Work Text:
July 31, 1953
Dear Dad,
It happened. It finally happened. The never ending war has finally ended.
It still slightly doesn’t feel real that it’s happened. I feel like the generals will do a 360 and announce that this ceasefire isn’t real and everything will start up again. The war and my life in the Army will continue on.
It finally set in on me that the war is over when we had our celebration party yesterday. Everyone declared their ambitions when they came home, and it was strangely beautiful. The Colonel’s plans to retire in Missouri. Klinger announcing his indefinite stay in Korea (Yeah, I can see the shock on your face, I’ll explain when I finally come home.). Everyone had a glint in their eyes while talking about their plans, most good, but some sad. One of the nurses said that she wanted to be a pediatric nurse because she saw too much death here. That felt like a ton of bricks falling on me.
I declared to everyone that I would go back to Crabapple Cove to work with you, taking care of our ordinary townsfolk. Excitement started to bubble inside me when I realized I no longer have to endure countless hours of meatball surgery.
Talking about my joy about coming home isn’t the main reason why I’m writing a letter right when I’m about to leave Korea. This isn’t something I can just say in a lousy telegram (though for your sake, I probably should.)
It’s not why I’m paying Klinger 20 bucks for some soldier from Boston who will apparently ship this letter out to you before I come home in about a week. I don’t know if I believe him, but Klinger has pulled off some miraculous shit, so I’ll choose to believe him one last time. If it fails, then I guess you’ll get this letter a week or so after I come home.
This letter is to tell you that I’m bringing a special someone back home. Yes, that someone. I can already see your smile.
It doesn’t feel real to me that Margaret is coming home with me. Sometimes, it feels like yesterday when she would quarrel with me for whatever joke or prank I was up to that day.
Oh, how the times have changed.
A few days after I came back from Seoul, she broached the subject of us in the future. She, alongside the Colonel and Charles, genuinely believed that the peace talks were finally going to be successful (I called bullshit, but look who’s right? She’s smarter than me anyways).
She told me she was considering leaving the Army, but her father had connections to lucrative positions in Brussels and Tokyo. It was then that I realized she could suddenly be gone from my life.
Hearing that made me sick. I couldn’t bear to hear it. The person I’ve fallen so deeply in love with. My Margaret. Gone.
I must have looked haunted or something because she asked what was the matter and I, like the dumbass I am, shut myself off while I spiraled for a bit, thinking about the prospects of her being gone from my life. I said I was tired and went back to the Swamp to ‘sleep’. While everyone else was asleep, I laid awake for an hour thinking how empty my life would be without her. She’s been there through the worst of myself and I want her to see me at my best, at home, in Maine. I want her to have the diner food at Meyer’s Diner, walk on the ocean with the salt tinged air around us (she adores the ocean, her favorite place she lived in as a kid was California), and to meet you. To finally settle down and have life calm down for once. To have her continue to make me laugh over the dumbest shit. I wouldn’t want to have my life without her, I couldn’t bear it. No one has made me feel like this.
Mostly from exhaustion, I fell asleep and had a way too realistic nightmare of our relationship slowly fading away as she took positions in Paris, London, and then Tokyo. The final nail in the coffin to us.
I woke up and stopped being a scaredy cat. I walked to her tent and told her to come home with me, giving a passionate speech to try to convince her to say yes (basically repeating what I’ve written in the past paragraphs). I had no idea if she would even want to go to Maine.
She put a hand on my cheek and said “I already wanted to go home with you. You just ran away before I could ask you.”
If I had a ring on me then, I would have proposed in that dim tent. It’s not like I haven’t thought about proposing to her hundreds of times.
Oh, by the way. Do you still have Mom’s ring? If not, I’ll just buy her a nice, big ring. Nothing compared to the piece of junk from her ex husband. A ring that’ll make the townsfolk pass out.
Anyways, I’ll stop rambling.
It still feels a little surreal that she’s coming back home. She makes me feel things I’ve never felt for anyone ever. People around me have joked that I look lovesick around her. I’m so beyond excited for you to meet her and I hope you love her as much as I love her.
At least these three years allowed me to gain something so incredible, something I thought I could never have. Again, you’ll absolutely love her. She’s a little nervous to meet you, even when I insist that you’re great. So, make sure you’re treating her with the utmost kindness. But, I know you will. She’s also excited to see Crabapple for the first time, she’s never been to Maine before.
Well, I hope you get this letter before we come home. If not, then surprise! I hope you enjoy reading my last letter from Korea, practically a love letter to Margaret. A sound finale, in my opinion.
I cannot wait to see you. To finally see your face physically instead of through a framed photo in my trunk. To see the house again and everything in the town. To have real seafood (My mouth is watering thinking about lobster) and to be back in the summer! Has much changed in the town?
I’ll telegram you any itinerary for us coming home, but maybe the Army has done so already. But, I don’t really trust them anymore.
I love you dad. I can’t believe I survived this. The light at the end of the tunnel is shining on me.
Your Son,
Hawkeye
Ps: If you don’t get this letter before we come back home, then surprise! Margaret’s coming home with me! If not though, can you buy this chamomile tea at the store for her? Ever since we got news of the ceasefire, she’s talked constantly about this specific tea she had stateside, and I told her I’ll tell you to buy it for her.
—--------------
August 3, 1953
Crabapple Cove, Maine
Daniel was reading a book he just bought at the local bookstore when someone rang the doorbell.
He looked at the grandfather clock that was a heirloom from his father. It said 8:50pm.
“Who could be ringing at this hour?” he said to no one as he walked to the front door. He’d prefer to not be disturbed by a sick person right now. The book was finally starting to get good!
He opened the door and was greeted by a tired looking teenager in a Western Union uniform.
“Dr. Pierce? I have a telegram for you from South Korea?” he said as he looked down at the piece of paper in his hands.
“Yes, that should be for me, thank you.”
He took the telegram, closed the door and went back to his armchair.
In his three years there, Hawkeye had never sent a telegram, calling them expensive and “never having such important information to send so rapidly that the army can’t just mail to his house.” Daniel had presumed the telegram had something to do with his coming home plans.
He wondered if another person would come back alongside him.
He kept every letter Hawkeye sent him. First, in a shoebox. Then, as the war progressed with no end in sight, he bought a wooden box from a woodsmith to store the letters, the photos (the ones he didn’t frame and showed to his friends), and the other things he would send.
She came up in the first letter he sent back home, describing her as a “screechy hard-line officer who was probably hooking up with the only other screechy officer.” She would come up occasionally after that, typically calling her out on her rigidness and her annoying demeanor. Eventually, the mentions become less critical. He would compliment her work in a difficult operation. Her work ethic when they went to the front together and how his opinion of her changed when she operated on a wounded man while shells went off besides them.
And then, every letter he sent back mentioned her.
The only photo he saw of her was of one of him and his fellow officers during the red party. While everyone was smiling at the camera drinks in their hands, their arms were around each other (“We look so lovey dovey in the photo. Don’t tell her I said that, she would probably be a little enraged.”).
In his letter back, Daniel wrote, “I know why you write about her so much and like her so much.”
Hawkeye ignored that sentence in his next letter, mentioning her falling asleep on his shoulder during movie night. Daniel could have sworn he could read the words adorable and cute erased on the paper.
Finally, he got a long letter, that after years of his silly one liners, he wore her down after an outing to the local bar (“We just became closer, more entangled as the war has continued on. And then, we just didn’t fight it anymore. Or at least, she didn’t. She’s taken my heart and ran with it for months, probably years if I confronted my feelings.”)
He knew that the relationship seemed to be going well. When he briefly called him from Korea, he asked her and the tone of his voice changed. He even said that I love you to her when he came back from the front lines. His letters were less gloomier and tried to focus on the little things that made life more tolerable. The flowers that bloomed nearby. The new music in the jukebox. A companion.
But, it was a war, after all. Anything can happen from the end of them.
He finally opened the telegram.
-
“Western Union Far East Telegram Services
4077 M*A*S*H, Uijeongbu, South Korea
August 2, 1953
13:00
Dad,
Finally coming home in five days. Will land at Portland on August 7. Around 9am.
Hope you got my final letter I sent a few days ago.
Lots of love, Ben”
-
The final letter? What letter?
—------------
August 6, 1953
He was at the local diner for some lunch and pie when Pat, the postman and one of his bridge friends, came up to him. Pat’s crossbody was filled with envelopes and small packages.
“Hey Daniel! Doing alright?”
“Doing great! My son is finally coming home tomorrow!” he exclaimed. He gestured at the empty seat in front of him and Pat sat down.
“He’s coming tomorrow? That’s awfully exciting,” Pat said. “Talking about him, I thought I saw his name scribbled on the return address on one of these envelopes.”
“You did? I just got a letter from him a week or so ago?” Daniel suggested.
“Well, you know the military and letters from overseas. It took Hawkeye nearly a month to find out about your operation,” Pat said and rolled his eyes.
He looked through his bag, pulled an envelope out and inspected the envelope.
“See, it’s for you. Its postmark is from…Boston? It’s usually from San Francisco? That’s odd” he questioned and gave Daniel the letter.
Daniel opened the envelope and before reading the letter, he realized something. This is probably the final letter Hawkeye mentioned in his telegram.
“You know, this is probably the last letter he ever sent me from Korea? He mentioned it in his telegram the other day,” he said and started to read. A large grin emerged from his face. How his son seemed to feel reminded him of how he was with his wife.
“What? What is it?” Pat asked. He completely forgot that he was sitting in front of him and got slightly startled.
“My son’s bringing someone home,” he said while waving the letter in front of his face.
“He’s bringing a Korean home?”
“No, No, one of his co-workers from the MASH. They’ve been together for quite a while now. I’ve told you about his girlfriend?”
Pat looked like he was trying to put two and two together.
“Oh! That lady!” he said in recognition. “Isn’t her name like Houlihan or something?”
“Yes, Margaret! For the past few weeks I’ve had to wonder if she’s even coming or not, but this signals it.”
“Are you excited to meet her?”
“Oh yes. He writes about her constantly in every letter, this one especially. He’s worked with her ever since he got to Korea. She’s the one who put a stop to his bachelor paradise.”
“Oh yeah, now that I think about it, you have talked about her before,” he said. “Hopefully she’ll take to this town well.”
“I hope so too, Pat. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to buy some chamomile tea.”
————-
August 7, 1953
Portland Airport
He had a small welcome home sign designed by some of the schoolkids in his hands while paying attention to every person walking out in the arrivals section. The anticipation was killing him.
Every time he sees someone in a military outfit, he thinks it’s them, but is proven wrong when he sees them run towards someone else.
Finally, he sees the two of them, walking side by side with suitcases in their hands, looking into the crowd. It didn’t take long for his son to look at him, his face breaking out into a boyish grin. He ran towards him and crushed him into a hug. He couldn’t describe the feeling of his son in his arms, safe and sound.
“I can’t believe you’re finally home!” he exclaimed to him.
“I can’t believe it either! It doesn’t feel real!” he said and turned his head to look for someone, to see that she was already standing besides them. Hawkeye’s smile didn’t fade away and Daniel finally turned to see the person he already felt he knew through pages of letters. She had a shy smile on her face when Hawkeye gestured to her to get closer.
“Dad, this is Margaret. Margaret, meet my dad.”