Gah, you wouldn't believe what a struggle this and the next few chapters were.

Sure, this one is short, but the next one is HUUUUUUUUGE and another reason why I'm not posting them together is because I'm still a little unsure about it.

RL sucks when you have to do something that sucks every creative drop out of you.

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As Harm pushed Jen, Will in her arms, down Bethesda's lobby in the hospital-policy required wheelchair she couldn't help but note "This is weird."

Looking down at them he chuckled, agreeing "Yeah, I know. It certainly isn't something I thought would be in my plans for 2004 when we were ringing in the New Year."

Struck with a thought she looked up at him "Do your parents know yet?"

Harm refused to meet her eyes.

"Harm?" she prodded gently.

He sighed heavily "No, I haven't told them yet."

"Sirrrr..." she moaned exasperatedly.

Harm winced as a passerby sent them an astonished, slightly suspicious look.

"Still not used to calling me Harm, huh?" he grinned "Better get used to it unless you want other people to get their own ideas of our relationship."

"What, you're afraid they'll think we're into domination/submission?" she asked impishly, her smile widening when Harm looked at her surprised.

It took Harm a second to recover, talk about such sexual practices was the last thing he'd ever expected to hear from Jen "No, I'm more concerned about service personnel hearing us and thinking we're either having an affair or thinking we're a CO and subordinate that are a little too close."

That snapped Jen out of her grinning and she looked around with a chastised look, remembering they were in a military hospital with everyone around being military.

"Oops."

Harm chuckled "Yeah, oops."

"Maybe we should just stamp our foreheads with "married". I know the company that makes them for JAG." Jen suggested, barely holding a straight face.

"With red or blue ink?" Harm asked and they chuckled, quieting when the baby made a few complaining noises in his sleep.

Jen looked at him shrewdly, completely on to his game "You're evading the question."

Harm sighed "Yeah, I know. I WILL call her, I promise, I just don't know yet how exactly I'll put it. I can't just say ' Mom, guess what? You're a grandma and a mother-in-law.' She'll have a stroke."

"Or squeal you deaf." Jen giggled.

Harm nodded "That too. I've been deafend enough for this year and it's not even June."

The reminder of how easily Harm could've died was like a bucket of cold water on Jen's good mood. Not that she was keeping a tally, but that was yet another black mark on MacKenzie and that spook as far as Jen was concerned.

Harm could've died without ever knowing a child of his, his firstborn and son at that, was about to be born.

And the Rabb Curse would've continued...

That was another thing... Jen hated making demands, it wasn't in her nature and she was stil unsure in her position as his wife, but sooner or later she would need to have a talk with him.

She didn't want him to change, she loved him because of the man he was, the man who cared about other people, even complete strangers, but he was a father now and she hoped he would for the good of his son avoid taking unnecessary risks.

Fact was, Harm took many risks on a regular basis, with most of those risks being unnecessary. Sure, his job in the military brought risks with it, but he was not in the frontline troops, he was safely back in DC. The last thing she wanted was to have a folded flag handed to her someday.

While that was probably the standpoint of every wife that cares about her husband Jen had more reasons to worry and make demands and that was the already-mentioned Rabb Curse.

From what Trish Burnett had told her during the older woman's March visit, no Rabb man of the 20th century had lived long enough to see his firstborn reach the age of 10.

Harm's father had been shot down when Harm was only 6 and even though he'd survived he'd been taken from his family's lives just as if he'd been killed, perhaps with even worse consequences.

Harm's grandfather, John Rabb, had been killed in Pearl Harbor before his son had even been born.

Harm's great-grandfather, George Rabb, had died in WWI while his son had still been a baby.

That was as far back Trish, who'd told Jen, knew for sure about the Rabb history since the only Rabb she'd known had been Sarah Rabb. Since Sarah Rabb had lived on the opposite side of the country until her natural death in 2003, Trish hadn't spent much time with her mother-in-law and thus didn't know more about the Rabb line.

All of these men had been in the military, just like Harm...

The statistics told a clear and frightening story and with the numerous scrapes Harm had had in his life even before the Navy, heck, in this year alone, it was a wonder he was still with them.

And Jen was determined to make sure he would be around for a long time to come.

Hopefully Will would choose civilian life, meet a nice girl and settle down. With Mattie determined to join the Navy, which would give Jen enough gray hair as it was, she didn't need Will to add even more.

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By this time they'd arrive to the main entrance/exit of the hospital.

Harm took will from Jen's arms and then help her get out of the wheelchair, which they then returned to a nearby nurse.

Keeping the infant in his arms, relishing the opportunity to hold his son, Harm then led the way to his Lexus, where it was standing in the short-term parking space.

Getting underway took longer than usual since neither of them had had any kind of experience in traveling with babies or baby car seats, so they first had to figure out how to properly strap in the now wide awake Will, who was kicking and squirming.

Once they were done, they looked at each other from the opposite rear doors and sighed in relief, chuckling a little.

"Never knew this could be so hard to do." Harm commented amused.

"Me neither." replied Jen, both unaware this had been the easiest time. From now on they would also have to lug a huge bundle of baby supplies EVERYWHERE they went and after that also deal with a stroller, that had to be collapsed and carefully packed in the boot and then taken out to be assembled everytime they went somewhere.

Ignorance is bliss, they say, so Jen again sighed in relief and tucked some hair back behind her ear. Harm's arm twitched and he barely stopped himself from doing the same with her other ear.

Instead he smiled at her, climbed out of the car, closed the rear door and got into the driver's seat, waiting for Jen to get in before starting the engine.

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They'd been on the road for only a minute, have barely passed the exit checkpoint, when Harm spoke up.

"You can take a nap and I'll wake you when we arrive. I know you must be tired."

Jen's head turned to him, her voice filled with dry humor "I'd rather not, I've been sleeping so much the past few days it's completely messed up my bio-rhythm."

Harm nodded his head and made a compassionate noise.

Had either of them had had any sort of personal experience of taking care of a newborn they would've quickly found the flaw in Jen's logic. The thing with newborns is that you sleep when they sleep. That "sleep" also isn't the REM sleep people usually enjoy through the night, but power naps between feedings, be it day or night.

They would learn soon enough though.

When Harm was silent for the next five minutes Jen, surprised at the silence, looked at him to ask what was wrong, but seeing his face scrunched up deep in thought told her he would tell her when he was ready.

Though, seeing that frown on his face, Jen suddenly had a flashback to seeing that very same face somewhere else. It was exactly the same, every little detail, just on a miniature scale.

She wasn't ignorant what it said about Harm's trust in her that he'd believed her immediately when she'd said he was Will's father. It was a delicate and very important matter, especially since she was all too aware there were plenty of women out there who didn't and wouldn't hesitate planting one man's child to another man as his.

He'd had all the right to question the child's paternity since he didn't remember having sex with her and because he knew nothing about her sex life. He didn't know no other man but he had taken pleasure in her body. He was fully in his right to want DNA testing, but the thought hadn't even occured to him. He trusted her, he trusted she would never lie to him, particularly about something as important as this.

He'd accepted her word as the truth without even a sliver of doubt and had then even married her, to give them all a real family and their child legitimacy.

Amazement, happiness, bewilderment, overwhelmness and humility all warred within her at the fact Harm trusted her so utterly and completely.

What had she done to deserve this trust and loyalty? She hadn't done anything special, just been his friend and showed her appreciation for what he'd done for her, for believing in her.

In the modesty and self-effacement that was so much a part of her Jen simply didn't realize she never did "just" something, she always went well above and beyond for people important to her. With her inherently good and sweet personality and honest character Jen had proven herself to Harm and others during the past two and a half years. With her self-sacrificing character and selflessness she'd then won Harm over, to the point where he was far from taking her for granted.

Like he'd told her a short while ago: "What would I ever do without you?"

Harm cherished her friendship, was infinitely grateful he had her in his life and there was nothing he wouldn't do for her.

Yet, Jen didn't know all that, she didn't see herself as someone special nor did she see anything special in what she'd done for her friends, that's why Harm's utter trust in her completely blew her mind.

Had she not been already in love with the man she would've surely fallen for him now.

But there was nothing she wanted more than for him to one day return her feelings.

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AN: planting one man's child to another man as his... unfortunately it's not fiction, it happens regularly, I've actually found a statistic last year.

But that's not how I was inspired for that part of this chapter: a few years ago I talked to another author on ff. net (she's a woman) who told me if she got pregnant by a one night stand while in relationship with someone else, that she wouldn't tell her partner about her cheating him and would thus make him believe the child was his. I don't know if it was her real reasoning or simply a lie, but after I asked her why in the world would she do that she said it's because the relationship would mean too much to her to destroy it that way.

I didn't say anything more since it didn't seem worth it to me, but I could see many flaws in that logic, starting with sleeping with men other her partner, but mainly making that whole relationship and family life into a lie. Personally I think in that case she would've obliterated that relationship the very moment she decided to lie.

For a normal, healthy long-term relationship (family and/or marriage) to succeed I personally think the three main conditions are trust, willingness to compromise and fidelity. Without all these three it's doomed to fail. The best basis is an already established friendship, because that way the man and woman already have trust, know each other well, know at least some part of each other's sexual past and know if the other is liable to cheat or not. It's great if there's romantic love, but it's not necessary. My reasons to believe that are from knowing at least two couples who were friends and then consciously decided to have a family together. To pre-empt any hasty conclusions :P... thus UNLIKE Harm and Mac, their "friendship" (if it could be called that, considering the fact that most of the time they weren't friends, just people who were either pretending or were living in a dellusion where they were still friends) and their banal "deal". In the cases I'm talking about the couple actually got along, were compatible and were not constantly fighting or playing some stupid games that were the trademark of HM (I'll be touching on this deal in the next chapter, btw.).

Anyway, that other author's answer and reasoning was the inspiration for that part of this chapter.

I can say only one thing on that: thank god not all women are like that.

Oh, yeah, not just one thing, but two things.

The second is: thank god I'm not her boyfriend/fiancee/husband. That poor fool, I don't envy him. If I were him I'd have the kids' paternity tested, just in case.

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Reviews are love.