Director's Cut, a jag fanfic

TEASER: It's a long flight to Paraguay.

DISCLAIMER: In another universe, they all belong to me. In this one, however, they belong to DPB, et al., and I am just taking them out for a night on the town. I'll have them back by curfew, I promise.

ARCHIVE: Absolutely, but please ask first via e-mail in my profile.

FEEDBACK: …is awesome, but I've never been a fan of anything more than medium rare, so please spare the flames.

RATING: PG-13

AUTHOR'S NOTE and SPOILERS: Not related to my previous stories in the LOCK AND KEY Series, "With Prejudice", "Raising Men: My Sailor", or "Lady Sarah". Anything is fair game up to season 8 through "Pas de Deux" and the first part of "Tangled Webb". Special thanks to those who maintain THE ROSE GARDEN SHIPPER PROJECT and the JAG ARCHIVE for having transcriptions of the quotes and scenes I don't have on tape!

=====

I, Harmon Rabb, Jr., do hereby resign my commission as an officer in the United States Navy holding the dual designators of Naval Aviator and Judge Advocate Trial Counsel, effective on 31 May 2003, and request that as of noon today, 13 May 2003, my status be listed as Terminal Leave. I acknowledge in resigning my commission at this time that I forfeit all retirement benefits, although I retain veteran's benefits as defined in my initial commissioning contract and amended by Act of Congress or Executive Order.

He stares at the computer screen for several long minutes, torn between leaving the office without handing over a printed and signed copy of the offensive document before him and doing exactly that with a flourish worthy of the Bard himself. He laughs, a hollow, intrusive sound that echoes off the bare walls of his office. Somehow, he thinks that Admiral Chegwidden will appreciate the Bard touch, engaged as he as to a Shakespeare scholar.

I further acknowledge that at the time of my resignation, my status becomes that of Inactive Reserve officer holding the rank of Commander and that as such, I am liable for recall for a period of up to 5 years during a time of declared war or national emergency. If I am recalled, any service time will accrue toward retirement benefits at my current rank and that, at the conclusion of any recall period, I will be offered the opportunity to continue my service with full promotion possibilities until retirement.

He knows as he composes – he could have used the boilerplate, but somehow he needs to do this the hard way – that with the circumstances of his resignation, the "national emergency" which causes his recall will be Armageddon – or at the very least the battles leading to it.

I will make myself available to my commanding officer, Rear Admiral A.J. Chegwidden, for an exit interview and final discharge orders at JAG Headquarters in Falls Church, Virginia, not later than 5 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time on 31 May 2003.

Unless he's dead. The thought does occur to him as he types the final pleasantries into the letter. He will be in a foreign country with no backup, searching for someone who might already be dead herself.

"I would know," he declares out loud at the thought of the woman who is the reason for this letter already being dead before he can get to her. "I would know."

I have enjoyed my career in the United States Navy, in particular my time in the Judge Advocate General's Corps. I truly regret the need to resign at this time. Sincerely, Harmon Rabb, Jr.

It is so final, there on the screen in print preview with the two-inch top margin awaiting the single sheet of JAG letterhead that sits in the printer on the credenza behind him. After one final scan and a precautionary spell-check, he sends the document to the printer.

As the printer comes to life behind him, he hears rather than sees someone stop just at his office door; it isn't her, so he has no interest in ascertaining the identity of the interloper.

"I just heard," says the resonant voice he's known since his plebe year at Annapolis. "Good luck, Harm."

"Thanks, Sturgis," he replies, surprised that his much more logical friend isn't trying to talk him out of doing this thing that he has to do or die trying. He looks up finally to meet the unhappy brown eyes that peer out of the handsome raw umber face.

Sturgis stands at a relaxed parade rest in the doorway, watching and studying for a moment. His eyes clear a little as he steps into the room and closes the door behind him. "She loves you, you know."

That brings a tight grimace to his drawn face even as he reaches behind him to retrieve his letter of resignation from the now silent printer. "I wish I did know that for sure."

Unbidden, Sturgis takes a chair across the desk and settles into it, crossing his long legs at the knees and clasping his hand together, extending his index fingers to rest on his chin. "You love her."

It is a statement, not a question; he wills himself to meet the unwavering brown gaze of his colleague and to answer the question truthfully, for there is no more reason to hide. "Yes."

"Enough to go after her. But do you love her enough to keep her once you get her back?"

It is not too different a question from the one Admiral Chegwidden asked him almost an hour ago. But he is no closer to an answer now than he was then, except that he knows one thing for an absolute certainty. "I love Sarah enough to try to make her happy for the rest of her life, even if it means I have to let her go."

The other man in the room smiles at that; perhaps it is exactly the answer that explains this abrupt resignation to him. "She told me, you know. She looked right at me, and said, 'I'm in love with him, Sturgis.'"

He bites back the harsh "Why didn't you tell me?" that threatens to erupt, realizing even as the words form that if she swore Sturgis Turner to secrecy, then only something this drastic – this life-threatening – would elicit the information from the submariner-turned-lawyer. Instead, he puts his hands to his throbbing eyes and summons an image of her, something that he can do in the space of a second hand moving once in its circuit of a clock face. This time, it is of her the last time he saw her, a week ago now, wearing the pregnancy suit and the beautiful black dress that made her glow. The vision makes him ache for her, for the children they will have in the not-too-distant future if he can find her and bring her home. "How long ago did she say this to you?"

"Remember the time I called you out on the Patrick Henry for help dealing with her?"

"That long ago, Sturgis?" He knows his voice betrays his shock even as he says it.

"Almost eighteen months ago," the man confirms.

This information falls into place in his brain and a picture emerges. "That's when you and Mac really became friends."

Sturgis merely nods with a smile.

"She's really in love with me?" He can't keep the wonderment out of his tone as her words, quoted by a third party though they be, sink into his heart. "She loves me."

"I think we've established that." The junior officer tries to hide his laughter behind a cough, but his failure goes unnoticed as the soon-to-be-former occupant of the office whips his Waterman pen out of its display holder and signs the paper in front of him with a flourish.

The laughter dies away with the last stroke of the pen. The two men look at each other for a long, silent moment before they each push up and out of their chairs.

"Bring her home, Harm," Sturgis says, extending his hand across the nearly empty desk.

"I intend to."

=====

Paraguay, he discovers, is not an easy country to get to. It is late evening before he arrives in Miami for his overnight flight to Sao Paulo, whence he will connect to a flight that in theory will arrive in Asuncion before nightfall the next day. He thinks ruefully about the monetary cost of his journey, but one vision of her, this time conjured from a candid picture taken at their godson's third birthday last year, banishes the qualms of raiding his trust fund to pay for it.

Over the echoing boarding calls and announcements in the international departures terminal, he hears the voice of his stepfather.

"If you need it, Harm, by all means, I'll transfer it right away."

"It's for Sarah," he had said, then took a breath before he tried to speak again, tried to explain which Sarah needs the assistance and why.

But Frank knows him very well – better, in fact, than he knows himself – and said only, "Son, if your Marine is in trouble, go to her and bring her back. Whatever it costs."

He realizes, sitting in the second of four airports on this pell-mell expedition to find his heart and soul in the jungles of Paraguay, that the man he once despised as an imposter has been to him everything that he imagined his real father ever would have been. Understanding, kind, loving, patient, strong, generous. Not many men would have tolerated a child – especially a rebellious stepson – who ran off to Laos at the age of 16. Not many men would have funded a search for a beloved wife's first husband headed by that same still angry son of that first husband. Not many men would have created a trust fund for that rebellious, angry young man, and certainly not many of them would have agreed to maintain some custodial control over the fund long after the terms of its trust expired and the money became available for use by the rebellious, angry young man. But Frank had understood why, when he asked after his ramp-strike so long ago, he had wanted to have someone else at least questioning the use of the money. And Frank had understood one hot summer afternoon two years ago when he had asked for two thirds of the current balance to be put into a separate, untouchable account labeled on his tax forms "savings" but representing the future that is the home he wants with his Marine and their children.

With a ruefully wry smile, he thinks about his stepfather's foresight in suggesting a checking account at a California bank into which emergency money could be deposited for immediate withdrawal. That was just before September 11, 2001 – and he could only imagine what might have happened had he tried to purchase a one-way ticket to Paraguay in cash this afternoon instead of an open round-trip ticket with a debit MasterCard. Truly, he has been blessed; he can only pray that someday he will have earned with Sarah the happiness Frank has had with his mother since the very beginning of their marriage.

He hears the first announcement for his flight, stands, stretches his cramping back with harsh internal invective about ejection seats. He picks up his backpack and makes his way briskly down the long carpeted concourse, knowing that it will be an extended time before he can walk at his normal stride again.

The gate agent, a woman who reminds him vaguely of Renee Peterson, smiles at him as she looks over his boarding pass and passport during the pre-flight check-in. He thinks she is a little disappointed that he does not return her smile, but he is not here to make her happy, nor is he the least bit interested in flirting with her, however beautiful he might otherwise think her to be.

"Have a nice flight, Mr. Rabb," she says, her charming southern drawl fitting her perfectly.

"Thank you," he manages in something less than a bark, and he is not surprised that she has already moved on to the next passenger without saying "You're welcome."

He takes a seat beside the window and turns to stare at the tarmac and the runways beyond through the large panes of plate glass. There is a dim sense of loss hovering at the edge of his consciousness as he watches the planes taxi out to the takeoff position, hold, then hurtle down the ribbon of concrete that will set them free to soar through the sky toward whatever distant destination the schedule this night takes them.

He will have to do something with his life when he returns; he decides on the spot that the offer from the CIA is only viable if he fails in his personal quest to rescue his Marine and bring her home. He could practice law and do very well for them in the private sector, he knows – he remembers clearly the banter back and forth with Sarah about the cost of raising children. He could also become a commercial pilot, which would perhaps be more interesting but would take him away from the center of his life, and would the tradeoff be worth it in the end?

It is all moot until he either succeeds or fails, he chides himself. He will focus on the here and now, on the mission that consumes him to the point of giving up what has been his entire identity for 17 years next week and his dream for 17 or more before that.

He knows not what lies beyond the end of his travel to Paraguay, what awful situation he will find after he leaves the city and enters the tropical jungle on his quixotic quest, what windmills he might have to tilt after to find his Dulcinea and bring her home. He knows not if he will have a Sancho Panza to keep him focused or if he will be unguided on this trek.

All he does know is that he is being pulled inexorably into his own heart of darkness, into a place where the light at the center of his soul that is her has been extinguished and the only way he can save himself is to cross the event horizon on his own, praying that somewhere past the darkness there is light again.

=====

He has been on the plane for two hours now, but only in the air for forty-five minutes. He has had three beers, the privilege that comes with paying for a first class ticket. His body tells him that it is 0130, but he is sure they have crossed a time zone by now, headed west. He corrects himself with a soft, amused snort; he is now operating on a twelve-hour clock and thus it is 1:30 a.m. where his body last slept. Admitting that he needs to sleep, he shifts the seat back and puts out the foot rest to its farthest extension – which isn't much but is better than nothing – and settles his head into the pillow that he has already tucked between the seat and the window. He expects to be awake for a long time even after he makes these preparations, but he finds himself drifting into unconsciousness and decides not to fight the fall.

He is somewhat surprised to find himself awake soon after, and not only awake but at the door to the set of a movie or television show rather than on the airplane. He is much more surprised to meet himself coming as he steps into the surreal room.

"It's about time," his other self says, reaching out to take his arm and dragging him toward what he recognizes as his bedroom. "I've been waiting for you."

"Who are you?" he asks his other self, and then notices that this other Harmon Rabb, Jr., is dressed in 1930's vintage bloused tan pants, a shirt of the same color, a black and tan argyle sweater vest, and a tan beret that is pulled low over his left eye. He decides that he – whoever he is – looks ridiculous.

"The Director," his other self says, and the clothing makes sudden sense. "But if you prefer that I look more professional…"

Now, the man who calls himself the Director is dressed in dress whites, complete with gold wings.

The vision is too painful and he winces; with a shrug, the Director changes appearances again, this time matching his own blue jeans and maroon Marine Corps t-shirt.

"Are you ready now?" There is some impatience in the Director's tone.

"For what?" he questions, still unsure where he is and what is happening.

"The Director's Cut."

"What do you mean, the Director's Cut?"

"I mean that I'm going to show you how our life would have gone had you listened to me instead of going your own way at several key junctures in your life, in hopes that the next time you hear my voice, you will pay attention and get it right."

He knows now: this is a dream. This is a dream that he doubts very much he is going to like, but try as he might, he cannot wake up.

"Ah, yes, the infamous Rabb cut and run maneuver," the Director says with a grim smile. "You might see that a few times during the feature presentation."

He shakes his head one last time but finds himself still on the sound stage that he now knows is his life. "Get on with it, then," he growls at his alter ego.

"Roll film!" the Director calls.

+++

"Have you two met?" Admiral Chegwidden says in the Rose Garden as he watches Harmon Rabb, Jr. scrutinize the woman in Marine Corps full dress uniform.

"No, sir," they both say, and turn to look at each other in surprise. Major Sarah Mackenzie blushes just a little and gives him a small grin that promises much.

"But I think I'm going to enjoy getting to know her."

+++

"That's not the way I remember it!" he exclaims, leaping out of his comfortable theater seat and stabbing at the screen with his right index finger fully extended. He doesn't even wonder how he came to be in a red velvet stadium theater seat.

"Of course it isn't," replies the other Harmon Rabb, Jr., contentedly munching popcorn that hadn't been in evidence a second before. "This is what would have happened had you listened to me. Shall I show you the result of that conversation?"

He only glowers at his smug tormentor, who shrugs and nods at the screen.

"I think I'll show you anyway."

+++

Lieutenant Commander Harmon Rabb, Jr. stands at the altar of a church in dress whites, holding the hands of Major Sarah Mackenzie as she stands facing him, the white lace of her dress making waves as the train cascades down the steps.

"I, Harmon Rabb, Jr., take you, Sarah Mackenzie, to be my lawfully wedded wife…"

+++

"Should have listened to me."

He squirms in his seat and tells himself to wake up, to extricate himself from this nightmare before he goes insane in his sleep, but to no avail.

"Next scene, please!" the Director calls.

All he can do is watch.

+++

"We're just friends," Mac says.

+++

He knows to whom she's referring; he curls himself into a tight ball in the theater seat of his dream and scowls at the intrusion of Dalton Lowne into this awful vision.

+++

"We're just friends. Are you jealous?"

"Please – " Harm says, and the intent of his denial is hidden by the very emotion of which he's accused.

"He drives a Porsche."

"I love you."

+++

His other self holds up a staying hand as he opens his mouth to protest. "Don't even try to tell me we weren't in love with her back then. I was there and I kept trying to get us over our fears."

"I suppose you're going to show me where that would have led," he answers snidely, then wishes he hadn't given the phantom before him the idea.

"Since you mention it…"

+++

"I, Harmon Rabb, Jr., take you, Sarah Mackenzie, to be my lawfully wedded wife…"

+++

"Are you beginning to see the pattern here, Commander Rabb?"

He wonders with one part of his mind if he always comes across so sarcastically when he's convinced he's right. Another part of his mind, however, is formulating a typical Rabb response. "You don't have any way of knowing that changing one sentence in one conversation would lead to that or any other result."

"Ah, but you forget, Harm – I can call you Harm, of course – that changing one sentence in one conversation changes all the rest of the conversations that come after."

He lowers his head into his hands; this delusion into which he has fallen is neither ending nor pleasing.

+++

The fog of night has dissipated just a little as he bends his head down to kiss the beautiful woman in his arms, to thank her for saving his soul and his sanity before he could commit the most heinous crime a man can perpetrate against another – premeditated murder.

Her lips are soft and giving and fit perfectly against his, just as they have in every erotic dream he's had since they met. He doesn't want this kiss to end, but he feels her back away just a bit and lets go with great reluctance to look down into the deep brown eyes that he wants so much to reflect the same overwhelming love for him that he feels for her.

"I know," she says, "you were kissing her."

His heart cracks; how could she have not known the truth in his outpouring of himself into that singular, intense moment? "No, Sarah," he replies, holding her eyes and willing her to hear him, "I was kissing you."

+++

The Director has no words for him. He has no words to excuse himself for this scene from his life. He had kissed Sarah Mackenzie, not Diane Schonke; that he did not choose at that time to disabuse Mac of the incorrect notion made him a fool then and a bigger fool now.

He closes his eyes to avoid what he knows is coming, but the image infiltrates behind his eyelids and burns itself into his soul.

+++

"I, Harmon Rabb, Jr., take you, Sarah Mackenzie, to be my lawfully wedded wife…"

+++

"Damn you," he whispers. His eyes sting with the heat of building tears, but none fall.

"You're damning yourself, you know." The Director stretches his right arm out and looks idly at his hand, wiggling each finger in sequence as though studying a particularly troubling enigma of the universe.

He shakes his head to clear the vestiges of what might have been a good cry and asks the question burning uppermost in his head. "Why am I here?"

"Because we need to see what our head has put our heart through in the past six years so that we don't keep doing so for another six. Pray, let us go on," the other Harm says with a snap of his intriguing fingers even as the real Harm tries to stop him.

"No, please, I ge– "

+++

"What are you searching for?" Harm glances at her, fascinated by the way the breeze on Vulture's Row ruffles Mac's short hair. He is still surprised to see her here, but her company is welcome as they stand together watching the flight ops down below.

"What every woman wants: a great career, a good man, and comfortable shoes. Lots and lots of them."

He doesn't answer right away, but when he does, his voice is soft and warm in the night. "I can't do much about the comfortable shoes, but I will help you have a great career if you'll let me be your good man."

+++

"That would have been a much better answer than the one we gave. 'Is that where Dalton Lowne comes in?'" His alter ego mimics the poor reply in exaggerated schoolboy style.

"It seemed fine at the time," he defends, thinking that in light of what happened later, it really wasn't all that clever. And why in God's name is this Director person talking in the first person plural?

An admonishing shake of the all-too-familiar head accompanies his next words. "She even gave us another chance to get it right thirty seconds later."

+++

"Why, Harm, are you afraid you're going to lose me?"

"Yes. And I can't live with that thought."

+++

"But we didn't heed my rather violent attempt to fix the situation."

A flash of the pounding voice that had battled for his attention wafts through the dream; he winces and looks away from the ghoul beside him.

The ghoul, however, is not content to let it go. "See what we missed."

+++

"I, Harmon Rabb, Jr., take you, Sarah Mackenzie, to be my lawfully wedded wife…"

+++

"I get it!" His scream echoes through the theater, and he realizes that the soundstage into which he first came is completely gone.

"Perhaps now we do. But I'm not convinced we're actually ready to do something about it."

+++

The Iranian desert shimmers in the heat of the afternoon as Harm looks at Mac, thinking once again that this woman to whom he is inextricably bound in myriad ways is as mysterious as the ways of the people into whose care he is committing her. She is beautiful in her Bedu dress, rapturous now as she was in Russia just a few short months ago in Roman costume. Through a lump in his throat that he cannot swallow away, he says softly to her, "Take care, Marine."

Her deep brown eyes hold his as she replies, "You, too, Sailor," and opens her arms to him.

In the sanctuary of her arms, with his lips against her ear, he tells her the secret he can no longer keep. "I love you."

+++

He whimpers at the scene, knowing how close he had come to exactly that and angry now that something had held him back at the last possible second from telling her the unvarnished truth.

"We are beginning to see it," his other self says, a note of some pleased surprise in his voice. "But just to prove the point…"

+++

"I, Harmon Rabb, Jr., take you, Sarah Mackenzie, to be my lawfully wedded wife…"

+++

He shakes his dreamland head, feeling again the ephemeral beginnings of a torrent of hot tears. So much wasted time…

"Indeed."

"Must you show me more?"

"Are we awake yet?"

When the dream Harm doesn't disappear, the specter gives a Cheshire Cat smile and simply points toward the screen.

+++

"But I think maybe we should talk about it; you know, there might be deeper issues." Mac stands in the passageway of the Watertown, arms waving in a way that shows clearly how aggravated she is and has been for a long time.

"Yes, we do, and we need to talk about them. Can we do that tonight over dinner instead of working through it?"

+++

"But we wouldn't have had that talk anyway, at least not then," he protests as his nightmares from the fight at the end of that case roll in, momentarily obscuring the director's presence.

"Not then, but the effort would have made a difference. And something else could have changed that given what we actually did say."

+++

Harm holds Mac's limp form in his arms, scared for her life even though her chest is rising and falling and she's semi-conscious. She has wrapped her arms around his in a life-affirming grasp as he rocks her gently to comfort them both. He wants to speak, but his voice is damaged to inaudibility. He wants to tell her that he's sorry for not being there when she needed him, that he feels responsible for Chris Ragle's death because he wasn't there for her when she wanted to tell him about her husband's extortion attempt. He wants to tell her not to go out with Brumby again. He wants to tell her…

He leans down to put his lips beside her ear and murmurs with as much voice as he has left, "I love you, Sarah."

+++

"That was my last chance," he says to his other self in the theater, "and I blew it."

The unreal Harm shrugs and waves off the thought. "We will be surprised. Reinforcement might help."

He moans, knowing what he's going to see even as the royal "we" becomes perfectly clear; he has tortured himself and now his psyche is getting even.

+++

"I, Harmon Rabb, Jr., take you, Sarah Mackenzie, to be my lawfully wedded wife…"

+++

"So much wasted time," the Director says, echoing his thoughts from a moment ago. "And even I was shocked at one point…"

"Did I actually say what you wanted me to say?" he asks, hoping for an affirmative response.

The other Harm's expression belies that hope unequivocally.

+++

Harm and Mac are standing on the steps of JAG HQ, watching as an ambulance carries Harriet and Baby Roberts to the hospital, proud midwife AJ along for the ride with Bud in the family car. Harm notices that Mac looks wistful; after all this week has put them through, he thinks that there must be a way to assure her that he will never really leave, even if he returns to flying.

"You okay?"

"Every time I think I've put the pieces of my life back together somebody comes along and jumbles them back up. Everybody who has ever meant anything to me is leaving my life."

"It'll be OK, Mac, you'll get to see Chloe again. One day you'll have kids of your own."

"Not at this rate. My biological clock is going off and I keep hitting the snooze button."

"So marry me now, before I ship out. Then at least you'll know you won't need to hit the snooze forever."

+++

"That," he concedes to the apparition who controls this unreality, "would have been better than, 'Tell you what. Five years from this moment if neither of us is in a relationship we'll go halves on a kid.'"

"Although I'll give us credit for the funny of 'Your looks and my brains, he'll be perfect.' We, mi amigo, are far from perfect."

"I got that a while ago," he responds irritably. "And you're going to show me something I really don't want to see."

"Of course."

+++

"Sarah, honey," Harm says with a broad smile, bringing the squirming bundle in his arms up to the head of the delivery table for her to see, "meet your daughter, Sarah Patricia Rabb."

+++

"That will happen!" he protests, knocking over his other self's now empty box of popcorn.

"It might," the man grants.

He looks at the one who is his psyche, fearing the uncertainty of his reply.

+++

Mac is crying. Harm is trying to find the words that will tell her that this need to fly can live alongside his need for her, but he's lost in his own scrambled emotions and cannot find words that will stop her from hating him.

"Damn it. I have so much I want to say to you…but I can't…I can't find the words." She looks like he feels, lost, floundering in a churning sea of fears and dreams and hopes.

"I know" is all he can say, and he pulls her into his arms.

A moment passes; he hears her sniffling before she breaks the silence. "Damn you. Why am I the only one crying?"

He notices with alarm that his own face is wet; some of the words he needs to say finally form themselves on his lips as he lets his tears continue. "You're not," he says to her softly. "Leaving JAG isn't leaving you, Sarah. I can't leave you because you're with me wherever I go."

+++

"Would that we had listened." For the first time, there is real anger in the alternate Harm's voice. "We would have saved us a lot of angst."

All he can do is watch helplessly as the film hasn't been his life rolls on.

+++

The warm night air of Sydney Harbor bathes them in romance. He wants so much to pull Mac into his arms, to exorcise the thoughts that have plagued him since earlier in the day, when she was topless behind a magazine. But the lurking presence of Mic Brumby, hovering between them as an elephant in the living room, prevents him from acting as he tries to focus on what she's saying about Webb and his multilingual dating habits.

"In any language, what man understands a woman?" he asks, mainly for something to say that will move the conversation back to him and Mac.

She laughs softly, almost a snort of recognition of what he is attempting. "You're referring to me? Oh, let me guess, you don't understand why I was at the beach with Mic."

He isn't going there. "That opera house is beautiful isn't it?

She, however, is. "Smashing. So, what bothered you, that I went to the beach with Mic or that you thought I was topless?"

He looks at her, eyes wide in shock. "You weren't?

"Harmon Rabb! You're a prude!"

"I am not! Look, I don't care if you want to go topless…"

Again the laugh, this time her long-suffering grunt of irritation. "You do if it's in front of Mic."

"You work with the guy, Mac! You wouldn't go topless in front of me, would you?" He cannot help the rise of hopefulness that comes out in the last two words; he prays she misses them.

She doesn't, of course. Mac never misses things like that. "Is that a request?"

He wants to shout the obvious true answer, but something holds him back. "You know they wrote 'Eternity' on this bridge in lights on New Years Eve."

"Is that how long we're going to wait?"

He meets her eyes and sees in them what he knows she must see in his eyes. No longer can he equivocate or misdirect; her searingly honest gaze pulls his confession from him as inexorably as the earth orbits the sun. "No, Sarah. We're not going to wait a moment longer."

Their kiss is sweet and languorous, shot through with love, hope, apology, and a thousand other emotions they pour into the moment.

+++

"The way it really happened is the stuff of our nightmares, is it not?"

"So why did you show it to me this way? Now I'll think about the way it should have been."

"You already do," the man reminds him.

+++

Commander Harmon Rabb, Jr. stands at the altar of a church in dress whites, holding the hands of Lieutenant Colonel Sarah Mackenzie as she stands facing him, the white lace of her dress making waves as the train cascades down the steps.

"I, Harmon Rabb, Jr., take you, Sarah Mackenzie, to be my lawfully wedded wife…"

+++

"If you go where I think you're going next…"

"You'll what – strangle me? You can't commit suicide in a dream, Harm."

"What would it take for you not to show me anymore?"

"More than you've got."

+++

It is a gorgeous spring night; the stars are out, the mid-spring flowers are in bloom, the breeze wafts softly along the porch of the admiral's house. It is perfect.

Except…

Except that they are not there to celebrate what he wants to be celebrating. Instead, there will soon be a miscarriage of love. His Mac is getting married to someone else.

On this night, he sees things as they happened, every horrid, hurtful word, every tortured look, every missed opportunity.

"Do you love him?"

Her reply, defensive yet truthful, given the reality in which they live, cuts him to the quick. "That's not a question you get to ask."

And later, when she asks him what she was supposed to do after that awful night in Sydney when he wouldn't give himself over to his emotions, one word is all he can muster. "Wait."

"For how long?"

He is aching inside as he summons what he hopes will tell her everything that he hasn't said thus far. "As long as it takes."

And when she starts to cry, he takes her in his arms, willing the world to change as he holds her. It doesn't.

But when they are interrupted and reminded that the world won't change for them, he manages something more than quibbling words, but not enough. "Mac, you have someone who will always love you."

"And you have somebody that loves you."

She stands on tiptoe to brush a kiss across his lips, but she is caught in his arms and by the depth of angst in his eyes as he descends to her for another kiss, this one full of passion and promise like no other they have shared in the four years they have been each other's better half.

When she breaks the kiss, it is with regret. "We're getting too good at saying goodbye."

"Then let this not be goodbye, Mac. Sarah." He holds her; she trembles in his arms. "Please, Sarah, don't marry him. You deserve…you deserve more. You deserve to marry the man you love as much as he loves you, not to settle for second best." He takes a deep breath. "Marry me."

+++

"We came so close."

"I did the honorable thing," he protests. "It wouldn't have been proper to propose to her on the night of her engagement party."

"It also wasn't honorable to forget to change our qual dates as soon as we knew which weekend she was getting married," his netherworld nemesis reminds him. "And if we had simply been delayed rather than dunked in the middle of the Atlantic, do you have any idea how we would have felt to come home to Lieutenant Colonel Sarah Mackenzie Brumby?"

"She wouldn't have gone through with it," he assures himself with much more confidence in his tone than he has ever allowed himself in his nightmares of exactly that.

"Luckily, we'll never know otherwise," the director says dryly, studying his fingernails.

The nonchalant tone alarms him. "Don't!"

It is too late.

+++

Michael Brumby stands at the altar of a church in morning coat and tails, holding the hands of Sarah Mackenzie as she stands facing him, the white lace of her dress making waves as the train cascades down the steps.

"I, Sarah Mackenzie, take you, Michael Brumby, to be my lawfully wedded husband…"

+++

"It didn't happen!" he seethes, pouncing at his phantasmagoric antagonist from his seat.

The phantasm vanishes and reappears on the other side of him. "You're right, it didn't. But it could have, and it would have been all our fault."

"I've been trying to fix it!" His protest sounds hollow, even in his dream state.

"Oh, really?"

+++

Harm and Mac had been running all out, trying as always to outperform each other in every endeavor. Standing together now at the finish line, they are still trying to outdo each other, this time in the "we're having issues" category that neither of them acknowledge but everyone around them knows all too well.

They have rehashed his unceremonious disposal at Renee's hands and are perched together on a precipice, one that they will either go over together or from which they will back away down separate paths. He fumbles for words, as he is wont to do in situations fraught with emotion.

"Maybe. I…don't know…"

"I don't know why we couldn't work things out between us, Harm."

They look at each other, regret and sadness etched on each finely crafted face.

She goes on. "So where does that leave us?"

He thinks that she looks anxious as he tries to gauge her feelings in her face and her body language. He cannot read her now; where they were once bound together by the strongest of threads they are now unraveling at the seams and he is torn almost beyond repair by loneliness and thoughts of all that might have been. "I don't know, Mac." His tone is heavy, weary with the weight of this great rending of the fabric of his universe. "At the end, I guess."

She takes a shaky breath and proposes, with more hope than he could possibly muster in the moment, "How about back at the beginning?"

He looks up at her, surprised, then smiles at her with what he hopes is his very best Flyboy smile. "Hi. I'm Harmon Rabb, Jr., and I'd like very much to be your best friend, lover, husband, and father to your children."

+++

"Oh, that's subtle," he points out archly to the increasingly laconic doppelganger who has tortured him through this night terror.

"But we almost said it." The matter-of-fact tone is, surprisingly, far more annoying than the smug tone the Director had assumed earlier.

He slouches down in his seat, wondering why even in what he knows is a dream his back hurts. The least his subconscious mind could do for himself is to create a back that hadn't been ejected from a fighter jet three times. The pain makes him cranky. "Almost only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and total global thermonuclear war."

+++

The audible CLICK startles both Mac where she stands in the Humvee and Harm where he stands with his right foot extended in front of his left in the middle of the minefield.

"Did you hear that?" he asks Mac, hoping that it was his imagination.

"Uh huh. Boy, are you lucky," she answers with a nervous laugh.

I'm WHAT? he screams in his mind, but out loud he says, "Why? Didn't I just step on a mine?"

"No," she shakes her head with a worried expression, "you're standing on a mine."

+++

"And, in our case, landmines," the ghoul grins.

"That is so not funny," he shoots back with a pointed look, thinking about Bud.

"Oh, right." The other looks sufficiently chagrined. "My apologies. But there are a few more 'almosts'…"

+++

Harm and Mac have stopped for the night, tired and footsore from their unexpected hike through the "man's country" back toward base camp. When first she settles a distance away from him, he teases her that room service could send a room divider. They share a laugh before he urges her to come closer. She does, but he wants her closer still, wants to hold her tightly enough that he won't shake with the terrors he knows will come in the night after their experience with the landmine earlier in the day.

The reason he gives her is valid enough and ultimately – perhaps – more important than his very personal need. "You know, Mac, the temperature is going to continue to drop, so if we don't share body heat, we're risking hypothermia."

"You make it sound so inviting," she replies, a smile on her face and in her voice, and he thinks that maybe she has seen through him.

"You want an invitation?" He can play that game, too.

"Yes."

But not for long. "Sarah, please hold me so I can make it through the night."

+++

His other self is ogling him rapaciously. "We might have shared more than body heat that night."

"Except for the damned bombs," he lets slip, and instantly regrets showing the Director that they agree on something.

"Except for the damned bombs." The Director stretches languidly in his red velvet chair. "But there might be some hope for us yet."

+++

Mac has doctored Harm's coffee with creamer for him, an intimate gesture that goes unnoticed as they talk about how they are going to defend their client adequately. They share an amused chuckle when her idea is exactly what he would have said had he gone first.

Harm speaks to it as they head back through the bullpen toward Mac's office, where all the files are spread out. "Have you noticed that we're beginning to think a lot alike?"

She shrugs with a half smile. "That's something, isn't it?" She swallows some of her black coffee.

"How do you account for that?" he wonders, as much for himself as to see what her answer might be.

She ponders this for a few seconds before she offers, "Ummm…a rip in the space-time continuum?"

He smiles; it is banter at its best between them, but he wants more than banter. "Or maybe it's a sign that our hearts are finally beating in unison…"

+++

"That would have been a good thing to say," he admits to the Director.

That oh-so-familiar face lights up in what he knows is the Flyboy grin. "Yes, it would have."

"You're not."

"I am."

+++

"I, Harmon Rabb, Jr., take you, Sarah Mackenzie, to be my lawfully wedded wife…"

+++

"Getting a bit hard to take?" The smile this time is gleeful, almost evilly so.

"You've made your point," he sighs. "I get it. Listen to you the next time you try to tell me to say something."

The Director's grin fades and the mirror-image face regards him silently for a long time. "There's one more thing…" the silken voice says, letting the idea hang.

He knows. He knows exactly what he is going to see. And he knows that it will hurt as much as anything this nightmare has shown him thus far. Perhaps more.

+++

Mac glows as though she really is carrying a child within her – his child, he wishes, wondering again if he should have said something more direct a few months ago when they had their most recent "baby talk". He wasn't worried that she wanted to up the timetable, when he thought about it. He was hoping she wanted to.

She glows, but it is a false light, faked for reasons known only to Clayton Webb, whose motives for having Mac play his pregnant wife Harm cannot trust as far as the end of his nose. And Webb is not known for safe missions. Successful, yes, but not safe. Images of the worst possible outcomes fly through his overactive imagination as she stands before him, telling him that she's going to Paraguay tonight but couldn't go without knowing he was alright after his ordeal with NCIS.

He can't stay still; he walks away to put his guitar down and looks back at her from the relative safety of ten feet of open space.

"I'm coming back, you know."

"You better," he says, waving at her beautiful faux belly. "We have a promise to keep to each other."

+++

"Shall I finish that scene for us?" The Director rises and moves behind him, lays his hand on his shoulder in the most comforting gesture he can make.

He shakes his head. "Allow me."

+++

She stares at him for a long moment, mouth open as though she is trying to formulate something to say.

He steps closer to her, arms open. "I don't want you to go," he clarifies, "but I know that this is as much who you are as flying Tomcats is who I am. And it doesn't matter, Sarah, as long as we come back every time."

Mac nods, wiping at the tears which threaten to fall at his heartfelt words. She steps closer, but not into his arms. "Are you sure?" she manages after more expectant silence.

"I'm sure." He smiles through tears that dampen his face. "I'm sure that you are who I love with my whole heart. I don't want to wait any longer for you, and I want you for all eternity."

She moves no closer and he can see the battle that wages in her chocolate orbs as she wavers between surrendering to herself and fleeing from that which scares her most, surrendering to him. "Why is it," she chokes out through half-suppressed sobs, "that you had to do this now?"

"Because I want our love for each other to protect you," he whispers, "like it has always protected me."

The tears fall faster from her brown eyes as she closes the distance, stepping into his embrace and tilting her head up for his kiss.

Their kiss is sweet and languorous, shot through with love, hope, apology, and a thousand other emotions they pour into the moment.

+++

"Please stow your tray tables and return your seats to the upright and locked position," the voice of the lead flight attendant drawls in the soft Texas twang that is so common among the crews of the airline which could get him to Paraguay most rapidly.

He sits up, disoriented, wondering for a moment where Mac is, since he has just been kissing her in the most extraordinary way. Reality crashes around him when the first class cabin attendant comes through, seeking remnants of beverages and other detritus that might be problematic during a bad landing.

Sarah Mackenzie is missing in Paraguay with Clayton Webb.

He is a civilian now.

He has to find her and bring her home, or die trying.

Because he knows now what he has to do to keep her.

"I love you, Sarah," he whispers against the cold surface of the window beside him, staring off into the clouds that hide the South American continent – and her – from his searching eyes.

Somewhere deep inside, the Director smiles. There will be no further need of a Director's Cut of Harmon Rabb, Jr.'s life.