Standard disclaimer applies.

This story takes place straight after Paraguay. For this story, Sadik is not dead. They believe he is but it was someone else.

0900 ZULU

JAG HQ

Falls Church, Virginia

 It had been ten days since they had been freed from the terrible grip of Sadik, but Mac still felt it. She felt the fear, the worst fear she had ever experienced in her life, and that hadn't come close to the pain and suffering Clay had put up with.

She felt guilt for his sacrifice, and for Harm's. Over and over again she had asked herself how she could have betrayed him like that. After he had sacrificed his career for her to save her life, she had gone to Webb.

It wasn't like she even liked him that much, but she had needed comfort, and Clay was willing to be there for her in a way that Harm never had been. Afterwards he had told her that sacrificing his career should have said something, but she had argued that it didn't mean she had to go and jump in his arms. After all, he had never treated her as anything more than a sister, and she told him that, but he had denied any such thing. Then she had asked him if he did want to be more than friends with her, and he had backed away. So she said never.

And then it seemed like they hardly knew each other. They had barely talked since they got back, but then again neither had been in to work yet. They had been best friends for eight years, and with one word, one action, it was all gone. Grief tore at her heart, and she prayed that it would go away.

She didn't want to be in love with someone who couldn't love her back.

That night she tossed and turned, vague flashes of the nightmare that was Paraguay running through her mind. And suddenly she thought about Harm. Did he really love her, or had he been told so many times by others that he did that it had been brainwashed into him. For that matter, did the same hold true for her?

It was with some relief that this was the answer that Mac closed her eyes and fell once more into sleep.

He couldn't get her out of his mind. He tried desperately to forget about her. She had said never and he agreed that it could never work between them. Was it true that he treated her like a sister? Well, a sister was someone you loved and was closed to you, but you couldn't go out with them, so he had every right to treat her like that because that was the situation they were in.

Well stuff her, he thought angrily. He didn't need her and she obviously didn't need him. The warm liquid trickled down his throat, and after a while it brought welcome relief to the emotions thrashing around inside him.

1450 ZULU

Paraguay

The three pictures lay in front of him, but only two of them were full pictures of the people he wanted, needed to be dead. He couldn't risk another failed job. The missiles had only been a small part of the plan, but an important one nevertheless.

The three CIA agents had so far proved difficult to control, but now he had other people on the job, and perhaps he could even get some information out of them before they were disposed of.

A fax came through and as he read it a slow smile crept across his face. The first nuclear bomb was ready for shipment to Iran, and it would not be long before he would have to leave the country as well.