Spoilers: The Stalker, Lifeline, Adrift, A Tangled Webb, Shifting Sands (If
I missed any, I'm sorry)
AN: Forgive me if treatment of Mac in this chapter is a little harsh. I'm
still trying to figure out why she turned Harm down when he finally 'let
go' for her. You'll need to read "Following the Shifting Sands" for this
to make sense. Thanks for all the feedback and encouragement to write
chapter two!
******
2025 EST Kresge Medical Center Pimmit Hills, VA
Harm was going to be flying again. It might not be his preferred Tomcats, but the odds of surviving while assigned to a fighter squadron sounded better than those of a CIA pilot at the moment, despite all of Harm's previous altercations with his beloved Navy jets. There was more risk involved in espionage since one small misstep by any of the players involved in an operation could scuttle an entire mission and cost everyone involved their life.
That's all Sarah MacKenzie could think as she walked away from Clay's hospital room. She was glad that the occupants of Clay's hospital room had been having too much fun enjoying the camaraderie of their new 'brotherhood' to notice her eavesdropping in the doorway. She needed a minute to digest this new information. When the admiral hadn't taken Harm back, she had been upset, but she'd assumed he'd find some decent civilian law firm to work for, and they'd be battling in the courtroom again before too long. She sat down on one of the sterile chairs in the hall's lobby, absently recalling that it was the same place she and Harm had been fighting a week ago when they had come to visit Clay together. Had it really been a week already?
Her cell phone rang, interrupting her train of thought.
"MacKenzie," she answered automatically as she brought the phone to her ear. The worried lines of her face softened at the voice on the other end of the line. She didn't know where this thing developing with Clayton Webb would take them, but she did know that it was nice to have someone paying so much attention to her while allowing her to be herself and not expecting too much in return. She was smiling as she answered him. "Actually, I'm on my way up right now. You shouldn't worry about me. I can take care of myself. You need to be worrying about getting better so the doctors will release you. Okay, I'll see you in a few minutes."
The reality of what she had to walk into dawned on her as soon as she hung up. She hadn't seen Harm in a week, and she wasn't sure how he would react to her presence after all that they'd said to each other. It took her a few minutes more to force herself to stand up and walk back to the room. As she reached the doorway, Clay's visitors called out their good-byes and stepped out into the hallway.
"Mac," Harm said, not allowing any emotion to show. It was almost as if they were strangers who just happened to know each other's name. Of course, he would have known she was coming since he had to have been in the room when Clay called her just a minute ago. He would have had sufficient time to able to prepare himself in case this exact situation occurred.
"Harm." She was equally as cordial in her response.
"You remember Catherine Gayle from the Angelshark investigation?" Harm politely presented his companion to his former partner.
Mac automatically registered that this had been the third person she had overheard. She had been more preoccupied with the words spoken than by placing the unfamiliar voice. "Yes. What brings you here, Ms. Gayle? Making sure that Clay stays out of trouble until he's well enough to come back to work?"
"My husband drove me here, but I wanted to check in on Clay anyway," Catherine replied with a cheerful smile.
"Does your husband work for the CIA, too?" Mac asked courteously.
"Actually, he does," Catherine said as she gave Harm a questioning look.
He answered her look with a slight shrug before turning back to Mac. "You remember how I told you I'd gotten married while you were in Paraguay?" He trailed off and waited for Mac to pick up on his meaning.
To her credit, Mac recovered quickly from her second shock that afternoon, all the while trying to convince herself that this was all an act. Harm was just trying to get under her skin with the new blond in his life since she had shocked him with her developing relationship with Clay in Paraguay. She wouldn't give Harm the satisfaction of showing any reaction that he could interpret as jealousy. "Congratulations. You're not going to change your last name, Ms. Gayle?"
"Catherine Rabb didn't quite have the same ring to it," she replied with a grin. Turning to her 'husband,' Catherine motioned with her head toward some point behind her in the hall. "I'm going to run to the ladies room really quick before we leave. I'll be right back."
"I'll be right here," he grinned at her and received a smile in return before Catherine walked away. Mac's heart tore a little at the fact that he would smile for this woman he barely knew, but as soon as his attention was focused back on her, all traces of that smile she loved would vanish.
They both watched Catherine walk away. The clicking of her heels was almost inaudible when Mac finally broke the silence between them. "So... I haven't seen you around this week."
As she had guessed, the smile was gone when he turned back to face her. She thought she'd taken his rejection in Sydney a whole lot better than this. Okay, so thinking back on the whole fiasco, maybe she hadn't reacted that well, and she'd gotten Mic involved in a situation where he was destined to come out the loser. His reply interrupted her musings on her past behavior. "I don't work at JAG anymore, so why would you have seen me?"
"That's true," she agreed, not wanting to touch on the subject of his 'marriage' until she had a little more time to think over that new development since she had now met his 'wife.' In an attempt to bring the conversation around to what she'd overheard in Clay's room, she changed the subject, saying, "You seemed to have taken up with hanging out with spooks in the meantime."
"I go where I'm needed," he replied with a vaguely. She could tell that his thoughts were elsewhere and that the only reason he was continuing this conversation with her was because he didn't have anything better to do until Catherine returned.
"And the CIA needs you?" she asked as nonchalantly as she could manage.
He finally looked at her before he replied, "Apparently, since they're going to let me fly for them."
She wanted to sound as reasonable as possible because she knew that he was watching to see her reaction to this news. He knew that she hated the thought of him flying, but luckily, she had had a few minutes to digest the information so that her emotions couldn't get the best of her. Despite everything complicating their relationship at that moment, she was still his friend, and she wasn't going to let him do this without hearing her opinion on the subject. "Harm, the CIA? You want to fly for their operations? How many have we gone on where we almost got killed?"
"Clay won't be around for a while, so I'll be safe at least until he's recovered," he said with a sardonic smile.
He thought he'd joke about this, which made her want to smack him. "Be serious, Harm! You can find something else to do where you won't have to risk your life every time you go to work."
Her tone wiped the smirk off of his face to be replaced with the hardest look she had ever seen. "You don't get a vote anymore, Mac. This is my life, and you've made it clear that you don't want to be a part of it."
Throughout the eight years they'd worked together, he had never spoken to her this harshly, not even when she had fallen off the wagon and said some pointedly hurtful things to him. On the inside, she wanted to cry, but she would never let him have the satisfaction. "You and your damn airplanes!" she muttered angrily as she turned away from him, attempting to regain control of the emotions he was provoking.
"You know, you once called Annie neurotic because she had a problem with me flying. She was the widow of a pilot with the safety of her son to worry about, so I think that she had a valid reason behind her fear, even if I couldn't understand it," he said as he walked around her so that they were facing again. "Just what is *your* problem with it, Mac?"
She had to think fast, belatedly regretting that she'd pushed the conversation in this direction instead of asking about his pseudo-marriage. "You're obsessed with it, Harm. Flying forces everyone and everything else out of the picture and becomes the only thing that is important to you."
He took her accusations without batting an eye. His response was decidedly bitter. "Well, lucky for me, just about everyone and everything that could have been superseded by my desire to fly in the past is out of the picture now. And don't forget that you're the reason behind that."
"Excuse me?" He'd said it so matter-of-factly that she was stunned by the bluntness of his retaliation.
"I told you not to go with Webb on this little adventure, but you didn't even consider my request," he said in a low voice.
She was so incensed by his words that she automatically went into defensive mode and missed the hint of sadness behind them. "I was doing my duty, and it's my fault that you decided to chance the Admiral's wrath by resigning your commission?" she incredulously threw back in response.
He looked her in the eye and, without reacting to the charged emotions she was radiating, said, "Ultimately, yes, you are."
"Okay, tell me why it's all my fault since I wasn't exactly there holding a gun to your head," she said mockingly as she crossed her arms across her chest.
He shrugged, as if the answer was as plain as the nose on her face. "I owed you, as you reminded me at your engagement party. You came after me in Russia to watch my six. Twice. I needed to repay the debt."
She smiled as she found a loophole in his statement. "But I did that with the Admiral's permission."
He was just as quick to tie up that loophole for her. "And if he had denied you permission, would you have sat on your hands while I went off alone into the great unknown? Could you have gone on doing your job, waiting to see whether I came back or not?"
Mac stopped short, mouth open as if to reply. Both knew that at that point in their relationship, they would have risked everything for each other, so it wasn't worth wasting her breath trying to lie and to say she would have let him go off alone on his personal quest for the truth. She was taken aback as it finally dawned on her that he would still put his life on the line for her after everything they'd put each other through after his return to flying, the incident in Australia, and every other speed bump they'd encountered since his dip in the Atlantic on the eve of her wedding. And he had put his life as well as his career on the line just so that he could bring her back from Paraguay alive. He had saved her life, and Clay's too. Had she even said thank you?
It was at that moment of enlightenment that she noticed what he had been fiddling with on his left hand throughout their entire confrontation, and she felt the world around her crumble.
"I thought you said your marriage was a farce to get information to find me," she said quietly, transfixed by the shiny gold band encircling his finger. Her previous crusade to show Harmon Rabb that he was wrong had been forgotten as soon as she had seen the wedding ring.
"I did, didn't I?" he said, making a big show of thinking about it for a few moments, still turning the band around his finger. Looking past her, he clapped his hands together and said, "Well, as much fun as this has been, I see my wife waiting for me. I promised that after we stopped in on Clay, we'd go visit her mother."
She didn't want him to go, but couldn't figure out how to get him to stay. She had to know the truth about that ring and whether or not he was really married. Things were rocky between them right now, but she had thought up until she had seen that ring that they would work through everything, and that they'd be friends again, despite his change in military status. She had just assumed that she'd always have him there, even if it they never became romantically involved. That was just the way Harm was-he was her rock, the one she could depend on through thick and thin, even if there were times when they wanted to kill each other. He couldn't really have gone off and married Catherine just because she'd told him there was no hope for a future between them. Suddenly she realized that he was walking away from her, and all she could think to say was, "Harm."
He turned back to face her, and their eyes met. She knew that he saw the fear in her eyes, fear of him walking out of her life forever. He smiled sympathetically, but didn't make a move in her direction. "You can't have it both ways. I have to go, and Clay is waiting for you."
******
Written October 4-6, 2003
******
2025 EST Kresge Medical Center Pimmit Hills, VA
Harm was going to be flying again. It might not be his preferred Tomcats, but the odds of surviving while assigned to a fighter squadron sounded better than those of a CIA pilot at the moment, despite all of Harm's previous altercations with his beloved Navy jets. There was more risk involved in espionage since one small misstep by any of the players involved in an operation could scuttle an entire mission and cost everyone involved their life.
That's all Sarah MacKenzie could think as she walked away from Clay's hospital room. She was glad that the occupants of Clay's hospital room had been having too much fun enjoying the camaraderie of their new 'brotherhood' to notice her eavesdropping in the doorway. She needed a minute to digest this new information. When the admiral hadn't taken Harm back, she had been upset, but she'd assumed he'd find some decent civilian law firm to work for, and they'd be battling in the courtroom again before too long. She sat down on one of the sterile chairs in the hall's lobby, absently recalling that it was the same place she and Harm had been fighting a week ago when they had come to visit Clay together. Had it really been a week already?
Her cell phone rang, interrupting her train of thought.
"MacKenzie," she answered automatically as she brought the phone to her ear. The worried lines of her face softened at the voice on the other end of the line. She didn't know where this thing developing with Clayton Webb would take them, but she did know that it was nice to have someone paying so much attention to her while allowing her to be herself and not expecting too much in return. She was smiling as she answered him. "Actually, I'm on my way up right now. You shouldn't worry about me. I can take care of myself. You need to be worrying about getting better so the doctors will release you. Okay, I'll see you in a few minutes."
The reality of what she had to walk into dawned on her as soon as she hung up. She hadn't seen Harm in a week, and she wasn't sure how he would react to her presence after all that they'd said to each other. It took her a few minutes more to force herself to stand up and walk back to the room. As she reached the doorway, Clay's visitors called out their good-byes and stepped out into the hallway.
"Mac," Harm said, not allowing any emotion to show. It was almost as if they were strangers who just happened to know each other's name. Of course, he would have known she was coming since he had to have been in the room when Clay called her just a minute ago. He would have had sufficient time to able to prepare himself in case this exact situation occurred.
"Harm." She was equally as cordial in her response.
"You remember Catherine Gayle from the Angelshark investigation?" Harm politely presented his companion to his former partner.
Mac automatically registered that this had been the third person she had overheard. She had been more preoccupied with the words spoken than by placing the unfamiliar voice. "Yes. What brings you here, Ms. Gayle? Making sure that Clay stays out of trouble until he's well enough to come back to work?"
"My husband drove me here, but I wanted to check in on Clay anyway," Catherine replied with a cheerful smile.
"Does your husband work for the CIA, too?" Mac asked courteously.
"Actually, he does," Catherine said as she gave Harm a questioning look.
He answered her look with a slight shrug before turning back to Mac. "You remember how I told you I'd gotten married while you were in Paraguay?" He trailed off and waited for Mac to pick up on his meaning.
To her credit, Mac recovered quickly from her second shock that afternoon, all the while trying to convince herself that this was all an act. Harm was just trying to get under her skin with the new blond in his life since she had shocked him with her developing relationship with Clay in Paraguay. She wouldn't give Harm the satisfaction of showing any reaction that he could interpret as jealousy. "Congratulations. You're not going to change your last name, Ms. Gayle?"
"Catherine Rabb didn't quite have the same ring to it," she replied with a grin. Turning to her 'husband,' Catherine motioned with her head toward some point behind her in the hall. "I'm going to run to the ladies room really quick before we leave. I'll be right back."
"I'll be right here," he grinned at her and received a smile in return before Catherine walked away. Mac's heart tore a little at the fact that he would smile for this woman he barely knew, but as soon as his attention was focused back on her, all traces of that smile she loved would vanish.
They both watched Catherine walk away. The clicking of her heels was almost inaudible when Mac finally broke the silence between them. "So... I haven't seen you around this week."
As she had guessed, the smile was gone when he turned back to face her. She thought she'd taken his rejection in Sydney a whole lot better than this. Okay, so thinking back on the whole fiasco, maybe she hadn't reacted that well, and she'd gotten Mic involved in a situation where he was destined to come out the loser. His reply interrupted her musings on her past behavior. "I don't work at JAG anymore, so why would you have seen me?"
"That's true," she agreed, not wanting to touch on the subject of his 'marriage' until she had a little more time to think over that new development since she had now met his 'wife.' In an attempt to bring the conversation around to what she'd overheard in Clay's room, she changed the subject, saying, "You seemed to have taken up with hanging out with spooks in the meantime."
"I go where I'm needed," he replied with a vaguely. She could tell that his thoughts were elsewhere and that the only reason he was continuing this conversation with her was because he didn't have anything better to do until Catherine returned.
"And the CIA needs you?" she asked as nonchalantly as she could manage.
He finally looked at her before he replied, "Apparently, since they're going to let me fly for them."
She wanted to sound as reasonable as possible because she knew that he was watching to see her reaction to this news. He knew that she hated the thought of him flying, but luckily, she had had a few minutes to digest the information so that her emotions couldn't get the best of her. Despite everything complicating their relationship at that moment, she was still his friend, and she wasn't going to let him do this without hearing her opinion on the subject. "Harm, the CIA? You want to fly for their operations? How many have we gone on where we almost got killed?"
"Clay won't be around for a while, so I'll be safe at least until he's recovered," he said with a sardonic smile.
He thought he'd joke about this, which made her want to smack him. "Be serious, Harm! You can find something else to do where you won't have to risk your life every time you go to work."
Her tone wiped the smirk off of his face to be replaced with the hardest look she had ever seen. "You don't get a vote anymore, Mac. This is my life, and you've made it clear that you don't want to be a part of it."
Throughout the eight years they'd worked together, he had never spoken to her this harshly, not even when she had fallen off the wagon and said some pointedly hurtful things to him. On the inside, she wanted to cry, but she would never let him have the satisfaction. "You and your damn airplanes!" she muttered angrily as she turned away from him, attempting to regain control of the emotions he was provoking.
"You know, you once called Annie neurotic because she had a problem with me flying. She was the widow of a pilot with the safety of her son to worry about, so I think that she had a valid reason behind her fear, even if I couldn't understand it," he said as he walked around her so that they were facing again. "Just what is *your* problem with it, Mac?"
She had to think fast, belatedly regretting that she'd pushed the conversation in this direction instead of asking about his pseudo-marriage. "You're obsessed with it, Harm. Flying forces everyone and everything else out of the picture and becomes the only thing that is important to you."
He took her accusations without batting an eye. His response was decidedly bitter. "Well, lucky for me, just about everyone and everything that could have been superseded by my desire to fly in the past is out of the picture now. And don't forget that you're the reason behind that."
"Excuse me?" He'd said it so matter-of-factly that she was stunned by the bluntness of his retaliation.
"I told you not to go with Webb on this little adventure, but you didn't even consider my request," he said in a low voice.
She was so incensed by his words that she automatically went into defensive mode and missed the hint of sadness behind them. "I was doing my duty, and it's my fault that you decided to chance the Admiral's wrath by resigning your commission?" she incredulously threw back in response.
He looked her in the eye and, without reacting to the charged emotions she was radiating, said, "Ultimately, yes, you are."
"Okay, tell me why it's all my fault since I wasn't exactly there holding a gun to your head," she said mockingly as she crossed her arms across her chest.
He shrugged, as if the answer was as plain as the nose on her face. "I owed you, as you reminded me at your engagement party. You came after me in Russia to watch my six. Twice. I needed to repay the debt."
She smiled as she found a loophole in his statement. "But I did that with the Admiral's permission."
He was just as quick to tie up that loophole for her. "And if he had denied you permission, would you have sat on your hands while I went off alone into the great unknown? Could you have gone on doing your job, waiting to see whether I came back or not?"
Mac stopped short, mouth open as if to reply. Both knew that at that point in their relationship, they would have risked everything for each other, so it wasn't worth wasting her breath trying to lie and to say she would have let him go off alone on his personal quest for the truth. She was taken aback as it finally dawned on her that he would still put his life on the line for her after everything they'd put each other through after his return to flying, the incident in Australia, and every other speed bump they'd encountered since his dip in the Atlantic on the eve of her wedding. And he had put his life as well as his career on the line just so that he could bring her back from Paraguay alive. He had saved her life, and Clay's too. Had she even said thank you?
It was at that moment of enlightenment that she noticed what he had been fiddling with on his left hand throughout their entire confrontation, and she felt the world around her crumble.
"I thought you said your marriage was a farce to get information to find me," she said quietly, transfixed by the shiny gold band encircling his finger. Her previous crusade to show Harmon Rabb that he was wrong had been forgotten as soon as she had seen the wedding ring.
"I did, didn't I?" he said, making a big show of thinking about it for a few moments, still turning the band around his finger. Looking past her, he clapped his hands together and said, "Well, as much fun as this has been, I see my wife waiting for me. I promised that after we stopped in on Clay, we'd go visit her mother."
She didn't want him to go, but couldn't figure out how to get him to stay. She had to know the truth about that ring and whether or not he was really married. Things were rocky between them right now, but she had thought up until she had seen that ring that they would work through everything, and that they'd be friends again, despite his change in military status. She had just assumed that she'd always have him there, even if it they never became romantically involved. That was just the way Harm was-he was her rock, the one she could depend on through thick and thin, even if there were times when they wanted to kill each other. He couldn't really have gone off and married Catherine just because she'd told him there was no hope for a future between them. Suddenly she realized that he was walking away from her, and all she could think to say was, "Harm."
He turned back to face her, and their eyes met. She knew that he saw the fear in her eyes, fear of him walking out of her life forever. He smiled sympathetically, but didn't make a move in her direction. "You can't have it both ways. I have to go, and Clay is waiting for you."
******
Written October 4-6, 2003
