A/N: This one covers 1998-1999 from many of the Horde's perspectives. Don't feel I need to go too much in depth, they're basically just drabbles on what has happened, and helps to tie in the timeline to the events of Miles Apart and Fight the Good Fight.
Disclaimer: I own everything except for the Kripke characters. Oh, and I don't really own the title of this fic, either…it's a song by Boston…not sure if I've said that yet? O.o
Chapter Twenty-Five
A Blur of Years
1998
Paige cantered Storm around the arena, her mind far away. She couldn't believe it was almost time for her to graduate already; after winning nationals, she'd spent a ton of time at horse shows but had still managed to pass all her classes. She chewed her lip as she moved Storm into a half-pass followed by a shoulder in, and after that an extended trot, moving in sync with him so much she didn't particularly need to concentrate.
So many things were happening…Jared was enlisting, just as Noah and Chris had. Her older brothers were happy in the Army, Chris now a pilot and him and Noah headed for Special Forces, if all continued to go well. Right after graduating, her and Jared would go the Trails, only four weeks this time around due to the small number of students and the fact all of their parents were hunters so they'd have no newbies.
"Head in the clouds?" Connie called from the fence.
"A bit," Paige called back, turning Storm towards her and slowing him to a walk. She halted beside her sister and puffed out a breath.
"You decided yet?" Connie wondered, fingering her chin.
"I don't know," she sighed, fiddling with Storm's mane. "I love horses and Thunder Creek and hunting, but…"
"…but the military is a family tradition," Connie finished for her, smiling.
"It is," Paige sighed. She squared her shoulders. "I'll talk to my dad tonight."
January 1999
"NEWBERN!"
Paige's head snapped up in alarm, fingers stilling on the keyboard. She jumped to her feet when Captain Edwards stormed into the room. "Sir," she barked, standing at attention.
"At ease," Edwards growled, shoving a file at her. "That new dumbass private just set my goddamn fucking hangar on fire!"
Paige's eyes widened. "Sir?" she said tentatively, taking the file.
"While I go rip the little bastard a new one, the General asked me to drop that off," Edwards muttered, storming back out of the room as suddenly as he'd entered.
She blinked and watched her door slam shut behind him so hard her picture frames rattled on the walls. A half second later, the Captain kicked it open again with a gruff apology and abruptly vanished again. A smile quirked her lips. Her fellow Blackhawk pilot―a friend off duty, but her commanding officer on duty―had a temper as violent as Mt. Vesuvius and reminded her of Noah.
"SIMMONS, IF YOU DAMAGED MY HANGAR I SWEAR TO FUCKING GOD, YOU ARE A DEAD MAN!"
Yeah. Rory could yell pretty loud, too. Wincing in sympathy for the poor bastard who'd provoked him, she shook her head and opened the file, to find her brother's picture staring up at her. According to the paperwork he'd just made Special Forces. She beamed with pride―she knew Noah and Elliot had made it, too.
She shook her head in amusement and went back to her paperwork, making a point to write a reminder to call Chris and everyone home in TC as soon as possible. She'd been in the army for a year now, and a pilot for the majority of that, and loved every minute of it. Right before boot camp she'd passed the Trials, and had been put with Connie as a partner, but Connie was only just now a senior in high school at the age of seventeen and wouldn't be eligible for another year at least.
She could hear Rory bellowing at all the privates on base, mostly mechanics by the sound of it. She checked the time―0937―and hurried to finish her report before their training flight at 1000 hours.
"Ready, Newbern?"
Paige looked up at her tall companion. He looked rather unbothered for all the screaming and ranting he'd been doing for the past fifteen minutes. She turned off her computer as she did so. "Yes, sir," she said respectfully.
"Oh, come off it," Edwards sighed, shutting the door and dropping into the chair before her desk, palming his face. "I swear they get dumber with every class that graduates."
"Don't they all, Rory?" Paige agreed, handing him back her brother's file. He grunted in agreement and took the file from her, dropping it on his lap.
"Big thing, you know, making 160th SOAR," he commented, tapping the file with his index finger. "Only two in his class did make it. And I hear from a certain source that a Sergeant Clayborne has made it into the unit that exists, just not on paper."
"I heard," Paige informed him, leaning back in her chair.
"Mmm," Edwards said, raising a sandy eyebrow. "Sure pays off, doesn't it, having so many high-ranking family members?"
She shrugged at the reference to three of her great-uncles, one, a four star General in the Army, another, Commandant of the Marine Corps, and the third, an Air Force Brigadier General. "Didn't help me much," she pointed out. "Everything I have I've earned.
"Good point." He sighed and scrubbed his head. "Well, off to the training flight. We have to be prepped and ready, so let's do this thing."
Paige grabbed her helmet and trotted out the door after him, mind on the mission.
/\/\/\/\/\/\
The noise of the routers and the wind was familiar to Paige as they cut through the air over the training area.
"Roger, Super 67 moving into holding pattern," she said into the radio, moving her bird to do just that. A medic helicopter pilot, she carried few men and served instead as an evac. Her team was about to be tested in a mock-combat environment.
Beside her, her co-pilot Randy Halleck was skimming over the controls and clicking the various switches and dials. "Holding steady," he told her.
A sudden drop in altitude caused Paige's stomach to bottom out. "What the hell was that?" she barked at Randy, re-gaining their lost altitude and control of her helicopter.
"System isn't responding properly," Randy snapped back, flicking the controls in earnest now.
"Super 67, this is Super 68, saw you drop in altitude, everything okay?"
"Super 68, this is Super 67…electrical malfunction, but it seems to be okay now," she responded to the other pilot, Eric Ajax. To Randy, she added, "See if you can pinpoint the problem, I'm getting a lot of movement in these pedals, Randy."
"On it," Randy assured her, as the men and women behind them shifted uneasily.
"Super 67, this is command. Land your bird, just to be safe. We can continue this training mission another day."
No sooner had General Ricks finished his order than the alarms started blaring for altitude drop. Her controls seized up, refusing to command, as her entire console went black.
"We have no control," Paige said calmly to Randy as the lights on their controls flicked on and off. "Try and re-route all power to manual controls."
Randy did as she asked. The helicopter entered a flat spin, heading rapidly towards the Texas dirt. The two pilots tried valiantly to keep her airborne, or at least slow her descent, as the soldiers in back held on to anything they could desperately.
Paige remembered the slam of hitting the dirt, remembered her bird rolling onto its side and slamming into the controls and then being viciously bounced around in her harness as pain erupted along her ribs and her left knee. Her helmeted head connected hard with the ceiling, and everything went dark.
February 1999
Ally took a deep breath and allowed Brad to give her a leg up onto Storm. It felt strange, to be riding her sister's prized gelding, but Paige had been adamant that he stay on the circuit to keep fit for when she came home. All the same, it felt like a violation of sorts.
Especially now.
It had been a month since that horrible training accident, but Ally would never forget the sheer terror that had gripped her heart for that first few seconds after learning Paige's Blackhawk had crashed with her aboard. She'd badly wounded her knee, cracked two of her ribs, fractured both her clavicles from being thrown up in the harness, and had suffered deep bruising along her shoulders and back, not to mention a concussion and brain swelling from the impact.
They'd seen Paige frequently, flying down to Texas to visit her while she recovered. She would be off active duty for another two months before returning to flying again. A freak mechanical failure―a one in a million chance―had caused everything to go so wrong that day. Her co-pilot had escaped with the same injuries, and only one of the medics on board had been badly wounded; it had been a miracle no one was killed. It had been pretty bad, but Paige was adamant that she wanted to get back behind the controls.
"Focus," Brad reminded her, patting her knee and pulling her head out of the clouds. "Remember, Paige is watching this from her hospital room."
Ally smiled at him and gathered her reins, pushing everything out of her mind but the task at hand, rubbing Storm's neck. She leaned forward to speak in the gelding's ears.
"C'mon Storm," she whispered as his ears turned back to her. "Let's kick ass. For Paige." Nudging him into a canter, she did a wide circle before starting her course.
When asked who to dedicate her victory to, she proclaimed simply:
"I dedicate it to all of those silent protectors willing to lay down their lives so that we can sleep easy."
March 1999
Chris returned home to half the horde. His sister and four of his brothers were still in the army, but it was nice to see everyone. He enjoyed getting back on Admiral and jumping a few rounds with him, and being back with his family even if it wasn't quite the same.
"It's good to have you home, son," Brad beamed, pulling him into a tight hug.
"Glad to see you too, dad," he chuckled. "And you three!" he added, scooping up Gunnar, Lilly, and Gare in one big bear hug with a playful growl, making his much younger half-brothers and sister screech with delighted laughter. "You three have gotten so big!"
Everyone was proud he'd made it into 160th, and to be honest, he was, too. It had taken a hell of a lot of hard work and dedication to get there, and he was happy he'd put in the time and the effort to do so. He loved the guys he worked for and loved flying Blackhawks for the most elite helicopter unit in the entire world.
It was a week to wind down and relax, but with three youngsters in the house, it was also joyfully busy. He enjoyed spending time with his growing siblings, especially Gunnar, who was nearly seven now and looked just like their dad, only with blonde hair instead of brown and Debbie's blue eyes instead of hazel.
So, naturally, kids were injury prone, and Gunnar decided to fall of the fence and hurt his arm when his parents had left him alone with the oldest, taking the two youngest out for some mommy-daddy time and giving Gunnar some time with his older brother.
"It hurts," Gunnar moaned from the passenger seat as Chris drove much faster than was legal to Thunder Creek Memorial Hospital, clutching his hand to his chest.
"Keep it elevated if you can," Chris suggested, demonstrating with his own arm. "It'll keep the swelling down. Hold on, little bro, almost there."
By the time they'd pulled into the parking lot, Gunnar's arm looked awful and he was pale as a sheet. Chris scooped him up in his arms and jogged into the hospital and called for help. A doctor immediately rushed over, and he was literally struck dumb. She was gorgeous.
She was several inches shorter than him, about Paige's height he'd guess. Her hair was dark, and her soft brown eyes were full of compassion as she looked at Gunnar's injury. Freckles dusted over her nose, and for the first time in a very long time, he reacted to the presence of a beautiful woman.
"What happened?"
"He fell of the fence and landed on his arm. I'm no doctor, ma'am, but it looked to me like he snapped his forearm when he caught himself," he recovered quickly, proud of his quick wits.
"Mmm, probably a greenstick fracture, young bones are hard to break completely. Come on, sweetheart, let's get you in for an x-ray. Do you want your dad to come with you?"
Gunnar was appalled. "He's not my dad, he's my brother!" he protested loudly as they were led to a room.
"My dad got remarried," Chris explained quickly for her benefit when she looked confused and flushed at the mistake. He found it enchanting. She blushed the prettiest shade of red! He talked his brother into letting a nurse take him to x-rays and sat in the room with the young doctor.
"You new in town?" he wondered, cocking his head to one side. "I've never seen you before."
"No," she smiled. "I've been here for about two and a half years, now. I ride at your grandpa's barn."
"Oh." Chris suddenly realized a lot had happened in Thunder Creek while he was gone. He stuck his hand out. "I'm Chris Newbern," he introduced himself, noting that her hands were slightly calloused but warm and oddly soft. "I'm in the army, otherwise, we probably would have met a lot sooner."
"As in Newbern Lumber, and Photography, and Woodwork, and―"
"Yeah, we kind of helped found the town way back in the day," he shrugged. "And your name?"
"Doctor Amy Murray," she introduced herself with a smile. "I'm an OBGYN, but I also dabble in pediatrics. Today is technically my day off." She looked at him and smiled. "I apologize for thinking he was your son."
Chris shrugged. "I wasn't exactly young when he was born," he admitted. "And you'd be far from the first. It was a lot worse when he was a baby." His eyes sparkled. "You single, Amy?"
"Last I checked," she shot back, arching an eyebrow.
He grinned.
November 1999
Ally's heart was pounding unevenly.
"What do you mean, NOAH GOT SHOT!" she exploded at her grandpa, who looked bemused by her temper.
"Well, somebody pointed a gun at him, pulled the trigger, and the bullet lodged in his right shoulder," John explained. "He'll be alright, it hit only tissue, it'll just take a while for his muscles to recover."
Ally swore right then that Noah would never get to scare her like this again, and planned to rip into him hard in their next letter. She grabbed the materials and stormed off to the study, intending to give the stubborn man a piece of her mind. He had no right to endanger himself like that!
Fuming, she penned the letter and marched it all the way down to the mailbox, slamming it shut ruthlessly. Even if he was at Walter Reed and would be fine in a week, he'd just need a sling, she was ripping him a new one anyway.
Stupid protective men!
December 1999
The marriage of Christopher John Newbern and Amy Renee Murray was no small affair―no less than eight hundred guests were in appearance and half the town was invited. The other half showed up anyway. The deeply in love bride and groom were happy, and by some miracle (otherwise known as high-ranking family members yanking very hard on numerous strings) the entire Horde was present.
It showed, too. The wedding party was huge. Gunnar and Garrett were co-ring bearers and Lilly and Amy's young cousin Savannah were flower girls. Amy had grown close to "the Horde" as Chris called it, and as a result, her bridesmaids consisted of her blood sisters Brianna and Reagan, as well as Ally, Connie, Paige, and Summer. The groomsmen were an even larger party, with Noah as best man (still in a sling), and included Elliot, Kyle, Jared, Theo, Jake, Michael David, Cole, Jeremy, and Amy's brother Gary.
Chris didn't even mind the fact he got a ton of shit from his brother's for being the first one off the market, but it was worth it.
"I love you," he told Amy right before they said their vows, and she just beamed up at him, that sparkle he loved so much animating her eyes.
"Love you too," she said, as Noah made a pretend gagging noise and pretended to shove his good hand down his throat, Elliot rolled his eyes, Kyle coughed to hide a laugh, Cole snorted, Jeremy's eyes watered from the effort of not laughing, Jared snickered, and the rest of his brothers laughed outright. Gary just looked bemused by the close relationships of the men and shook his head at their childishness.
E/N: Brief drabbles that give us a snapshot of two years. Dean comes back to TC in 2000… ;) Guess when that is!
REVIEWS=LOVE
(And faaaaaaaaaster posting! Please click the button? *puppy dog eyes*)
Dean appears in the next one, folks…and he'll be around much more often now, too!