Title: Not the Life he Imagined

Author: Tsarina Smith

Rating: PG-13/R-ish

Disclaimer: JAG isn't mine. If it were mine I would have been much, MUCH nicer to the characters.

Spoilers: The whole series is fair game, but "Yeah, Baby" and "Standards of Conduct" especially.

Summary: Harm turns 40 and wonders how his life turned out so differently than what he wanted.

Authors Notes: Thanks again for the reviews! I appreciate them so much and I'm glad you guys are enjoying this. I wanted to have this up yesterday, but I got distracted by a massive 40 part Harry Potter fic and yeah… I swear that story was longer than the first few books, lol. Anyhoo, Hope you all like this!

Four

Mac was slowly going insane. She had a slight idea of what Harm had been thinking about, and even though she knew the conversation needed to be had, she was not thrilled about having it. Harm had called her around noon to finalize plans for that evening. He was going to make seared salmon and asked her to come over around 7:00. Now she was simply going crazy waiting for 7:00 to get here. Part of her was tempted to head over to his apartment now and demand that they have their conversation. The smarter, bigger part of her knew that if pushed or rushed he would back away quicker than she could say biological clock.

Her biological clock… that was basically what this came down to. If she hadn't been feeling so weepy on the steps of JAG three and a half years ago, they probably wouldn't be in this predicament now. Truth of the matter was that she desperately wanted nothing more than to have a baby with Harm. She was in love with him, and had been for longer than she cared to admit. But while she wanted a baby, more specifically Harm's baby, the two of them as well as any child that they created deserved a hell of a lot more than the situation they were currently in. Call her overly romantic and sentimental, but when she became a mother, she wanted the father of the child to love her as much as she loved him. And she wasn't sure how Harm felt about her exactly. She had no clue if she was just a convenient means to make him a father, or if he actually wanted to build a life with her.

Knowing she would go crazy if she continued to sit around her apartment she dug her cell phone out from under the pile of magazines on the counter and dialed a friend of hers.

"Sarah!"

She smiled at Nina's enthusiasm and collapsed on the couch. "I'm about to lose my mind. Can you talk?"

"I can, but I'd much rather see you. Come to the shop. You should come see me. I'll let you raid all the freebies that these up and coming designers keep sending me. And we can go have lunch."

"Fine," she said with an exaggerated sigh, "you've talked me into it. I'll meet you at the shop in about an hour." She hung up the phone and threw it on the couch and went to her room to change clothes. Growing up, she never thought she'd be friends with someone like Nina Caldwell. She was wealthy, fashionable and owned an upscale boutique in DC. She was also incredibly smart and had gotten her MBA at Duke while she was there at law school. They became casual friends, but when Nina had opened up her shop in DC a little over a year ago, they had reconnected and formed a strong friendship.

Nina looked up as the bell over her door jingled and lit up when her friend. "Sarah!" She hurried over to embrace her friend and then studied her with a critical eye. "You don't look so good. What's wrong?"

"Gee thanks, Nina. Just what I needed to hear."

She rolled her eyes and tugged on her arm. "You don't look bad, just tired. Come on; let's go play dress up and you can tell me all about it." She looked at her sales associate and told her to keep an eye on things and to call her if she was needed. Once in her office, she opened a closet and pulled out a couple of items, among them a midnight blue cashmere sweater dress and a pair of dark jeans so lightweight she could barely tell they were denim. "Try on the dress. I'll turn around. And start talking."

After over a year of this, Mac knew better than to argue with her friend. She supposed there was a little truth in old sayings about redheads. She shrugged out of her top and shimmied out of her jeans and started to pull the dress over her head. "It's about Harm."

"No offense, Sarah, but what else is new?"

"Ok, this dress is incredible."

Nina turned and smiled. "I knew it would look perfect on you." She watched Mac admire the dress in the mirror and asked what Harm had done this time.

She sat down in the desk chair and nibbled on her lower lip. "Did I ever tell you that we made a deal to have a baby together if we were still single in five years?" She watched as Nina's eyes widened and her jaw dropped. "I'm guessing I never told you about that?"

"No, you definitely have not told me about that. Oh my gosh. Sarah! When was this?"

"Three and a half years ago."

"Ok, so why is this upsetting you now? And try on the pants." She reached over and tugged an amethyst colored top off of a hanger. "Try this on with them."

Mac waited for her to turn again before changing clothes. "Harm turned forty yesterday and I took him out to dinner for his birthday. The whole evening felt different. He was looking at me like… well, like a man looks at a woman he's interested in. He flirted with me for a lot of the evening. You can turn around now."

Nina did and smiled. "Lovely. That color is gorgeous on you. So then what?"

"Well, we started talking about how his life hasn't turned out the way he wanted. He has no future as a pilot and he doesn't have a family of his own."

"Ah. Which brings you to the deal the two of you made?"

She nodded and sat back down. "There was something in the air between us last night. Unfortunately we didn't get to talk about it. We got interrupted by the waitress at dinner and we went back to his place afterwards-" Mac rolled her eyes as Nina raised her eyebrows and smirked, "where I had planned a surprise party for him. So we didn't get to talk. But I told him we needed to, so I'm going over to his place for dinner tonight."

"Sarah, you're in love with this man. What has you so off kilter?"

She shot up and began to pace. "We made the baby deal three and a half years ago. And we haven't talked about it since. The way Harm acted last night, well, he's acted that way before. He acted that way at my engagement party to Mic. He acted that way on the Guadalcanal. But we always keep ourselves from taking things any further. What if that's how it's going to be this time? What if he doesn't want me as a woman, instead just as the mother of his child?"

"Would being the mother of his child be so horrible?"

She nodded. "It would be if that were all it was. What would I do when he eventually met someone else? I'd not only have to deal with seeing Harm with yet another woman who was incredibly wrong for him, but I'd have to deal with another woman taking care of our child. I couldn't do it. Not to mention the ramifications of being an unwed mother would have on my career."

Nina rolled her eyes again. "I swear, the military and its sense of propriety."

Mac closed her eyes briefly to hold her temper in check. Nina was quite vocal in her disdain of how much military regulations controlled her life. "I knew this when I became an officer, Nina. I willingly gave up parts of myself to serve a greater purpose and I would do it again. And the truth of the matter is, that having a baby and not having a husband would pretty much extinguish any chance I would have of advancing further."

"We're always going to disagree on that."

She smiled softly, "I know."

"Come on. Let's go get lunch." She handed Mac a shopping bag for her clothes and grabbed the dress.

"Nina, I can't accept this."

"Yes you can. The top was too big for me, and the jeans are not my style. And the blue of this dress looks horrible with my skin tone, but perfect on you. Now we just need to get you some shoes." They walked back into the public part of the store, where Mac headed for the shoes and Nina got a garment bag for the dress. She waited for her to come over, and beamed when she came with a pair of gray velour Stella McCartney pumps. She rang them up, giving them to her at cost and then letting her slip them on before leaving the store.

A few hours later, a nervous Harm was pacing, waiting for Mac to arrive. The oven beeped that it was one minute till the salmon was done, which meant it was one minute till 7:00. He knew she would be right on time, and smiled softly when he heard a gentle tap on the door a few seconds later. He opened it and took a deep breath as he looked her over. "You look gorgeous."

She smiled and thanked him. "I spent the day with Nina, who I swear thinks I'm her own, personal Barbie doll."

"Barbie was blonde." He said with a smirk.

"Fine, I'm Barbie's dark haired friend. Did she even have one?"

He shrugged and smiled. "Barbie is the extent of my doll knowledge. Come on in." He took a few stops back and let her in. "I'm going to go get dinner out of the oven. Make yourself at home."

She took her coat off and hung it by the door before glancing around the apartment. The lights had been dimmed and it looked very much like it did the night they had dinner before going to the tribunal. "Is there anything I can help with?"

"Sure; you want to get us some drinks?"

She went into the kitchen and pulled a pitcher of tea off of the top shelf. She carried it to the table and filled both goblets and then sat the pitcher on the counter. "It looks great in here, Harm."

He smiled at her and carried over two plates of food. He sat a plate at each seat and then pulled out her chair for her. The next few minutes were spent in relative silence as they enjoyed their dinners, but Mac was at her wits end and finally brought up the reason they were having dinner together. "So what's going on, Harm?"

"You're the one who said we needed to finish our conversation. You tell me."

"Oh, so you don't think we need to talk?"

He could tell she was getting riled up and reached over and covered her hand with his. "Relax, Mac. We do need to talk, which was why I was thisclose to strangling the waitress last night."

She grinned and sipped her tea. "Well, if you had I know a pretty good lawyer. She probably could have gotten you out of trouble."

His smile wasn't as jovial as hers and the look in his eye was deadly serious. "She's very good at getting me out of trouble."

"If she hadn't interrupted us, what else would you have said last night?"

"I want a family, Mac. And I'd like to have that family with you?"

She had known he would say it. She was expecting it. But actually hearing the words coming out of his mouth made this whole situation seem unreal. She gently sat her fork down and looked up at him. "Do you want a family with me, or do you want us to have a baby together?"

Confusion spread over his handsome features. "Isn't it pretty much the same thing?"

"No." She picked up the fork and moved the remaining salmon around the plate. "Harm, a family is us and our child living in the same home. Taking family vacations together. Spending snowy nights curled up by a fireplace. Us having a baby together is just that. Us creating a child, complete with custody agreements and eventually the possibility of a step-parent or two. Which of those do you want?"

"I don't know." He said quietly.

She fought the tears back and nodded. "What about what you said at dinner last night? About me being the only one you were afraid to lose."

"I meant that, Mac." He said, his tone gentle. "I could not stand not having you in my life."

"But you only want me in your life as a friend?"

"Friendship is permanent, Mac. It's forever. Relationships are messy. What if we gave it a go and it didn't work out? We'd lose what we have now. What's so wrong with what we have now?"

She shook her head. "Nothing. And you know why? Because we're both single right now. You're happy because you do not have to fight another man for my attention, and I'm happy not having to see another insipid blonde draped all over you. But what happens when that changes? What happens when one or both of us meet someone we want to spend the rest of our lives with? I can pretty much guarantee we will no longer have the relationship we have now. What changed since last night? Last night you seemed sort of open to the idea of us."

He stood up and began pacing again, feeling stupidly that if this kept up he'd wear a hole in the floor. "I'm terrified, Mac. I feel for you what I've never felt for anyone."

She stood and walked over to him, stilling his movements with her hand on his arm. "I'd never leave, Harm. Ever. There is very little you could do to make me turn my back on you."

"Logically I know that. But emotionally I can't believe it."

"So why do you want to go through with having a baby then?"

He cupped her face in his palm and smiled. "I'd be assured that you would always be in my life."

Tears finally filled her eyes and she backed away. "I'm sorry, but that's not enough for me. I need more than that. And after seven years of waiting for you I deserve more than that. You need to get over your fear. You have to let go, Harm."

"I know, but what if I can't?"

"Then all we'll ever have between us is a friendship." Knowing she couldn't stand one more minute in his presence, she walked away from him, grabbed her purse and her jacket and left the apartment.

End Part Four

Do. Not. Kill. Me. I have a lotttt of issues with the baby deal, which I've kind of talked about with some of you. I also have issues with the idea of Mac and Harm sitting down for a conversation. When they actually make plans to talk about their feelings, things don't go well (Adrift II, anyone?). I can see both of them over analyzing everything to death and making a big mess of things. They work much better with spontaneity. Anyways. Hope you guys enjoyed this, and the next part should be up in a couple of days. Tuesday or Wednesday, I'm guessing.