<strong>Mary Nash dream sequence - previously</strong><br/><br/>It took a moment for the voice beside her to truly register.  The desert.  She was in the desert? No ruins on an unnatural hill, no maimed bodies, no penetrating reek from the carcass of whatever it was they had just killed.  Or re-killed.  She felt different, though.  From many long nights she knew in her bones that another nightmare would start.  But not this time.<br/><br/>She was kneeling, her normal working posture when saving lives in the field.    She didn't turn her head, but she did take off her helmet and tilt her head up to the sky, not looking at any star in particular.  She could feel the dream-weight of her armor, her M4 slung across her back.  That was a good sign, in some nightmares she had been naked , not even her medical kit with her.  Those had been bad ones, trying to keep life in broken bodies  with bare hands alone.<br/><br/>"Fair?  What has fairness got to do with it?  And I can bear the pain.  I have so far, anyway."<br/><br/>The dread was gone.  No, not gone, but diminished, and what remained was being held back.  The voice was comforting, paternal.  "You sound like the priest or pastor everyone wishes their church had."  She still didn't turn her head because if  there was no one there, then there might not be anything to keep her dreams away.<br/><br/>Pain. She absently ran her hands along her thighs, felt a tear in her uniform on the front of her left thigh.  Surprised she looked down and saw not the puckered scar of a healed bullet wound, but a raw slightly bleeding bullet hole.  The AK round had practically kissed her femoral artery that day.  The metal shards from the car bomb that her armor had just barely stopped, she could feel them lodged in the skin and muscle over her right lower ribs.  Cuts, abrasions, bruises, the incidental small hurts of combat, she somehow knew they were all fresh on her dream-body.  But no pain.<br/><br/>"I don't know what I'd do if I saw something like that in action.  Or that corpse Bill, Theo and Red killed."  She bowed her head.  "I'm not a killer.  I've shot at Insurgents, pretty sure I've hit a couple.  I've been in fights stateside, messed one guy up pretty bad when he tried to jack my van."  Her head moved slightly, not quite a turn towards the voice.  "I was defending myself, or others.  And what these, these hunters are up against isn't even mortal let alone human!"<br/>