Title: Free Lunch
Author: Am-Chau Yarkona
Rating: G
Disclaimer: Not my characters.
Summary: Five minute fic from the word "free--". Charles thinks.
Free lunch. No such thing as a free lunch, my father used to say, and in his cutthroat political world of campaigning and dinners that were exchanged for favours or social graces he was probably right.
At one time, I'd imagined that after this dreadful war was over I'd go back to that, to the opera and the banquets, to soft chairs and gentle music, to a genteel world where medicine was something one did casually, because it was respected rather than being useful. I found I couldn't. The 4077th changed me: there, lunch was terrible but it was given freely.
All that was asked in return was that you stayed. You did your work, for free, because it needed doing; and you got fed, given a share of whatever alcohol was around and the food packages from home, because you needed them as much as the next man.
I didn't understand that when I first arrived. I still don't understand why, in the mud and the brutal rules of the army, the 4077th was different—but I know it was, and I can't let that go.