TITLE: The End of an Era
AUTHOR: VIDZ
TIMELINE: AU, decades in the future
DISCLAIMER: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc of the TV show JAG are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author of this fic. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: I can't believe I've actually written something that amounts to a Western!
It's not an uplifting, optimistic story; like already said, I call it an old style Western, almost like an eulogy to the United States that the pre-WWII generation still knew and whose rapid disappearance Johnny Cash mourned in many works. The romantic time and western movies where the hero makes a last stand against a superior force with the knowledge it will mean his end, but choosing to fight to the end rather than surrender and vegetate in submission. Ironically it's the type of end Mac raved over in S8 (or was it 7?).
Harm is notably different in this story than from the show, it's been several decades, life has not been kind to him and he is bitter, jaded and disappointed with what had happened with the world.
But don't take this story to mean I'm back to writing JAG. I'm not. I've been quiet for years now, not posting, but never made an official break with JAG even to myself. That's why this story, to serve as the closure of a large part of my life. It's been banging around in my head for a long time and just today I decided it would be a fitting farewell to this era of my life that spanned 20 years, both due to it's plot and due to it being the last story I had an inspiration for, much less desire to write.
My apology to my readers for leaving a few of my stories unfinished. But at least with over 200 stories published (230+ if also counting the ones I posted in other places and the ones I have deleted off fanfiction net for varios reasons during the years), the percentage of unfinished works is miniscule compared to too many other authors.
Not giving the finger to writing in general though, even if I don't have anything in the works right now nor any concrete plans.
SUMMARY: This was a story that came to me years ago when watching "The Simple Life of Noah Dearborn" which alerted me to the problematic touched upon by this story. The theme was then re-echoed by the excellent Canadian country song "Ride Forever" by Paul Gross, better known to US audiences as The Mountie from "Due South". The basic plot was also heavily influenced by many older American Western movies.
Forgive me if the narration is too stiff, too wooden or too slow, but it's been years since I've written anything and I'm rusty.
X
The sky is mostly black with a small scatter of gray far on the horizon.
The dawn is coming, slowly, but inevitably.
Harmon Rabb, Jr., the last of the Rabb line, shivers and tucks the blanket closer around his frail body. It's too early and too cold for him to be sitting out on the porch at this hour, but this night is special. His old joints ache from the temperature as well as the position he's been in for hours, but he ignores them.
The old blanket is heavy, older than him, going back several generations, all the way back to the time when people still made their own. Not out of some momentary fad or to brag to their friends about a new hobby, but out of necessity and because that was the way it was done. The time when they still made things to last, from blankets all the way to buildings, instead of being a cheap consumable like nowadays.
Easily and quickly replaced.
Like people. he thinks and smiles grimly to himself, without even an ounce of humor.
The combination of wood and steel lays heavily on his aching knees, an old hand caresses the oiled form gently as his thoughts turn to the near future.
Everything will be decided in just a few hours time. The eyes that once scanned the skies from a cockpit now cut over the yard to across the road from his property. The yellow and orange of the earth moving machines glint dully in the disappearing dark.
Such an irony.
He had dedicated his life to protecting the system that had now turned on him as the newest victim of never-satiated greed, didn't even know how many lives of people from other countries he had taken, destroyed homes with bombs he'd dropped from his Tomcat, enforced the will of his country's leadership with sword and with pen and with his litigational skill protected persons who belonged in front of International Criminal Court, all only for it to come down to this, to be stabbed in the back by the people and system he had protected, for a few dollars more.
Even though they were agents of people who wanted to take away everything he held dear for their own profit, he held no hate for the machines in his heart. They were only machines, robots, had no agency of their own, no ability to think and feel and make decisions. They sat there in neat rows, waiting for the workers to come in the morning and activate them when the men and women in slick, expensive suits showed up, accompanied by the sheriff, carrying papers.
Papers from court saying he is too old to make sane decisions, that greed and thirst for money of rich real-estate developers counts more than his desire to live out the rest of his days on the farm that has been his family's for almost 120 years, papers saying he is to be declared incapable of making decisions, stripped of all rights and possessions and thrown out of his own home as his house is torn down with bulldozers and his land flattened and turned into a shopping mall, into that greatest monument of consumerism he had served for 30 years.
But he won't lay down and die. He will fight against impossible odds for his right of freedom, right of choice, right to decide how to live, for his right to own and manage what is rightfully his. He doesn't have much hope of winning though. They will have remove him from this porch by force, he will not go willingly. And, thinking back to other cases like his that he's heard of and read about, they will be all too willing to use that force and will come prepared. No matter, makes no difference to him. He has lived a long life and he doesn't mind giving it protecting these most basic of human rights. Human rights that haven't been basic for a long time now.
Yes, he will go down, he has no doubt about it. This will be his last morning, this is why he has spent the entire night out on the porch, taking in the peace and quiet of this last place of serenity in the State, the sounds of the last few remaining wild animals on the property as they went about their lives ignorant of the little time they have left. He spent the night here to see his last sunrise, make peace with his decision and himself, with the ghosts of the people whose lives he had taken, with family members who have gone before him and were now waiting for him on the other end and to find the strength to do what has to be done.
Yes, he will go out, but at least he will go out fighting for freedom and justice, instead of submitting with a whimper and servitude.
THE END
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