AN: Thanks for your patience - sorry about the long delay in posting. The
middle is always the hardest part! g This is short, but it helps nudge
the muse (reviews have been known to do that as well).
USS Seahawk Atlantic Ocean 8:30 EST, The day of . . .
Mac allowed herself the luxury of an extra minute and thirty seconds in the shower, hoping the extra time spent under the hot shower spray would rinse away the cold feeling that had been hanging on since 0530 that morning.
She hadn't gone back to sleep - the dream's images were too vivid to simply slough them off as a nightmare and sink back into blissful unconsciousness. Instead she reached for the journal under her bunk and tried to record what she had dreamt.
The journal was something relatively new for the Marine lawyer. After she'd had a vision that tied into a murder investigation (NOTE: episode in season 7, "Capital Crime"), Mac realized that her visions could touch people outside her immediate circle. And that realization gave her an additional sense of responsibility. What if she ignored a vision, or didn't try to understand it and people ended up hurt, or worse, dead?
The journal, not a pour-your-heart-out-diary, was something she kept by her bedside now, wherever that bed happened to be. If she had a dream that was unusually vivid, she wrote it down. Then, in the clear light of day, Mac read what she had written during the night, looking to see if there was anything she should watch out for or observe more carefully.
Since she had started the journal, nothing had "happened." No warnings of danger for her friends, no extrasensory insight into a case she was working on. (Unless she counted that dream she'd had of making out with the "time to make the doughnuts" guy from the Dunkin' Donuts commercial and then discovering that someone in the office had brought in two dozen hot Krispy Kremes the next day . . .)
Some might have abandoned the journal as an experiment proven useless, but the practical and methodical lawyer determined otherwise. Besides, wasn't there some law that said the minute you throw something out, you find an urgent use for it . . .?
Coates had already left for the Mess when Mac returned to their room to dress. Before putting on her uniform, she paused to re-read her notes from the night before. Sitting down on the bunk, Colonel Sarah MacKenzie reviewed the scrawled but legible phrases that spilled across the page:
//an exploding cannon . . .a wall of flames blocking her path as she walked down a corridor on the Seahawk . . . a long spiral staircase descending into inky, black nothingness . . . hearing Harm calling her name, over and over again . . . an image of her and Chloe, playing the old game "Battleship" . . . . //
//I have no idea what any of this means; and I'd discount all of it if I hadn't had the exact same dream, three nights running. G-d, Harm and Sturgis will both freak if I bring this up; maybe I'll talk it over with Harriet when I get home.//
Having settled on a course of action, the lawyer and Marine turned to more pressing matters. She had to be dressed, out of the Mess, and back in the small legal office she shared with Coates by 0900.
Since discovering her flawless internal clock, Coates had made it a game to try and beat Mac to the office and declare the JAG officer "late." In the two weeks Mac had been working with the bright petty officer, she hadn't been able to catch the Marine yet. And Mac wasn't about to let the final day aboard ship be the only time she'd lose.
TBC
USS Seahawk Atlantic Ocean 8:30 EST, The day of . . .
Mac allowed herself the luxury of an extra minute and thirty seconds in the shower, hoping the extra time spent under the hot shower spray would rinse away the cold feeling that had been hanging on since 0530 that morning.
She hadn't gone back to sleep - the dream's images were too vivid to simply slough them off as a nightmare and sink back into blissful unconsciousness. Instead she reached for the journal under her bunk and tried to record what she had dreamt.
The journal was something relatively new for the Marine lawyer. After she'd had a vision that tied into a murder investigation (NOTE: episode in season 7, "Capital Crime"), Mac realized that her visions could touch people outside her immediate circle. And that realization gave her an additional sense of responsibility. What if she ignored a vision, or didn't try to understand it and people ended up hurt, or worse, dead?
The journal, not a pour-your-heart-out-diary, was something she kept by her bedside now, wherever that bed happened to be. If she had a dream that was unusually vivid, she wrote it down. Then, in the clear light of day, Mac read what she had written during the night, looking to see if there was anything she should watch out for or observe more carefully.
Since she had started the journal, nothing had "happened." No warnings of danger for her friends, no extrasensory insight into a case she was working on. (Unless she counted that dream she'd had of making out with the "time to make the doughnuts" guy from the Dunkin' Donuts commercial and then discovering that someone in the office had brought in two dozen hot Krispy Kremes the next day . . .)
Some might have abandoned the journal as an experiment proven useless, but the practical and methodical lawyer determined otherwise. Besides, wasn't there some law that said the minute you throw something out, you find an urgent use for it . . .?
Coates had already left for the Mess when Mac returned to their room to dress. Before putting on her uniform, she paused to re-read her notes from the night before. Sitting down on the bunk, Colonel Sarah MacKenzie reviewed the scrawled but legible phrases that spilled across the page:
//an exploding cannon . . .a wall of flames blocking her path as she walked down a corridor on the Seahawk . . . a long spiral staircase descending into inky, black nothingness . . . hearing Harm calling her name, over and over again . . . an image of her and Chloe, playing the old game "Battleship" . . . . //
//I have no idea what any of this means; and I'd discount all of it if I hadn't had the exact same dream, three nights running. G-d, Harm and Sturgis will both freak if I bring this up; maybe I'll talk it over with Harriet when I get home.//
Having settled on a course of action, the lawyer and Marine turned to more pressing matters. She had to be dressed, out of the Mess, and back in the small legal office she shared with Coates by 0900.
Since discovering her flawless internal clock, Coates had made it a game to try and beat Mac to the office and declare the JAG officer "late." In the two weeks Mac had been working with the bright petty officer, she hadn't been able to catch the Marine yet. And Mac wasn't about to let the final day aboard ship be the only time she'd lose.
TBC