A Life Lived at the Whistle:
Jessie Fan fiction based on GI Jessie- the thoughts of her father and his relationship with his dreamer daughter.
First Fanfiction-Please Review and be kind-
Also I'm not sure what the Program said about Jessie's mom but the way she never talks about her leads me to believe that she is dead.
May 1st 1991-
He's Private John Wayne Prescott and has been in the Army for approximately 2 years ever since he graduated high school, when he sees her. She's his superior's daughter with long curly red hair and pale skin and a notebook in her hand and a tattoo on her arm, she's beautiful. Her name is Leslie and he's convinced she's the one for him. The only problem is that she doesn't want anything to do with him. It's when she flips him into a truck and he wakes up in Oklahoma he's convinced she is the one for him.
December 24th 1991-
It's Christmas Eve when he proposes, he has his commander's permission a ring that's more than half his pay check and a future planned out for the both of them. They've been together for nearly 9 months, a year if you count the year he has been obsessed with her. So when he goes down on one knee and promises her the world he's rewarded with the biggest smile ever and he takes up a permanent residence on Cloud 9.
March 5th 1992-
It's his wedding day. His uniform is all straightened out ironed and cleaned. He knows what his vows are and his knees nearly give out when Leslie comes down the aisle looking like a fallen angel minus the wings. Later she leans over to him and hands him a pregnancy test and he official becomes the happiest man alive, because he and Leslie are having a little baby that he will love and protect no matter what.
December 7th 1992-
Leslie's beautiful despite giving birth nearly three weeks early. He'd been in the middle of a training course and had rushed to the hospital as soon as he could. He had privately hoped for a boy so he could raise a solider but looking at his baby daughter he feels nothing but happiness. He has a family, a job a beautiful wife and a stunning little baby girl that privately he vows no boy will ever go near. They call her Jessica. Jessica Deborah Prescott or Jessie as he calls her, he is now the most happiest he could ever get.
February 18th 1998-
Jessie's six when Leslie as a joke gets her a make-up kit. He comes home one day to find his little girl dolled up to the nines. She looks beautiful, she's always beautiful and it's a painful reminder that she's going to leave him one day and that there will be boys looking at her. It fills him with a sick sort of rage and possessiveness; he later gives her a tube of camouflage paint and laughs at his little girl who looks like a bush with cheekbones, and who gets driven to school in a tank. The Army, Leslie and Jessie are the most important people in his life and everyday he counts himself lucky.
June 21st 2000-
Jessie's eight when it all goes to hell. Leslie starts coughing and a routine check-up confirms the worst. A brain tumour- and it's inoperable. Worst- it's getting drastic fast. Suddenly he's left with nothing. His happy life is crashing down around him. He'll have to raise Jessie all by himself, he'll have to cancel any deployment and worse- he'll have to lose the love of his life to the one enemy he can't protect his family from.
September 4th 2000-
He knows it's all over when he comes back from a training lesson and see's Jessie crying in Cookie's arms. Beverly the XO rubs his arm and tells him to take as much time as he needs to get himself and now Jessie together.
November 30th 2006
He comes home from the base to see Jessie crying slightly. The worry turns to an uncomfortable silence when he later learns that he needs to get tampons. This is one of the days that he needs Leslie. Instead he sends her round to Beverly opens a bottle of Jack and drinks until he can stop the feeling of failure out of his system.
October 4th 2007
John can see Darla's actions towards Jessie- can see his child is desperately unhappy with her life. He knows about the magazines hidden under her bed filled with movie stars and pictures of New York City and other places John has never seen and never wants to, he sees her roll her eyes at his pamphlets on the Armed Services. It's another crushing reminder that one day she's going to leave him. If he takes away her tank keys because of that well that's just his own way of making sure he's never alone.
May 1st 2010
She's gone. He can feel it when he walks in the house after filling up the tanks. Everything is gone, her clothes, her phone, Leslie's old guitar. She left after a big fight they had to New York and the phone message that she leaves does not help things in the slightest. All his life all he's done is protect his little girl and now she's run off to a place where not even he can protect her from, that night he gets drunker than ever before and cries like he never has done.
January 6th 2012
He and Beverly start a relationship, it starts of slow and not until John has a long conversation with the picture on the mantelpiece. He misses Jessie but still doesn't have the heart to ring her and tell her that he's proud of her, that he understands that she too much Leslie's daughter to stay in the military. He heard that she's settled down as some part time nanny to four of the most spoiled children in the whole of New York. His pride constricts any relationship with his daughter and that he could possibly have and even when he asks Beverly to marry him he finds it difficult to pick up the phone and tell her. In the end he rings her and spouts out some shit about reconnection. He wonders when his relationship with his daughter got so bad.
September 13th 2013
She looks different, his daughter, she's older, more sophisticated and theirs a happiness that she hadn't had before. She's beautiful-she's always been beautiful but she looks more beautiful now. It's like looking at a younger version of his Leslie; the rounded baby fat disappeared into a striking figure. It's like a bullet to the gut-he realises that she's no longer his little girl. New York has turned her into a woman far from her father.
September 14th 2013
It's probably the worst argument he has ever had with her. It's so bad that he goes to his old bunker, opens up a large bottle of Jack and drinks until it stops hurting-like he used to do after it all went to shit. He loves his daughter, he loves his wife and his misses them both. He misses the life he had and he constantly worries that he's making the wrong decision. John knows he cannot marry Beverly without his daughter's approval- the two are so alike it's the closest he will ever get to his wife giving her approval-and he needs that more than anything.
September 15th 2013
It's over then- he married Beverly and he gained Jessie's approval. He realised his daughter's dreams and though he missed her and his wife immensely he learnt he could be happy again. He will never be the same again-his life changed on the day he met Leslie, and that brought a beautiful daughter that keeps John breathing some days-who is happy in her life. It's been a life lived at the whistle of an army but he wouldn't change it for the world.