The Richter Scale

By Lady Chal

Summary: Set 6 years after the events in my previous story "Memorial Day." While spending Thanksgiving with his daughter in California, Clayton Webb discovers something about his ex-wife that will shake the foundation of his world.

AN: To completely understand this universe, you may want to visit my page and read all my JAG fic in the following order: "Speak to Me in the Middle of the Night," "Lion Among the Lambs," "Memorial Day," this story, and then finally "Do Not Look for Me in Death." I make no apologies, this is totally Webb/Mac! You have been warned...

"Is this Major a looker?"

"Seven-point-six."

"—Wait, wait. –You break it down into tenths?!"

"I use the Richter scale."

--We the People

Part I: Gray

26 November 2027

UCSF MEDICAL CENTER

SAN FRANCISCO, CA

The rain pounded steadily against the glass wall of the waiting room. Large, fat drops flattened out against the mirrored surface before joining the streaming rivulets that trailed down to the wet pavement far below. Here and there, bright umbrellas dotted the sidewalks like waves of soggy, dancing blossoms. Save for that, the world outside the window was lost in a wash of gray. The Bay Bridge was almost completely obscured save for the small pinpoints of flashing red light that occasionally pierced the rain and mist.

A low rumble of thunder echoed from sea and rolled across the city, vibrating the small drops of water that beaded on the glass. A moment later a flash of lightning slashed across the sky and illuminated the face of the man who stood at the window, staring grimly at the gray world beyond. It was a scene that was both foreign and familiar to him. He'd never been to San Francisco. He'd been to hundreds of cities in dozens of countries all over the globe, but somehow he'd managed to completely miss this one. Still, damp and dismal as it was, it didn't seem much different from London or Paris, Budapest or Tokyo. The buildings and faces might change, he thought, but the dismal gray of a rainstorm always remained the same.

Clayton Webb was something of an authority on gray. It had tinted his world for longer than he could remember. Some people saw their lives in black and white, right and wrong, good and bad. A glorious and lucky few lived their lives in Technicolor, but those were mostly artists and dreamers. Life had never been black and white for Webb, and color, for the most part, was just a dream. There were no easy choices. There had been no such thing as a clean dividing line between right and wrong. There had only been situations, and parameters from which actions must be chosen and consequences lived with. For a life lived in the shadows, there was no such thing as black and white. There were only subtle variations of gray.

Another bolt of lightning flashed outside the window, enhancing the shadows of the room and making him suddenly aware of his own reflection, cast in the darkened glass by the dim light of the small lamp behind him. It occurred to him that he looked almost as drab as the world outside the window. From the gray of his hair to the charcoal of his suit and the silver headed cane he leaned upon, he was practically colorless.

The next flash of lightning allowed him a better look, and he ran his fingers down his chest, touching the raw silk of his tie and nervously smoothing it into place. He smiled faintly at the deep red sheen of the fabric. Well, perhaps he wasn't completely colorless. There was this damned tie that Penny had insisted he wear. He didn't know what the big deal was; the Navy one with the silver stripe would have done just as well. Penny, however, had not seen it that way. She had pulled this one out of a box in her closet and refused to let him leave her apartment until he had taken off the other and donned this one instead. He had known better than to argue. She was channeling her mother in that particular moment, and it really wouldn't matter what he said. In the end, he was going to lose.

Which was how he'd ended up here, he thought glumly, a gray man in a gray world, staring down at the small scrap of color in his hand as he waited for the color that remained in his life to return to him.

"Daddy?"

He turned sharply at the sound of his daughter's voice, and was momentarily jolted at the sight of her. Yes, Penny was his color now. Of that, there could be no doubt. Her gleaming dark hair shown with rich mahogany highlights, and her hazel eyes sparkled with glints of green and gold that complimented bright emerald silk of her blouse. God, he thought, she was Sarah all over again. Ok, maybe not quite yet, but she would be. Six-point-two, he decided as his gaze swept over her with a discerning eye, but she was destined to go higher. Like her mother, she'd only get better with age. As it was, he already had Phillips beating the boys off with a stick whenever she came home to visit.

He must have been studying her just a bit too intently, because she reached out and laid a careful hand upon his arm.

"You looked pretty deep for moment there, Dad," she said softly. "What were you thinking about?"

"The Richter scale," he muttered.

Penny shot him an odd look. "Care to translate that?"

"Maybe …if you'd been a boy" he said.

"Huh," Penny snorted, "Story of my life."

Clay jerked his head towards the hall from which she'd entered.

"What did the Doctor say?"

Penny shrugged. It was a small gesture that somehow spoke volumes and made her seem older than her twenty years. "She's resting right now. They gave her some painkillers and ran some x-rays. They don't think she did any serious damage when she fell."

"And do they know why she fell?" he demanded.

Penny drew in a small breath, and said. "She had a dizzy spell."

Clay said nothing. He didn't have to. Penny was lying –or at least not telling all of the truth-- and they both knew it. She'd learned long ago to look a person straight in the eye when shading a truth, but she'd never quite managed to overcome the small inhalation that was her only tell. So he simply narrowed his gaze upon her, and waited.

One heartbeat passed between them, and then another before Penny finally wilted with a heavy sigh. "She was dizzy because she was still weak from the treatments."

"What treatments?" Clay demanded. Penny flinched at the sharpness in his tone, but he refused to relent, pinning her with the same dark expression that had wilted lower level State Department bureaucrats and any military personnel below the rank of Lieutenant. She lasted for all of about thirty-five seconds.

"Chemo," she mumbled, not quite meeting his eye.

Clay cocked his head, not quite sure that he had heard correctly. "Excuse me?" His voice sounded strangled, even to his own ears, and he was dimly aware of the death grip he held upon the cane.

Penny stepped forward and took his arm again, steadying him as the impact of her words rocked through him. "She's taking chemotherapy, Dad. She has cancer."

Clay focused upon steadying his breathing. He willed his legs to remain upright. He forced his mouth to stay closed even as the small shadowy details began to merge and coalesce in the back of his mind. It all made sense now, if he thought about it: Spring break spent with friends in Seattle rather than coming home to DC… Summer classes at UCLA that he had yet to see a tuition bill for... and most of all, the nagging feeling that something was going on in his daughter's life which she didn't feel she could share with him. –And all this time he'd been foolish enough to think it was just a boy.

He gazed at Penny for a long moment, seeing both the little girl and the woman in her face, seeing both his daughter and a person he wasn't sure he'd ever met.

"How long?" he asked hoarsely.

She gripped his arm even tighter, anxious now to reassure him. "Oh, Dad… it's still early. They think she's got a really good chance of—

"That's not what I'm talking about, Penelope," he said flatly. "You knew. How long have you known?"

Penny bit her lip. "You…um… remember when Mom broke her leg?"

"On your birthday," Clay said. "You said she went roller-blading with you and Katie."

Penny nodded, "Yeah, well, she didn't exactly break it because she was roller blading…. I mean, we were roller-blading and everything, but… it just sort of broke on its own. --I mean one minute we were going along fine and then the next minute mom just fell down and…and…"

Penny floundered for breath and words, as the story, pent up for so long inside her came tumbling out. Clay dropped his cane to grasp her other arm and led her to the couch, no longer quite sure who was supporting who.

"The next thing I knew we were at the hospital and the Doctors were talking about x-rays, and shadows…and tests…and…and…they said she had some kind of bone cancer. I don't even know the name of it. It was growing in her leg and that's what made it weak and break…and…oh, Dad," she wailed, "I'm just so scared I don't know what to do!"

Clay reached for her then, pulling her into his arms like the little girl she once had been. "Hush," he said softly, his breath feathering the hair at her temple. "Hush," he murmured again, rocking her gently in his arms.

When her sobs had subsided, he pushed her back a bit and put a hand to her tearstained cheek. He rubbed away the dampness with his thumb and then framed her face in his hands, forcing her to look at him.

"Why didn't you tell me?" He asked.

Penny sniffed. "I wanted to," she admitted. "so many times, but…I just…"

He plucked the linen handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her. "You could have told me, Pen." He said quietly, stroking her hair. "You should have told me. You shouldn't have had to deal with this alone."

Penny wiped her eyes, dabbed at her nose, then began to slowly twist the handkerchief between her fingers. "Mom asked me not to," she admitted quietly. "She doesn't want anyone to know."

Clay sank slowly back against the cushions. "No," he said dimly, "you mean she doesn't want me to know."

"Oh, Daddy! It's not like that."

Clay covered his face with his hands, struggling to compose himself. "Of course it's like that," he said tiredly. "It's been 'like that' for the last three years. Your mother has made it perfectly clear she no longer wants me to be involved in her life."

He dropped his hands and shot his daughter an irritated look. "Apparently she did not get the memo about my intentions to stay completely involved in your life. I can not believe she expected you to deal with this alone!" he snapped, unable to control the fierce anger that only Sarah could stir in him.

"It's ok, Dad," Penny said uneasily, "I wasn't alone, I had Mom, we had each other."

Clay shot her a baleful look. "That's not enough, and you know it. –So does she. You might be her support system, but she can't be yours, not when she's sick." He raked a hand through his hair. "God, I can't believe you didn't tell me!"

He felt Penny's hand close around his own, squeezing tightly. "Dad," Penny said haltingly, "She didn't do it to hurt you. She really didn't….but you know how she is. She's just so…proud and so…"

"Stubborn," Clay said softly.

Penny smiled faintly. "Yeah," she whispered. "I think she's scared, Dad. She just won't admit it, not to me –not even to herself. I think she didn't want me to tell you because she knew you would come charging out here with a battalion of doctors and specialists and money and she just didn't want that."

"Well of course I would have," Clay said irritably. "Christ, Pen! Chemo? What is this, the Dark Ages? You're the heiress to a foundation that invests fifty million dollars a year in cancer research. I think we could have done a little better than that. There's a clinic in Switzerland that's had incredible success. You could have talked her into going there at least."

"Believe me, Dad, I tried." Penny said. "She wouldn't have it. She insisted on doing it all on her own. Chemo is what the government was willing to pay for, so that's what she did."

"She's doing this on her military benefit plan?" Clay was horrified. "What in God's name has she done with her divorce settlement?"

The silence from the other end of the sofa was suddenly deafening. Clay slowly turned the full force of his gaze upon his daughter. Penny had knotted the handkerchief into a hopeless tangle. "She gave it to me," she said quietly.

"What?" he said stupidly. He was starting to feel like the coyote in those old Warner Brothers cartoons, mowed down by a freight train, only to get up and be bowled over again by another one coming from the opposite direction. Clearly there was much that Sarah and Penny had been keeping from him as of late.

"She put it all into a trust for me. I'll get it when I graduate from college. In the mean time, she set up a bank account for me in LA and has some money transferred into it every month. She's been living off of her pension –and her checks from the practice."

It was not unlike the arrangement that he himself had made for Penny. Clay made a mental note to substantially decrease the monthly amounts he was transferring to his daughter's account. It was possible to have too much of a good thing, especially when it came to college students and spending money.

He leaned forward and braced his elbows on his knees, staring over his clasped hands to the polished toes of his black wingtips. "So what else have you been keeping from me?" he asked quietly.

More silence.

"Tell me about Spring Break," he said. "Were you up here? Is that why you didn't come home?"

"Dad…."

"I know you weren't in Seattle," he continued. "You told me you going up there with Katie to spend the week at her family's cabin. Funny thing though, when I called your apartment to let you know I was going to be up at Manderley for the rest of the month, I didn't get your answering machine. I got Katie."

"You never said anything," she whispered.

"I was waiting for you to tell me the truth," he said simply. "I still am."

"Dad, I'm so sorry…"

She reached for him again, laying her hand upon his wrist. He recoiled slightly at the contact, balling his fist reflexively at the touch of her fingers upon his skin.

"In spite of what your mother might think, I'm not made of stone, Pen," he said tightly. "It was bad enough when your mother cut me from her life. I don't…." he swallowed hard, "I don't think I can stand it if I lose you, too."

Incredibly, instead of pulling away, her fingers tightened around his wrist, pulling his hands apart. Taking his left hand firmly in hers, Penny laced her fingers tightly through his limp ones and leaned into him, pressing her face into the hollow of his neck and shoulder, just as she'd done as a child.

"Oh, God, Dad," she whispered. "I'm so sorry! I never meant –I didn't know you thought that…" she sighed heavily. "If it's any consolation, Mom thought I was in Seattle, too."

"So where were you?"

"I was in L.A., in the hospital," she said.

He had thought himself beyond surprise at this point; even so, he felt his fingers twitch automatically in hers. She squeezed back in reassurance.

"I was having tests done. I had a bone marrow biopsy, to see if I would be a compatible donor for Mom."

"Are you?"

Penny nodded. "I am, but so far, she won't hear of it. She's convinced the chemo and radiation treatments are going to work. –If they don't, though, a bone marrow transplant is the next step."

Clay scrubbed the hand Penny wasn't holding across his face. "Well, that's something I guess."

"I'm sorry I lied to you, Dad." Penny said quietly, "and I'm sorry I didn't tell you about Mom. I wanted to, but she's…"

"Bull-headed," Clay finished.

"Yeah."

Freeing his hand from hers, Clay wrapped an arm around her and pulled her close. "I'm sorry too, Sweet Pea," he said, brushing a kiss across the top of her head. "I knew something was going on with you, I should have put it together sooner. I should have talked to you until you started talking back. I was just so…"

"Lost," Penny said quietly.

He didn't deny it.
"You've been lost for a long time, Daddy," Penny observed. "I think we all have, --even Mom, although she pretends she isn't."

He sighed and sank back into the sofa cushions, pulling her with him. "Your mother takes pride almost to the point of insanity. I think she'd rather die than ask for help." He shot a sidewise glance at his daughter. "Sorry," he said, "bad choice of words."

Penny snorted. "Why are you apologizing? It's true. Every time I try to help her she won't let me. I decided not to go back to Virginia for the summer so I could help her through the chemo, but she keeps pushing me back to L.A. every chance she gets. She won't let me get better doctors. She wouldn't let me call you. She won't let anybody do anything."

"I don't know about you," he said slowly, "But I think your mother's had her own way on this thing for long enough."

"Tell me about it," Penny groaned, sinking deeper into the couch cushions.

"So what are we going to do about it?"

She rolled her head towards him, and regarded him warily. "I don't know," she said, "What are we going to do about it?"

Clay thought about this for a moment. "Well," he said at last, "I think the first thing is for you to go back and sit with her until she wakes up. When she does, you explain what happened and tell her that as far as I'm concerned, the jig is up."

"And then?"

"And then," Clay said grimly, "you head for the nearest bolt hole because she and I are about to have a talk."

Penny raised her head from the cushions to look at him. "Really?"

"Really," he said grimly.

"Wow," she said slowly, "You're braver than I thought."

Not really, his inner voice chided. A braver man would have come after her two years ago, instead of signing those damned divorce papers and letting her slip away in the first place. He jerked his head towards the hallway. "Go on," he said quietly. "Be there when she wakes up."

Penny leaned over to kiss his cheek and then slowly extracted herself from the couch. She bent down and retrieved his cane, lying forgotten on the floor, and handed it to him. He gave her hand a final squeeze.

"Come and get me when you're ready," he said.

She nodded silently and left.

Clay turned slightly to watch her go, and was struck again by how different she had become in the few short months since he had last seen her. –Different, and yet the same. She was woman now, but somewhere inside she was still his little girl, and he suspected that where he was concerned, that child would never be very far away.

He sank back into the cushions and closed his eyes. God, how had this happened? They had all been so close, once. They had been the damned Washington gold-standard of happy suburban life. They'd had it all: the perfect marriage, the perfect daughter, the perfect house, even the perfect standard issue dog and cat.

Well, on second thought, maybe the cat hadn't been that perfect. There were those four citations they'd received from Animal control for Tigger doing his business in Mrs. Montgomery's Begonia bed. On the other hand, there'd been a certain poetic justice in it, what with all those damned birds she insisted on feeding that carpet bombed every deck and drive and parked vehicle up and down the block. Maybe that was why Sarah had left him the cat. She could live content in the knowledge that Tigger would continue to crap in old lady Montgomery's prize Begonias, while Clay continued to pay the fines for it.

Not that it mattered, now. Whatever they'd had before was gone. The house in Alexandria was empty, primped and painted with a real-estate sign tastefully displayed in the front yard. He and the cat were at Manderley, Penny was in college at UCLA, discovering her own life, and Sarah and the dog were in San Francisco in a three story Painted Lady she'd bought before the ink on their divorce papers was even dry.

They were all cast asunder now, circling about Penny in an unsteady orbit, uncertain of themselves and each other, with none of them knowing how to reconnect. Penny was right: They were lost, had been lost for the last three years. No, he decided silently. They'd been lost for far longer than that. More like six, if he wanted to be perfectly honest with himself. That wasn't the worst part, though. The worst part was the knowledge that they had come to this because of him. Poetic justice, he thought grimly. Angry and hurt and betrayed as he might feel right now, he could not judge them too harshly for the secrets they had kept from him. It was merely the reflection of his own sins coming home to roost.