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Movie nights were universal, it seemed. M*A*S*H* nights even more so. Once Stone realized just how absorbed shadow got in the first season and a half, he made it a point to watch a few episodes with him, every Thursday. Each Equipped with a bowl of ice cream, which wound up long gone by the time the fourth episode of the night started.
Stone leaned on one armrest of the couch, with a bag of yarn at his feet and a pile of squares on the coffee table. Shadow is sitting a little ways in front of him on top of an ottoman, leaning forward like he could make it to the 4077 M*A*S*H* camp just by wishing.
As the operating room, and consequently Henry Blake, get the notice that Henry is going home, Stone works away at a crocheted square. He’d finished the stack of red ones last week and now was now trying to make a stack of black squares to match. Each one had a fried egg on the front. Stone is wearing a melancholic smile, nearly identical to the one that Shadow wore each time the theme began.
The laugh track draws Shadow back to the screen. Frank is still bumbling about, Margaret trying to convince him that he’ll bring order back to the 4077. Shadow curls in on himself, looking away from the screen as the two start necking.
Stone tosses him a blanket, royal and light blue striped together. Dandelion yellow stars dot the corner held close. When Stone first gave it to Shadow, his first reaction was to teleport clear out into the woods, home and loss tangling together and threatening to overwhelm him entirely.
He’d come back to the House and made a beeline to stone to thank him. Every M*A*S*H night, at some point, he’d pull the blanket around himself, holding those stars close to his heart.
Frank blows the whistle to assemble everyone in the camp, pulling Shadow out of his reverie. Henry walks out to say goodbye, briefcase in hand. He’s wearing a dark blue pinstripe suit, red silk tie, and white fedora,- all his Sunday best to go back to his picket-fence family in Nebraska. Everything gets to be normal for him again. He waves goodbye to the camp, wishing them the best. But the rest of the 4077 continues on in Uijeongbu.
Shadow never made it past season 2 with Maria. They’d started watching by snooping around, spying on the other staff members on the base as they watched partway through season 1. By the start of season 2, they’d been allowed to sit down and watch with the staff members on base. They’d make a game out of how best to censor Frank and Margaret’s affair, now that they had little eyes watching. But life at the 4077 won’t stop now that Henry has left, and life in Green Hills keeps on going, regardless of the grief of the inhabitants. Clutching the stars at the corner, Shadow returns his focus to the screen, trying to will his thoughts to happier memories.
Everyone is in the operating room again, because life doesn’t stop. All in white, all masked, some splattered with blood on their aprons from the bodies on the tables.
Radar rushes in, green fatigues standing out in the sea of white linens, no mask on his face, no gloves on his hands. Trapper reprimands him, telling him to mask up. Hawkeye jokes about it being his discharge from the army. But Radar just takes a shaky inhale, holding the note in his hands, and starts to read.
“Lieutenant Col- Lieutenant Blake’s plane-” he pauses, but the 4077 needs to know. “was shot down over the Sea of Japan. It spun in. There were no survivors.” It takes everything in Radar not to cry as he breaks the news to the camp that held Blake in such high regard.
The operating room falls silent. No one dares to breathe. Shadow doesn’t either. But Hawkeye looks down, still devastated, at the body cut open before him. He picks up a scalpel, and the surgeons and nurses get back to work.
“MASH 4077 bids Henry Blake a reluctant and affectionate fairwell.”
It’s not fair.
Radar adored Blake. Less than 20 minutes ago, they’d been joking around about how Blake had taken out Radar’s appendix.
It’s not fair.
Blake was a good doctor, who was a goofball who tried to keep the 4077 up and running so that they could help as many people as possible. As close to a saint in surgical garb as there ever was.
It’s not fair.
“Shadow?”
Shadow whips around, having to make a conscious effort to not tear apart the stars so near to his heart with his claws. In the process though, the blanket starts to slip from how it sits draped around him.
“It’s not- He didn’t-” Shadow starts, breathing harder and harder. “He’s not even real. How can it feel like I’ve lost him?” Shadow looks up at Stone, sitting so small on that ottoman, an island in the middle of the living room.
“It’s okay, this is what stories do. It’s what good stories do.” Stone offers, righting the blanket around Shadow’s shoulders. “But even if Henry isn’t real, what you’re feeling is. Do you have names for any of it?” Shadow takes a few steadying breaths.
“It feels like losing someone else, but it hurts a bit less. Like I’ve lost a connection to the past. We never made it to this point. I would have been asleep by the time this episode aired.” Shadow says, through the lump in his throat.
“But, Henry is a story.” counters Stone. “And stories live differently than people.”
Shadow takes a deep breath. Another. Meets Stone’s eyes. “Thank you.”
Shadow gets up off the ottoman, handing Stone two of the corners of the blanket. Working in tandem, they fold the blanket, gently laying it in the ottoman’s storage.
“Why Absynnia?” Shadow asks. Long after the ice cream bowls have made their way to the sink.”
“I’m not sure.” Stone stops, contemplating, then looks back towards the TV. “House? Do you know?”
The TV flickers to life, displaying a few definitions. The one it settles on defines “Abyssinia” as 1920s slang, for “I’ll be seeing you.”