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Chapter Text

A week had gone by since Colonel Sherman T. Potter rode up to the 4077th on a horse and a prayer and so far, no one had bitten him. Yet.
Not for lack of trying.

Frank Burns had turned him in to someone,he didn’t know who, but he had his suspicions, that it was the Vatican. Klinger’s already attempted to persuade him to sign off on a Section 8 after a bold (and sparkly) Joan of Arc number. And Margaret Houlihan was polite, precise, and tension so tight she could vibrate through a wall at any moment.
But Potter was no stranger to chaos. (He was only new at this sort of chaos)

Yet, even through the fog of operating tables and camp shenanigans, Potter figured he had most of them pegged.
Take BJ Hunnicutt, for example, bright, gentlemanly, a little obsessive about hygiene. Always washing his hands, as though a single germ could sue. Radar O’Reilly was half soothsayer and half puppy dog, and Father Mulcahy was half boxing coach and half man of the cloth, a man of peace who would absolutely body-slam you in checkers, if the Lord allowed.
But Hawkeye Pierce?

That had been a code, a manual only Potter had been unable to decipher. Pierce had the bedside manner of a saint and the bedside wisecracks of a bawling stand-up comic. He flew through surgery as though his hands had been kissed by Hippocrates but outside the O.R. he drank from the tap and put off any deep questions with a pun.
And yet … there was something beneath that flippant surface. Something haunted.

Potter had seen it before. Not often. But enough to recognize when pain put on a clown nose.

It had been a hell of a day. A total of 14 hours straight of meatball medicine at its worst. The sort that makes surgeons who have handled hundreds of corpses feel like butchers. Potter emerged from the OR, wiping the imaginary blood off his hands. He saw across the compound that Hawkeye was coming out of the opposite tent, shuffling as if his feet weighed a thousand pounds each.
Something made Potter follow him.

He didn’t call out. Simply walked behind, stealthily as a church mouse in sneakers.
Hawkeye got to the tent for changing and wrenched his bloody scrubs from his body with that cool detachment of the practiced hand who’s done it one too many times. His skin was pale. Leaner than it should’ve been. Not just thin — carved down. And there, on his left forearm, beyond where the hem of the sleeve of his usual shirt would cover...
Potter stopped dead.

The figures were faint but unmistakable.
A-12984.

The type of thing that had been seared onto you. The kind of thing no one should ever wear. Potter had known them once, when he was young enough to still believe life made sense. Poland. A camp called Dachau. Or maybe Buchenwald. The names all ran together like bad dreams. But the figures stuck with him. Tattooed onto skin like cattle. Stripped of identity. Of dignity.

And here they were. On Hawkeye Pierce.
Potter opened his mouth. Closed it. Hawkeye pulled his shirt sleeve down over the numbers before he had a chance to say anything, just as one might if one were pressing upon an old wound that had never truly healed. Then he strode out of the tent without looking back, cigarette already in-between his lips.
Potter stood frozen.

Potter slumped in his chair, staring at his whiskey glass.

Radar had delivered the mail, a pile of requisitions, and a new complaint from Frank about how BJ had substituted a pair of his socks with frozen liver. But Potter barely noticed any of it.
A-12984.

It didn’t add up.
Benjamin Franklin Pierce hailed from Crabapple Cove, Maine. Or that’s what every personnel file and Army record said. Protestant. American. Smart-mouthed, emotionally unavailable, perennially teetering on the edge of insubordination — yes, honestly.
But none of that jibed with the tattoo. None of that explained how the hell Hawkeye somehow now had a goddamn number seared into his flesh like one of the Holocaust survivors Zemo had spouted off about in your sophomore year.
Potter rubbed his temples.

“Colonel?” Radar said, shifting from one foot to the other.
“Yeah, son?”

“You okay? You look as though somebody just informed you that you’ve been reassigned to Tokyo with Frank Burns as your bunkmate.”
“I'm okay,” Potter lied with military crispness. “Just tired.”

Radar nodded, but Potter noticed the look he shot over his shoulder as he departed. The kid missed nothing.
Potter reclined and gazed at the ceiling.

He had questions blistering the insides of his throat. But with a man like Pierce, he knew not to ask too quickly. That kind of pain was not the poking type. It was like this: It came out in jokes, in booze, in the occasional spontaneous chicken dance. And if you asked too directly, he’d make it a game of emotional dodgeball.
He needed to wait. Watch.

He puffed on a cigar and grumbled to himself:
“Well, Pierce. Then who the hell are you anyway?

Hawkeye was sitting on the stairs outside the Swamp, staring at the stars like they laughed in his fucking face.

BJ returned with a martini glass and plopped down next to him. “Just another day, just another mess of arterial spray.

“Why didn’t we go into dentistry again?” Hawkeye asked, voice hoarse.
“Because you passed out when looking at me floss.”

They chuckled, but Hawkeye’s laugh did not quite make it to his eyes.
BJ studied him for a second. “You okay?”

“Dandy. Peachy. One dark-night-turf-grab away from a punch card for a free psyche eval.”
“That good, huh?”

Hawkeye didn’t answer.
BJ was holding the martini, half-warm. “Drink?”

Hawkeye took it. “You know what I miss?”
“Human decency?”

“Bagels.”
BJ raised an eyebrow. “Bagels?”

“With lox and cream cheese. Real ones. Not them rubbery circles they pass off in the mess tent. My bubbe used to make the best — ” He cut himself off.
BJ blinked. “Your what?”

Hawkeye glared at the martini glass as though it had cheated him. “Nothing.”
BJ didn’t push. But as he re-entered, he cast one last look over his shoulder.

Hawkeye remained sitting, his eyes yet in the stars. And beneath his rolled-up sleeve were the numbers, barely visible.

A-12984.

Chapter Text

If Colonel Sherman T. Potter thought he’d seen strange things during his tour in the Pacific, he was wrong. He was dead wrong. Because nothing — nothing — could compare to the moment he walked out of his office at 0700 hours and came face-to-face with Corporal Max Klinger dressed as Sigmund Freud.

And not a subtle Freud, either.

Klinger had gone all in. White wig. Wire-rimmed spectacles. A pipe that smelled suspiciously like cinnamon schnapps. And God help them all a cardboard cutout of a couch on wheels he was pushing around like a rolling confessional.

“Corporal,” Potter said slowly, “do I even want to know?”

Klinger adjusted his fake beard, which was only partially secured with chewing gum and despair. “Colonel, sir, I’m treating the subconscious trauma of being stuck in a meatball surgical unit surrounded by madmen, war, and the fashion crime that is Frank Burns.”

Potter blinked. “I assume this is another attempt at a Section 8?”

“You got it. I am now ‘professionally’ diagnosing my own sanity as hopelessly Freudian. I believe I’m suppressing my urge to run away screaming and replacing it with frequent costume changes. Also, my mother wanted me to be a podiatrist. That clearly messed me up.”

“You are messed up,” Frank said, walking by with the moral outrage of a weasel in a clergy robe. “And possibly a communist.”

Klinger grinned, leaning in conspiratorially to Potter. “I’m gonna try Jung tomorrow. Big fan of archetypes.”

“Good Lord,” Potter muttered and kept walking.

Over in the mess tent, Frank Burns had apparently discovered a new hobby: whispering.

And nothing good ever came from Frank Burns whispering.

“You know,” he said loudly as only Frank could while still pretending to whisper “Pierce isn’t really from Maine.”

Margaret Houlihan didn’t even look up from her powdered eggs. “Frank.”

“I heard he’s not even American.”

“Frank.”

“And I definitely saw him reading Kafka in the latrine.”

Margaret finally looked up. “Frank, Kafka’s from Prague. That doesn’t make someone a communist or a—”

“He wears a Star of David around his neck!”

“So do half the nurses,” Margaret snapped. “Because they’re Jewish. Like people. Human beings. You’ve heard of them?”

Frank narrowed his eyes. “He’s hiding something.”

Margaret sighed. “Yes. A flask and a loathing of you.”

But Frank was on a roll now, storming out of the tent with the kind of righteous indignation usually reserved for war crimes or someone forgetting to say "bless you" after a sneeze.

Potter found Hawkeye exactly where he suspected he would: behind the Swamp, sitting on an upside-down wash bucket, throwing rocks at a rusty tin can nailed to the fence post.

It was a quiet morning. The kind of silence that was so rare in Korea it felt like it might crack if you spoke too loud.

“Mind if I join you?” Potter asked.

Hawkeye didn’t look up. “If you’re planning on making small talk or asking me to lead a calisthenics class, I’d like to request immediate transfer to the front lines.”

Potter sat on an adjacent bucket. “No calisthenics. And God save us all from small talk.”

They sat in silence for a moment, watching the can wobble under the assault of flat pebbles and Hawkeye’s surgical-grade aim.

Then, casually, Potter said, “You ever been to Europe, Pierce?”

Hawkeye paused just for a breathbefore lobbing another rock. “Vacation or trauma?”

“World War II.”

Another pause. Longer this time. Hawkeye didn’t answer.

Potter studied him. “I saw the numbers.”

Hawkeye’s shoulders twitched, just once. Then he dropped the rock in his hand and clasped both arms over his knees.

“Didn’t think anyone would,” he muttered. “I usually keep them covered. Guess I was too tired.”

“You don’t owe me an explanation.”

“Good,” Hawkeye said, then winced. “Sorry. Reflex. I know you mean well. Everyone who says ‘you don’t owe me an explanation’ always looks at me like they expect one anyway.”

Potter let the silence stretch again.

Finally, Hawkeye exhaled. “I wasn’t supposed to survive.”

Potter didn’t speak.

“Wasn’t even supposed to be there,” Hawkeye continued, voice quiet. “My parents got us out of Germany before the camps really started… or they thought they did. We ended up in Hungary. That was a mistake.”

Potter watched the younger man’s face carefully. No jokes now. No sarcasm. No shield.

“I was ten when they took us. Auschwitz. My father died three days in. My mother... months later. I stopped counting. I was too small to work, too young to be useful. Somehow they kept me around anyway. I think — and this is the part that screws me up the most — I think one of the guards just liked my eyes.”

“Jesus,” Potter breathed.

Hawkeye laughed a sharp, broken sound. “No, no Jesus. Just Mengele. And a tattoo. They moved me around. Eventually I ended up in a Red Cross orphanage in Switzerland. Some American doctor took a liking to me. Got me out. Gave me a name. Papers. A future.”

Potter leaned forward. “Wait — Pierce?”

“I’m not a Pierce. Not really. He was. The doctor. He adopted me unofficially. Paid my way through medical school. Told me to be ‘as loud and as good and as ridiculous as I wanted’ said the world had too many shadows already. So I became loud. And good. And ridiculous.”

“And no one knows?”

“No one at camp. BJ suspects something. Radar asked once, but I pretended it was a pen smudge and offered him a pickle.”

Potter smiled faintly. “Why keep it secret?”

“Because as soon as you tell someone, you’re not you anymore. You’re the survivor. You’re the tragedy in the room. And then they start treating you like glass. Or worse… they treat you like a symbol.”

Potter was quiet a moment, then said, “Klinger’s dressed as Freud.”

That made Hawkeye snort. “Classic Max.”

“And Frank is spreading rumors you’re a secret Jew-Communist trying to undermine the U.S. Army.”

Hawkeye let out a long breath. “And that’s why I don’t talk.”

“You want me to squash it?”

“Nah,” Hawkeye said, tossing a final rock and hitting the can dead center. “Let Frank be Frank. He’s the only man I know who could walk through a field of sunflowers and come out smelling like sour milk.”

Potter chuckled. “Well, for what it’s worth, I’m glad you survived.”

Hawkeye didn’t look at him, but his voice softened. “Me too. Most days.”

Then, after a pause:

“You want a bagel? I’ve got a stash.”

Potter blinked. “Here? In Korea?”

“Smuggled them in via a nurse from Brooklyn. Don’t ask questions. Just say ‘thank you’ and pass the cream cheese.”

Chapter Text

It started with a boy.

They always started with a boy.

The first shell of the day landed just after breakfast, shaking the ground and sending toast flying from Radar’s plate. He caught it on instinct — like a man used to catching shrapnel with one hand and a clipboard with the other — but nobody laughed. It was going to be that kind of day.

By mid-morning, the operating tables were full. Blood ran down gowns, boots squelched through mud that had once been earth and dignity, and Hawkeye Pierce stood over a boy whose chest had been peeled open by metal and war and nothing that made any damn sense.

“Clamps,” he barked. “Suction. No, not there — BJ, give me your hand.”

BJ slid in like a man already halfway to grief, pressing fingers deep into the boy’s aorta while Hawkeye worked fast and frantic, hands moving faster than thought, faster than guilt. But it wasn’t fast enough.

They lost three by noon.

By two, they were down to one,a young corporal with dark curls matted to his forehead and Hebrew letters around his neck. His dog tags were bent from the explosion. His arm was gone.

His name was Eli Weissman, and he was seventeen.

Hebrew first name. Mezuzah around his neck. Mumble of Yiddish when they hit the morphine drip too fast.

Hawkeye heard it, the words.
“Ema... baruch dayan ha’emet...”
Mother... Blessed is the true Judge...
He didn’t say anything.
Didn’t blink, either.

Just pressed the stethoscope to Levi’s chest, listened to the jagged, fluttering rhythm of a kid whose heart was losing the war, and started barking orders.

Father Mulcahy sat beside Eli’s cot, gently patting a damp rag against the boy’s forehead. His smile was kind, if uncertain.

“I’d be happy to say a prayer with you,” the chaplain offered gently. “Or… if you’d prefer, I could just listen.”

Eli smiled weakly. “You a rabbi?”

“Oh — no. I’m a Catholic priest. But we’re… well, we’re all trying our best here.”

Eli laughed — a dry, cracked sound. “Do you even know the Shema?”

Father Mulcahy flushed. “Not in Hebrew, I’m afraid. But I do know the Psalms, and I believe they count for something in both our books

Eli looked up toward the tent ceiling. “I just wanted someone who understood

The flap opened, and Hawkeye stepped inside.
Father Mulcahy turned. “Ah — Dr. Pierce. Corporal Weissman was asking after you.”

Hawkeye walked to the bed. His face was tired. Pale. Surgical mask lines still marked his cheeks.
“Hey, kid.”

“Doc,” Eli rasped, and gave a little smile. “You Jewish?”

BJ, standing just inside, stiffened. So did Mulcahy. The air tightened.

“Doc, do you believe in God?”

Hawkeye had paused for a millisecond too long.
Then” Oh, me and God? We’re pen pals. I send questions, He sends jokes.”

Everyone chuckled. Except Levi. He just smiled.
“That’s good,” he whispered. “That’s really... that’s really good.”

“Ya” Hawkeye said, his voice light, sarcastic. “We’re close. Real close. I write Him angry letters every Tuesday. Sometimes I even get answers — usually in the form of food poisoning or bad weather.”
Eli chuckled. “But you know the stories, right? You remember Egypt. Moses. The Red Sea?”

Hawkeye nodded slowly. “Yeah. I remember.”

“Tell me one?”

There was a long pause. Then Hawkeye sat down beside him.

“You ever hear the one where Moses parts the Red Sea, leads his people out of bondage, only for God to leave them wandering in the desert for forty years because He forgot where He put the promised land?”
Eli smiled. “That’s not how my rabbi told it.”

“No,” Hawkeye said quietly. “I bet it’s not.”

They stayed that way for a while. Quiet. Soft sounds of incoming choppers in the distance, the muffled rattle of metal and boots.

Afterward, the camp was still.
Even the birds. or whatever weird mutant birds lived near a MASH unit, were quiet.

Hawkeye stepped out of post-op and lit a cigarette with shaking hands. He didn’t even smoke. Not really. But his fingers needed something to do that didn’t involve scalpels and failing to save boys who still got carded for beer.

Father Mulcahy had stayed there. Tried to help. He’d sat beside Levi earlier that morning, reading from Psalms and mispronouncing every other word in Hebrew.

"Leh-cha... leh-chah dodi," he'd said, squinting down at a prayer book he'd borrowed from the Red Cross chaplain’s trunk. “Welcome the Sabbath bride... that’s right, isn’t it?”

Levi had smiled at him kindly. “You’re doing fine, Father.”

Father Mulcahy tried. God bless him. But Yiddish was not his native tongue, nor was Jewish theology something he’d learned much about in seminary.
Still, he’d meant well. He always did.
That made what happened next so much worse.

….By sunset, Eli was gone….

The mess tent was too quiet.
When Hawkeye walked in, it was like someone had turned the color down on the world. He poured himself a cup of something pretending to be coffee, sat down hard on the nearest bench, and didn’t say a word.

Until he did.

“He was seventeen.”

BJ looked up. “Hawk—”

“Seventeen. You know what I was doing at seventeen? Making out with the rabbis daughter in a canoe.”

Margaret rolled her eyes. “Pierce—”

“He bled out on a cot,” Hawkeye snapped, his voice rising. “Alone. Far from home. In a war that doesn’t even have a reason. He was a kid with a broken arm and broken lungs and a necklace with a star. And he still believed.”

Father Mulcahy stood quietly, hands clasped.

Then Hawkeye — sleep-deprived, jittery, and running on a cocktail of rage and grief — opened his mouth again.

"Tell me something, Father,” he said, voice loud enough to cut the air like a bayonet, “where the hell was your God today?”

The tent went silent.

Father Mulcahy looked up slowly from his bowl of something approximating stew.

“Excuse me?”

“The boy believed, didn’t he?” Hawkeye went on, standing now. “Said his prayers. Wore his mezuzah. Probably fasted on Yom Kippur and kissed his mother goodbye before shipping out. And what did it get him? A bullet in the chest and a priest who couldn’t even say the Shema properly.”

Margaret looked horrified. Radar stared at the floor. BJ reached for his friend’s arm, and missed.

“Hawkeye—” Potter started.

“No, I want to know. Is that the plan? God just picks who lives and who dies based on what? Proximity? Coin toss? Bad luck?”

Frank slammed his tray down.

Hawkeye slammed his cup down. “And for what? Where was God, Father? Is He out on a smoke break? Or just too busy to show up for Eli Weissman, son of Miriam and Daniel, age seventeen, who asked me to tell him a damn bedtime story while he died?!”

The silence was scorching.

Then Frank Burns stood, sneering. “That’s enough.”

“No, Frank. It’s never enough, is it? Not until we’ve scraped every ounce of hope out of the world and called it patriotism.”

“Shut up!” Frank barked. “Have some respect. Father Mulcahy’s right there.”

Hawkeye didn’t move. Didn’t blink. He looked dangerous. Like a man dangling over the edge of a precipice and daringthe wind to push

“You’re disrespecting the Father,” Frank snapped.

“And what would you know about respect, Frank?” Hawkeye growled. “You couldn’t spell compassion with a dictionary and a tutor.

Frank stood. “I said shut up!”

And then Frank — who had never punched anyone without a three-to-one advantage — punched Hawkeye in the jaw.

It wasn’t a good punch. It was a Frank Burns punch overreaching, underpowered, full of self-righteous anger and precisely zero coordination.
But it landed.

Hawkeye staggered back. Looked around the room. Saw the stares. The judgment. The silence.

He left.

He didn’t say a word.

“Damn it,” BJ muttered.

“Let him go,” Frank said smugly.

“No,” Potter said, already rising from his seat. “I won’t.”

Potter found him behind the Swamp again.
Hawkeye was sitting on the ground this time, in the dirt, legs stretched out in front of him, hands limp on his thighs. Blood trickled from his lip where Frank had connected.
Potter didn’t ask permission. He just sat down beside him.

“You’re bleeding,” Potter said.

“Occupational hazard of being me,” Hawkeye muttered. “Don’t worry. I disinfected it with bourbon.”

Potter crossed his arms. “You want to explain that little display back there?”

Hawkeye barked a laugh. “Sure. Kid died. I cracked. Frank threw a haymaker and somewhere God laughed into His beard.”

Potter leaned back against the jeep. “Want to try again, but without the sarcasm?”

“Not really.”

A beat.

Then, softly “He was Jewish.”

Potter nodded. “I figured.”

Hawkeye muttered. “He looked at me — looked at me — like I could give him something. Something real. Some truth. And what did I do? I lied. Told him God and I were tight. That I still believed.”

Potter said nothing.

“I haven’t believed in years,” Hawkeye said, voice fraying at the edges. “Not since the camps. Not since I watched my father choke to death in a latrine trench while a man with an SS pin told me it was because we were chosen.”

Potter froze.

Hawkeye’s eyes glittered with something wet and dangerous. “You want honesty, Colonel? I’m Jewish. Was born Avraham Yosef Berkowitz in Berlin. I watched my family die for their faith. I listened to people pray as they were herded into gas chambers. I held a boy’s hand as he starved to death in a storage shed.”

Potter’s breath hitched.

“I don’t wear a Star of David because I threw mine away. I don’t say Kaddish because if I started, I wouldn’t stop. And I sure as hell don’t believe in a God who lets children die and calls it divine wisdom.”

For a long time, they said nothing.
Then Hawkeye said, “I’m Jewish. But I’m not… religious. I don’t pray. I don’t keep Shabbat. I don’t light candles or fast or say the words.”

“That your choice?”

“No,” Hawkeye said quietly. “It was His.”

Potter looked at him.

“I prayed,” Hawkeye whispered. “Every night. In a wooden barrack full of rats and piss and people who used to be people. I prayed to a God I thought was watching. I begged. For food. For warmth. For my father’s cough to stop. I asked Him to make it stop.”
He turned his face away. “And He didn’t. He never came.”

Potter’s heart twisted in his chest.

“Eli believed,” Hawkeye continued. “That stupid, kid believed. And he died just like the rest of us. Bleeding and scared. Like my mother. Like the old woman next to me who wouldn’t let go of her prayer book even when they dragged her out of line.”
He shook his head. “So no. I don’t talk to Him anymore. Not because I stopped believing in God. But because He stopped believing in us.”

Potter swallowed hard. The sun was setting behind the hills, turning the sky into a bleeding wound.

“I walked into a camp once,” he said finally.

Hawkeye looked at him.

“Then Potter ,voice low, said, “I walked into a camp once. Liberation detail. Just after V-E Day. Place called Bergen-Belsen. Smelled it two miles away. Hawkeye looked at him sharply. When we got there, the gates were open. The guards gone. What was left…” Potter paused. “I saw bodies piled like lumber. I saw survivors so thin they looked like walking bones. One man kissed my boot and thanked me for existing.”

He wiped at his face. “There was a boy in the corner,” Potter continued, “couldn’t have been more than twelve. Skin and bones. Still alive. Barely. He looked at me like I was made of starlight. Like I was Moses parting the Red Sea. And you know what I felt?”

Hawkeye shook his head.

“I felt ashamed. Because I was too damn late.” He huffed. I’d seen war. I thought I was ready. But nothing prepares you for that smell. That silence.”

Hawkeye looked down.

“Anger’s okay,” Potter said gently. “It’s not wrong to feel it. Hell, son, if you weren’t angry, I’d think something was broken.”

“I am broken,” Hawkeye said. “Just not in the ways anyone notices.”

They sat there for a long time.

No jokes. No clever lines. Just two men and the ghosts that hung between them.

Then Potter placed a hand on Hawkeye’s shoulder.
“You don’t have to believe in God, son. Hell, some days I don’t. But you can still believe in something.”

“Like what?” Hawkeye whispered.

Potter smiled, sad and kind. “Bagels. Laughter. The way you hold a scalpel. The way you fight for people you don’t even know.”

Hawkeye didn’t respond.

He just dropped the cigarette, crushed it under his boot, and whispered, “Thanks, Colonel.”

Potter nodded. “Anytime, son.”

They sat together in the dirt, the sky darkening around them.

“You want to come back to the mess tent?” Potter asked softly.

“No,” Hawkeye said. “Not yet.”

Potter stood. “All right. But I’ll sit with you a while longer. If you want.”

Hawkeye didn’t answer.

But he didn’t tell him to leave either.
They sat there in silence, as the wind blew softly through the camp and the stars began to flicker above them like old gods blinking awake.

Chapter Text

The war didn’t stop because one seventeen-year-old boy died. The war didn’t even hiccup. By the next morning, the choppers were back, the stretchers were lined up, and the 4077th was right back in the business of sewing teenagers together like worn-out quilts.

But grief is a stubborn houseguest. It doesn’t leave when the next bell rings.

Radar was sorting through Corporal Eli Weissman’s belongings. It was the part of his job he hated most: the paperwork, the careful packing, the last note home. His soft hands trembled as he folded the uniform, tugging gently at the sleeves as if the boy might suddenly need them pressed and ready for inspection.

At the bottom of the footlocker, beneath the bloodstained undershirt and a bent photograph, Radar found a folded piece of paper. He hesitated before opening it, like the paper itself might bite.
Inside was a drawing.

It wasn’t much pencil on thin Army-issue notepaper. But the lines were careful. Devoted. A menorah, tall and proud, with nine candles burning. Next to it, a boy’s handwriting in Hebrew that Radar couldn’t read.

He stared at it, throat tightening.

He didn’t know why, but he tucked the paper into his own pocket instead of Eli’s file.

BJ Hunnicutt had been holding his temper for sixteen hours, which was sixteen hours longer than Frank Burns deserved.

He found Frank near the supply tent, squawking at a nurse about the correct way to fold gauze.

“Frank,” BJ said evenly.

“What?” Frank sniffed, not looking up.

“About yesterday.”

Frank crossed his arms. “If you’re here to congratulate me, don’t bother. Somebody had to shut Pierce up. The man was blaspheming in front of a priest. Un-American, if you ask me.”

BJ’s jaw worked. “Funny. I didn’t ask you. I’m here to tell you that if you ever lay a hand on Hawkeye again, I’ll break both of yours. And I’ll enjoy it.”

Frank sputtered. “Threatening a superior officer! That’s—”

“Superior?” BJ’s smile was sharp as a scalpel.

“Frank, the only thing you’re superior at is losing patients and annoying Margaret.”

Margaret, passing by with a chart, didn’t even look up. “He’s not wrong, Frank.

Frank turned red. “Well, I—”

But BJ was already gone, leaving him spluttering like a broken teakettle.

In the mess tent, Klinger was hunched over a pile of pilfered potatoes like a man plotting a coup.
“Radar, keep watch. If Colonel Potter finds out I liberated half the mess’s spuds, I’ll be peeling KP until Korea’s a democracy.”

Radar frowned. “What are you doing with ‘em, Max?”

Klinger whispered dramatically“I’m planning a Seder.”

Radar blinked. “A what?”

“A Passover dinner. I figure, after… well, after the kid… maybe some people could use it.”

Radar scratched his head. “You know how to do that?”

“Do I look like I know how to do that? I thought potatoes were kosher enough. You mash ‘em, you bake ‘em, you fry ‘em. Boom, Jewish cuisine.”

“Max,” Radar said carefully, “I don’t think that’s how it works.”

“Don’t worry, kid. I got a plan. We’ll make matzo outta saltines, wine outta grape Kool-Aid, and for bitter herbs—” Klinger produced a wilted stalk of celery like it was Excalibur. “Voilà!”

Radar groaned. “You’re nuts.”

“Yeah,” Klinger grinned, “but I’m nuts with a heart of gold.”

Meanwhile, in Father Mulcahy’s tent, there was a massacre of another kind.

“Sh’ma Yis-ra-el…” he muttered, stumbling over the sounds. His lips twisted, his tongue fought him like an enemy combatant. “…A-do-noy E-lo-he-nu…”

He stopped. Groaned. Tried again.

It sounded less like Hebrew and more like an Irishman gargling marbles.

“Blast it!” He dropped the scrap of paper Radar had given him the one with Eli’s Shema scrawled at the bottom of the menorah drawing. “I’ve got souls to tend and I can’t even pronounce the first line!”

Margaret, who had been passing by and overheard, poked her head in. “What is that noise?”

Mulcahy flushed. “Practice.”

“Practice for what?”

“…Interfaith dialogue.”

Margaret arched an eyebrow. “Sounds like you’re auditioning for an opera in Klingon.”

Mulcahy sighed. “I’m trying to honor the boy. He died clutching his star. The least I can do is learn his prayer.”

Margaret softened. “That’s… sweet, Father. Terrible, but sweet.”

That evening, Hawkeye stumbled into the Swamp smelling like gin and formaldehyde. He didn’t expect to find company.

But there they were: Radar clutching Eli’s drawing, Klinger balancing potatoes, Father Mulcahy clutching Hebrew notes, and BJ looking like he was ready to kill Frank with a salad fork.

Hawkeye froze. “Did I miss the circus auditions?”

Radar swallowed. “We, uh… found something in Corporal Weissman’s things.” He held out the drawing with both hands, like it might break.

Hawkeye took it.

The menorah. The words. The childish scrawl.

His fingers trembled.

“Doc,” Radar said softly, “what’s it say?”
Hawkeye opened his mouth. Closed it. For the first time in years, he read the words aloud. His voice cracked.

“Sh’ma Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad.”

The room was silent.

Father Mulcahy blinked. “You—you know it?”

“Yeah,” Hawkeye said hoarsely. “I know it.”

BJ looked at him. “Hawk…”

Softly, like a confession dragged out of him
“My name isn’t Hawkeye. Not really. It’s not even Benjamin Franklin Pierce.”

Everyone stared.

“My name is Avraham.” He laughed bitterly.

“Avraham ben Shlomo, if you want the whole mouthful. Haven’t heard it spoken out loud since… since before the world ended.”

They didn’t move

Hawkeye crumpled the drawing to his chest. “That kid — Eli — he still believed. Still prayed. Me? I stopped. Long time ago. Avraham died in the camps. Hawkeye crawled out. And I don’t know what the hell to do with that.”

Potter appeared in the doorway, hat in hand, his face grim.

“You do what you’ve always done, son,” he said gently. “You keep the living alive.”

For once, Hawkeye had no joke.

No pun.

No mask.

Just silence.

Chapter Text

Colonel Potter had never considered himself a meddler. A doctor, yes. A husband, a grandfather, a fairly competent poker player when whiskey wasn’t involved—but a meddler? Not usually.

Except now.

Because there was something simmering beneath Captain Benjamin Franklin Pierce’s jokes and whiskey fumes. Something Potter had glimpsed in the tattoo on his arm and in the volcanic rage that had blown the roof off the Swamp last week.

The thing was Colonel Sherman T. Potter wasn’t one for hesitating either. In his younger days, hesitation got you gored by a bull or flattened by a cavalry charge. In Korea, it meant body bags. But when it came to Hawkeye Pierce, hesitation had become his new pastime. The man was like a porcupine in a bathrobe funny to look at, prickly to touch, and liable to leave quills in anyone who got too close.

Potter, however, was no fool. He’d been watching Pierce unravel by inches. The dark humor was getting darker, the jokes sharper, the drinking less like recreation and more like self-medication. And after that blow-up with Mulcahy, followed by Frank’s right hook (Potter still thought Frank ought to be court-martialed for bad aim), it was time to bring in the cavalry. So Potter did what any sensible commanding officer in Korea would do when facing a human hand grenade in surgical scrubs. He called in the cavalry.

Or, in this case, the psychiatrist.

Potter sent word, and within forty-eight hours, a battered Jeep spat out Major Sydney Freedman like a peanut from a slingshot. Freedman arrived in a cloud of dust and cigarette smoke, wearing his usual rumpled uniform and the eternal expression of a man who’d been awake since 1942.

Sydney dusted off his cap, adjusted his jacket, and greeted Potter with his usual air of sardonic calm.

“Sherm, you look like you’ve been dragged through a knothole backwards,” Sydney quipped, gripping Potter’s hand. “What’s the emergency? Another officer thinks he’s Napoleon? Or worse, thinks he’s Frank Burns? I hope this is about your hemorrhoids again. Those were more fun than the last guy you had me talk to.”

Potter clapped him on the shoulder. “Afraid not, Sydney. It’s Pierce.”

Sydney raised an eyebrow. “Pierce? You mean the man who drinks like Hemingway, talks like Groucho, and operates like Michelangelo on a deadline? That Pierce?”

“That’s the one.”

Sydney groaned. “Great. What’d he do? Insult a general? Try to marry Klinger in a dress?”

“Worse,” Potter said. “He’s cracking. And I think he needs you.”

Potter gave him the rundown in his office, low and tight. He didn’t mention the tattoo — that was Hawkeye’s to share — but he made clear Pierce was running on fumes. Sydney nodded as he listened, fingers steepled like he was building a cathedral of patience.

“Sounds like he’s got walls higher than the Maginot Line,” Sydney said. “Good news is, I’ve always been fond of sieges.”

Sydney found Hawkeye in the Swamp, shirt unbuttoned, hair mussed, and half-asleep on his cot. Empty gin bottles stood at attention like soldiers on parade. BJ sat at the still-rickety table, writing a letter home. When he spotted Sydney, BJ perked up.

“Major Freedman,” BJ said with relief. “You here for Frank? Please say you’re here for Frank.

“Nope,” Sydney replied, removing his cap and grinning. “I’m here for the other wise guy. The one who thinks sarcasm is a food group.”

Hawkeye was stretched out on his cot, tie around his head like a bandanna, sipping gin through a straw.Hawkeye raised his glass. “Ah, the army’s very own couch inspector! Freud with fewer cigars. Come to tell me I hate my mother, Doc?”

“If you do, you’re in good company. Everyone hates their mother in Freud’s world.”

Hawkeye cracked one bleary eye open. “If you’re here for Frank, I’ll pay you double whatever Potter’s paying you. In gin. Or liver.”

Sydney pulled up a chair, uninvited, and sat beside the cot. “Hawkeye, you look like ten miles of bad road. We need to talk.”

“We are talking,” Hawkeye said. “Look at us. Practically a fireside chat. Got any marshmallows?”

“No,” Sydney said dryly, “but I’ve got ears. And unlike Frank’s, they’re not connected to his mouth. So—what’s eating you?”

Hawkeye sat up, swinging his legs off the cot. He raked a hand through his hair, all mock nonchalance. “Oh, the usual. The army, the war, Frank’s face. Take your pick. Hawkeye tilted his head. “Let’s cut to the chase. You’re here to ask if I’m nuts. Spoiler: I am. But you’ve seen the food here, haven’t you? Nuts are the sanest option on the menu.”

“Cute,” Sydney said. “But you can’t dodge forever, Avraham.”

The room went still. BJ looked up, startled, but said nothing. Hawkeye froze, as though someone had sucker-punched him. His eyes narrowed dangerously.

“What did you just call me?” His voice was low, sharp.

Sydney didn’t flinch. “Avraham. Your name. The one you don’t use. The one you buried.”

The air grew thick. Hawkeye shot to his feet, fists clenched. “Get out.”

“No,” Sydney said simply.

Hawkeye’s voice rose. “I said get out, damn it! You don’t get to walk in here and—”

BJ stood now, concern flickering across his face. “Hawk—”

“Stay out of this, Beej!” Hawkeye snapped, shaking. “This—this is between me and Sigmund Freud’s stunt double.”

BJ swallowed. “Want me to leave?”

“Yes,” Hawkeye and Sydney said in unison.

BJ nods. “Thought so,” and slipped out, quickly, likely going to get help.

Sydney tried the gentle route first. “You’ve been through a lot. You save lives every day. But you’re carrying something more, aren’t you?”

Hawkeye rolled his eyes. “Sure. Gas. From the powdered eggs. You want to psychoanalyze that too?”

“Look, Hawk. You think you’re good at hiding it. But people see more than you realize. Potter sees it. I see it.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Hawkeye snapped.

Sydney leaned forward, voice quiet but cutting. “So tell me about the numbers, Avraham.”

The name hit Hawkeye like a slap again. His glass slipped from his hand and smashed against the floor. He lunged to his feet, fists clenched.

“STOP IT—”

“You think you can joke forever, but it leaks out. The cracks show. You think no one sees, but I do. Because I’ve been there too, Hawk. My uncle. My cousins. We light candles for them every year.”

“You don’t know anything about me!”

Hawkeye roared. He shoved Sydney hard, knocking him back against the cot. For a moment, the Swamp echoed with only ragged breathing.

Sydney sat up, adjusted his jacket, and said calmly: “You’re right. I don’t. Not unless you tell me.” Sydney didn’t back down. “You can rage all you want, Hawkeye. Yell, curse, throw things. Hell, punch me if you need to. But you can’t outrun yourself. Not here. Not in a tent in Korea.”

Hawkeye’s breath was ragged, chest heaving. He did throw something — an empty gin bottle, which shattered harmlessly against the tent pole. “You think you know me? You don’t know a goddamn thing!”

“I know Auschwitz,” Sydney said quietly.

The silence was absolute. Even the canvas walls seemed to hold their breath.

Hawkeye staggered back a step, like Sydney had ripped the floor from under him. His face drained of color, anger replaced by raw panic.

“No,” Hawkeye whispered. “You don’t get to say that.”

“I was in Europe at the end of the war,” Sydney said, softer now. “I didn’t live it like you. But I saw the camps. I saw the survivors. And I’ve seen that look in your eyes every time you think no one’s watching.”

Hawkeye’s hands shook. He pressed them over his face, voice breaking. “Stop. Just stop.”

Hawkeye stumbling toward the tent flap. Sydney followed, relentless but gentle.

“Avraham,” Sydney pressed, “you can’t keep this inside. It’s poison. And it’s killing you faster than the war is.”

Hawkeye whirled on him, eyes blazing through tears. “What do you want me to say? Huh? That I was there? That I watched my family shoved onto trains like cattle? That I smelled the smoke and knew it was them? That I crawled out of hell and somehow kept breathing? What the hell do you want from me, Sydney?”

Sydney’s throat worked. “I want the truth. Not for me. For you.”

Hawkeye’s voice cracked, raw and jagged. “The truth is I don’t know why I lived. The truth is every joke, every bottle, every smartass comment—it’s all so I don’t hear the screams at night. The truth is God left us in those camps to rot, and if He’s still out there, I want nothing to do with Him.”

The words tore out of him like shrapnel. The camp outside had gone quiet. Voices, movements—everyone was listening. But in that moment, Hawkeye didn’t care. He was trembling, exposed, shaking like a man stripped bare.

Sydney nodded slowly. His eyes were kind, steady. “Then start there. With the truth. You don’t have to believe in God. You don’t have to forgive the world. But you do have to stop bleeding alone.”

Hawkeye’s hands shook. He pressed them against his face, as if he could hide behind his own palms. When he finally spoke, the words cracked like dry bones.

“Auschwitz,” he whispered. “I was there.”

Sydney froze. The camp was bustling—Radar yelling about a shipment, Klinger parading in a nun’s habit, Frank complaining about communists—but inside the Swamp, the world went still.

“They took everything,” Hawkeye said. His voice was sharp, bitter, alive with venom. “My home. My family. My name. Avraham. That’s what they called me before they branded me like cattle. Before they stripped us down to bones and ash.”

Sydney didn’t interrupt.

“I was seventeen. Old enough to know what was happening, too young to stop it. I watched my mother disappear in smoke. My father beaten until I couldn’t recognize his face. My sister—” Hawkeye’s voice cracked, and he slammed a fist into the cot frame. “And now I’m here, cutting open boys who aren’t old enough to shave, pretending gin and jokes can stitch up what’s left of me.”

“Hawk,” Sydney said softly, crouching down” you’re carrying Auschwitz into every OR with you. Every tent. Every drink. You think if you keep laughing, it’ll drown it out. But it doesn’t. It just festers.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Hawkeye snapped. Tears ran down his face, unnoticed. “God turned His back on us in that camp. On me. And now you want me to what? Pray? Forgive? Move on?”

“No,” Sydney said simply. “I want you to live. Because you survived. And the cruelest thing you can do to them—the bastards who put you there—is to keep living when they wanted you dead.”

Potter stood just outside the Swamp at the side, away from Hawkeye and Sydney, pipe unlit, face heavy with sorrow. He’d heard enough to know the rumors were dead now—killed by truth, harsher than any gossip.

Hawkeye had collapsed back onto his cot, hands over his face, shoulders shaking. Sydney remained beside him, one hand resting lightly on Hawkeye’s arm, steady as a rock.

No one laughed. No one spoke. The camp was listening, and for once, the war’s loudest mouth had nothing left but the sound of his grief.

By the time BJ returned with a tray of mess tent sandwiches, the whole camp was buzzing. Radar had heard through the tent flap. Mulcahy had caught fragments. Even Margaret was uncharacteristically quiet, pacing outside with a cigarette.

Frank, of course, muttered something about “commie sympathy,” but Potter shut him up with a glare.

BJ set the tray down and said gently, “Hawk? Want a sandwich?”

Hawkeye laughed, broken and bitter. “Sure. Why not. Hitler  didn’t kill me. Maybe the meatloaf will.”