yankeedoodle_dr | (no subject)

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"Damn," says Hawkeye, "damn, damn, damn!"

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he recognizes that he has not just stepped into the scrub room, that the piece of furniture he just threw his surgical cap down on wasn't the sink.

(He's in short-sleeved scrubs, red down his front and up his bare arms from the wrist to the elbow. He's moving slow and a little unsteady. His face is lined with the kind of exhaustion that only hits after the second, third, and fourth winds have come and gone.)

One bloody arm wrapped around himself, his head hanging: "Damn."

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"It gets easier, losing patients," he says. He gives an incredulous snort, something that isn't quite a laugh, over the rim of his glass. "It gets easier!

"I don't know which was worse -- that he honestly believed it, or that for a minute--" Hawkeye is gesturing now with the scotch, with the ease of someone grown accustomed to talking with a glass in hand. "I wished it was true.

"It doesn't get easier." He shakes his head, swirls his drink with a clumsy flick of the wrist. "If anything, it gets harder every time." He scrubs his face with his free hand; sets his chin in his hand. "If I could've gotten the ribs spread quicker--"

By the end, it's hard to say whether Hawkeye is talking to Simon or to himself.

That incredulous snort after the first words ... it spares Simon the necessity of covering his own distaste. (Distaste is too mild a word, really; horror might be closer.)

"Do you," he starts slowly, and then reconsiders and begins the sentence again. "You always go over it again afterwards. Trying to find what you did wrong."

That part isn't a question; it's said as though stating a natural law.

"What do you do when there isn't anything?"

His mouth curls upward.

"Refuse to believe anyone who says so," he says, scotch poised in hand.

The long drink that he takes is something of an answer, in and of itself.

"Even if it's true?"

It's a response he can understand, but ...

Hawkeye shrugs once.

"You know, it's funny; there's never a shortage of decisions to second-guess."

He's quiet for a moment, studying his glass again.

"The first time I lost a patient was just off a battlefield," he says, low and reflective. "In Yuna's world. I can't remember if I ever told you about it..."

"It's funny; I can't remember, either." It's said lightly, but the way that he finishes off his scotch is anything but flippant. "Refresh my memory."

While he refreshes his glass.

There are any number of places he could start.

What comes out is: "Yuna's world has religious strictures against higher technology. Including medical technology."

He takes a drink while working out where to go from there.

Hawkeye thinks, fuzzily, that he's heard this story before, now that he's hearing it. He isn't about to tell Simon to stop, though.

He gives a low hmm as he finishes topping off his glass, more of a quiet indication that he's listening than any sort of a question.

Simon's voice is flat and matter-of-fact. "Which meant not only that they didn't have certain instruments and medications, but that I couldn't even bring any along. Which, obviously --"

He stumbles on the word, and breaks off.

"I lost five," he resumes finally. "Two of them ... I think two of them I could have saved, with access to a real operating theatre."

Hawkeye watches him, miraculously steady.

He says, "You blame yourself?"

One corner of Simon's mouth tugs upward in something that can't really be called a smile.

"She asked me something very similar. A few days after."

"I'll bet she did."

Elbow on the table, glass perched precariously in hand.

Wry, and not nearly as glib as the aim, though he's trying: "I can't help but notice that that's not an answer to the question, though."

"That's just it."

Simon picks up his own glass, but doesn't drink yet.

"I went over it. Over and over. And I couldn't find anything I did wrong."

He waits, more patiently than a lot of people would give him credit for. He takes a drink; a long one.

He's listening, his eyes on Simon.

In unconscious echo, he takes a swallow of his own drink.

"So how do you blame yourself in a situation like that?"

"Well," he says, and it's wry. "I wouldn't blame somebody else."

Hawkeye holds himself to impossible standards.

The honesty is thanks to the scotch.

"I tried to blame her."

The scotch is responsible for honesty from more than one of them, it seems.

"It doesn't work. It's like ... blaming gravity."

"Or the air," Hawkeye says, helpful.

And maybe a little drunk.

But serious under it.

"Or vacuum," Simon agrees, blinking. "It's just there. Or not there. The absence of a thing. You can't blame the absence of a thing."

"Can't blame death, not supposed to blame ourselves -- the only thing left's the war."

Beat.

"I don't mind blaming things on the war."

Simon raises his glass, only slightly unsteadily. "To blaming the war."

"To blaming the war," Hawkeye agrees readily, and he clips Simon's glass with his with just a little too much force.

He drinks, and lowers the glass. "But blaming war doesn't work either. Of course."

The glass hits the tabletop with a small solid thunk.

"Because then people try to put a stop to it for good, and they only ever mean it for the best, and god only knows what they'll do next time."

"You know, putting a stop to war for good--" Hawkeye eyes him speculatively, tiredly. "Some people might think that was a good thing. Crazy, I know."