Work Text:
Tears
When she reads the letter, the record of a tumultuous first twenty-four hours in Korea, of a day that nearly shattered BJ and the friend who helped him stay in one piece, when she first reads about Hawkeye Pierce and realises he has already found a home in BJ's heart, Peggy cries.
She knows that for most women in this situation, the tears would be of a different kind. For many, the fear would be of betrayal or infidelity (Peg knows BJ too well to think he would hurt her deliberately, or that if he stumbled it would mean anything more than simple human frailty), or disgust at the object of his affection (Peg is neither stupid nor narrow-minded enough to be surprised that her husband is attracted to both men and women or to find the idea distasteful).
Peggy doesn't cry for those reasons. She doesn't even cry because her husband is thousands of miles away, not really. She wishes he weren't, she wishes he were safe here with her, of course. She wishes he could watch Erin growing up. She wishes for so much more than letters.
But she cries because she knows her husband, her BJ, is hurting, and she is too far away to comfort him, and she is not naïve; she knows that BJ, in the chivalrous way she rolls her eyes at but that gives her comfort all the same, is downplaying the awfulness of his first couple of days, is trying to protect her from the worst of what he's going through, and is being hard on himself for clinging to the one bright spot he's found in a dark place.
So she cries, because she loves him, and it hurts her too. Then she wipes her eyes, puts Erin down for a nap, and gets out her writing paper.
~ fin ~