A/N: More, as promised, without (too) much delay. Thank you all for reviewing and I hope you enjoy where I'm taking this.

ArmyDT42, you mentioned a Harm POV. As I'm exploring Mac's side, Harm won't have a voice yet. Maybe a companion fic will follow or maybe he'll steal the mike and talk anyway. Right now, the story is leading me more than anything else. So, we'll see.

Chapter 4: The un-reality

The fog is comforting, like a shield. You are not really there, you don't feel the water, or the cold and Harm is not staring at you or your naked body, which can be surely seen through the dissipated bubbles and clear water. There is no reason to worry or to feel self-conscious. So you don't. You observe calmly as the man before you stares and mutters something about you being beautiful.

Your mind is giving you something you have always wanted... an open Harmon Rabb.

It is not real, though, so you ignore it and focuses instead on the minute details of his face your mind has been able to capture and keep safe. The crinkles in the corner of his eyes, the play of color and depth of the blue iris of his eyes, the half smile just shy of concealment you never could figure out completely. These details call out to you... I'm here! I'm real! And he does seem so very real, it breaks your heart to look at him. So, as he places the gun in the toilet beside you, your gaze shifts and refuses his.

You wanted to accept this new world, had made up your mind to forget about that shack, Clay's screams and the hopelessness of it all. You realize, though, that you can't. You deny reality, it being too painful to contemplate. But this cannot be your new reality if it starts to shift away from what you know, from what you want to know. Allowing your mind to play a script right out of a romantic movie would mean falling into Harm's warm embrace and never letting go.

It would be wonderful.

It would be empty.

That man in the living room can only be your Harm if you don't allow your own dreams and expectations to color his actions, his words, his decisions. If he stopped being that Harm, it would mean that you are truly lost and alone.

The thought leaves you cold in a way the water can't.

So you rise and wrap yourself around a towel - Harm would be shocked like an old granny if she chose to go al naturale - and clutch the gun he left behind for you as if it is real and dangerous. You slip into your Marine persona and turns your attention to Clay, to Gunny, to the situation at hand. Anything but Harm's soulful eyes and Mac-imposed feelings.

It is safer in the dark, where the status quo lurks like an anchor keeping the little sliver of sanity you still possess from drifting in the sea of madness.

At the end of the day, you lie in bed. He is next to you. His body emits waves of heat and pulls you in like a magnet is strapped to your heart. You wonder if it isn't. You shift, trying to alleviate the hurt that the long days in Paraguay have managed to gather in your hip and knees. There is some attempt to keep quiet on your part, though you soon realize you don't want to be quiet. The silence is oppressing and makes it much too hard to breathe.

Why, oh, why can't you just breathe?

You miss Harm. You miss the man that can single-handedly make you mad and make you silly just by looking your way. You miss the stupid heroics and the non-committal answers. You miss the friend, the opponent in court, the smile across the bullpen after a hard day. You miss it all, every single detail of his face, of his tone of voice. You miss...

… him.

You stare at the Harm your mind created and suddenly you can't look away. Your mind has finally come up with a plausible answer to him being there in South America and even though you know your created explanation is a mere reflection of Harm's words at the time of his brother's disappearance, you grasped it fiercely in your hands, desperate to believe it could be real. Desperate to forget the real word and get completely lost in this other world your subconscious has kindly created.

If it could all just make sense!

Words leave your mouth and you vaguely register the questions being fired from your mouth. Quitting the Navy, coming in alone to rescue her. How, when, why... The lawyer in you has left the soldier behind. You want answers that fit. You want a Harm can be real.

He evades and ducks and rolls away from you in typical Harm fashion. It is so reminiscent of a thousand other half conversations they had over the years that, for the first time, you allow yourself to believe. You are angry and happy and confused. You are feeling more in that moment than you have for the past two days. Sanity is finally admitting defeat and it is wonderful.

So you allow him to table your discussion, knowing that the topic of conversation will never be broached again. There is some sort of satisfaction blooming in your chest at that knowledge. It can mean going home, being safe, finding your way back to the beginning, before the world had turned upside down and dragged you to hell kicking and screaming.

There is a moment, when you see the man responsible for your torture, your insanity and the early demise of the soldier and the lawyer and the woman you used to be, that your certainty vanishes. He seems so real, much more than all the others, and you are sure, if only briefly, that he is the real Sadik, infiltrated in your mind, and plotting to pull you back to reality and that shack and that nightmare that was more real than the dream you have created.

So it is relief you feel when you don't catch him. One second he is there and the next he is gone, disappearing from your lives in a cloud of dust and mist and mystery. It is almost like you wished him away. A man with many faces. A faceless man in a crowd of faceless people. A blur that returned to the shadows whence it came, relinquishing its hold on you.

Reality receded back as well and you turn and you look at Harm and all is well again.

Until he stops being him and starts being you. And as he tries to unpause their talk from earlier, a conversation you were sure to have already been relegated to their cluttered past, you realize the importance of this moment. Understandably, you panic. You want the real Harm and there is only one way to keep him.

The word escapes your mouth and it feels right, for it is true. Never, ever can she allow them to change. Never is how long it'll take her to renounce the mirror image of Harm that is hers in favour of a man that would become a stranger and not hers at all.

Never.

Don't you ever, ever leave me, you catch yourself thinking as you walk away.

There is certainty in your heart that assures you of the rightness of your decision and your actions. You are sure it is relief. But you don't understand why there is also a deep ache in your chest as you walk away from him, when you have not let him go at all. You merely decided to keep him close forever. The tightness in your chest grows and it is all you can do, not to crumble to the floor.

You stay strong, though. He is worth your strength, even if he is only in your head. And you don't crumble or sob or cry. You want to, though. The whole in your heart is gapping and if you didn't know any better, you would have thought that the feeling was actually heartbreak.

It can't be, though. So, you walk away.

That's the end of A tangled webb, part 2. What comes next will stear away from canon.

You've been warned.