Nota Bene: Decidedly different from my usual stories but hopefully still interesting. The opening is a little darker than usual but things iron themselves out.

In this (very AU) timeline Mattie reconciles with her father months earlier than in the show, hence the date discrepancy. Furthermore, I am taking some liberties (besides the obvious) with some of the characters but I feel that they are in keeping with what was shown on screen, I am just developing it further.

Lastly, I am not a Mac-basher and I liked AJ (at least most of the time) but neither is really at their best here at least at first so be warned!

This Present Past

Prologue

It ended startlingly fast after all those years.

One minute JAG Ops was full of conversations, quiet bursts of laughter and alive with activity, then with the flick of a channel the life had drained away as a world smashed to bits around them.

Life had just began inching its way back to normality. The Commander was back of course and that alone took away three quarters of the tension that had been eddying uneasily around HQ since the Paraguay debacle.

Things were still subdued; the newer staff were still trying to understand the flow of the office and the enigmatic and soft-spoken Commander that sat all unconsciously at its heart. The Colonel and Commander Turner simply seemed glad that he was back to bearing the brunt of the Admiral's ill-tempers. The older staff both officers and enlisted were trying to adjust for him being back albeit more worn and quieter than ever before.

It is course very hard to see your heroes tumbled from their pedestals and trampled on and most were still not quite comfortable around him. After all how exactly do you reconnect with an officer so far senior to you in rank? Once the Admiral's protégée, now apparently on the very bottom of that officer's list of favorite persons. The fact that scuttlebutt abounded and facts didn't regarding said officer's journey from the dubious honor of protégée to the bottom of the barrel did nothing to make the transition easier.

The facts were simple and few, the Commander had been accused of murder, acquitted, resigned to rescue the Colonel, emphatically not asked to return, worked for the CIA, been dumped by the CIA, vanished for a bit, reappeared as a civilian and suddenly returned. It was enough to confuse even the most level-headed even without further mysteries like why the Colonel apparently hadn't been able to stand the man who rescued her for months at a time, why the Admiral had done such a complete one-eighty on his best officer (his voice had been most penetrating the day the Commander had not come back) and of course everyone's favorite, why said Commander had come back and apparently resigned himself to all resulting humiliations?

In fact, no one seemed able to figure the Commander out any more, he had always been guarded about himself but despite his status as office legend he had usually been both cheerful and polite to both enlisted and officers. He was still polite, but far less obviously cheerful, he smiled but they seldom reached his eyes, if he was guarded before he was now a full-blown enigma.

The only constant from both "before" and "after" seemed his single-minded determination in pursuing his cases.

Now it seemed that things would never have the chance to reach normality. Because there on the bullpen monitors was a very familiar and very tall figure who should have been safely on his way back to the states with Bud Roberts. Jen Coates slipped away quietly to alert the Admiral and thus happily missed her mentor being backhanded by his captors.

It was a long week. What news the Admiral had managed to scrap together wasn't good. The plane that both officers had been on had been hijacked by extremists, the Commander had been in uniform at the time and unfortunately stood out. Bud was apparently yet undiscovered to Harriet's somewhat guilty relief.

By the end of that first week the entire staff was in mental shambles. Those that knew and liked the Commander were frazzled and emotionally weary. Those that didn't know him as well or had disliked him were quickly changing their minds. It easy to dislike someone when they annoyed you in court or simply over-shadowed you in the office. It was much harder to muster up those feelings when you saw that legend prove itself in heart-rending color three times a day on screen.

And it was next to impossible to resent someone whose mother showed up at the office dignified and sorrowful to see if there was news of her son's possible release.

By the time the attempted escape occurred the whole staff not excluding the Admiral was a mess. More than half the prisoners got away; unsurprisingly the Commander was not one of them. Everything after that was a blur.

Like the day that the nightmare had begun two weeks earlier it played itself out with surreal swiftness. One minute the remaining captives were sitting quietly together during a rare break in the on-going questioning and ill-treatment and the next even that last facade of normality had dissolved.

Someone in charge had apparently finally run out of patience and with seeming nonchalance the terrorist leader gave his ultimatum. Until they started cooperating each day would count another captive dead. There was scorn in his voice as he asked for a volunteer to be the first. The JAG staff watched in horror the remaining men glanced at each other.

Afterwards they agreed that they hadn't really been surprised when the tall and worn captive with ripped Commander's stripes had nodded slightly and stood proudly for the last time. There was a collective hush as he looked straight at the camera and gave the fastest and final closing argument of his life.

And not even Harriet and Jen closed their eyes when triple shots rang out seconds later and the Commander slipped silently to the ground his eyes dark with pain and an odd little half-smile on his lips.

Six hours later the rest of the hostages were rescued by SEAL Team 2, the members of which were horrified to find the lawyer who had once HALO jumped with them bloodless and dying.

The Commander had bought the extra time with his blood.