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Maybe it never would’ve happened if he had never answered that payphone. Or never took the five day pass. Or never let Henry on that plane. Or ever let the draft take him to Korea to begin with.
But those things did happen. And now, Hawkeye stands fully clothed in the camp shower, trying to rinse every remaining memory away. If only it were that simple.
The payphone rings.
Hawkeye is walking by when it does, and its incessant ringing makes him pause. The fact that the phone is ringing is not necessarily unusual. The fact that this sidestreet in the middle of Tokyo is pretty much deserted, save for him, is. He’s been in Tokyo two days already, and hasn’t been alone for a second of either. Sometimes, in this city of millions, it felt like he couldn’t even breathe without sharing air with someone else.
Hawkeye looks around, waits to see if anyone comes out from one of the darkened alleyways or shuttered apartments to answer it. No one does. The phone eventually lapses into silence. He shrugs it off, another oddity in a city full of oddities, and begins to walk away. And then it rings. Again.
This time, there is an urge for him to answer. The odds that the call was for him was ridiculous. For someone to know what exact payphone Hawkeye was walking by, on what exact side street, at what exact time, in the hopes of getting him to answer a call he wasn’t even expecting, was beyond astronomical.
And yet. The phone rings.
Hawkeye glances left, then right. Still no one. He takes a reluctant step, then another, and another, across the street to the ringing payphone. Its likely on its last ring when he picks up the receiver. He’s not even sure if the call will still connect when he does.
Hawkeye brings the receiver to his ear. “...Hello?” he asks, because what else is there to say?
“Tell Lorraine the orders came through. I’ll be home in three days.”
At the familiar voice of Henry Blake, Hawkeye lets out a shocked gasp and drops the receiver.
Trembling, he stumbles backward from the payphone. Henry died two weeks ago. He was there when Radar broke the news to everyone in the OR. It couldn’t be Henry. It couldn’t be. There’s no way. That had to have been some cruel, terrible, mean trick. Who would do such a twisted thing?
As if to answer him, the phone begins to ring again, despite being off the hook. Impossible.
“Alright, Hawk, you’ve finally cracked,” he says to himself. It does little to grant him any self-assurance. “Maybe it's time to call it a day.”
He puts the phone back on the hook, not daring to put the receiver back against his ear, in case it wants to say anything else to him. And then he takes off at a flying pace for his hotel.
A few blocks away from the payphone, and Hawkeye is almost ready to forget the entire experience. There’s an izakaya around the corner from where he’s staying, and he ducks inside. A few bottles of sake in, and it's like the call never happened to begin with.
Hours later, as he stumbles into the hotel lobby, the front desk clerk sees him and waves. “Captain Pierce-san, yes? I have a message”
“Depends who’s asking,” Hawkeye slurs. “If it's Ferret Face, tell him he can stuff it.”
The clerk raises a confused brow, but remains composed. “With respect, I must insist you take this message, so I may complete my duties.”
Hawkeye waves a dismissive hand. “Fine, fine. Hand it over.”
The clerk gives him a folded piece of note paper. He debates waiting to get to his room to read it, but in truth, he is genuinely curious about who would message him during his leave. Maybe it was Trapper. He had promised to check in every day, and he hadn’t heard from him yet today. So standing there in the middle of the lobby, with only the clerk as his witness, he unfolds it.
Take suit to cleaners. The brown double-breasted. 34-waist. -Henry
Hawkeye crushes the note in his hand and throws it at the clerk. “Who made you write this?” he rages. His eyes are blurring with red hot tears. “Tell me! Was it Frank? Hot Lips? Don’t tell me it was fucking Flagg . Who the fuck made you write this note!”
The clerk’s face turned ashen, and he tugs nervously at his suit collar. “I wrote it exactly as it was said to me on the phone, sir. I apologize if the message caused you any distress.”
“Who. Sent. The. Message,” Hawkeye demands, leaning over the front desk. It takes all his self control not to grab the man by the neck.
“I’m sorry, Captain,” the clerk hurriedly says. “I wrote the name as I heard it on the phone. All it said was what I wrote down. That’s all I know.”
Hawkeye drops the crumpled note on the desk and storms away to his room without another word.
Hawkeye’s desk phone rings as soon as he enters his room. He closes his eyes. Takes a deep breath. Steels himself. Then makes the two strides across the tiny room to the phone, and picks it up.
“Haven’t I suffered enough!” he cries into it, before the voice on the other end even has the opportunity to speak.
“I wish we could all go home together,” the voice of Henry says. And then the line goes dead.
Hawkeye slams the receiver into its cradle. Then again for good measure. He sits at his desk, eyes blurred and burning from exhaustion and tears. Whoever was doing this was a sick, sick fuck. Pranks were one thing. Sure. But this? Who would do this to him? More importantly, who would do this to the memory of Henry?
He’s crying, scared and numb, staring into nothing, when the phone rings again some time later. In a fit of fear and rage, Hawkeye sends the phone flying across the room. It slams against the wall, unplugged and phone off the hook.
And yet. It still rings.
Hawkeye goes back to the front desk, and asks to be switched rooms immediately. The clerk, already intimidated by his behavior from earlier, is eager to comply. He even makes sure it's on an entirely different floor.
The room is identical to the last, down to the layout. Modest size, twin bed, writing desk, bed stand with telephone. Hawkeye hasn’t even put his bags down again when it rings. He freezes, blood cold, watching. Maybe it's the front desk, he tries to reason. Maybe he forgot something in his old room.
Against his better judgement, he reaches out, picks it up. Puts the cold plastic to his ear. Hears the voice of his dead commanding officer. Again.
“It’s cold down here, Hawkeye,” Henry says. His voice sounds distant, the call line filled with interference. “I can’t get out.”
Hawkeye can’t believe his ears. He must finally really, truly, be losing it. “Whoever you are,” he hisses back. “Whatever this is - you’re a sick, twisted fuck. Henry is dead. Don’t call me again.”
With more care than is deserved, he hangs up the phone. For good measure, he unplugs it from the wall. And because he can’t even look at it without a pit forming in his stomach, he shoves it into one of the drawers of the small dresser cabinet.
It still rings.
Hawkeye switches hotels. It is expensive, and a pain, but he doesn’t know what else to do. The phone in his new hotel rings with the dead voice of Henry too. He hides the phone in the dresser. The closet. Under the bed. Puts it in the toilet. Anything he can think of to make it stop. Nothing works.
So he gives up on a hotel stay altogether. Wanders the streets of Tokyo for the remainder of his leave. He sleeps on park benches, is run off by Japanese police who are honestly too tired and overrun by debaucherous G.I.s such as himself to do much more than that. The payphones he passes all ring. He refuses to stop and answer them. Instead, he goes into bar after bar, and drinks.
On his last morning of leave, he sits in an izakaya that caters to drunks and the damned. He wonders, idly, which category he falls into when the phone behind the bar begins to ring. The bartender, more surprised than he is by the sudden noise, picks it up. He listens a second, then hands the receiver to Hawkeye.
“For you.”
Hawkeye doesn’t want to comply. But he’s also tired of running away from the ghost of Henry. He takes the receiver.
“Yes, Henry.”
The voice is small, tinny, faded. But Henry alright. “Can you tell Lorraine I’ll be home the day after tomorrow?”
A lump forms in Hawkeye’s throat. He doesn’t know if it's from the terror, from guilt, from grief, or all the above. “Yes,” he rasps out. “I can.”
“Thank you, Hawkeye,” Henry says. A pause. Then. “I wish we could all go home together.”
“Yeah.” Hawkeye wipes his red-rimmed eyes. The tears aren’t stopping. “I wish we could too, Henry.”
“Send my love to Lorraine and the kids. Radar too.”
Hawkeye chokes a sob. “Of course.”
“Goodbye, Hawkeye.”
“I’ll be seeing ya, Henry.”
The line clicks. Hawkeye’s hand falls limp, the receiver dropping to the counter. Gently, the bartender reaches out, grabs the receiver, and hangs it back up. He pours something hot and places it down in front of Hawkeye.
“Was he a friend of yours?” the bartender asks.
Hawkeye nods, tries to force himself to get it together. He picks up the mug the bartender had handed to him. It's tea.
“Wind phone,” the bartender says. “Sometimes, our loved ones have one last message they need to say. My cousin’s wife kept calling him until he answered the phone. It took many weeks before he gathered the strength. After he listened to her message, she never called again. She died a month before she called, from the fire bombings.”
Dread curdles in Hawkeye’s gut. “Why?”
The bartender shrugs. “Only they know. But after they say what they need to say, they never call back.”
Hawkeye isn’t sure how he feels about that. On one hand, he wishes the phone never rang to begin with. On the other - he isn’t sure he’s ready to admit he’ll never hear the voice of Henry again.
He finishes his tea, thanks the bartender for the advice, leaves. Makes his way to the military airfield, to make the agonizing journey back to war. Among the crowds of Class As, he thinks he spies a tall man in a brown suit, with a cream colored fedora, standing near a payphone.
He holds a hand up, waves a silent goodbye. Then he grabs his duffel, and boards his plane.