Blondie- A Jake 'Hangman' Seresin fanfiction

Chapter 6

"First group: Rooster, Blondie, Fritz, Hangman, Phoenix, and Bob."

With that, Maverick dismissed them, and they rose from their seats to go and prepare for the training exercise, promised to be one of the last before they began taking on actual missions.

Georgie made it onto the tarmac and halfway towards her aircraft before she was hit by a wave of dread. It began as a burning sensation on the back of her neck before spreading into her chest and knocking the breath out of her lungs, forcing her to stop walking and catching the attention of the others.

"Are you okay?" Jake asked, moving in front of her and grabbing her forearms to steady her.

"I've got a bad feeling about this," she told him.

"Do you know why?"

She shook her head in confusion before it hit her. "I forgot to take my anxiety medication this morning," she realised.

"Do you want to go and ask the doctor if they can give you some?"

"No, I'll be fine."

"Are you sure? The last thing you need is to be panicking in midair."

"I'll be fine," she assured him, taking a deep breath. "I'll be fine."

She made sure to give her plane an extra thorough check before climbing inside, but once she had done so, she felt a lot calmer, figuring it was just the effects of missing her medication.

The exercise was a simulated bombing run which each of them had to attempt- straightforward other than the virtual terrain and a slightly optimistic time limit. Once Rooster had completed his turn, albeit slightly slower than Maverick would have liked, Jake volunteered himself to go second.

"0.8 seconds within the limit, Hangman," Maverick announced, "and you successfully destroyed the target. Blondie, you're up next."

"Manoeuvring into position," she reported, banking left in order to line up with the virtual starting point. But just as she was approaching it, she heard a deafening banging noise to her left and an alarm started sounding in her cockpit.

"Blondie, what's going on over there?" Phoenix asked, obviously noticing her loss of control.

"I've lost an engine," she replied. "Attempting to restart it." In vain, she pressed the button, but it was no use- the banging noise had obviously been the sound of her left engine breaking in some way.

"Clear the runway," Maverick ordered. "Blondie, land immediately."

The loss of one engine meant the other was doing extra work, and before long a second alarm joined the cacophony. "My right engine is on fire. Attempting to extinguish." Now without both engines, the aircraft began to angle ominously towards the ground, and to add insult to injury, the fire in the right engine would not go out.

"Eject, eject!" Maverick ordered as she began to spin out of control, and she reached for the handles below her seat.

"Blondie, eject!" Jake yelled when nothing happened.

"There's some sort of fault with the ejection handles, they're stuck."

Finally, with one desperate yank, the handles worked and Georgie was ejected from the cockpit. The last thing she thought as her parachute opened above her was that this was eerily similar to the nightmare she'd had nearly two weeks before, and then everything went black.

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The next thing Georgie was conscious of was a buzzing noise in her ears that thrummed in time with her heartbeat, and a blackness that pressed down on her eyelids like the weight of a grown man. Gradually, the buzzing faded and allowed her to hear the sounds of muffled voices around her. Some she recognized- Jake and Lainey, primarily- and some she did not. She felt a familiar hand slide into hers.

With great effort, she forced her eyelids to unstick themselves, levering them open before recoiling slightly at the brightness of the room.

Dazed, she glanced around the room, taking in the faces of several members of her squadron before finally landing on Jake.

"What are you all doing here?" she asked, the scratching in her throat telling her that she'd been unconscious for at least the better part of an hour.

"You nearly died?" Phoenix pointed out.

"Oh, that," Georgie sighed before turning to Jake. "I told you I had a bad feeling about flying."

"That's the one bit I don't get. You forgot your medication and had a freakout on the runway, and then lost both your engines? Super freaky."

"Maybe I'm psychic," she shrugged, rubbing the bridge of her nose. "Do they know what happened?"

"Some sort of mechanical failure in the left engine, they don't know what," Lainey supplied. But before anyone could ask a follow up question, a nurse came in.

"I'm afraid you'll all have to leave, Admiral Bates is here to see you, lieutenant."

"We'll see you tomorrow, okay?" Phoenix smiled. "Just call if you need anything."

"Don't worry about me, I'll be fine," Georgie insisted.

Jake stood up from where he had been sat by her bed, but leaned down to kiss her forehead, and tell her, "I'll be waiting outside, alright?"