Hawk's Fight with Buck

        (Alternative version of the fight scene from "Time of the Hawk")

by

Teresa Spanics

Chapter Nineteen

That night, Hawk fell into a restless sleep broken by nightmares of the dead calling out to him.  Hawk would dream he was back on Throm again.  He would find himself standing by the mass grave where the rest of his dead flock would appear and ask him to join them.  Hawk would find his wounds bleeding again and one of the elders would tell him he will soon be with them.  He would collapse onto the ground from blood loss and be pulled into the mass grave by the others who would tell him he is now home once more.  Hawk would wake up begging to be let go. He would find himself so exhausted that he would fall back to sleep again only to have the nightmares come to him once again.

But the worse of the nightmares was of Koori.  Hawk would dream he heard a knock on the door, got up to open it and saw Koori standing there.  Koori would run into his arms, but when Hawk touched her, blood would appear on her and she did not seem to notice until he told her.  Then Koori would vanish into the darkness with Hawk frantically searching for her until he came upon her grave.  He would wake up screaming her name.  But upon awakening to find himself alone only seemed to strengthen Hawk's desire to die so he could be with his beloved Koori.  The nightmares would repeat over and over to the birdman to the point Hawk found himself wishing longingly for death to come to him.

When Buck knocked on the door to Hawk's quarters, there was no reply.  An uneasy feeling came over him and he quickly overrode the lock on the door and hurried inside.  Looking around, Buck found Hawk huddled in a corner with his arms around his knees, a look of utter exhaustion plastered all over his face.

"Hawk!" Buck knelt down beside him.

"Buck?  I ... I thought ... you were someone else," Hawk said in a tired voice as Buck put his hand on his shoulder.

"Who?" Buck asked as Hawk struggled to his feet.

"It is not important.  I just need to sleep," Hawk said as he tried shrugging off exhaustion.

"Hawk!  It is morning and you look like you have been up half the night.  What's wrong?  Please tell me," Buck queried in a worried tone.

"I ... I thought you were Koori at my door," Hawk finally said.

"Bad dreams about Koori, isn't it?" Buck concluded.

"Yes and the rest of my people," sighed Hawk.

Buck helped Hawk back to the bed.  Hawk laid down with a tired groan.  "Do you want to talk about it?" Buck inquired gently.  "Sometimes talking about bad dreams can help to deal with them."

"How can I describe them?  Maybe it would have been better that I had died instead of lived.  Why else would I have these dreams?  The dead want me to join them," Hawk cried desperately before turning away to face the wall.

"Hawk, that is not true!"  Buck cried, making Hawk turn back to face him.

"Then what is the truth?!  What?!" Hawk yelled desperately as he sat back up facing Buck. Not trusting himself to speak, Hawk bowed his head for a moment.  "You should have let them kill me."

"What?!  Why?" Buck asked in a shocked voice.

"I am guilty of not saving my people.  Of not saving ... my mate.  I killed her.  I ..." Hawk sobbed as he put his head in his hands.

"Hawk!  Hawk, look at me," Buck ordered as he put his hands on Hawk's shoulders.

Hawk forced himself to look up, sobbing.  "I ... kill ..."

"Hawk, it was an accident.  Koori was trying to stop me when you grabbed my ship with your ship's talons.  You had no way of knowing she had undone the safety harness.  As for your people, you had no way of knowing that they were in any danger.  You have to stop blaming yourself," Buck said in a soothing tone of voice.  "I went through almost the same thing as you are going through.  I blamed myself for not being there.  I had to come to terms with the fact that there was no way I could have known what would happen to me or to my family and friends.  It is called survivor's guilt, Hawk.  When someone has survived a terrible event in which other people do not, the survivor feels guilty to have lived while others died when it appears that they should have lived also."

"You talk of it as if you had experienced this 'survivor's guilt'.  You have, haven't you, Buck," Hawk said in amazement as he forced himself to calm down. as realization was quickly dawning on him that Rogers had indeed suffered through what he was suffering.

"Yes, I have and I want to try and help you deal with it as I have done, if you will let me," Buck replied. 

"Yes, please help me," Hawk asked in a soft tone.

"Of course, that is what I am here for," Buck replied with a gentle smile.