Very much AU, but an attempt at a new perspective of Harm's life and where it fits.
The Last Dream
It was cold and dark up under the attic roof and the rain danced as though it was alive on the slates above him. It seemed almost alive as he sat there, sleepless in his guilt and his fears.
The sound was mesmerizing and thankfully distracting to the battered young lieutenant. The trickle of rain sounded more real up under the roof, almost tangible as it pooled on the tiles and then ran away to the gutter and down into the fresh earth. Unsullied, pure, clean, everything that he wasn't.
If only human lives were as easy to repair as the immortal cycle of lakes and scummy ponds to condensation and clean rain. But then he had known what he was getting into hadn't he, the best and worst a man could be.
The rain was still calling to him as well it might, because he was linked to the water as few could be. He had been an aviator, one with the sky and a sailor, one with the sea below. Now he wasn't sure he was either.
The window latch rasped as he fumbled with it but the windows themselves opened noiselessly out into the downpour. He watched absently as the water beaded at the ends of his eyelashes and mingled with the tears that ran unheeded down his face. Tears for his missing father and the wife that that father had left behind, tears for the child that he had been, tears for Mace and tears for the blank future but none for the man that had killed his friend.
He had stopped crying for himself long ago.
The rain was trailing off by the time he had recovered his composure, a gentle drizzle settling into the thirsty earth. It would be good for Grandma Sarah's garden. He looked east where her garden was quietly living, it was still dark.
Sometimes he wondered if he would have liked a quiet life, far away from doubt and turmoil and pain. He saw it in his dreams, a beautiful wife and happy children and no more excitement than the dog and Pennsylvania storms.
It was a dream, elusive and as slippery as the water running through his fingers. And whatever he might dream he knew that that wasn't him, but standing there in the dark and the rain he just wasn't sure what was.
It was as bright and blinding as the lightening, but in the space between the falling rain drops he saw his life laid out in front of him.
It terrified him as he stumbled back to his bed dripping wet and shaking.
He didn't dream of black and white fire and death that night, he dreamed in color. Hot, painful, brilliant color, living in a kaleidoscope world full of love and life, joy and sorrow, despair and always at the end, hope.
He saw gold wings and forgiveness; he saw Meg Austin's beautiful and happy face. He saw the Admiral at the beginning of his service and he heard his condemnation at the end of his Navy career. There was a dark cell in China, a smirking face with evil in the eyes as he sat ready to die in his own home, and the stormy waves of the North Atlantic and an empty raft.
He saw a woman who wasn't Diane who became inexorably entangled in his life, he saw her in pain and he saw her breaking his heart. He saw Bud Roberts happy and safe with his wife and son. He saw a friend lose his leg and he saw a carrier group in deadly danger.
He saw suffering and honor, gallantry and hardship. He saw the duty and burden of an officer of the court. He saw both guilty and innocent. There was another cell, this time in the land he called home and he saw fear and gut-wrenching loneliness.
He saw his career ended and his life at loose ends. But there at the end was a little girl with fiery hair and a bright spirit and there was a young, dark-haired yeoman who needed a friend.
And beyond all the sorrow and joy he saw a place for man who wasn't sure where he belonged, a place that for good or ill was his and his alone to fill.
And he made his choice; that damn the hardship and the broken heart he would carry out his oaths and take his place.