TEASER:  Mac gets sent into the war zone in Iraq on a case.  Now she's giving Harm nightmares.

DISCLAIMER:  If I owned the ensemble and the concept, I wouldn't be in debt.  If I were making money from them, I would be in a lot less debt.  If DPB and TPTB would like to sell them to me on an installment plan, show me where to sign.  Until then, consider them borrowed with love and the story and any new characters mine.

ARCHIVE:  Flattery will get you everywhere!  Please ask first via e-mail in my profile.

FEEDBACK:  Always, but spare the flames, please.  Life is tough enough without a hobby being stressful, too.

RATING:  PG-13 to be safe.

AUTHOR'S NOTE and SPOILERS:  Companion piece to "She Who Holds the Key".  Not related to my previous stories "With Prejudice", "Raising Men: My Sailor" or "Lady Sarah".  Anything is fair game up to season 8 through "Favorite Son"; based, alas, on current events, and set in Harm's voice.

=====

I can't believe I'm doing this again.  I don't cry, but this is twice in nine months and four times in four years.  And every time has been in the arms of Sarah Mackenzie.

Two and a half hours ago, she called me – and woke me up – to ask if I could pick her up at home on my way to the office for our 0800 staff call.  Naively, I thought it was just because her car wouldn't start or was in for maintenance or something.  "No, Harm," she said in a voice that sent shivers down my spine for more than one reason, "I'm going TAD and the admiral wants you to take me to Andrews."

Maybe it was the tone of her voice, or maybe that odd connection she and I have, but I knew her destination immediately.  "Iraq?"

I could see her nod in my mind.  "Yeah.  But mostly Centcom in Qatar," she hastened to reassure me, or to try, at least.

"I'm going with you," I declared to her, knowing even as I said it that it couldn't be a promise because I couldn't keep it.

Mac's silvery laugh almost made me smile.  "Not likely, Flyboy.  The powers that be asked for me by name, apparently, and before you ask, Webb had nothing to do with it."

I'm actually convinced that our favorite CIA liaison is cowering behind another agency to avoid my wrath, but Mac went on then to remind me that doing anything stupid like disobeying a direct order and following her would be detrimental to my career.  "But flattering in its own warped way.  0740, Harm, and not a minute later."

I was there at 0738 to find her waiting on her front steps with her sea bag packed; it's two hours later and we're alone in what passes for the VIP departure lounge at Andrews Air Force Base.  It is Monday, 24 March 2003 and I am an emotional wreck.

"Mac.  Sarah.  I…"  I don't cry and I almost never have a problem saying what's on my mind, but this woman regularly reduces me to both tears and speechlessness.  Instead, heedless of the fact that we're both in uniform, I pull her exquisite form more tightly against me, wishing we could just melt together so we never have to be apart again.

"Harm?" she questions in the same soft, caring tone she used back on the Guadalcanal when I broke down after the doctor told us Bud would be okay.  She can't see my face, but she knows I'm crying.

I know this woman; she'll remember the entire conversation I'm about to reference.  "Mac, you're gonna give me nightmares."  It won't be the first time; when she was involved in the embassy evacuation in  Indonesia before 9/11, I didn't sleep for an entire week until I saw her walk into the office in Falls Church.  I can't believe I even had to ask the question of her a few months ago when I backseated with a madman.  Coates told me at Christmas that I could get rich investing in Tylenol stock as long as I keep flying – Jen has never been one to keep her opinions to herself.

Sarah's fingers work soothingly at the hairs on the nape of my neck and I wonder for the millionth or more time why I can't make our relationship what it should be instead of this nebulous in-between thing that it is.  I wouldn't have put a couple of my t-shirts into her sea bag on the sly if it weren't nebulous – I'd have had a stash of Victoria's Secret items in my closet with which to surprise her at a distance when she opens her bag.

Mac's voice matches her fingers.  "Harm, I'm going to be fine.  I'm only going to be in the hot zone for about 12 hours, in and out to get the subject, then I'll be in Doha at Central Command HQ until the whole thing is resolved to a point that I can come back."

"How long?" I hear myself murmur.  Somehow, that never came up earlier.

"Two weeks tops," she declares, and her fingers stop working at my neck and move to my wet cheeks as she pulls back to look me in the eyes.

I could lose myself forever in her deep brown orbs.  "Is that a promise?"  That word is almost as loaded as "eternity" between the two of us.

"Promise," she nods with a small smile.

"Don't make a promise you can't keep," I say, and now we both laugh a little because we're saying the wrong lines in this conversation but this time it feels right to do so.

"I haven't yet."

I should have made her promise to wait "as long as it takes" back on that damned bridge in Sidney.  How different life would be right now!  "No, Sarah, you haven't.  E-mail me?"

"As often as I can."

Which, since I was inspired by our court martial of that annoying ZNN reporter, Stuart somebody, and since I could avail myself of Bud's help just after Christmas, will be as often as she can get a signal for her satellite phone and a clean wireless link to her laptop.  And I'll admit that the whole reason I gave Mac the hardware was as a contingency in cases just like this.  She had had a smile on her beautiful face when she said, "Boys and their toys."

"Harm, will you really be okay?"

She's got the look on her face now that makes me want to throw caution to the wind and kiss her the way I've ached to since the day I met her.  But I'm not brave enough to do that because I know it will tell her what I can't put into words yet, so I smile as best I can through my still teary eyes and answer her as truthfully as I dare.  "I'll survive until you get back, and then I'll be okay."

She's still pondering this when the steward for her flight, an Air Force Staff Sergeant, opens the tarmac door and announces that the plane is ready for its one passenger.

"I guess I really am a VIP this trip."  My Sarah pushes away a little, but stays within the circle of my arms and leaves her hands against my cheeks.

I take her hands in mine and lay a kiss in each palm.  "You're always a VIP to me, Sarah."

She smiles that funny, wondering smile at me.  "You be careful and smart while I'm gone, Mr. VIP Flyboy.  Or I'll come back and kick your six into next year."  She's being a little flippant now because we don't do well when we part with our deeper emotions showing.

"You, too, Mac."  I let her hands go and she steps away from me.

She hefts her briefcase, which contains my lifelines to her, and walks to the door.  There she turns to watch me watching her.

Then, because I can't let her go without reminding her that we have bigger promises to keep to each other, I say, "Take care of those babies of mine."

For a moment, I think I've scared her, but she recovers and flashes me a smile that tells me I said the right thing in the right tone.  She disappears through the heavy metal door and I am alone, except for the tenuous link by satellite and the far stronger cords she has woven around my heart and soul for six years.

Nightmares?  I can count on them.

=====

I have no recollection of my workday; I'm guessing that I didn't do anything too stupid because I'm pretty sure I'd remember getting my ass chewed by a two-star admiral.  I don't know why I agreed to go to the gym with Sturgis and Bud after work; Sturgis beats me at one-on-one about 6 of 10 times as it is and tonight Bud – who is admittedly getting to be a very good basketball player on that temporary prosthesis, even if he can't jump yet – beat me at 21 by five whole points.  I think I made his year by losing.  I declined Sturgis' offer of beer and dinner at his place, claiming that I need to prep for court in the morning.  I think all three of us knew that I came home to wait for word from Mac, even though we also know that I won't hear from her until I get up in the morning to read my e-mail.  Unless she calls.

Besides, I have beer and sustenance here.  It's leftovers from the Thai food Mac and I shared last night, when we thought we were just in for another week of her on the bench and me praying that I wouldn't have to try a case before her.  If I had only known…

Oh, who am I fooling?  If I had known last night as we were sitting here on my sofa watching Spaceballs that I'd be putting her on a plane for the war zone this morning, I wouldn't have done anything differently.  I'd have held her close and felt her laugh, marveled at how we always manage to breathe in synch, wondered what it would be like to kiss her – really kiss her, without mistletoe and with no one to weigh us down as Diane, Renee, and Bugme have in the past.  But I wouldn't have taken that next step because I can't let go.

Not yet. 

I have a year, a month, and about 21 days before I have to let myself out of my self-made prison.

I wonder, as I sit here flipping between The Weather Channel and ZNN, if the nightmares I know I'll have tonight about sandstorms and surrendering Iraqis turning AK-47s on trusting troops would still come if I could let go of the control I hold so tightly in my life.  If by somehow telling Mac exactly how I feel about her would free me – free us – from the obsession we are to each other.

It's a moot point, of course.  I can't even think the words coherently yet, so I don't have the foggiest idea how I could say them now.  And I know my Sarah.  I'll have to say them for her to know I'm really letting go, because a kiss might be down payment on the words, but she won't really believe me until I say the most important words any man can say to the woman who makes him whole.

It's 2130; she should be somewhere over Africa now because she's due to arrive in Doha about 0800 local, which is midnight here.  Maybe if she has a few minutes before she checks in with the Marine officers who requested her, she'll call me.  She knows I'll still be awake, because sometimes I'm at her place until long after midnight, and sometimes she's here; other times we're on the phone arguing until after 0100 just to hear the other's voice.  At least, I have to assume that she hangs on for the same reasons I do; maybe she's just too polite to cut off contact until I've said something.  But thinking that hurts too much, so I'm going with my original thought so I can maintain some of my remaining sanity.

The commentators and embedded reporters are hashing over the day's maneuvers and wondering when the next bombs will fall on the capital city of Iraq.  The air gets very still, then I find that I can't see and I'm breathing grit.  I yell for help as I see a group of men approaching me, holding their assault weapons out in firing position.  When I try to fire my rifle, I find it merely spits sand in big lumps at my feet.  I'm running toward a collection of coalition troops when I step wrong and fall into a tank pit –

I wake with a start when the phone rings above my head; it takes me a few seconds to get my bearings before I realize that I fell asleep on the couch with ZNN playing low on the television and am now sprawled on the floor where I fell in reaction to my nightmare.  The clock on the screen conveniently tells me that it's 8:24 in the morning in Baghdad and 12:24 a.m. in New York – which prompts me to grab for the receiver fast enough that I drop it as I pick it up.

Mac's voice floats toward me from a few feet away and I hear the laughter in it before I manage to gain control of the wayward instrument and bring it to my head.  "Where are you?" I ask, hoping she'll say she's back at Andrews and needs a ride home.

"Doha," she replies instead.  "Sorry to disappoint you.  Is your floor comfortable?"

I don't even question how she knows either of those circumstances.  "How long do you have?"

"Five minutes and three seconds.  I have to meet with some folks very quickly to get the down and dirty briefing and then we have to get in country and back out before the storms pick up again."

She could have gone the entire conversation without that word after the nightmare I just had.  "How was the flight?"

"Not nearly as much fun as a ride in a certain Stearman would be."

We were thinking about flying this coming weekend, now that winter seems to have lost its grip on the eastern seaboard.  Damn.  "We'll have to find out, won't we?"

"You bet, Flyboy.  You've been watching ZNN, haven't you?"

I don't know why she's taking the conversation this way, but I'm game.  "Yeah.  Why?"

"Because I think I can wrangle a camera shot from the crew that's embedded here at Centcom.  I'm famous, remember?"  There's a touch of irony in her voice and something tells me that she's already had one encounter with an overeager reporter.

Oh, yeah.  Between the high profile trial a few years ago that earned her unwelcome coverage in People Magazine and the whole court martial of that Stuart guy, she's probably the best known non-flag officer in the entire theater at the moment.  I'll bet that the reporter she's already seen this morning will have a passel of his colleagues with him the next time, and cameras, too, since she's got to be the most telegenic person in theater, as well.  Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, because then I'll be able to see her as well as read her e-mail and maybe talk to her occasionally, too.  Before the next war, we're getting videophones.  "Work the whole pool, Mac.  I want to see your face on every channel as I surf."

She laughs again, and this time I laugh a little, too.  She's the channel surfer; I'm content to let the commercials play, but she's always flipping through the range of cable stations to see what else is on while the sponsors of whatever we're watching try in vain to sell us things.  I grant you, we don't need most of it, but we should at least be courteous enough to let them make their pitches.  Her voice comes before I can add to my comment.  "Would you surf to see me, Harm?"

"I'd rather see you surf," I blurt out before I can censor the thought that goes with the image of my favorite Marine in her azure bikini.

"No, you'd rather see me wipe out," she shoots back with more laughter.  "More precisely, you'd rather see me all wet in my blue bikini, right, Commander?"

The woman is a witch, that's all there is to it.  I'm sure my lack of a quick parry to her thrust tells her she's read me correctly yet again, so I give in with a dramatic, dreamy sigh that's only partially faked.  "Yeah."  And then it occurs to me that I might be able to get a little of my own back.  "So, should I get a blue Speedo or a black Speedo?"

"Black," she says without a moment's hesitation, and I am exulting inside for all of three seconds before she adds, "trunks, Harm."

Huh?  "What?  You don't think I – "

"I don't want anyone else eyeing the merchandise that closely," she clarifies, and then, "I gotta go, Harm.  Check your personal e-mail tonight."

"I will.  Mac, please…"

"Yes?"

"Be careful.  I'm waiting."  Oh, that was good, Rabb.  Throw that little one-liner in to screw everything up.

She sighs, but I can't quite identify the emotion in the sound.  "I'm coming as soon as I can.  Just wait alone, would you?"

All I can do is hope that was said in jest.  Because whatever may have happened in the past, I won't allow anyone to get between us now.  Even if I can't yet let go of my self-made chains.