Author: Ashlee

A/N: Not mine. If they were, I would have changed most of the final season. This story is posted over at my fan site: Allthingscatherine but I thought I would post it here so that more will be able to read it. Thanks for the feedback.

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"Why do you think you came here?" Dr. Liam asked over the top of her dark-rimmed glasses.

The room was filled with a lingering silence save for the sound of the clock on the wall. It ticked endlessly on, counting away at the sixty-minutes the session allotted and racking up the dollars that time like this would cost.

It had all started several weeks ago, the therapy that is. 'Just one time.' Mac had comforted herself with the thought. She had just needed answers. Answers to questions she didn't trust herself to ask.

Therapy with Dr. Adrianna Liam that first day had been ….for lack of a better word, therapeutic. She had left the office with a promise that she would attempt to find her way back there in the coming week. 'one more time.' She had told herself, and the phrase had become her mantra. In total, she had been to eight sessions so far. Despite her reservations about therapy and psychologists in general, Commander McCool had been quite helpful in the past and so she had decided to follow her instincts and swallow her pride.

Dr. Liam was a woman in her early forties. She was confident and well put together. She kept her long brown hair tied back into a classy bun at the base of her neck, and always crossed her legs, jotting her thoughts on a legal pad that rested in her lap at several points throughout their meetings. It was rather unnerving.

"Colonel?"

Mac sighed, as she fidgeted with the hands resting in her lap.

"I ....I guess I felt I had to."

"And, why is that?"

"Because.."

"Mac, I can't help you if you don't start opening up to me...why did you leave your life, your friends, and your job to come here?"

There was a moment in which everything changed and Mac's countenance shifted. Dr. Liam watched as the woman's face before her fell, her eyes revealing a pain the Doctor suspected they had only begun to scratch the surface of.

Mac looked to the side, trying to keep her emotions at bay.

"He..." her voice cracked.

"Is with someone else."

"Does he know how you feel about him?"

Mac tried her best to swallow back the emotion...

"No." She managed. " Yes. I don't know. It wouldn't have changed anything."

Silence once again permeated the space. This time, though, Mac could hear the Doctor scribbling something on her legal pad. 'Damn her.' Mac thought, all of a sudden furious that she was here of her own volition.

"I need to get back to work." Mac explained, with a glance at the clock. "I should be going."

Dr. Liam nodded, albeit reluctantly. "See you next week?"

"Next week it is. Thank you." Mac stood and straightened her clothes, crossing the room to the door, walking down the hall and down the stairs to the buildings double glass doors.

Mac stood outside, the sun beating down upon her with an intensity she had come to love. She inhaled and then exhaled deeply. She had to get better...She needed to be happy. And as she looked up at the high-rise building she had just escaped from, she repeated the mantra that helped her through. 'One more time.'

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