Scar Tissue
Title: Scar Tissue
Pairing: Sledge / Snafu, Mary-Frank Sledge
Rating: T
Disclaimer: Based on the fictional representations, not the actual namesakes, as portrayed in HBO's The Pacific. I am not making money with this.
Warnings: Spoilers up to the end of the series
A/N: I have never spent any time in Louisiana, so please forgive me for butchering the accent.
Summary: But Mary Frank also knew that if broken bones were left to heal on their own, they often hat to be re-broken because they would heal crooked. And she didn't want her boy to heal the wrong way.
Mary Frank knew that she was a little too concerned for her boy. That she maybe should stop pushing and give Eugene the time he needed to heal. But she also knew that if broken bones were left to heal on their own, they often hat to be re-broken, because they would heal crooked. And she didn't want her boy to heal the wrong way.
Edward could not understand her worry. Eugene was her boy - her baby - and he shouldn't hurt. She didn't know what Eugene had seen and done during his time as a soldier - a marine, she silently corrected herself, a marine - but from what Edward and Sidney had told them and from what little snippets of newspaper she collected, she knew that it was bad.
So she tried to comfort him. But Eugene didn't want her consolation. He pulled back whenever she touched him, as if afraid that he would somehow taint her with all that invisible blood still coating hands. He did not want to talk to her, not even about the time he spent in Beijing, afraid that he would somehow destroy the image of the boy he knew she still held dear in her heart. Her husband had told her about this. He tried to tell her that Eugene would no longer be the boy who stole cookies from the baking tray or drove into town on weekends and enjoyed laughing and joking with his friends. He had seen it all before.
But Edward came back from Europe and he talked to her about the war, his friends and the girls and told her it made him feel better - to be heard, to be accepted, even though he did unspeakable things. He married and got a job - he healed. Why didn't Eugene understand that she would help him - could help him?
The first step, she thought, was to do something. Whenever her mind was plagued with pictures of the war - with pictures of her boys not coming home - she found herself something to do and set her mind to it. She could forget and retain hope. She wanted him to find a job, get his life back. But Eugene was contend doing nothing. He didn't want to understand her way of thinking.
She tried to reason with him. She tried to talk to him, the way she talked to Edward. She tried to heal him through a mother's touch. But it was as if he didn't even see her. When he broke down the day his father took him into the woods to hunt - something he always had enjoyed before the war - she decided that she could no longer watch him shuffle around the pieces his mind had broken into. She decided to take matters into her own hands, just as both her sons had done when they decided to go to war.
She reread all the letters Eugene had sent them carefully. She wrote down every name he mentioned, and crossed out those that didn't appear again and those that were wounded or killed. She was left with only a few.
She contacted the Marines and asked for their addresses. They couldn't give her much, for she herself wasn't and had never been enlisted. But she knew enough to contact local authorities. It took patience and some bribing money, but money had never been an issue in her family, and then, one day after almost four months after Eugene's return, she took three envelopes down to the post office one Wednesday she went into town. The wording of each letter was the same. She carefully introduced herself as the concerned mother of Eugene Sledge and described her son's agony: his nightmares, his breakdown, his refusal to talk and even touch. She asked for help. She asked them to help her son like they did during the war - she begged them to make sure he survived this war against his mind and conscious like they made sure that he survived the war against the Japanese, because she couldn't even begin to understand what he went through. She asked them to bring back her son who left so many months ago to become the troubled man he now was.
She wrote down her address and her telephone number and asked the servants to only call her if wasn't a patient or a friend of Eugene on the line. She didn't want him to know.
She received two letters in response. One came from Texas, the other from California. They both told her the same thing, even though in different wording. She should give Eugene time to adjust, let him heal on his own pace, that some needed more time than others, especially when they fought as long as her son. She was told that Eugene had a strong spirit that would not break, but bend to accommodate everything he has been through. Wishes of good luck ended each letter, signed with a name and a military rank.
She then realized that these men she had written to had their own demons and night terrors to fight and that they, too, had a hard time adjusting to civilian life. She did not write back.
She waited for another month, but did not expect to hear from the last marine she had contacted. He seemed to have been the closest to Eugene, someone he looked up to because he had already fought in previous battles when Eugene joined his unit. He was the one her son spoke the most fondly of in his letters, but also the one he was the most concerned about. She realized that not every man had become a soldier because of his duty to his country - she realized that there were also those who had nothing else.
She had given up hope to ever hear from him, when one day, when Eugene had wandered off into the forests and hills behind their mansion to think, Lilly came onto the patio where she was sitting and told her someone was on the phone for her.
She got up and felt relieve wash over her because she was no longer alone, there were others who wanted Eugene to heal, to become whole again. Her fingers shook when she picked up the receiver.
"Hello?", she said, her voice wavering. For some time, there was no answer.
"Mrs Sledge? Ah'm sorry ah took so long ta call ya. Had some sh- stuff ta take care of first."
"I had to sort myself out", she heard. "I can't heal Gene when I'm broken too."
"Are you...?", she asked.
"Ah'm sorry, Ma'am," he drawled like only a boy from the Deep South could drawl. "Ah'm Merriell Shelton, Ma'am. Ah got yo' letter."
For the first time in what felt like months, Mary Frank breathed.
Thank you for your time!