Mirror M*A*S*H: Through the Mirror, Part Seven
This is by way of being a sequel to MirrorM*A*S*H.

Part one, Part two, Part three, Part four, Part five, and Part six are here.

There has been a long gap between posting part 6 and part 7. This was due to RL stuff, mostly, though also this chapter was a real mess to write. (No less than three scenes were written only to be discarded as I realised either No, it didn't happen like that or Yes, that happened, but I don't need to put that part in.) While I cannot of course command, I do request (politely, no arm-twisting) that you go back and re-read at least Part 6 before you start on this bit. Thank you. I'll make you a cup of tea while you're reading Part 6. Would you care for a scone?

Part 7

Hawkeye assumed the knock at the door was Joseph – it wasn’t the right time of day to be Won-sik – until the door opened.

Hawkeye had let Francis go. There was really nothing else he could do. He was sitting on the bed with his arms wrapped round himself, staring across the room at the whitewashed wall. His future held ten more days of this – one more visit from Francis – and then another Jesuit convent, and perhaps another. He could not hold on to Francis. He would have if he could.

The man stood in the door a moment, looking at him, and then came in and closed it behind him. He moved with a kind of awkward, surreptitious grace. He leaned up against the door, and looked at Hawkeye, and said nothing. He was older than Hawkeye – looked older –

No, he didn’t. Hawkeye stared back at him. Even the brief glimpse in the infirmary had told him that much. This was himself as he would have been: the man Francis knew first. Aside from a permanently startled expression on his face, they were identical.

Of course, he hadn’t even known Hawkeye existed till Hawkeye walked into the infirmary. Hawkeye had at least known that there was another Hawkeye, even if he hadn’t expected to meet him. Or known how weird it would be if he did.

“You know, I finally understand why Dad used to say he always knew when I was up to dickens,” Hawkeye said, for something to say. The startled expression on the other man’s face showed no sign of going away. “You’re not supposed to be here, are you?”

“Who are you?”

“Benjamin Franklin Pierce,” Hawkeye said. “Hawkeye. Named after Mom’s favourite President and Dad’s favourite novel. Right?”

“That’s right,” the man said. “But who are you?”

“I’m...” Hawkeye shrugged. “I’m you.”

The man came over and sat down on the bed. Hawkeye shifted up to give him the other end. He was looking at Hawkeye with the same intent fascination that Hawkeye felt. He moved, hands folding over knees, head tilting, eyeing Hawkeye.

“Who are you?”

“I told you,” Hawkeye said. He was looking at the other man’s hands. He wanted to ask him Are you a torturer? but he couldn’t, he knew he couldn’t – “Are you a Christian?”

The man laughed: startled and abrupt. His head went back, his mouth wide, showing his teeth.

He’s me. Hawkeye shifted, putting his hands down on the bed, then bracing one against the wall.



He was kind of a Christian. A not-Christian. An agnostic, he said.

He was no easier to convince about passage from another world than Hawkeye himself had been. Hawkeye supposed he probably shouldn’t even be trying to do it: You can make a fresh start there. No one will know you come from somewhere else.

“We’re identical,” Hawkeye said finally, wearily exasperated. “You must be able to see that. Even if you look older than me – ”

“I look older than you?” The man looked around. “Look, isn’t there a mirror?”

“No. You know it, though. Same as I do. We’re the same.”

The man stared at him. “Okay,” he said finally, with a kind of defeated acceptance. “Say we are. What I really wanted to know was – ” He stopped in the middle of the sentence, still staring. “Say we are identical,” he said again. “Where are you from? Why – ” He stopped again. “What – what did you do before you came here?”

Hawkeye almost thought he could tell him. It was like talking to himself. He couldn’t, shouldn’t, mustn’t.

“I was a captain in the US army,” he said. “In this other world. Before I was drafted, I was a doctor. Just finished residency.” You may be able to requalify as a doctor. No one will know you come from somewhere else.

The man felt for the shoulder of his uniform where rank tabs should have been pinned, and weren’t, whether he’d removed them on purpose or forgotten to put them on. “Good guess,” he said after a moment. “Where did you – how do you know Father Mulcahy?”

“Do I get to ask any questions?” Hawkeye asked.

The man shrugged, after a moment’s apparent surprise. “What do you want to know?”

Hawkeye laughed. He couldn’t help it. He reached down and picked up the children’s encyclopedia from beside the bed. “Everything that isn’t in here.”

The man took it, looked at it a moment, and turned it over, as if the back cover would explain it better. “What are you talking about?”

“All I know about your world – this world is what’s in that book, just about.”

The man opened the book at random, glancing down a page. He didn’t look as if he was reading. “What is this?”

“Francis found it for me. I finished reading about X, Y, and Z this afternoon. Now he tells me they’re sending me to Spain in ten days, and all I know about Spain they printed in half a column and one picture of an angry cow.”

The man looked up, sharply, as if in recognition. He stared at Hawkeye for a long moment. “Why did you ask me if Dad was alive?” he asked at last.

“You look like Dad,” Hawkeye said after a moment. “Well, if Dad looked thirty years younger and dyed his hair black.” More than that, the man sounded like Dad – if Hawkeye closed his eyes, the man’s voice – “I’ve been here three weeks. Twenty-one days. Back there, if they think I’m still alive, I’m AWOL. In nine days, it’s desertion.” He didn’t suppose he had to spell out what would happen to Dad if his son had been logged as a deserter. “If they think I’m dead, Dad’s – ” Hawkeye could not finish the sentence. He rubbed the back of his hand across his face. If he went back, he would be assumed to have gone AWOL. Even if he could find the temple in Seoul and figure out how to use the gate without killing himself. The man was staring at him. Hawkeye managed a grin. “Dad’s probably already got rid of my golf clubs.”

“Ayuh,” the man said. He sounded, and looked, as if he was in shock. “Why can’t you go back?”

“I don’t know how,” Hawkeye said, which was true. “And if I did... If I’m dead, Dad’s safe. If I go back, if I’m AWOL, if they decide I meant to desert...” He swallowed. “You know the classic army way of giving good news and bad news. ‘Doctor Pierce, your son is alive. But your mourning wasn’t wasted, because we’re going to kill him ourselves.’”

“Kill you?” The book slid to the floor with a thump. The man leaned back against the wall. “What do you mean, Dad’s safe?”

He did have to spell it out, and by the end of it, Hawkeye had stopped being able to look the man in the face: staring at his own hands, he described what would happen to the immediate family of a deserter.

The silence filling the small room felt thick and heavy. Hawkeye went on staring at his hands. He could never have faced Dad if they had let him go home.

The man’s hand on his arm made him startle. He looked up. The man had leaned close enough to reach out and touch him. He pulled back almost immediately. Hawkeye swallowed. He stared back at the man, bewildered for a moment how to read the look in the blue eyes.

“Okay,” the man said. “Okay.” He was swallowing. “You don’t need – I think I get the picture.” He pushed his hands against his face as if he was trying to wipe something away.

“That wouldn’t happen here?” Hawkeye checked.

The man made a peculiar, half-familiar noise somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “No.” He took his hands away and looked at Hawkeye again. “Is that – that’s what’s going to happen – to Dad, I mean your Dad, if you don’t go back?”

Hawkeye moved restlessly. “No,” he said. Putting it into words made it obvious what a gamble it was. “Probably not. I – you see, the Colonel hit me over the head and knocked me out, but Francis says it was obvious I wasn’t leaving the camp willingly, and I bled enough the other side of the gate that it probably looked like I died there. The only way they can be sure I didn’t die is if I come back. I don’t think they’d just assume I deserted when it looks like the Colonel killed me.”

The man was leaning forward again. “Father Mulcahy was in this camp with you?”

Hawkeye nodded. “Look – why are you asking me about Francis – ‘Father’ Mulcahy?”

This time the man looked away. After a long moment, he said, “He won’t talk to me.” He turned his head back and looked directly at Hawkeye. “I’m his friend, and I’m a physician,” he said. “Something’s wrong. I can’t just – it’s killing me to just stand back and let him – something’s wrong.”

For a space of time Hawkeye couldn’t measure, it felt like he couldn’t breathe. He could feel the shivering weight of Francis leaning on his shoulder, hear him saying We were friends. I used to think we’d always be friends.

He was a slave. He was property. We didn’t hurt him. We were careful.

We raped him.

He clung to me. He thought I was his friend.

Francis’s voice, quiet, scared, steady: No. Please, no. Please.

Hawkeye put his hands to his head, trying to shut out the voice in his memory. “No,” he said out loud. His voice had cracked, he could hear the pieces falling.

The man’s hand touched his arm again, and Hawkeye tried to shrug him off. His eyes hurt, his face hurt, his stomach hurt. I didn’t know. I didn’t know you existed. I didn’t know –

He’d known something was wrong. He hadn’t understood, but he’d known.

It felt as if Dad had sat down beside him and put an arm round his shoulders and was saying something to him. Dad didn’t know, didn’t understand, but he was holding him and letting him weep into his shoulder. Whatever Dad was saying wasn’t making sense over the loud, uncontrolled sounds his throat was making. He knew he didn’t deserve it. He didn’t deserve anything.

“Ten days? Am I ever going to see you again?”

“I’ll come to Seoul again to see you before you go, Hawkeye.”

“I’m going to Europe. You’re going to the States. Am I ever going to see you again?”

“Very likely not.”

Francis hadn’t even said it with satisfaction. If it were revenge, Hawkeye could have borne it. Being sent away to the other side of the world, to live – to live with his promises, with the hope that Dad was alive even though he thought Hawkeye was dead, with the knowledge of what he’d done to Francis –

“I can’t stand it,” he said.

Dad’s arm round his shoulders shifted and –

Not Dad. Hawkeye.

Hawkeye unpeeled himself from the man. “We’re not the same,” he said thickly. “We’re not alike.”

The man was looking at him in open confusion. Francis hadn’t told him anything.

That wasn’t just forgiveness. Francis didn’t want him – didn’t want this Hawkeye – to know.

“I won’t tell you anything about Francis,” Hawkeye said. He rubbed at his eyes. “I won’t – ” He swallowed. “If he wanted you to know, he’d tell you.”

The man shifted himself on the bed, looking uneasy, looking almost guilty. “If I start telling myself that...” he muttered, and trailed off.

“We’re not alike,” Hawkeye said again. He was trying to think of some other way of explaining himself without saying the words out loud. “Look.” He put his hands to his shirt front and undid the buttons, quickly. “If you ever need to tell us apart – we’re different.” The scars ran down his chest and stomach, still fresh enough to be red and angry. “You don’t have these. You’ve never – you didn’t ever – ”

“Oh God,” the man said. He stared and looked away and stared again. “Oh God, what happened?”

“The Colonel used his knife,” Hawkeye said. “He’d have gone on longer, but Francis – ”

Francis sat and watched and cried and waited until the Colonel was convinced that when he gave in it was because he couldn’t stand seeing me hurt, not because he’d thought up a way of killing the Colonel.

But he did save my life afterwards.

“Francis stopped him,” Hawkeye said. “He saved my life. Twice. Three times. Because of you. Oh look, get out of here.” He did up his shirt front again. “We’re not alike. Francis hates me. He likes you. Get out of here.”

to part 8...