Fic: Korea, 1950-Something (1/1, Teen)
Dec. 29th, 2018 10:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nonelvisTitle: Korea, 1950-Something
Characters/Pairing(s): Rory Williams/Hawkeye Pierce
Rating: Teen
Word count: 3639
Spoilers: none
Contains: infidelity (sort of)
Summary: Something's making the Korean War last eight years longer than it should for a MASH unit – the unit where Rory Williams waits, trapped in time, for Amy and the Doctor to return. Crossover with M*A*S*H.
Author's Notes: This fic is entirely Nostalgia's fault. Many thanks toplatypus and my long-suffering spouse for their beta work.
::xposted to![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
dwfiction and ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
dwfiction, and archived at A Teaspoon And An Open Mind and AO3
“Korea,” said the Doctor as he, Amy, and Rory exited the TARDIS on a dusty mountain bluff thick with brush. “Korea in the ... 1950s, I’d say. But it’s very fuzzy. Unusually fuzzy. Like someone’s stuck a big pair of pink fluffy bunny muffs over my time senses.”
“Like the ones we got you for Christmas?” Amy said.
“Exactly. Only perhaps a bit pinker and fluffier.”
“Doctor, what’s that camp?” Rory said. Olive-green tents, olive-green people wandering in ant-like curvy paths, a red cross on a white field painted on several of the tent roofs. Medical, clearly, and probably military.
“It’s a MASH unit: a mobile army surgical hospital,” said the Doctor. “The best healthcare the United States military can offer in a war zone. Perpetually underfunded and understaffed. And they’ve been here what feels like” – the Doctor licked his index finger, turned it to the wind, tasted it again – “twelve ... no, eleven years. Eleven years. That can’t be right. The Korean War only lasted three years. Well, technically, it lasted a lot longer than that, but the armistice went into effect three years on.”
“So, an alternate universe, yeah?” Amy said. “Or something’s messing with the timeline.”
“No, not an alternate universe; the TARDIS can’t travel there easily … but there could be something altering the timeline.” This time, he knelt, touched his finger to the dirt, and tasted it. “Tastes like time loop. Not quite a paradox, so it shouldn’t be Chronovores,” he continued. “All that delicious potential energy trapped here where it doesn’t belong, but not what they usually feed on.”
“Okay, so it’s something else,” Rory said. “Some kind of time energy ... vampire?”
“No, they were all wiped out centuries ago.” The Doctor paused, cocked his head, listening to the wind rustle past them. “Amy. Rory. I’ve got a bad feeling about this. I mean, not quite bad bad. More like the opposite of good.”
“That is perhaps the least useful thing you’ve ever said.”
“I think,” the Doctor said slowly, “that we might have Weeping Angels on our hands. Hopefully only one. A really hungry one rather than a colony of them. Let’s go with that: one Angel and not a thousand of them.”
“Doctor, I don’t like that answer,” Amy said. “Can’t we pick another one?”
“Well, if you’d rather the thousand, we can assume that, but I personally prefer to hope for the best and come up with a daring, off-the-cuff, last-minute plan for the worst.”
“What’s a Weeping Angel?” Rory asked.
“You know how you’re scared of clown paintings because you think they’re staring at you?” Amy said. “They’re like that, only alive, and if you blink, you die.”
“Sounds … no, nothing about that sounds good. Clown paintings, really?”
“More like clown statues,” the Doctor said.
“In case you were wondering, you’re still not helping.”
“Right, well, that’s what we’re dealing with. Living, terrifying clown statues that feed off quantum energy and time displacement, and which have trapped these poor people in eleven years of war.”
“Doctor, we’ve got to get them out,” Amy said.
“Indeed.” The Doctor rose and scanned the horizon with his sonic. “There’s some unusual vibrations beyond those hills. Not quite a ripple in the space-time continuum. More like a little shimmy. Could be our Angel. Fancy a bit of a ramble?”
But they hadn’t travelled more than a few meters before a low, repetitive thwock-thwock rumbled across Rory’s skin. An alto clicking that deepened into bass, and only then did Rory recognize the sound and vibrations: a helicopter. More than one, given the volume.
A crackle from the tannoy, then a voice: “Attention all personnel: incoming wounded, incoming wounded.” In the camp below, the olive-green ants stopped meandering and turned as one towards the hillside, where if Rory shaded his eyes from the sun, he could spot four helicopters coming in for a landing.
“Doctor,” he said, “there aren’t nearly enough people to take care of that many wounded.”
“I know, Rory. There never are. It’s a war.”
“I could help. I could stay here and help. I … I should stay here and help.” He reached for Amy’s hand. “I don’t want to leave you to sort out a Weeping Angel on your own. But –“
“You’re a nurse. I know,” she said, squeezing his hand. “We’ll be fine, the Doctor and me. One Angel! Hopefully. We’ll be back before tea, either victorious or in desperate need of your unique sort of help.”
“That’s not exactly comforting.”
“Try to pretend it is anyway.” Amy leaned in, kissed him. “Go on, save some lives. And so will we.”
Amy’s hair gleamed copper-red in the late afternoon sunlight. He’d see her again, ginger hair and all. No reason to panic that he’d be here on his own, in the middle of a war, without his wife and their magic time-travelling friend.
He turned and ran towards the hill. Best not to look back now.
* * *
It wasn’t until he was applying pressure to some poor, moaning soldier’s thigh gash that someone finally stopped and asked who he was. “Lieutenant Rory Williams,” he said to the woman who’d asked, a platinum blonde with wavy curls, and whose facial expression made it clear that she expected an answer immediately, if not sooner. “British medical unit,” he added somewhat desperately while he tried to remember anything at all about the UK’s involvement in the Korean War. “I’m a nurse. Temporary loan to you lot for the next week or so.”
“You’d better be good in an operating room, Lieutenant. And you should report in to Colonel Potter when this is over.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. Somewhere years ago, when he’d first trained as a nurse, he’d had rotas in operating theaters, but nowadays, most of his work was at the bedside, or paperwork. Still, bodies were bodies, weren’t they? And he knew a forceps from a scalpel and could perform an emergency tracheotomy in his sleep if needed, and once almost had.
Fifteen minutes later, he wasn’t literally hip-deep in patients, but he might as well have been. The no-nonsense blonde, Major Houlihan, had assigned him to assist a surgeon named Captain Pierce with a soldier, practically a teenager, whose gut was riddled with shrapnel. “Call me Hawkeye,” Pierce said, “and call this kid the first in a long line we’re gonna see who should be home watching The Howdy Doody Show, not carrying a gun. Now, hand me a scalpel and let’s see if we can all get home before curfew, boys and girls.”
* * *
Colonel Potter seemed only too grateful to have an extra pair of medically trained hands, pointedly not asking most of the questions Rory had feared, like “what unit are you with” and “you’re not a time traveller, are you.” “What are you doing here,” however, was unavoidable, although the colonel seemed somewhat unswayed by the response that had otherwise worked on Major Houlihan.
“So, the Brits have loaned us to you in your civvies,” Potter said. “That’s unusual even for them.”
“Practical joke, sir. My comrades thought it would be funny to steal my uniform before they dropped me here.”
Potter leaned forward on his desk, tapping a pencil. “Son, that’s a load of horse pucky, and we both know it.”
“Excuse me, sir?”
“Horse pucky. Bullcrap. I believe the Limeys I knew back in WWI called it ‘telling porkies.’” He wiped his eyes, blinked tiredly at Rory. “Look, son, we’ve both spent the last twelve hours cleaning up those poor boys in the OR. I didn’t get any messages from the brass on our side or yours about this little visit, and I don’t believe for a minute you’ve got authorization to be here, but it’s your unit’s problem if you’ve gone AWOL, not mine, and in case you haven’t noticed, we could use the help. You did a damned fine job in there; Captain Pierce and Major Houlihan told me so themselves, and their word’s good enough for me. You’re welcome to stay a while if you work for your supper, but I’ll warn you; if the Army or your CO come looking for you, you’re headed home with them. Capiche?”
Rory rose to his feet and saluted, which felt like the most military thing he could do at the moment, or at least more military than running out of the colonel’s office and into the hills in a panicked search for Amy and the Doctor. “Thank you, sir,” he said. “I appreciate your generosity. I won’t let you down, sir.”
A few minutes later, Rory was being shown to the VIP tent – “the most luxurious guest accommodations ten miles from the front,” according to Corporal Klinger, who’d also offered to serve as tour guide, village gossip, and cigarette girl for the low, low price of several dollars Rory didn’t have.
“How long you gonna be here?” Klinger asked. “Just want to make sure I leave a note with the maid to lay in enough clean towels.”
“There’s a maid?”
“Of course there isn’t, I’m just messing with you. You Brits, you’re a riot. Breakfast at five, dinner at six, officers’ mess is across the way, just follow your nose, and if you wind up at the latrines instead ... eh, don’t worry about it, people make that mistake all the time.”
Rory slumped on the bed, a wonderfully, delightfully flat surface that in no way resembled an operating room full of blood and viscera and what had looked like his friends from Year 12. “Thank you,” he said, already feeling his eyelids start to droop.
“You got it, boss. And remember, you need anything, and I mean anything” – he tapped the side of his nose – “you just ask for Max Klinger, and I’ll have it here in a jiffy. For a nominal fee, of course.”
The door slammed behind him, but by then Rory was already dead asleep.
* * *
“That’s ‘shit on a shingle,’ the Army’s finest contribution to the culinary world,” Hawkeye said at breakfast the next morning. “You ever eat paste as a kid? Shit on a shingle’s like that, except the paste’s a better deal, especially with a nice parsley sprig on top. Don’t worry, a few more meals, and your tastebuds will atrophy just like ours. You’ll be fine.”
Hawkeye proved a cheaper tour guide than Klinger, and easily as educational. Here was the best putting “green” in the scrub surrounding the camp; here was the local watering hole with the whiskey that almost tasted like the real thing; here were the working girls who for a small fee would much rather sit and have an intelligent conversation with you than ply their trade. Rory practiced rudimentary Korean and traded Delphonian lessons in exchange, even if everyone assumed he was joking about an eyebrow-based language. The women found it hilarious and charming, especially when Hawkeye waggled his eyebrows at them in a way Rory refused to translate.
Life wasn’t so bad. It wasn’t the first time Amy’s “back in time for tea” had turned into “some undetermined point later than that,” and it was still 1950-something for the foreseeable future, with no internet or telephones or the slightest way to reach Amy, much less the Doctor – but Rory was alive and in one piece and the Army folks were mostly friendly and welcoming, even if they couldn’t pronounce “lieutenant” correctly. He was even starting to get used to the shit on a shingle.
But the wounded. The cavalcade of wounded, interrupted only by hours of tedium the camp’s denizens helped him fill with drinking, gambling, and nearly every other bad habit they typically pursued. He remembered how to blow smoke rings. He was learning to tolerate whatever vile concoction passed for gin in the Swamp, a small price to pay in exchange for convincing Major Winchester, starstruck at having a real live actual Englishman to show off for, to pull out his strategic Cognac reserve. He was, at least, assiduously avoiding the womanizing, not that Amy would have minded as long as she’d been there to share in the spoils. But all everyone’s casual flirtations did was remind him of her.
He also lost track of time almost immediately, which he supposed made sense, given the Weeping Angel’s interference. Soon enough he’d only be able to tell time had passed because the humidity would turn to bone-chilling wind, and the sunlight would narrow and dim. He’d begun scratching marks in one of the tent’s supports, counting off days and eventually, more than a week.
They’d return. They had to. He refused to believe he could be trapped here until the end of his days, not without Amy. A thousand years of waiting had been more than enough, and surely the universe wouldn’t do that to him again.
But the sun continued to set, and rise the next day, and still Amy and the Doctor didn’t return.
* * *
“I can’t believe I have to teach a doctor how to play golf,” Hawkeye said. “This class was mandatory in med school, right between ‘Surviving Your Three-Martini Lunch’ and ‘How to Bag a Nurse in Five Easy Steps.’”
Rory adjusted his stance with the 3 wood. Left hand on the club, thumb pointed straight along the shaft; right hand curled atop it. Eye on the ball and his target. Swing back, pivot foot, gouge palm of hand with thumbnail, watch ball dribble off tee after whiffing his swing.
“I’m not a doctor, remember?” he said. “I’m a nurse.” He frowned at the golf ball and replaced it on the tee, taking up a new stance. This time for sure.
“Oh, well, then I guess I can cross off Step 1: Memorable Introduction. Nothing says ‘I’m a real catch’ like spending your first few hours together arm-deep in some kid’s guts.”
This time, the ball lofted itself into a low arc, dropping after twenty meters and bouncing into a ditch. “I don’t understand,” Rory said. “I’m really good at crazy golf. It’s literally the only thing I’m better at than Amy other than my job. I should be having a much easier time at this.”
“‘Crazy golf’? You mean, ‘mini golf’? Look, kid, putting’s a whole other ballgame. Much easier to cheat at, for one thing. The rest of the game’s about the swing. And the shmoozing. And the gin and tonics. Also, who’s Amy?”
“My wife.” Rory took the new ball Hawkeye handed him and placed it carefully on the tee, watching it so it didn’t wobble.
“I didn’t know you were married. So much for Steps 2 through 5.”
“I didn’t figure I was your type anyway.” A swing, a whiff, another swing, another ball in the ditch. At least he was building up some consistency.
“True, I have some basic but essential requirements in a nurse I assume you can’t meet without raiding Klinger’s unmentionables drawer.”
“Life’s full of little disappointments, Hawkeye,” Rory said, clapping him on the back. “Come on, let’s collect those balls, and then we can discuss a gin and tonic.”
“See, now you’ve got the makings of a real golf pro.”
* * *
That night’s poker game broke up at … well, it wasn’t quite false dawn yet, more like false false dawn, with shreds of lighter blue barely beginning to peek at the horizon. BJ had slunk off to bed an hour ago, Klinger finally departing once he’d made his minimum fifteen percent profit, and Hawkeye, as drunk and regretful as the rest of them, last to try and eventually fail to stumble out. “When did they upgrade these tents to revolving doors?” he asked. “That’s the modern Army for you.” He flopped over onto Rory’s bed. “What is this, two beds now? You VIPs get all the perks.”
“There’s only ... you’re just ... oh, never mind, budge up,” Rory said, pouring himself beside Hawkeye on the bed.
“Why, Rory, what big feet you have.”
“Shut up, Hawkeye.”
“I just want you to know I’m not one of those fast girls. You’ll have to woo me like everyone else. Send me flowers and fancy chocolates. But I think I’m full up on cocktails at the moment.”
“Shut up, Hawkeye.”
“Goodnight, darling.”
“Goodnight,” Rory said, and fell asleep in Hawkeye’s arms.
* * *
He woke a few hours later, swallowed the entire cup of what was, thankfully, water by the side of his bed, and nestled back in against Hawkeye. The man’s arm still stretched across Rory’s chest, and the warmth of another body, another breath across the back of his neck, lulled him back to sleep for another hour.
They were in the same position when he woke again, and this time Hawkeye was stirring beside him. As were parts of his own body, and shit, what if Hawkeye knew?
... or, perhaps, what if he could feel the same reaction from Hawkeye’s body, still tucked tight against his.
He should get up. It was the friendly thing to do. Then they could both ignore this, at worst have a laugh about it.
Carefully, he started to slide out from under Hawkeye’s arm.
Hawkeye shifted his hand to Rory’s hip. “Don’t go,” he said.
I’m married, Rory wanted to say. But Amy’s only regret about this would be that she isn’t here to watch.
And also: It’s 1950-something. In my country, this is illegal right now. Probably in yours, too. Definitely illegal in your army.
“We shouldn’t,” he finally whispered.
“We’re two consenting adults in the middle of a godforsaken war. Also, Jesus, have you even looked at yourself? I haven’t seen eyelashes that long on a nurse without half a tube of black-market mascara.”
Rory wriggled onto his side to face Hawkeye, leaving the other man’s hand on his hip. There was a night’s worth of stubble on Hawkeye’s cheek, and they both desperately needed to brush their teeth, and the man was all angles and sharp edges. Except for his eyes, dark and deep, and lips Rory traced with his thumb, letting Hawkeye draw it into his mouth. Rory sucked in a breath and shivered, electricity sparkling all across his skin.
“Let me latch the door,” he said.
“I’ll be counting the seconds until you get back. Oh, there you are.”
“Yes.” Rory sighed at Hawkeye’s touch. “Here I am.”
* * *
The following night, Rory was closing up the last patient when his hindbrain twitched and he suddenly knew with immense certainty that it was 1952. He’d seen the calendars and newspaper datelines before, but they’d felt rough, unfocused, as if viewed through a lens smudged with the camp’s omnipresent mud and grit. Now the lens was clear, and there could only be one explanation why.
“Your CO finally showed up,” Colonel Potter said afterwards, when they’d both scrubbed up and Rory had been summoned to the colonel’s office. “And he brought your missus with him.” But Rory was already in Amy’s arms by then, trying not to weep that she was real, the Doctor was real, they were here and alive and safe and they were all going to go home.
“Thank you for hosting him, Colonel,” the Doctor said. “I trust he wasn’t any bother.”
“Heck, we’d keep him if we could. He’s a damned fine nurse and a credit to your unit. I hope you keep that in mind when it comes to pressing charges for his little extended absence.”
“Not to worry, Colonel; we have no intention of pressing charges. We’re all just happy to have him back.”
Rory raised his hand in a salute. “Thank you, Colonel. It was an honor to serve with you.”
“You too, son. You take care now.”
Amy’s hand in his was a lifeline as they strode through the camp, the Doctor’s chatter about Weeping Angels and mirrors and, apparently, weasels, the soundtrack humming below the tenor line of anxiety in Rory’s head. He couldn’t leave without saying goodbye to Hawkeye, could he? Where was the man hiding?
When a golf ball splashed in a puddle beside him, he knew. “Hang on a tick,” he said. “I’ll meet you at the TARDIS.”
He rubbed the ball clean on his jeans and handed it to Hawkeye on the bluff a few minutes later. “You’ve got excellent aim,” he noted.
“You say that, but I was aiming for Charles.” Hawkeye leaned on his 7 iron. “Guess you’re headed back to your unit.”
“Something like that.”
“Think they’ll be able to loan you out again? We can always use someone without a poker face.”
Rory smiled. “I wish I could tell you I’d be back. But things don’t usually work out that way for my unit.”
He knew it was 1952, but if pressed, would never have been able to say how long he’d spent in the camp. But it was long enough. Not a thousand years of waiting, but more than enough time for the space in his heart to widen and welcome another.
“Come here,” he said, and drew Hawkeye into his arms. “Don’t forget me,” he whispered against Hawkeye’s neck. “I won’t forget you.”
Hawkeye’s hands pressed into Rory’s back, as warm and comforting as the night before. “I won’t,” he said. “I couldn’t. I can’t.”
“Don’t let this war end who you are,” Rory said. “You’re better than that.”
Hawkeye released him, teed up the ball, and adjusted his stance with the 7 iron.
“Let’s hope so,” he said. The ball flew into the air, far and fast.
Rory was gone by the time it landed.
Characters/Pairing(s): Rory Williams/Hawkeye Pierce
Rating: Teen
Word count: 3639
Spoilers: none
Contains: infidelity (sort of)
Summary: Something's making the Korean War last eight years longer than it should for a MASH unit – the unit where Rory Williams waits, trapped in time, for Amy and the Doctor to return. Crossover with M*A*S*H.
Author's Notes: This fic is entirely Nostalgia's fault. Many thanks to
platypus and my long-suffering spouse for their beta work.::xposted to
dwfiction and dwfiction, and archived at A Teaspoon And An Open Mind and AO3“Korea,” said the Doctor as he, Amy, and Rory exited the TARDIS on a dusty mountain bluff thick with brush. “Korea in the ... 1950s, I’d say. But it’s very fuzzy. Unusually fuzzy. Like someone’s stuck a big pair of pink fluffy bunny muffs over my time senses.”
“Like the ones we got you for Christmas?” Amy said.
“Exactly. Only perhaps a bit pinker and fluffier.”
“Doctor, what’s that camp?” Rory said. Olive-green tents, olive-green people wandering in ant-like curvy paths, a red cross on a white field painted on several of the tent roofs. Medical, clearly, and probably military.
“It’s a MASH unit: a mobile army surgical hospital,” said the Doctor. “The best healthcare the United States military can offer in a war zone. Perpetually underfunded and understaffed. And they’ve been here what feels like” – the Doctor licked his index finger, turned it to the wind, tasted it again – “twelve ... no, eleven years. Eleven years. That can’t be right. The Korean War only lasted three years. Well, technically, it lasted a lot longer than that, but the armistice went into effect three years on.”
“So, an alternate universe, yeah?” Amy said. “Or something’s messing with the timeline.”
“No, not an alternate universe; the TARDIS can’t travel there easily … but there could be something altering the timeline.” This time, he knelt, touched his finger to the dirt, and tasted it. “Tastes like time loop. Not quite a paradox, so it shouldn’t be Chronovores,” he continued. “All that delicious potential energy trapped here where it doesn’t belong, but not what they usually feed on.”
“Okay, so it’s something else,” Rory said. “Some kind of time energy ... vampire?”
“No, they were all wiped out centuries ago.” The Doctor paused, cocked his head, listening to the wind rustle past them. “Amy. Rory. I’ve got a bad feeling about this. I mean, not quite bad bad. More like the opposite of good.”
“That is perhaps the least useful thing you’ve ever said.”
“I think,” the Doctor said slowly, “that we might have Weeping Angels on our hands. Hopefully only one. A really hungry one rather than a colony of them. Let’s go with that: one Angel and not a thousand of them.”
“Doctor, I don’t like that answer,” Amy said. “Can’t we pick another one?”
“Well, if you’d rather the thousand, we can assume that, but I personally prefer to hope for the best and come up with a daring, off-the-cuff, last-minute plan for the worst.”
“What’s a Weeping Angel?” Rory asked.
“You know how you’re scared of clown paintings because you think they’re staring at you?” Amy said. “They’re like that, only alive, and if you blink, you die.”
“Sounds … no, nothing about that sounds good. Clown paintings, really?”
“More like clown statues,” the Doctor said.
“In case you were wondering, you’re still not helping.”
“Right, well, that’s what we’re dealing with. Living, terrifying clown statues that feed off quantum energy and time displacement, and which have trapped these poor people in eleven years of war.”
“Doctor, we’ve got to get them out,” Amy said.
“Indeed.” The Doctor rose and scanned the horizon with his sonic. “There’s some unusual vibrations beyond those hills. Not quite a ripple in the space-time continuum. More like a little shimmy. Could be our Angel. Fancy a bit of a ramble?”
But they hadn’t travelled more than a few meters before a low, repetitive thwock-thwock rumbled across Rory’s skin. An alto clicking that deepened into bass, and only then did Rory recognize the sound and vibrations: a helicopter. More than one, given the volume.
A crackle from the tannoy, then a voice: “Attention all personnel: incoming wounded, incoming wounded.” In the camp below, the olive-green ants stopped meandering and turned as one towards the hillside, where if Rory shaded his eyes from the sun, he could spot four helicopters coming in for a landing.
“Doctor,” he said, “there aren’t nearly enough people to take care of that many wounded.”
“I know, Rory. There never are. It’s a war.”
“I could help. I could stay here and help. I … I should stay here and help.” He reached for Amy’s hand. “I don’t want to leave you to sort out a Weeping Angel on your own. But –“
“You’re a nurse. I know,” she said, squeezing his hand. “We’ll be fine, the Doctor and me. One Angel! Hopefully. We’ll be back before tea, either victorious or in desperate need of your unique sort of help.”
“That’s not exactly comforting.”
“Try to pretend it is anyway.” Amy leaned in, kissed him. “Go on, save some lives. And so will we.”
Amy’s hair gleamed copper-red in the late afternoon sunlight. He’d see her again, ginger hair and all. No reason to panic that he’d be here on his own, in the middle of a war, without his wife and their magic time-travelling friend.
He turned and ran towards the hill. Best not to look back now.
* * *
It wasn’t until he was applying pressure to some poor, moaning soldier’s thigh gash that someone finally stopped and asked who he was. “Lieutenant Rory Williams,” he said to the woman who’d asked, a platinum blonde with wavy curls, and whose facial expression made it clear that she expected an answer immediately, if not sooner. “British medical unit,” he added somewhat desperately while he tried to remember anything at all about the UK’s involvement in the Korean War. “I’m a nurse. Temporary loan to you lot for the next week or so.”
“You’d better be good in an operating room, Lieutenant. And you should report in to Colonel Potter when this is over.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. Somewhere years ago, when he’d first trained as a nurse, he’d had rotas in operating theaters, but nowadays, most of his work was at the bedside, or paperwork. Still, bodies were bodies, weren’t they? And he knew a forceps from a scalpel and could perform an emergency tracheotomy in his sleep if needed, and once almost had.
Fifteen minutes later, he wasn’t literally hip-deep in patients, but he might as well have been. The no-nonsense blonde, Major Houlihan, had assigned him to assist a surgeon named Captain Pierce with a soldier, practically a teenager, whose gut was riddled with shrapnel. “Call me Hawkeye,” Pierce said, “and call this kid the first in a long line we’re gonna see who should be home watching The Howdy Doody Show, not carrying a gun. Now, hand me a scalpel and let’s see if we can all get home before curfew, boys and girls.”
Colonel Potter seemed only too grateful to have an extra pair of medically trained hands, pointedly not asking most of the questions Rory had feared, like “what unit are you with” and “you’re not a time traveller, are you.” “What are you doing here,” however, was unavoidable, although the colonel seemed somewhat unswayed by the response that had otherwise worked on Major Houlihan.
“So, the Brits have loaned us to you in your civvies,” Potter said. “That’s unusual even for them.”
“Practical joke, sir. My comrades thought it would be funny to steal my uniform before they dropped me here.”
Potter leaned forward on his desk, tapping a pencil. “Son, that’s a load of horse pucky, and we both know it.”
“Excuse me, sir?”
“Horse pucky. Bullcrap. I believe the Limeys I knew back in WWI called it ‘telling porkies.’” He wiped his eyes, blinked tiredly at Rory. “Look, son, we’ve both spent the last twelve hours cleaning up those poor boys in the OR. I didn’t get any messages from the brass on our side or yours about this little visit, and I don’t believe for a minute you’ve got authorization to be here, but it’s your unit’s problem if you’ve gone AWOL, not mine, and in case you haven’t noticed, we could use the help. You did a damned fine job in there; Captain Pierce and Major Houlihan told me so themselves, and their word’s good enough for me. You’re welcome to stay a while if you work for your supper, but I’ll warn you; if the Army or your CO come looking for you, you’re headed home with them. Capiche?”
Rory rose to his feet and saluted, which felt like the most military thing he could do at the moment, or at least more military than running out of the colonel’s office and into the hills in a panicked search for Amy and the Doctor. “Thank you, sir,” he said. “I appreciate your generosity. I won’t let you down, sir.”
A few minutes later, Rory was being shown to the VIP tent – “the most luxurious guest accommodations ten miles from the front,” according to Corporal Klinger, who’d also offered to serve as tour guide, village gossip, and cigarette girl for the low, low price of several dollars Rory didn’t have.
“How long you gonna be here?” Klinger asked. “Just want to make sure I leave a note with the maid to lay in enough clean towels.”
“There’s a maid?”
“Of course there isn’t, I’m just messing with you. You Brits, you’re a riot. Breakfast at five, dinner at six, officers’ mess is across the way, just follow your nose, and if you wind up at the latrines instead ... eh, don’t worry about it, people make that mistake all the time.”
Rory slumped on the bed, a wonderfully, delightfully flat surface that in no way resembled an operating room full of blood and viscera and what had looked like his friends from Year 12. “Thank you,” he said, already feeling his eyelids start to droop.
“You got it, boss. And remember, you need anything, and I mean anything” – he tapped the side of his nose – “you just ask for Max Klinger, and I’ll have it here in a jiffy. For a nominal fee, of course.”
The door slammed behind him, but by then Rory was already dead asleep.
“That’s ‘shit on a shingle,’ the Army’s finest contribution to the culinary world,” Hawkeye said at breakfast the next morning. “You ever eat paste as a kid? Shit on a shingle’s like that, except the paste’s a better deal, especially with a nice parsley sprig on top. Don’t worry, a few more meals, and your tastebuds will atrophy just like ours. You’ll be fine.”
Hawkeye proved a cheaper tour guide than Klinger, and easily as educational. Here was the best putting “green” in the scrub surrounding the camp; here was the local watering hole with the whiskey that almost tasted like the real thing; here were the working girls who for a small fee would much rather sit and have an intelligent conversation with you than ply their trade. Rory practiced rudimentary Korean and traded Delphonian lessons in exchange, even if everyone assumed he was joking about an eyebrow-based language. The women found it hilarious and charming, especially when Hawkeye waggled his eyebrows at them in a way Rory refused to translate.
Life wasn’t so bad. It wasn’t the first time Amy’s “back in time for tea” had turned into “some undetermined point later than that,” and it was still 1950-something for the foreseeable future, with no internet or telephones or the slightest way to reach Amy, much less the Doctor – but Rory was alive and in one piece and the Army folks were mostly friendly and welcoming, even if they couldn’t pronounce “lieutenant” correctly. He was even starting to get used to the shit on a shingle.
But the wounded. The cavalcade of wounded, interrupted only by hours of tedium the camp’s denizens helped him fill with drinking, gambling, and nearly every other bad habit they typically pursued. He remembered how to blow smoke rings. He was learning to tolerate whatever vile concoction passed for gin in the Swamp, a small price to pay in exchange for convincing Major Winchester, starstruck at having a real live actual Englishman to show off for, to pull out his strategic Cognac reserve. He was, at least, assiduously avoiding the womanizing, not that Amy would have minded as long as she’d been there to share in the spoils. But all everyone’s casual flirtations did was remind him of her.
He also lost track of time almost immediately, which he supposed made sense, given the Weeping Angel’s interference. Soon enough he’d only be able to tell time had passed because the humidity would turn to bone-chilling wind, and the sunlight would narrow and dim. He’d begun scratching marks in one of the tent’s supports, counting off days and eventually, more than a week.
They’d return. They had to. He refused to believe he could be trapped here until the end of his days, not without Amy. A thousand years of waiting had been more than enough, and surely the universe wouldn’t do that to him again.
But the sun continued to set, and rise the next day, and still Amy and the Doctor didn’t return.
“I can’t believe I have to teach a doctor how to play golf,” Hawkeye said. “This class was mandatory in med school, right between ‘Surviving Your Three-Martini Lunch’ and ‘How to Bag a Nurse in Five Easy Steps.’”
Rory adjusted his stance with the 3 wood. Left hand on the club, thumb pointed straight along the shaft; right hand curled atop it. Eye on the ball and his target. Swing back, pivot foot, gouge palm of hand with thumbnail, watch ball dribble off tee after whiffing his swing.
“I’m not a doctor, remember?” he said. “I’m a nurse.” He frowned at the golf ball and replaced it on the tee, taking up a new stance. This time for sure.
“Oh, well, then I guess I can cross off Step 1: Memorable Introduction. Nothing says ‘I’m a real catch’ like spending your first few hours together arm-deep in some kid’s guts.”
This time, the ball lofted itself into a low arc, dropping after twenty meters and bouncing into a ditch. “I don’t understand,” Rory said. “I’m really good at crazy golf. It’s literally the only thing I’m better at than Amy other than my job. I should be having a much easier time at this.”
“‘Crazy golf’? You mean, ‘mini golf’? Look, kid, putting’s a whole other ballgame. Much easier to cheat at, for one thing. The rest of the game’s about the swing. And the shmoozing. And the gin and tonics. Also, who’s Amy?”
“My wife.” Rory took the new ball Hawkeye handed him and placed it carefully on the tee, watching it so it didn’t wobble.
“I didn’t know you were married. So much for Steps 2 through 5.”
“I didn’t figure I was your type anyway.” A swing, a whiff, another swing, another ball in the ditch. At least he was building up some consistency.
“True, I have some basic but essential requirements in a nurse I assume you can’t meet without raiding Klinger’s unmentionables drawer.”
“Life’s full of little disappointments, Hawkeye,” Rory said, clapping him on the back. “Come on, let’s collect those balls, and then we can discuss a gin and tonic.”
“See, now you’ve got the makings of a real golf pro.”
That night’s poker game broke up at … well, it wasn’t quite false dawn yet, more like false false dawn, with shreds of lighter blue barely beginning to peek at the horizon. BJ had slunk off to bed an hour ago, Klinger finally departing once he’d made his minimum fifteen percent profit, and Hawkeye, as drunk and regretful as the rest of them, last to try and eventually fail to stumble out. “When did they upgrade these tents to revolving doors?” he asked. “That’s the modern Army for you.” He flopped over onto Rory’s bed. “What is this, two beds now? You VIPs get all the perks.”
“There’s only ... you’re just ... oh, never mind, budge up,” Rory said, pouring himself beside Hawkeye on the bed.
“Why, Rory, what big feet you have.”
“Shut up, Hawkeye.”
“I just want you to know I’m not one of those fast girls. You’ll have to woo me like everyone else. Send me flowers and fancy chocolates. But I think I’m full up on cocktails at the moment.”
“Shut up, Hawkeye.”
“Goodnight, darling.”
“Goodnight,” Rory said, and fell asleep in Hawkeye’s arms.
He woke a few hours later, swallowed the entire cup of what was, thankfully, water by the side of his bed, and nestled back in against Hawkeye. The man’s arm still stretched across Rory’s chest, and the warmth of another body, another breath across the back of his neck, lulled him back to sleep for another hour.
They were in the same position when he woke again, and this time Hawkeye was stirring beside him. As were parts of his own body, and shit, what if Hawkeye knew?
... or, perhaps, what if he could feel the same reaction from Hawkeye’s body, still tucked tight against his.
He should get up. It was the friendly thing to do. Then they could both ignore this, at worst have a laugh about it.
Carefully, he started to slide out from under Hawkeye’s arm.
Hawkeye shifted his hand to Rory’s hip. “Don’t go,” he said.
I’m married, Rory wanted to say. But Amy’s only regret about this would be that she isn’t here to watch.
And also: It’s 1950-something. In my country, this is illegal right now. Probably in yours, too. Definitely illegal in your army.
“We shouldn’t,” he finally whispered.
“We’re two consenting adults in the middle of a godforsaken war. Also, Jesus, have you even looked at yourself? I haven’t seen eyelashes that long on a nurse without half a tube of black-market mascara.”
Rory wriggled onto his side to face Hawkeye, leaving the other man’s hand on his hip. There was a night’s worth of stubble on Hawkeye’s cheek, and they both desperately needed to brush their teeth, and the man was all angles and sharp edges. Except for his eyes, dark and deep, and lips Rory traced with his thumb, letting Hawkeye draw it into his mouth. Rory sucked in a breath and shivered, electricity sparkling all across his skin.
“Let me latch the door,” he said.
“I’ll be counting the seconds until you get back. Oh, there you are.”
“Yes.” Rory sighed at Hawkeye’s touch. “Here I am.”
The following night, Rory was closing up the last patient when his hindbrain twitched and he suddenly knew with immense certainty that it was 1952. He’d seen the calendars and newspaper datelines before, but they’d felt rough, unfocused, as if viewed through a lens smudged with the camp’s omnipresent mud and grit. Now the lens was clear, and there could only be one explanation why.
“Your CO finally showed up,” Colonel Potter said afterwards, when they’d both scrubbed up and Rory had been summoned to the colonel’s office. “And he brought your missus with him.” But Rory was already in Amy’s arms by then, trying not to weep that she was real, the Doctor was real, they were here and alive and safe and they were all going to go home.
“Thank you for hosting him, Colonel,” the Doctor said. “I trust he wasn’t any bother.”
“Heck, we’d keep him if we could. He’s a damned fine nurse and a credit to your unit. I hope you keep that in mind when it comes to pressing charges for his little extended absence.”
“Not to worry, Colonel; we have no intention of pressing charges. We’re all just happy to have him back.”
Rory raised his hand in a salute. “Thank you, Colonel. It was an honor to serve with you.”
“You too, son. You take care now.”
Amy’s hand in his was a lifeline as they strode through the camp, the Doctor’s chatter about Weeping Angels and mirrors and, apparently, weasels, the soundtrack humming below the tenor line of anxiety in Rory’s head. He couldn’t leave without saying goodbye to Hawkeye, could he? Where was the man hiding?
When a golf ball splashed in a puddle beside him, he knew. “Hang on a tick,” he said. “I’ll meet you at the TARDIS.”
He rubbed the ball clean on his jeans and handed it to Hawkeye on the bluff a few minutes later. “You’ve got excellent aim,” he noted.
“You say that, but I was aiming for Charles.” Hawkeye leaned on his 7 iron. “Guess you’re headed back to your unit.”
“Something like that.”
“Think they’ll be able to loan you out again? We can always use someone without a poker face.”
Rory smiled. “I wish I could tell you I’d be back. But things don’t usually work out that way for my unit.”
He knew it was 1952, but if pressed, would never have been able to say how long he’d spent in the camp. But it was long enough. Not a thousand years of waiting, but more than enough time for the space in his heart to widen and welcome another.
“Come here,” he said, and drew Hawkeye into his arms. “Don’t forget me,” he whispered against Hawkeye’s neck. “I won’t forget you.”
Hawkeye’s hands pressed into Rory’s back, as warm and comforting as the night before. “I won’t,” he said. “I couldn’t. I can’t.”
“Don’t let this war end who you are,” Rory said. “You’re better than that.”
Hawkeye released him, teed up the ball, and adjusted his stance with the 7 iron.
“Let’s hope so,” he said. The ball flew into the air, far and fast.
Rory was gone by the time it landed.
no subject
on 2018-12-30 02:35 pm (UTC)