning to find Hawk and finding only an empty space.
He folds the Hawaiian shirt, and instead of putting it back in the locket, he tucks it into his jacket pocket instead. He needs a little bit of Hawkeye to hold on to, the way he holds onto his photo of Peg. And maybe if he carries pieces of them with him, he can somehow keep them safe.
BJ is so tired of leaving the people he loves behind.
He looks back down into the trunk and stops in his tracks, unable to do anything but stare.
One of his own grey sweatshirts, one he thought he’d lost (along with a fully-functioning liver and some of his sanity), is tucked into the trunk, folded neatly.
“Oh Hawk,” he mumbles, staring down at it. On any other day, he wouldn’t think too much of this discovery. His and Hawk’s clothes are so mixed up now, they’ve pretty much given up on determining who owns what, but having just seen Hawk for potentially the last time in this lifetime, BJ is on the edge of a breakdown. Where everything else in the trunk is messy, BJ’s shirt is neat.
Swiping at his eyes, he goes back to his folding. He tries not to think about Daniel Pierce’s reaction (if the worst should happen and Hawkeye dies) to receiving the trunk. Will he even notice the sweatshirt that clearly doesn’t belong?
He has never met Daniel Pierce, but between the stories and letters, BJ feels as though he already knows him. Is meeting Daniel just one more moment the war will take from him (the way it’s taken him away from home, the way it may take Hawk from him)?
All of Hawk’s possessions will go back to Maine, to Daniel, even if Hawk himself doesn’t. After all, Hawkeye doesn’t have a will, and despite the very real probability that he may die in the next few hours, writing one will likely be the very last thing on his mind, so BJ doesn’t think that Hawkeye will mind if BJ takes something of his.
If their roles were reversed after all, BJ wouldn’t mind. But then, if their roles were reversed, and Hawk asked BJ to leave, BJ would have a harder time refusing. Maybe it makes him a coward, and a bad doctor, but saying no to Hawkeye isn’t something he’s good at.
But their roles aren’t reversed.
Maybe it’s superstitious, but BJ thinks that if he carries Hawk’s shirt, Hawkeye has to come back to him (and because of that, he’ll live).
Going back to his packing, BJ folds up Hawk’s robe and places it in the trunk, along with his cowboy hat, before grabbing the rest of Hawk’s things off the shelf. He accidentally drops Hawkeye’s copy of The Last of the Mohicans, sending pieces of paper fluttering to the dirt.
They’re letters.
The first one BJ picks up is the one that Hawkeye was writing to his father this morning, the one he finished just before the war descended a level further into hell (this whole fucking war is Hell’s elevator).
As far as he can tell, the rest of them are all unfinished.
Most of them start with the same two words: Dear Beej.
There are easily a dozen unfinished letters, all addressed to him. As BJ flips through them, his chest aches as he thinks of all the things he and Hawkeye haven’t said, things that he took for granted there’d be time to say. And he thinks again of how reckless and brave Hawkeye is, writing down things the army would gladly punish him for, and doing it anyway.
I wish I’d gotten to you first, one says.
You’re the only good thing about this place.
It’s selfish, the way I need you here.
He doesn’t let himself read beyond the first sentence of any of them. They have walked a fragile tightrope between friends and lovers since that very first week, neither of them willing to upset the balance. While the letters are addressed to him, they aren’t for BJ’s eyes.
He finds one that starts Dear Trap, and quickly folds it back up, noting that it too is unfinished. He doesn’t read it, because everything that happened between Hawk and Trapper is between them, and BJ plays no part in their story. He tries to quell the sudden stab of jealousy, and wonders yet again who Trapper was to inspire such loyalty in Hawk, despite leaving without a goodbye.
The most damning one is the last one in the stack.
It isn’t addressed to Daniel, and it’s not addressed to Trapper or BJ. It’s a letter to Peg.
And this one is finished.
BJ has to read the greeting twice before it sinks in that this really is a letter from Hawkeye to Peggy. He’s never doubted that what he and Hawk feel for each other isn’t exactly platonic, but this is a war and the lines between friendship and romance are so easily blurred. Though they’ve never discussed it, not really, BJ knows (hopes, prays) that Hawkeye knows how he feels.
It’s a letter between the two people in the world BJ loves the most, and he can’t help but read it.
Dear Peg,
I never meant to fall in love with BJ. I swear I never meant to love him as much as I did, because until I met your husband, I wasn’t planning on anything more than surviving this crummy place (because that’s all you can do). But he showed up at Kimpo, and backed up my crazy schemes, which you’ve heard so much about, and ruined all my plans in the best possible way. I have to keep him safe, Peggy, because he loves you like crazy (trust me, I’m an expert on crazy) and he deserves to come home to you and Erin. And I love him, but having come to know you through your letters and through Beej endlessly talking about you, I feel as though I’ve known and loved all three of you for my whole life. He’s yours for keeps, Peg, but I hope you don’t mind me borrowing him for a little while.
Yours, Hawkeye Pierce.
BJ has to wipe his eyes again. Peg knows damn well how BJ feels about Hawkeye, and has written veiled blessings in response to the thousand half-truths he’s sent her, because he hasn’t loved anyone this much since her (and he doesn’t love her any less because he loves Hawkeye too).
It’s impossible for him to deny any longer that Hawkeye loves him. It’s always there, in the way Hawkeye looks at him when he thinks BJ doesn’t notice, in the way he so casually invades BJ’s personal space and always seems to crack his jokes just to make BJ laugh (and how he seems to shine when BJ does laugh), and it’s there every time the name Beej passes his lips. But it has always gone unspoken.
Because Hawkeye thinks that BJ isn’t his to keep, and they all know that whatever comes of this is temporary. One day he’ll go home to Peggy, but that’s the day he’ll have to leave Hawkeye.
All he wants is to keep them both.
I’ll tell you the next time I see you, he thinks again. I’ll tell you everything I thought we had time for. I’ll tell you that it doesn’t have to be a choice, because I choose you and Peggy. I’ll tell you that I love you.
He packs the rest of Hawk’s trunk, sliding the letters back where they belong, and locking the footlocker.
They’re bugging out, and leaving Hawkeye here, and BJ forgets that the army life he doesn’t want any more of always means inevitable goodbyes.
He had to say goodbye to his wife and daughter, and now he’s leaving the compound behind, leaving the Swamp, where he’s made a temporary home with Hawkeye.
And now, it’s an empty tent in a ghost town. It could be anywhere.
And he’s leaving the one person behind who made it somewhere.