Work Text:
Daniel let himself imagine the moment for weeks, as soon as he heard about the ceasefire.
He stood at the arrivals gate in Boston, hat twisting between his hands, eyes scanning every uniform that emerged. He had not slept the night before in excitement. Every moment of the drive down had felt like a countdown.
He was looking for a tall, loose-limbed young man with dark hair, bright blue eyes, and a grin already forming around some irreverent remark about the Army’s sense of style.
The soldiers began to file through.
Daniel stepped forward, searching faces eagerly. He saw joy, saw exhaustion, saw men clinging to wives and sweethearts, sometimes both. He saw canes, slings, lost limbs, haunted expressions.
He did not see his son.
A thin man stood near the wall, uniform hanging awkwardly from his frame. His shoulders curved inward, as if he were folding in on himself. His hair, what Daniel could see, was heavily threaded with gray. His face looked carved down to its bones.
Daniel’s gaze brushed over him in pity and moved on.
He took a step forward, peering past him across the sea of faces in the terminal. He heard a shriek of laughter from the other side.
And then...
“Dad?”
The voice was rough and quiet.
Daniel turned back.
The man by the wall had lifted his head. And there they were.
Older, exhausted. But unmistakably Hawkeye’s blue eyes.
Daniel stared. His mind refused it at first. This couldn’t be his boy. His son had left with dark hair and easy laughter. This man looked a decade older than his years.
“Ben? Is that you?” Daniel breathed.
Recognition flickered fully now. A faint, crooked attempt at a smile.
Daniel closed the distance in two strides and gathered him up. The impact shocked him, the sharpness of shoulder blades, the narrowness of his back.
He held his son fiercely and wept into his graying hair.
“I’m sorry,” he choked. “I didn’t... I walked right past you. My boy.”
Hawkeye’s arms came around him slowly. “It’s okay, Dad,” he murmured. “I hardly recognize me nowadays either.”
On the drive back toward Crabapple Cove, Daniel couldn't stop himself from talking.
Hawkeye sat beside him, fingers running along the brim of Daniel’s hat in his lap, staring out at the coastline sliding by. The late light caught the gray at his temples. It made him look worn out.
“The Thompsons repainted the marina. Looks worse than before, if you ask me. And Mrs. Collins’ daughter had a baby last month. Loud little thing, from what I hear. Keeps the whole house awake.”
Hawkeye’s fingers stopped moving on the hat, the brim bent slightly beneath his grip.
“You won’t believe how quiet it’s been without you,” Daniel went on, filling the silence. “Though I suppose that might’ve been a blessing to some.”
A soft huff of breath. Almost a laugh.
Daniel smiled at that and kept going, filling the space with town gossip, with ordinary things, with life.
When the truck hit a pothole and jolted, he glanced over.
Hawkeye’s head had tipped against the window. His eyes were closed.
He was asleep, his grip on the hat loosened.
Daniel’s throat tightened. He lowered his voice instinctively, though there was no need.
“Rest, son,” he said softly. “You just rest.”
Daniel had always imagined Hawkeye would want a parade. Music. A party to end all parties. The kind of debauched merriment that would be gossiped about in the Courier for years.
But now he wasn’t so sure.
Word spread fast that Hawkeye was home, and by evening Mrs. Collins had already sent over a blueberry pie. As had Mrs. Jones. The mayor stopped by the next morning with a handshake and a lengthy speech prepared.
He turned them all away gently, promising a debutante ball when Hawkeye felt up to it.
“He’s tired,” he said. “He's fine, just tired.”
Hawkeye slept through the first twenty-four hours. When he woke, he moved like someone relearning how to walk. The following afternoon, Mr. Jackson’s Chevy backfired outside. Hawkeye flinched, knocking over his cup of coffee. His hands shook as he reached to clean it up.
Later that evening, Daniel watched him at the kitchen table, pushing scrambled eggs around his plate.
“You used to eat like a lumberjack,” Daniel said lightly.
“Army food is a great diet plan,” Hawkeye replied, absently, tapping his fingers.
The humor was there. But it felt placed carefully, like a tool instead of a reflex.
Daniel saw it clearly now, the hollowness in his son’s cheeks, the way his wrists looked thin when he reached for his coffee. By the third day, Daniel’s worry drove him to action.
They went to the clinic.
Twenty pounds underweight. His ribs and spine were visible. Anemic and malnourished. Army diet indeed.
Daniel gripped the edge of the desk with worry as he read the blood test results from Portland two days later, but the rest was clean. No lingering infections or diseases.
They could work with that.
That night Daniel brought home the largest lobster he could find, straight from the docks of Crabapple Cove, fresh bread still warm from the oven, butter he’d churned himself.
Hawkeye stared at the spread.
Then he ate, without delicacy or politeness, devouring it. The bread disappeared. The lobster shell piled high. Butter glistened on his fingers.
Daniel pretended not to notice the speed, the intensity. But when color returned to his son’s face, and he smiled as he helped himself to another slice of bread, something in his chest eased.
“Well, that... that was obscene,” Hawkeye sighed, sitting back. Daniel laughed for the first time since Boston.
The bigger changes revealed themselves in quieter ways.
The following morning, as they sat on the porch watching the tide rolling in, Daniel cleared his throat.
“I suppose,” he began carefully, “you’ll be looking for hospital positions in the city soon. Boston could use a surgeon like you. Big opportunities.”
He tried to keep his tone neutral. Supportive.
Hawkeye didn’t answer immediately.
Instead, he watched the gulls bobbing on the water. The familiar sweep of shoreline.
“I don’t think I want the city any more,” he said finally.
Daniel blinked.
“I was thinking…” Hawkeye swallowed. “If you’d have me, I could work with you in the clinic. Crabapple Cove’s got enough broken bones and stubborn fishermen to keep me busy.”
Daniel stared at him.
Before the war, Hawkeye had talked about big teaching hospitals, about surgical fellowships, about escaping to anywhere but this small town that had once felt too confining for his enormous spirit and heart.
“Are you sure?” Daniel asked quietly.
Hawkeye’s blue eyes met his with certainty. There was no restlessness in them now.
“I’ve seen enough of the world for several lifetimes,” he said. “I’d rather be here, if that’s all right with you. Making sure you’re home on time, and not terrorising the ladies of Crabapple Cove, that kind of thing.”
Daniel had to look away for a moment because the joy that surged up was too large to contain.
“All right with me?” he repeated thickly. “Son, there’s nothing in this world I’d like better.”
And yet, even in his delight, he understood that this wasn’t the impatience of youth redirected. War had not just aged his son; it had shifted his compass.
For decades, the house had always creaked with familiar sounds, the wind off the water, the settling of beams. Now there were new noises that Daniel listened out for. Restless pacing. The soft thud of a door closing at odd hours. Once, a muffled sob.
A week after his return, Daniel found Hawkeye sitting at the kitchen table long after midnight, staring at nothing in the dark.
Daniel poured two cups of coffee and sat opposite him, lighting the candle on the table.
“You want to tell me about it?” he asked quietly.
Hawkeye’s jaw tightened in the flickering light. For a moment, Daniel thought he’d deflect with humor again.
Instead, his son’s hands began to tremble.
“At the end, there was a bus,” he said without preamble. “Us and some villagers. We were hiding from enemy patrol.”
Daniel leaned forward.
“There was a baby,” Hawkeye continued, voice thin. “It wouldn’t stop crying. I told the mother to keep it quiet.” His breathing grew uneven. “I thought she was smothering a chicken. That’s what I told myself. That’s what I wanted to believe.”
Daniel closed his eyes.
“I know...” Hawkeye whispered. “She made that choice. Not me. But I told her to keep it quiet, otherwise we would've all been dead.”
Daniel felt the weight of his son’s guilt pressing down, unbearable in its intensity.
“They sent me to a hospital after,” he added, tracing the rim of the coffee cup with his finger. “Said I needed rest.”
Daniel rose and pulled him into his arms.
Hawkeye shook against him, the careful composure of the past week finally splintering.
“You were trying to save everyone,” Daniel said fiercely. “That’s who you are. That’s who you’ve always been.”
“But I couldn’t,” Hawkeye choked.
“No,” Daniel agreed softly. “You couldn’t.”
They stood there a long time.
Finally, Daniel held Hawkeye’s face between his hands.
“We’ll recover together,” Daniel said, his own tears falling freely now. “One day at a time. You’re home. And I’m so glad you’re home, Ben.”
Outside, the tide rolled in against the shore of Crabapple Cove, steady and unrelenting. Inside, Daniel felt Hawkeye relax into him as they held onto each other.
And for the first time since Hawkeye stepped on that plane to the other side of the world three years before, Daniel felt hope.