Hair of the Dog

Radar had had a feeling when he first saw Hawkeye the other day when the other man had returned from R&R. It was a pretty strong feeling that there was something different with Hawkeye and that someone really needed to keep an eye on him. Generally, Radar listened to these kinds of feelings, so he’d been watching Hawkeye pretty closely ever since.

Hawkeye had said he didn’t remember what happened to him during most of his trip, which was maybe a little unusual but certainly not out of the question, after all the captain drank a lot. He’d been bitten by something that he didn’t remember being bitten by or what it was and he was assuming was a dog, and he didn’t actually tell Radar any of that, but sometimes Radar could hear or would just sorta know the stuff that people didn’t actually say out loud. Ever since then, though, it seemed like Hawkeye was different.

Sometimes now Radar would notice thoughts from Hawkeye that were weird or didn’t really make much sense to him, and usually he noticed that Hawkeye would notice them, too. Sometimes, more and more often as the days went by, Hawkeye would think or do something that reminded Radar of an animal; sometimes he’d notice a thought or feeling from Hawkeye that was just like an animal.

A canine animal to be more exact, which was funny seeing as he’d been bitten by something he assumed was a dog…

Hawkeye was a wolfman! Were wolfmen real? They could be, couldn’t they? Why wouldn’t they be? Really, there were probably weirder things that were real. He was real after all, with all his seeing and hearing and knowing things, and Henry Blake had been real and he’d been magic, like honest to God magic, not magic tricks magic. (Not that anybody else besides Radar knew and not that Henry had told him, Radar just knew and, of course, he didn’t let on that he knew anything.) But anyway, if they were real, then who was to say wolfmen weren’t real?

Radar wasn’t entirely sure, but the very idea just made him all the more certain that he needed to keep an eye on his friend.

--

Whatever had happened to Hawkeye in Tokyo several weeks ago was still happening to him. At least, he had to assume all of the strangeness he’d been continuing to experience could be reasonably traced back to that night. Although, regardless, he still didn’t know what to make of it.

He was still getting used to his bizarre heightened senses, particularly the nose, but he was adjusting surprisingly well. He seldom got overwhelmed in triage or OR anymore, and he had gotten pretty good at matching certain people to their scents (for whatever that was worth.) His ears were better than they’d been before as well, which he finally realized the third time he’d anticipated incoming wounded minutes before the others (well, the others excluding Radar, of course. Radar always seemed to know in advance somehow.) After that time, he’d stopped mentioning it when he heard things others didn’t or barely could.

He told no one about any of this. Truthfully, he didn’t know how to. He knew he’d just sound crazy anyway; often, he feared that maybe he was. Especially when he caught himself having strange thoughts and impulses, which seemed to be happening with increasing frequency as the weeks went by. His thoughts didn’t always feel all the way normal, all the way human.

Most recently, he’d developed a persistent feeling of restlessness, and since its onset it seemed like it only got more intense with each passing day, until it finally came to a head, presently feeling like it was swallowing him up. He was lost in it, a slave to it, and he didn’t know how to get rid of it. No matter how much he ran around, slept around, acted out, paced, pranked, drank, did anything, there was no relief for the strange pent up energy. Finally, it left him in a perpetually manic, hypersensitive state, a constant stirring in his head driving him on, keeping him from staying still or quiet for too long.

He was practically possessed by the bizarre urge to claw his way out of his own skin and run and run and run until he was far away from this stinking hellhole. It wasn’t at all a rational desire, seeing as he couldn’t run all the way home, but still, something inside him was screaming at him to escape. It was an almost primal feeling, and it manifested itself as a near constant itch just beneath his skin and that damn restlessness that he couldn’t shake.

Maybe this waking nightmare called war (or by some “a police action”) had finally cracked him. He had concluded early that morning (or late the previous night, sometimes he didn’t know one from another) while he was surrounded once again by the smell of blood, sweat, fear, and death (a cocktail worse than anything he imagined actual Hell had to offer, that for some reason he was now painfully aware of and couldn’t stop being aware of) that the war literally stunk. Why he had the misfortune of being suddenly able to smell its literal stench he didn’t know.

There were two things that stopped him from giving in to this newly developed nervous condition. One, it was physically impossible to escape the confines of his own skin no matter how much he felt the inexplicable need to. Two, there were too many people counting on him and too many people he cared about and loved here for him to give in to his apparent insanity and abandon them (especially considering he had no idea where the hell he’d end up if he tried to literally run away.) Although, if he were completely honest, it was mostly the physical impossibility that was currently stopping him.

Despite being sleep deprived, he was so desperately restless. Everywhere he went that day, sitting or even standing still was almost impossible. He really was making an effort not to act as erratic and unstable as he felt inside, but all the same he received looks that said he was being odd even by his usual standards. He couldn’t help it; he didn’t know what to do. Furthermore, his impulse control was practically nonexistent in this state.

“How are you not dead on your feet?” BJ asked incredulously at one point, “How are you even on your feet?”

At some point during their conversation, Hawkeye had apparently abandoned what remained of his lunch and stood up, but he hadn’t even noticed he was standing until his friend pointed it out. “I don’t know. I should be tired—I know I should be tired or part of me knows I should be.” His thoughts were racing faster than he knew how to keep up with, and it distracted him for a moment.

“Are you alright?” BJ asked, examining him with as much scrutiny as he seemed able to muster.

“Me? Alright? Yeah, I’m alright. Why wouldn’t I be alright? I mean, this morning was hell, and this place is hell, and it reeks like hell. It fucking reeks, literally speaking and figuratively speaking. And we’re all caged in it, and we can’t get out, and if we did where would we go, they won’t let us go home after all. And sometimes I just want to run screaming into the night, but it’s midday and where would I go if I did, and I can’t just leave all my friends here stuck in this hell without me.” He thought he heard BJ gently say his name, but another train of thought joined this one and he couldn’t get off the tracks.

“And if I ever found the men in charge of keeping us here and sending us more and more bodies to patch up so they can keep on keeping us here, I’d—” Fuck. He literally bit his tongue to stop himself from the string of violent speech and obscenities that rushed into his head and didn’t feel entirely like they’d come from him, but instead were yet another of those animalistic impulses that he’d been having.

Because he’d almost said a lot of really scary, definitely not “alright” things. Before he bit his tongue so hard he tasted his own blood, he’d very nearly said that if he ever encountered the men in charge of this damn war he’d taste their blood. He couldn’t shake the idea of sinking his teeth into their flesh and tearing it open, even though it made no sense; human teeth couldn’t do what he imagined doing, a human jaw didn’t even work that way. He’d fucking maul them one way or another, maybe even kill them, and he wouldn’t even feel remorse. Because after all, what caged animal ever feels remorse at biting back at those that torment them and their family? They’d hurt him and his pack and so many others, and the animal just under his skin wanted them to pay.

Rage was not completely foreign to Hawkeye; Korea had given him more anger than he’d previously known in his life on several occasions. But this, this was horrifying. Hawkeye was generally a pacifist, and he seldom ever felt inclined to physical violence, and now some part of him was telling him to viciously attack, maybe even murder, and that it would be right to do so.

He forced himself to sit down. He didn’t look at BJ, but he could feel the other man’s stare. “Okay,” he conceded, “Maybe I’m not alright, but let’s just keep that between you and me and whoever just happened to witness my almost making a scene just then.” Sitting still, remaining in the mess tent, trying to force himself to be quiet lest he say something truly insane was excruciating.

“Maybe I am just tired. I’m just the kind of tired that’s too tired to rest, too tired to know how tired I am. Can someone get so tired it goes around and circles back into un-tired territory? Because part of me wants to rest and part of me just wants to take a long walk and keep going until I forget myself or collapse, whichever comes first—”

“Whoa, whoa, Hawk, slow down,” BJ said sternly, and Hawkeye suddenly realized that BJ had uttered those exact words earlier during his previous rant but in a gentler tone that had evidently not fully reached Hawkeye the way BJ’s current tone did.

Hawkeye looked at his friend sheepishly. For just a moment, he felt brought back to himself enough to realize he’d gone off once again, and now he felt oddly exposed, self-conscious, and ashamed, which were all feelings he wasn’t really used to having. God, why was it so hard to just stop?

“You’re going a mile a minute—no, scratch that you’re going a hundred miles a minute. What’s going on with you? Are you on something?” BJ continued.

“I’m—I don’t know what I am,” Hawkeye confessed, “I’m probably just tired, really.” He wanted so much to believe that’s all it was, but he really didn’t believe that was it at all. He forced his words to go a bit slower as he spoke as best as he could. He didn’t want to trouble his friend with whatever this was, and even the weird animal voice (if it could be called a “voice” when it had no actual voice) in his head agreed with him on that. “I can’t even remember the last time I slept for more than three hours. Hell, I don’t know if I’ve slept that much in the past two days.”

This was true. There had been a lot of wounded in the last day or so, and that coupled with whatever sort of breakdown he was apparently having had meant little sleep for Hawkeye. So, he wasn’t really lying, just leaving out a few details.

“I’m gonna go for a walk and see if I can’t wear off whatever kind of second or tenth wind this is so I can maybe get some actual rest,” Hawkeye said, allowing himself to stand once more. Part of him really wanted BJ to join him, but he knew his friend was exhausted and that it was probably better that he tried to keep to himself until whatever state he was in passed. Unfortunately, this state came with impulses that told him he really didn’t want to be alone, but he’d just have to try to ignore those and all the other unwanted thoughts and urges as well.

--

Hawkeye paced the floor of the swamp, despite the stares he drew from his bunkmates. He briefly entertained the idea of going for a walk, but he had done that already, and it was going to be dark soon. No, it was probably better to try to stay put, stay here with his pack...Pack? Friends, his friends, even if they were judging him harshly and worrying over him in ways he didn’t care for.

He had hoped at some point he would stop feeling these wild, unstable, and abnormal sensations, even if it only stopped due to exhaustion, but presently the sun was about to set and if anything, the feelings were worse than ever. He was almost like a caged animal, like a wild animal trapped inside a human body. He had no idea why he felt that way, but as the day passed he had found his drive to question it had diminished.

“Hawk, c’mon, you’re wearing me out just watching you,” BJ said, his voice bringing Hawkeye back to reality for a moment. “Why don’t you just sit down and have a drink or something?”

Drinking! Of course! Why hadn’t he thought of that? Probably because he’d been having trouble thinking clearly or because wild animals didn’t drink or because drinking meant stopping and he hadn’t been doing much of that today. Drinking could solve everything though, couldn’t it? He could get so drunk he forgot to feel crazy, so drunk he could stop moving, so drunk he could pass out for a while.

“Good thinkin’, Beej,” he replied, heading towards the still, “Now, why the hell didn’t I think of that? I must really be losing it.” He hadn’t really meant to say that last statement out loud, but his impulse control was currently out the window.

He couldn’t wait to numb all the crawling his skin was doing at the moment. Idly, he scratched at one of his arms, pausing in front of the still. The unsettling sensation was only getting worse, so he quickly poured a glass of gin and tried to ignore it.

He shuddered. For the first time since all his insanity started, it felt like there might actually be something physically wrong with him. He spilled his drink as he began to shake uncontrollably.

“Hawk, you alright?” BJ asked with concern.

“I don’t know,” Hawkeye answered honestly, “I don’t know what’s going on. I—” Various muscles throughout his body convulsed, and he fell to the ground with a pained noise.

“Hawk!” BJ cried and went immediately down on the ground beside him.

“Pierce?!” Charles followed suit. To BJ, he said, “it appears as though he’s having some sort of fit.”

A fit was putting it lightly. He had almost totally lost control of his body, and it felt like every muscle he had kept spasming. Mentally speaking, he was still all there but barely.

Charles and BJ were trying to hold him down, presumably to keep him from harming himself accidentally, and probably also so they could check him over. He didn’t like it though. He didn’t want to be held down. He didn’t like the feeling of being restrained. He struggled against them as best as he could.

“Hawkeye, are you conscious? Can you talk to us?” BJ asked him.

He was, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t find the words. He was usually full of words...but now they were...his thoughts were becoming simpler. “Beej,” he managed. He struggled with the rest.

“Hawk?”

“Whatever this episode is, if it does not end soon, we may need to sedate him,” Charles said, “Do you have any idea what might have brought this on?”

“No idea,” BJ said, “We’ll probably have to do some blood work, especially if we can’t get him to come to and talk to us.” He tried addressing Hawkeye again, “Hawk? Hawkeye?”

Their conversation was becoming harder to follow, but Hawkeye soon heard them shouting. When he could see the two of them for all his moving about (and when his eyes weren’t tightly shut from the discomfort of whatever was going on with him), he could see horrified and confused expressions.

“Hawk?!”

“What on Earth?!”

His face felt wrong somehow, as did his teeth. He cried out, but the sound changed to something not quite human sounding. His clothing didn’t quite fit in several places all of a sudden, mostly they hung on him and caught him in a disorienting trap of fabric.

“What the hell?!”

“What is the meaning of this?! How is this possible?!”

“Forget the why and how, what is happening?!”

Trapped. Restrained. Frightened. He needed to escape, but he couldn’t. He thrashed about, but strong arms still held him. Fight then flee. He attacked. The arms released him, and he was free once he finished wriggling out of the last of the cloth.

Run. Run. Run. Run. He dashed out of the tent, and he did not stop until he was far away from the camp.

--

Charles cried out in pain and immediately withdrew from— well, whatever it was that had replaced Hawkeye— and BJ rapidly followed suit to avoid the same fate. For a moment, BJ just stood in place, overwhelmed and hopelessly confused; he didn’t know whether to worry about the black canine beast that had somehow taken Hawkeye’s place (or that Hawkeye had somehow turned into or whatever the hell had just happened) or Charles who had just been bitten by Hawkeye or whatever Hawkeye had become or been replaced by.

Or had any of that even just happened at all? It made no sense and was impossible. He would surely wake up soon, and he wasn’t sure if he’d tell the others about this dream or not.

Then, the gravity (if not the reality) of the situation hit him. Charles was hurt and was bleeding quite a bit. They would have to worry about Hawkeye and the beast that somehow might have been Hawkeye and what was real and what wasn’t later.

No, what they needed to worry about now was getting Charles fixed up and figuring out how the hell they were going to explain what had just happened to anyone else.