"Hawkeye" Pierce (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
notinflictthem) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
ph_logs2023-11-10 06:36 pm
notinflictthem) wrote in ph_logs2023-11-10 06:36 pm
The bathroom tiles were cool against my hand
CHARACTERS: Hawkeye and you! Yes, you!
DATE: November
LOCATION: Hawkeye’s Clinic
SITUATION: Settling in, making waves, shaking hands, making friends
WARNINGS: Blanket warning that war and injury may come up
Hawkeye wakes up to sunlight instead of Radar yelling for helicopters. He has his coffee unhurried, plans out his day. No Frank to yell at him for not shaving, but no Trap to chew the fat with, either. Nobody to complain with about breakfast. It’s too quiet. If he doesn’t see a human person in the next hour, he’s going to start gnawing his own limbs off.
So from about 8am-6pm, the clinic is staffed. The sign out the front reads ‘Hawkeye’s Clinic, happy hour 6-7pm’, and underneath that, more recently, a smaller sign reads ‘100% satisfaction rate; just ask the survivors!’
Inside, Hawkeye is either cleaning, running his tabletop still for alcohol to disinfect with (or drink), or organising his small array of client notes.
If you actually visit during the signposted happy hour, the table in the middle of the clinic has a tablecloth draped over it, and Hawkeye stands there polishing the couple of glasses he owns. Someone should get him some decent barware. There’s a couple of stools, and he grins as you enter. He’s playing bartender. Indulge him?
After happy hour, the ‘bar’ gets packed up and the clinic gets scrubbed down. If you’ve got a standing invitation for cards, a date, or just want to check in on him off-hours, this is the time to do it. Find him out on his front doorstep with his nose in a book, leaning out the window with a martini in hand and watching the street, or doing something upstairs, the sound of a pleasant baritone muddling through something jazzy.
(Hit me!)
DATE: November
LOCATION: Hawkeye’s Clinic
SITUATION: Settling in, making waves, shaking hands, making friends
WARNINGS: Blanket warning that war and injury may come up
Press my corpse against the wall
Hawkeye wakes up to sunlight instead of Radar yelling for helicopters. He has his coffee unhurried, plans out his day. No Frank to yell at him for not shaving, but no Trap to chew the fat with, either. Nobody to complain with about breakfast. It’s too quiet. If he doesn’t see a human person in the next hour, he’s going to start gnawing his own limbs off.
So from about 8am-6pm, the clinic is staffed. The sign out the front reads ‘Hawkeye’s Clinic, happy hour 6-7pm’, and underneath that, more recently, a smaller sign reads ‘100% satisfaction rate; just ask the survivors!’
Inside, Hawkeye is either cleaning, running his tabletop still for alcohol to disinfect with (or drink), or organising his small array of client notes.
I told the band to leave without me
If you actually visit during the signposted happy hour, the table in the middle of the clinic has a tablecloth draped over it, and Hawkeye stands there polishing the couple of glasses he owns. Someone should get him some decent barware. There’s a couple of stools, and he grins as you enter. He’s playing bartender. Indulge him?
I'll get the next flight
After happy hour, the ‘bar’ gets packed up and the clinic gets scrubbed down. If you’ve got a standing invitation for cards, a date, or just want to check in on him off-hours, this is the time to do it. Find him out on his front doorstep with his nose in a book, leaning out the window with a martini in hand and watching the street, or doing something upstairs, the sound of a pleasant baritone muddling through something jazzy.
And if I make it to the mornin' (wildcard)
(Hit me!)
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“Chris Freeman? Yeah, I know ‘em. Great kid.” He replies, pausing for a swallow of his drink—then wrinkles his nose, staring at his glass.
“…huh. Good for what ails ya, but think I’ll stick with whiskey.” He muses, taking a more careful second sip.
“Anyway. Maine’s nice, I hear. Never got to visit when I was alive—and speaking of. You won’t lose no patients here, not to fret. One of the reasons I think folks like me ‘n Chris are here. Granted, I got a personal stake in one of the souls in this town, but when death takes a holiday? You prolly want a couple death entities around to help fix the problem.”
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"I don't even know where to start with that- the- okay, the dead part I get, the receptionist here told me I'm dead, sure, fine- what do you mean 'death entity'."
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He pauses for another sip of his drink, making less of a face this time. It's...something,, but maybe he could get used to the taste.
"I go by other names than the Shade--some fit, some are me bein' mistaken for the genuine article. Gentle Death, the Black Dog, Reaper of the Wayward...been mistaken for Satan 'n Hades a time or two, but Hades has his own pantheon and Satan's a prick. Beyond bein' lord of Hell, I mean."
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"Sure," he says vaguely, "sure. I mean- why not."
God is real and so is Hades and Satan and this guy was a God and now he's not but he's. Death? This is the prick who keeps taking his patients? Or- no, he's not from his world. Or is he?
Maybe give him a moment to try and work out where to slot this in his brain.
CW: substantial discussion of death and dying
"Sorrow's Shade--that's it in full, the name conferred on me by the Divine." he begins quietly. "Reaping a life's far different from collecting a soul, son, and that's my lot. I'm a death god, not Death himself--him? You're right to hate. He's got no mercy or compassion...he sees the mark of death laid on any man by Creation, he takes 'em. Me? If the mark's not bound--if that death ain't destined--I do my best to remove it. Guide the soul to safety and to longer life. If that death is set in stone, though?"
The Shade's features briefly twist with genuine sorrow.
"I won't ever call it blessed, but a lot can be done to ease the burden not just for the victim, but for the living. I warn them I can, I try to help 'em prepare themselves, and their survivors--and if they want, I give 'em somewhere to go beyond Heaven and Hell. Somewhere beyond judgement, where they can just...be. Have as close to a life as one can when the heart stops beatin'."
Reaching for his drink, the Shade takes a bracing swallow, then gestures at Hawkeye with it.
"And one of the areas I cover as a god is grief. The good doctors are always under that umbrella of my care."
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He breathes in, a little ragged.
"I've cut into more people than anyone has fingers and I have never- not ever- found anything like a soul. Ever. I've been there when people have passed, and all I've ever seen is someone dying."
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His answer is met with a small, grim smile.
"Then you've seen more souls 'n most, son. When you open up a man with clogged arteries or scars to slice into, the soul's in that tissue and all that build up. It's in the calluses on his hands and yours, the skin dried up from all that scrubbin' and sterilization. It's in the last breath of life and the first one after you get a heart goin' again. Hell, it's in the fact that you were there to see those folks die...maybe a procedure wasn't put to you specifically but you stepped up to help with? Sittin' by the bedside of someone wasn't gonna make it but you still bore witness? All those choices that mark a body, those feelings that compel us to act, those actions we perform cause they seem right. Those are the hidden corners where the soul lives, son. You can't see it when you cut a body open the same way you can't see their cells. Not without a microscope. Human eyeballs ain't built that way."
He pauses, his smile warming a little.
"Fun fact--folks like you are God's favorite. The ones who don't believe...he likes how curious you are, never stop askin' questions or lookin' for answers. You ain't ever closed off to learning more and changing your thinkin' like some of the faithful--gives him hope, he told me once."
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He just looks him dead in the eye and takes another swig of his martini.
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That's a promise. The Shade is sounding more and more like his Bubbe in moments where there was nobody else in the room in a way that is kind of freaking him out.
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"Big or little 'g?' Cause I'm the latter." he points out. "But? If the philosophical stuff bugs you, I'll lay off. But I make no promises 'bout the metaphysical. I'm mortal right now, but I am a practicing mage even so. Or, uh--do spells 'n haints raise your hackles, too?"
Yes, he's smirking over the rim of his glass. Yes, he is an asshole.
Sorry, Hawk.no subject
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Kids.
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