Love and Troubles

Author: hermiine (hermiine85@yahoo.com)

Summery: Continuation of Truths and Consequences. The JAG-family tries to return to normality, but that won't be easy when there are so many things that have changed.

Rating: PG-13

Spoilers: Anything is really fair game, but I'd ad a special spoiler warning for the episodes of season 9.

Disclaimer: JAG is still not mine and my birthday isn't coming up so I'm guessing it will stay that way for a while.

Author's Notes: I'd like to thank Cria and TZ for beta reading. I'm very grateful for your effort. Any comments, suggestions, corrections or questions are welcome. Just send me an e-mail and I'll see what I can do.

A not-as-short-as-I-planned-it-to-be summary of Truths and Consequences: Mac got pregnant with Sturgis child after a one-night-stand. They decided to race the child together, but not as a couple. At this point Harm was ready to move the relationship with Mac forward, but when he found out about her pregnancy a rift between them. Mac was forced to finish Singer's deployment at the Seahawk. During Harm and Mac's time apart they both came to some realizations and starting on Christmas Eve they rebuilt their friendship. By Valentines Day, Harm was ready to ask Mac out again and this time the result was better. They continued their new and more mature relationship, up until Lindsey made an audit of JAG HQ and their relationship became public. Mac wasn't able to ignore the gossip about them and grow insecurities about their relationship, which in the end drew her to break up with Harm. Harm didn't want to give up so easily, but before he had a chance to act Singer was found murdered and he had to focus on defending himself against the charges of her murder. Mac took the news of Harm's charges badly and went into premature labor. At the hospital they were able to postpone the birth for a while, but some days later little Elena was born. The new parents happiness was destroyed when a terrorist kidnapped their baby. The same day Harm was released since the real murderer, Commander Lindsey, had been found. Clayton Webb had previously been working on a operation to catch Elena's kidnapper's brother and now he and Mac went under-cover trying to find her somewhere in Paraguay. There they were captured by the terrorists, but also found Elena by them. Harm sensed that Mac was in danger and went down to Paraguay trying to find her. Harm together with Gunny were able to get Mac, Webb and Elena out of the terrorist's compound. Gunny went to take Webb, who had been tortured, and Elena to the hospital, whereas Mac and Harm were going to take care of the Stinger-missiles. We left off right after Mac and Harm had destroyed the missiles and were soon to crash into a tree.

Part 1: Waking Up

May 24th 2003

Harm was slowly waking up from his unconscious state. Whatever had happened, his head was suffering extremely from it. He discovered that he was sitting in an airplane. The memories slowly came back to him. The travel to Paraguay, the rescue at the compound and the short flight with the airplane. Mac should be with him. He started to look around to find her.

"Hey Sleepyhead, you're awake?" Mac came up from behind the plane.

"I thought you weren't here anymore," he looked at her, but she was really blurry to him and he couldn't see if she was hurt as well.

"I went to see if there was anyway for us to get out of here. I wasn't far away. Are you OK?" She walked up to help him out of the plane. When he refused her help, she didn't back away and just held his hand more firmly.

"I think if we're going to get out of this, we'll have to work together," she said and Harm was finally out of the plane. "How are you feeling?"

"I must have bumped my head against something."

"It was a pretty mean crash, wasn't it?"

"It wasn't a crash. It was a hard landing," he smiled at her.

"That makes me feel so much better," she smiled back at him and linked her arms under his to support him. "Come on, let's go back to Ciudad del Este and see if we can find Elena and the guys."

Harm would never have admitted it, but it was good to have her there as support since he was still quite dizzy. Mac had found a small road and hoped her sense of direction was right because Harm's couldn't be trusted at the moment. Hopefully the road would lead in the direction of Ciudad del Este, where they would hopefully find Elena.

"So what's the dispassionate plan?" Harm asked when they had walked for a while.

"I think that's your assignment on this trip."

"OK," Harm said. They kept on walking in silence. Harm felt how he was getting weaker, but he didn't say anything to Mac about it. She noticed it anyway since he was walking slower.

"You want to sit down and rest for a while?" Mac asked, but Harm just looked at her. "I guess not." They both looked forward again and now spotted a farm.

"Shall we take our chances?"

"Yeah," Mac agreed.

"Same procedure as last time?"

Mac didn't answer and just put her hand to her back and started to wobble a bit. 30 minutes later they were at the farm and fifteen minutes after that they were driving away in an old blue truck.

"Maybe you should bring that pregnancy suit on all of our missions. It seems to come in handy," Harm commented to her.

"A roll of money is mostly easier to carry with you, don't you think?"

Harm just nodded and they fell back to silence.

The evening was growing darker. Mac was driving; it wasn't very smart for a dizzy person like Harm to be driving, was it?

"Are you feeling any better?" Mac asked as Harm came back from being dozed off for a while.

"How I'm feeling isn't really our biggest problem right now," he answered her.

"I guess not. I just need to worry about something I can if not control at least see and check on."

"Mac, I'm sure she's fine. Maybe they're already at the hospital."

"Let's hope so," she was still deep in thought.

"So, what do we do now?" he asked her.

"Well, do you know anyone in the CIA except for my husband?"

"As a matter of fact I do. My wife," he took up his phone only to see that it was out of range. Mac wondered who and what he could possibly mean by 'his wife', but Harm didn't surrender any explanations and she didn't ask.

"We can check in with the office in Ciudad del Este. Maybe they've heard from Webb."

TBC