Her hair is long, longer than BJ remembers, longer than the latest picture sent to him shows. It curls, too, and BJ threads his fingers through the curls, bringing them to his nose and inhaling deeply.

Sweet. Peg smells sweet, with an underlying scent of baking flour and peaches. She made spiced peach pie for Erin, BJ remembers, as the sleeping Peg unconsciously moves to return his touch. Peg always smells like this, whether it be kitchen smells or garden smells or even the astringent smell of cleaning solution. She smells like home.

BJ loves it, loves her scent, what is purely Peg. But even underneath the flour and the earthy smell from the garden, there's always that sour hint of blood, gin, and sweat.

He can't get away; it follows him everywhere. He's begun taking showers three, four times a day, scrubbing until his skin glows pink, trying to get the stench of Korea off of him. The smell permeates everything; he remembers doing to Hawkeye what he's now doing to Peg; twining their legs together, arms tangled like they'd never be separated, BJ's nose pressed to the back of Hawkeye's neck. And there, always there between them would be that smell of smoke and disinfectant.

Hawkeye always smelled of gin and antiseptic, except when they'd just come from an OR session. Then Hawkeye would pull BJ to him and BJ would stand there with Hawkeye's arms around his shoulders, his face at the smooth curve where Hawkeye's neck connected to his shoulder, as he inhaled the thick odor of blood and metal, braided together and as inseparable as Hawkeye and BJ.

It's there, always there, following him like his own shadow, that memory of Korea, the things he did there and the things done to him. Korea has faded in his mind, the sights becoming blurry, the sounds dissolving to static, the feel of flesh not his own no longer sliding through his fingers, the taste of the food thankfully no longer on his tongue. But the smell, the stench is still there; it's infected him from the outside in and he knows he'll be smelling of Korea until the day he dies.

Peg doesn't know, of course. He knows that she wonders at his constant need for cleanliness, the almost obsessively constant washing of his hands, but she doesn't know. She doesn't know why he can't stand to have gin in the house, doesn't know why he insists that his surgeon's scrubs be washed twice a day.

He knows. He knows because everywhere he turns there is Korea, and inextricably linked to Korea will always be Hawkeye. Hawkeye is always beside him, silently pacing along beside BJ's invisible shadow of Korea's smell.

Gin, smoke, blood, sweat, metal--it's an olfactory tapestry of death and tears, hanging on the wall of his mind. He clenches his eyes shut and breathes in Peg's aroma again, and under the peaches and the flour, underneath what is Peg, is Hawkeye.