A/N: So I wrote myself into a corner on another story and was so discouraged that I took a hiatus. I've been meaning to to start that one up again soon, and did this as a warm-up. So, here's a oneshot. Maybe a twoshot if there is interest in continuing the ending a bit

Summary:

Harvey's mother is on trial, contemplative dark city gazing happens, 'you're not in my world, probably for a reason' echos back from the past, and the maturity factor finally shifts it's balance.

We are broken the same

An undetermined amount of time into the future...

The scotch didn't have ice and the skyline did.

He sipped, not flinching at the sudden bracing wind against the double-panes. Some nights he noticed his drink slowly swirl with the slight oscillating of the high-rise, but tonight the bursts were sudden, brusque, isolated.

Just like his opponent at trial, sudden, his run-in with his mother earlier that day, brusque, and how he felt now, isolated.

He picked up a frame out of the cardboard box in front of him. He has scratched her out of the picture, brutally. The white of the photo paper all that remained of her left eye and the majority of her neck. A hint of that deceitful smile. The paragon of his youth, but what did it matter?

He tossed it down, gulping a bit of his amber liquid.

Then he closed his eyes and breathed in a long breath and put down the drink.

His therapist had said to visualize. The picture was key. He needed to look. He picked up the frame.

She closed the door lightly, her head slipping forward to rest against the slightly cold wood.

Her palm was slightly clammy as she absently trailed away from the freshly turned deadbolt click to the clatter of the chain.

The home scent she had applied rushed into her as she pulled a hard breath. It had been the right thing, to let him go. After all these years, the same pattern, different men. Anyone would assume that her high-powered life would extend to her personal life. As if her perfect pencil-length skirts would endow her with timeless and impeccable taste in men. And she would be glad of it, because if they did know, she would feel unmasked. It would be unbearable.

She allowed herself a few more moments of weakness, relishing the aching chill of her feet against the tile. Focusing for a moment on the goosebumps on her bare legs as the cold reached through, seeped through, the door.

She was punishing herself, and as soon as the absurd thought caught up to the still-sane part of her mind, she backed away, into the warm glow of the living room.

And then, of course, she saw the double place settings. The two glasses of wine. She conveniently overlooked the fact that one glass was shattered as she cleaned up the glass.

As if it were normal for a woman in the later part of her thirties to be crouched on the ground picking glass out of a rug after an explosive fight with the 43rd man she had ever dated (not that she was counting) and the second she had considered marrying.

Staunch, resolute, resilient, radiant. That's what she told herself she was.

But that was not the woman she saw reflected in a side mirror. And she paused to school away the ugliness that had creeped over her face, but only for a moment.

He was frowning, his eyebrows were furrowed, and he was leaning his mouth into a tight fist, arm propped up on the conference room table. He knew, intellectually that he was mad.

His mother was raving about some or other supposed fabrication of her actions. She was pacing. But he knew this behavior. Self-justification, he had seen it in many clients who were unable to master their features and emotions even to protect their innocence. And it was a good thing that those people were such a dead giveaway to read, it made his job a whole hell of a lot easier. If they weren't going to tell him the truth, and he damned as well needed to know it, at least their bodies always told him.

But, as she sat down in a a flurry of contrived exasperation, he took a moment, sitting back to ponder why his mastery over this subject seemed suddenly strange. After all, it's always a bit of a shock when you surpass you parents. You always expect they either start out perfect, or they will somehow, through some natural law, keep pace with your discoveries of life's secrets. After all, how could the created know more than the creator.

And that was the same problem here. The creator of this bogus story didn't know how much her lies told, how much truth her lies actually had. That was the key here.

He stood up.

"Mom, just go back to your hotel room. Don't talk to anyone who tries to approach you. Be here tomorrow morning."

His had was , opening the door. It really was strange to use the word 'mom,' but he thought the token may buy compliance.

"Well, aren't you going to do it?" she demanded, the crazy gleam in her eyes.

No. There was no way I was going to tip off our opponent by such a foolish move.

"I'll think about it." I said evenly, eyes slightly tired. "Now, go."

"You're late."

"What?" Donna stopped mid stride, skirt mid-swish.

"Deposition began an hour ago downstairs." Harvey turned away from the Manhattan skyline view, hands in his pockets, eyes snapping to her. "Oh, I see," he said, removing his gaze and walking over to his desk.

She approached the front of his desk, shifting in a stilted way. "What can you see?"

"It's not my place."

He knew. But how could he? For all he knew, she hadn't even been seeing anyone.

Her confused look prompted him to say, "It's always that skirt."

"How did you find out?"

"One of them came here last time. Before that I had dropped by."

She winced. Dropped by was hardly a way to refer to what had happened that night, what they had done.

Maybe he had been keeping a closer eye on her than even she knew.

"Well, Marrio needs to see you in ten minutes down in eleven."

"I know," he said, finally sitting down, shifting through the papers she had just handed him. "I'm going to give him cause for moving this date up. The quicker we can get this thing to trial, the less time they will have to find out about my mother's little indiscretion with the head of their competitor."

"I'll get us the earliest on the docket."

She walked out toward her desk, but she could feel his eyes on her skirt. His pen unmoving.

Scotty.

'You're not in my world anymore, and that's for a reason.'

'An intentional reason?'

'No, an inherent reason.'

'Are you going to tell me what this is? You seem to have put a lot of thought into this.'

'You weren't ready, you probably never will be for me because our differences are to great to bridge. I may be a warrior, Harvey, but I'm not like you. I'm not a mercenary.'

'And you think I'm a mercenary?'

'You always have been. That's what I love and hate about you. But it's not me. Your flaws are not my flaws, so I have no patience or sympathy for you. And you probably wouldn't happily endure mine.'

He remembered the way she had looked in that moment, her eyes fierce, her hair so soft and touchable.. her resolute but dispirited countenance.

'I won't turn up again.'

He walked to the door, and for maybe the first time in a situation such as this, he paused.

'I would have been very happy for circumstances to have been different.'

He had left.

But later, months later, he had realized that she was right. When he saw her with her new fiance, he could no longer call up any regret.

Seeing the man she had chosen had sealed things for him. Her choice bespoke their difference. Her happiness with him belied the troubles they would have had.

Not that he had anything against generic patent attorney recipients of plastic surgery that had pollo betting habits and nere a scratch on their records even after a solid month of digging. No.

She was, after all, very different. His contact at her office even mentioned she was talking of moving and having a baby after a June wedding.

"Harvey, you're letting your disappointment color this trial."

"Excuse me?"

"The allegations about your mother's involvement with his competitor may not be true."

"They are true! And it has everything to do with fact and nothing to do with any disposition of my own." He was standing now, hands resting on the chair, back slightly bent forward.

"You are assuming that! Based on childhood -"

"There's one person who hasn't be able to get over their childhood disappointments with their parent in this room, and it's not me," he said, storming toward the door.

Then he stopped, as he had been doing a lot lately, and turned.

Donna looked affronted, and suddenly he felt his height over her, so he backed up a pace toward the glass door that was still shut in the conference room.

"Maybe if you - stop covering it up the disappointment for him you'd be - happier." This was awkward for him, changing an attack into 'speaking the truth constructively' as his therapist had suggested.

He walked out of the room.

She looked down at her single glass of wine on the coffee table. A mirrored tray, a candle, then a flash of her face as she leaned forward. Her tired, drawn face. She backed up in aversion.

'stop covering up the disappointment.'

'you'd be ... happier'

She closed her eyes, lips pursed on the glass, and then put the glass down and cried.

Cried because he was right. Because she couldn't rescue enough men to rescue her father. She couldn't rescue any man enough to rescue herself from the disappointment, the fear, the shame she felt. She couldn't pose or paint or pretend her way out of how she felt - the pain of her own guilty embarrassment of his foolishness, and what that must say about her.

"You look chipper."

"It's a nice day."

"Who's the guy?"

"No guy."

"Hmm. Tell Garrion if he calls this phone that my client will be unable to talk to him until after the trial."

"Is that your mothers?"

"Yes, and she will need a new one."

"Harvey -"

"Look, I went over there, about four months ago because I feared this was happening when I got wind of the ordeal in the papers with the plaintiff. I saw her. Her and Garrion. I also found a hotel key when I called on my mother, yes, I know, she was suspicious that I visited as well."

"Well we had better find a way to keep this out of the papers."

"That's what I'm doing today."

'Dad, what is HRS Holdings?' She had picked up a check for two thousand dollars.

'Oh they are the company I got the settlement from a few years ago.'

She had paused. There had been no settlement in his court case.

'They come every month.'

'Oh.'

The conversation played back in her mind as she held incorporation documents in the file room with the moniker of HRS typed firm black ink.

Her thumb ran across the familiar signature at the bottom.

Harvey.

"Has Neilson come to ask about the documents from last summer?"

She jumped slightly and put the paper back in the box.

"No."

"We Incorporated the plaintiff but their case isn't in that box."

"Rachel needed something"

His sideways look as he was leaving told her that he didn't believe her.

She suddenly felt a rush of heat over her whole body. "Why would you do this?" she asked in sudden outrage.

"Don't ask me to stop," was all he said before rounding the corner.

She could feel his presence as he left the room.

"We need to lambast him in front of the jury. Talk him down to the depraved old man he is." Mike stood facing Harvey, both locked in debate.

"That would be admitting the rendezvous happened."

"It wouldn't, it would imply, that he would have wanted her, and then we can make it seem like it was a power move within his own company toward his investor board."

"You know, I've been thinking, maybe it was. Their company charter has a clause allowing a questioning of leadership during boom times to protect the companies future."

"The paranoia clause was going to be incited? We don't have any evidence that the board was even meeting let alone discussing an inquiry."

"Well that information isn't on trial and I highly doubt our plaintiff's opponent would want to do anything but support that cover story."

There was a knock on her door. At after ten, she had no idea who it could be. Pulled herself up from her couch, pulling the sleeves of her lounge sweater back to more fully use her hands.

The shadow of a man shown in the street light through the peephole, he was holding flowers.

She closed her eyes impatiently and opened the door.

"Jaques, I need you to leave-" she broke off.

"You must have a type," a familiar voice said.

"What, what are you doing here, Harvey?" she said uncertainly.

"Can I come in?"

"Of course," she said, standing back and then going to pour wine. She absently selected one of her nicest bottles.

He was already sitting on her couch when she returned.

It felt somehow overwhelming to have his masculine energy in her home, somehow almost indecent to have him on her couch, the place she had cried a few nights ago.

She sat down after his glass was in his hand, rather further than she would have done with Rachel or even Jaques.

"I'm sorry," he said simply. "I didn't mean for you to find out about your father like that."

"Well, I did," she said, feeling relaxed and a little bit disappointed that this was the apparent cause for his visit.

"I'm not here just to apologize for that, though."

Her heart skipped a beat.

He was so big, sitting there, his presence washing over her.

"I'm sorry for how much of an ass I've been to you over the years, and I'm so incredibly glad that you stuck by me."

"Harvey, of-"

"No, Donna. I was out of line and you should have left me many times."

"But I would never-"

"I know. That's the point. We are flawed, but our flaws keep us together, but they also keep us apart, and I want to stop that."

"What are you-" She didn't know what he was saying. He couldn't be saying what she thought he was saying, that was taboo. Acknowledging this tension between them, speaking of it out loud, it could be the downfall of their ambitions, the downfall of their normalcy and all they had worked to create.

"Harvey, no -"

"Why are we keeping this a secret? It's not like you don't know or I don't know."

"It'll break everything."

"Everything is already broken. Are you happy with this life? Coming home alone every night?"

"No, but-"

"Can you sit here and tell me that you'd ever be fully satisfied with someone else?"

She was silent, and she knew the truth. Her relationships were surface-level imitations of what a relationship should look like.

But with him, it went all the way down, but it was flawed, there were pieces that disappointed her, pieces where their flaws existed.

"We can never be perfect, Donna, all I'm asking is that you'll try."

"Things could never go back to the way they are now."

"But would you want that anyway?"

She looked down, mind buzzing, unable to string logical thought together.

His hands were so big on her thin wine glass.

His presence in her living room was overwhelming.

She wanted his thick shoulders around her, she wanted those warm hands on her, she wanted to drown in his pure caring capable essence.

It must have shown in her eyes, because in a moment, he had shifted toward her, lips parted, placed his warm hand slowly on her cheek and was drawing her near to him, hooded eyes locked in her own.

When she closed her eyes, his warm lips were on her own.

Her mind was buzzing, and she was trembling slightly, but she melted into him.

What if this was the end of the dream duo? She had survived that before. But she had to admit to herself, even then, not having Harvey at work was fine, but not having him in her life, that was the emptiest part.

And suddenly, all the implications of those words hit her at once. The completeness she felt with him, the magnetic attraction she had suppressed for years, the tension they had denies.

It all unraveled.

But their case wouldn't. She knew they would win tomorrow. His mother would be let off the hook.

And if she was lucky, she could finally let go of the shame of her own past and would be able to let herself enjoy the happiness that she had so close all along.