Okay, I'm Nuts
By Ultracape
Summary: Harm and Mac decide to take a chance that will not only change their lives, but the lives of everyone on the planet. (Grandiose isn't it? Read on if you dare!)
H/M Some angst, romance, humor, mystery, life, death, eternity
Rating: Everyone can read this, if they want to I think.
All Feedback is welcome. Just don't throw things. That will effect you're computer more than it will affect me.
Spoilers: I'm sure but I don't remember the name of the episode but it was in second season and all the rest for that matter.
Disclaimer: Pay me, who'd pay me for this? Besides, I think I'd be embarrassed to accept a cent. I think I'm even embarrassed not to pay you for reading it. None of the characters in this are mine.
A/N: For this, let's assume that Mattie has limited mobility and has been left with Jen back in London.
A/N2: I've been to some places in rural PA where the population doesn't top 500 during the height of tourist season with the state fair up the road. The heart of down town is a small grocery store next to a hardware store, a gas station and a restaurant/bar and even the local lawman does it only in his off hours from working as a mechanic. If you can't get what you need there then you've got to go into "the city," 50 miles away over bumpy roads. So let us assume Belleville is just such a place.
Near dusk on a May evening, 2006
Belleville, PA
Rattling along in the old pickup truck, anticipating two weeks alone together with only his best girl who was tucked up right under his arm would have ordinarily made Captain Harmon Rabb, Jr. the happiest man in the world.
Yet the knowledge that the same girl was doing her very best to keep from crying was tearing him up inside.
It had been a rotten idea.
After a whole year of trying the natural method, Mac again got her period, right on time. There were, of course, medical interventions they could try. There was also adoption. Yet what really hurt was looking at the future through the eyes of the past. Neither one of them were the type who would give up on anything this important, except, too often themselves. That was, as usual, the problem.
Harm was just as devastated as Mac. After a year of being strong for her, he needed some strength himself. The road ahead would be even harder than the one they'd been on because they both knew how difficult it was for either of them to admit they needed help, especially in something that was so personal.
So he had suggested a break, that the two of them get away from London, from Washington, work, law, worry, stress, the Navy and the Marines and just live with each other in peace for a couple of weeks to reconnect, to find out who Harmon Rabb and Sarah MacKenzie really were and what they really wanted.
So here they were, on his grandmother's, well, now his, farm in Belleville, PA.
All they had done after flying in was to check that all the utilities were turned on and working correctly, including a laptop with a satellite Internet hookup his grandmother had asked him to arrange for her.
They collected the keys to everything from the caretaker he'd hired after his grandmother passed on, and driven the old truck into the small down town, no bigger than a couple of blocks long. The plan was to shop for enough supplies so that they would not have to see anyone for the duration of their stay.
So of course, as they shopped, one after another they ran into women with broods of young children, women near bursting with pregnancy, what looked like the results of a town wide orgy during fertility rites.
Harm couldn't help thinking that if it weren't so horrible it would have seemed like one of his old "daymares," as he'd taken to calling them.
"You know, if it weren't so horrible it would be funny," Mac managed to say to Harm as they bumped along a particularly deserted stretch of back road near the old farm.
Harm glanced at her as she managed to give him a smile through tears she refused to shed.
"We can't go on like this," he said to her seriously. "We can't live our lives in constant pain because of what we don't have."
"I know. We can't react like this every time we see something we want something out of our reach. I don't know about you but I'm discussed with myself. I'm acting like, oh, god, I'm acting like I did when I'd see a happy family when I was a kid. A father smiling at his daughter, giving her a hug, kissing his wife, it would drive me to tears. Harm we're going to have to learn to live with things just the way they are."
"I know, honey. You're right. But this reality is so difficult to bear. We're used to being able to help, to change things for the better for other people. Fighting for truth and justice is a walk in the park compared to this."
Suddenly overhead, Harm caught a streak of silver streaming through the darkening sky.
"A shooting star?" Mac asked him as she saw it too.
"A falling meteor, you mean but it's awfully low for that too."
"I remember Harriet telling me that she and Bud wished on them one night and their wishes came true, even though Bud said it was really a Russian satellite."
He turned back to her with a small smile, "what happened to that change in attitude?"
"I've still got that, but it doesn't hurt to try," she gave him a hopeful smile.
Resigned to doing even a small, nothing, stupid thing just as long as it would bring even a little happiness to his wife, Harm joined her in a silent wish as the silence of the countryside enveloped them.
Suddenly the truck nearly jumped off the road pushed by the force of the concussion as a loud, low boom sounded off to the side in the field they were passing.
"It never fails, does it," it wasn't a question as he got out to check on the condition of the truck.
"Harm, look, over there," Mac, pointed into the field towards some smoke coming up from a few broken branches in a copse of trees. "Could that be where the meteor landed?"
She was off, running across the field before he could stop her.
Catching up after a few dozen yards, Harm saw that there was indeed some large metallic looking thing that had fallen through the branches and was sitting on the ground at the base of a tree trunk.
"Oh, my god, it can't be."
Mac slowed to a stop as she and Harm, hand in hand, walked in disbelief closer to what looked like a small bluish space ship.
Suddenly as they neared it, they saw the top of the capsule emblazoned with a crooked red "S" on a gold shield, something that neither of them ever thought they'd see outside a comic book.
"No, I'm not going to believe this Mac. I'm just not going to believe this. I don't know how, I don't know who, but this is some sort of weird cosmic joke." Harm stomped around the tree never being able to look away from what appeared to be a small, finned space capsule. "I am just not going to believe it. Just lock me up and throw away the key cause no one, no one is going to believe that if this is here, I'm not insane, even me."
But Mac ignored his rant. Slowly she approached the ship that had been dropped from the sky and as she did the top of the capsule popped open to reveal a tiny creature that looked like a baby.
"Oh, Harm, look."
He jumped in front of her. "Mac, this is not the 1930s or whatever and you and I both know a hell of a lot better than to think that something that falls out of the sky is totally harmless. Don't go near it. We'll get the authorities to handle this."
"When have we ever done that?"
"Now, this time, that's what we're going to do. Reality, remember? We're going to accept reality."
And then the child whimpered.
"Oh pooh!"
"Oh pooh?" Harm couldn't believe Mac would say 'Oh pooh!' "Just more proof that I am nuts," he grumbled.
But before he could stop her, Mac pushed around him and lifted the child out of the craft. "Harm?" She looked at him.
"What?"
"Come, look, it's a boy."
"Well, of course it's a boy. I may have not watched television for years but I read the comics, I saw the movies. It would be a boy. But Mac, come on now. This can't be. We're both educated people. We both know that this is totally irrational, impossible. Everything we know about the real world says this can't be. We're dreaming. We'll wake up and it will all go away."
"What about the bumble bee?"
"What about the bumble bee?"
"It doesn't know it's aerodynamically impossible for it to fly so it does."
"That's because they hadn't developed the formulas when that idiot came up with that stupidity."
"Well, then isn't that same thing possible now?"
Rolling his eyes at his wife's logic, Harm came over and looked at the child in her arms.
"He even looks like you."
And to be truthful, even with himself, Harm had to admit, weird as it may be that the child had dark hair and aquamarine eyes that seemed to shift color with the waning light, just as his did. The child was even longer than expected. He'd be tall, just like him.
"Oh my god," Mac exclaimed as she pointed to the side of the baby's head.
"What, what is it, horns?"
"No, look, he has a bent ear, just like you."
Mac watched Harm's expression shift from disbelief to acceptance even with a touch of affection as he looked at the baby.
"Honey, I know this is crazy but let's examine the facts we know. There was no plane. There was nothing but a streak of light and this appeared here. There's no one else around for miles. And even if in some impossible way somebody did leave a baby in a spacecraft under a tree on the farm, they're not coming back to claim it. Come up with some other explanation, any other and I'll accept it."
Harm reached out, "come here little fella," he said as Mac placed the infant in his arms.
He moved the blue blanket, which was wrapped around the child and saw that indeed, the baby was a boy. What was it Sherlock Holmes said, he mused? After eliminating the impossible, whatever explanation there was, no matter how improbable, had to be true.
"Accepting for the moment the fact that we both are out of our minds and somehow stepped through the looking glass or down a rabbit hole or into another dimension, god, where's Bud when we need him," he rambled on.
Mac chuckled, as she kept an arm around Harm's waist, stroking the baby's head and cooing delightedly at it, "Okay, accepting that fact…?"
"How are we going to explain this? Martha and Jonathan were farmers living out in the middle of nowhere. It was easy for them to conceal things they didn't want other people to know."
"Uh, huh, and we're lawyers with cutting edge Internet access and top security clearances who have two whole weeks before we have to see another living soul. We can do it better. You're even a former spook. We can conjure up enough mumbo jumbo paperwork and put it in the right places that even a very determined background top security clearance search would show nothing but a private adoption from birth parents who disappeared."
He was determined to play devil's advocate, even while holding the baby more protectively. "Mac, what about Child Protective Services. We are lawyers, we know it exists, even if we have to go to the county seat to find an office."
"We'll think of something. I know we'll think of something. Harm, we have the advantage over Martha and Jonathan. We know what to expect and we can handle this."
Harm just rolled his eyes. "Just because it happened in the comics doesn't mean it's going to happen in reality. I don't even know why I'm bothering to use that word."
"What word?"
"Reality."
"Harm, do you think that if existence could take a break from reality long enough for the impossible to happen that the fantasy would stop before the story has a chance to unfold? We will be able to keep this child and we'll be able to explain it's existence and we'll bring him up as ours."
He had no choice. He knew that from the moment the appearance of the child put a smile on her face, from the moment he accepted that the baby looked, even a little bit, like him. Giving in to the one woman on the planet who had ever been able to best him in a fair fight, he surrendered. He held the child out from him and stared into his eyes, "Okay, little fella, you are ours. I don't know how yet, but we'll keep you and love you and raise you as our own and help you deal with whom and what you are, whatever that might be. But there's just one thing you've got to promise me."
"Harm, he's an infant, what in the world can he possibly promise you?"
Harm chuckled, "Given the circumstances, Mac, and accepting him as our son, he can promise me that some day, some how, some where, no matter how impossible it may seem, he'll teach me how to fly."
Mac, couldn't stop laughing. "Okay, you're right. We're both nuts."
A/N3: I just finished watching my new "Lois and Clark" DVDs and I couldn't resist.