Title: You Can't
Fandom: : MASH
Rating: T
Length: 266 Words
Content notes: Character Death! This ended up nothing like the prompt, but I swear that's where I started XP
Summary: Hawkeye gets back from another mission to an Aid Station


Hawkeye stared down at the sheet-covered stretcher tucked out of the way beside the mess tent. There was nothing he could do for the person beneath that sheet, but his eye kept being drawn to it. He wanted to get up, to go to it, pull down the sheet, and get to work.

Even before Korea, Hawkeye had never done well with the words "you can't." Here, he found them even more distasteful and soul wrenching, and even more necessary. Starting with "you can't save everyone." It tore at him every time they had to make that choice in Pre-Op or the OR, but it was the truth. And usually, he comforted himself with the knowledge that not trying to save one impossible case was really saving other lives that weren't as far gone.

Today he found no comfort in that thought.

This time, it wasn't "you can't save him but there are others."

This time it was "you can't save him because it was far too late even before the chopper arrived." This time it was "you can't save him even though you tried for two hours." This time it was "you can't wear yourself out on a lost cause, so we're tying you down to your own stretcher so that you stop bleeding everywhere."

This time it was Klinger, his medic, laying beneath that sheet, and Hawkeye only a few pints away from needing his own. This time there was absolutely nothing he could do.

But still, he couldn't look away from that sheet-draped form. From the man it had once been.

"You can't…"