Spoilers: "Pulse Rate," any other episode that Mattie has been in may be
helpful; Summary: Mattie tries to figure out where she fits in with the
shifting sands of Harm's life. AN: I'm sorry for the delay between
chapters, but I had spoken and written final exams to grade. "Pulse Rate"
didn't do anything to inspire me, so I've been struggling against writer's
block. It finally dawned on me that Mattie has not come up yet in any of
my stories. I really like her character because I think she's good for
Harm. This episode is all hers.
******
2012 EST Grace Residence Blacksburg, Virginia
"Harm?"
The only response from the opposite side of the dining room table was the clink of metal against ceramic as the brooding Navy Commander absently scooped food from his plate to his mouth.
"Harm?" Mattie queried again, slightly louder. For his part, Harm continued eating as if she hadn't spoken. Impatiently, Mattie pounded the table with her fist as she tried a third time to capture his attention. "Harm?"
He looked startled as the table suddenly jumped under his plate. Mattie had a hard time smothering her laughter behind her napkin at the expression on his face.
Finally realizing that his companion was trying to talk to him, Harm glanced up, shaking the remnants of the dilemma he'd been puzzling over out of his mind for a moment so he could focus on the person in front of him. "Mattie, I'm sorry. I've got a lot on my mind."
"I noticed," she said dryly. "You've been kind of distant tonight. What's bugging you?"
"Nothing."
Mattie looked at him skeptically as she stood and cleared her place setting. "It's not 'nothing' if it took me shaking the table to get your attention, Harm," she chided.
"Okay, let's put it this way, it's nothing you need to worry about," he informed her as followed her into the kitchen with his dinner remnants. The teenager moved over as he joined her at the sink so that he could rinse off his plate. She noticed that not only was he conversationally disinclined during the meal, but his appetite was suffering as well if the half of his homemade dinner that ended up going down the garbage disposal was any evidence.
"Is it a case?" she asked as she took his plate and set it in the dishwasher. "And that's why you can't talk about it?"
"Not really."
She closed the dishwasher and looked up at her ad hoc guardian, trying to put a finger on whatever had put him into such a funk. "Is the old bald guy being mean to you again?"
Mattie had hoped for more of a smile than he actually gave her when he replied, "No, the admiral and I are getting along fine. Don't you have homework to do?"
"I finished it while you were making dinner," she said as she followed him out of the kitchen, "Is your friend still going through his crisis of faith?" She wasn't going to let him sulk in silence, so she continued her interrogation. Harm plopped down on the sofa, so Mattie made herself comfortable sitting cross-legged on the coffee table in front of him.
"Last time I talked to him, he was still trying to get through it, but he's been working out of the office a lot lately. You know, you really shouldn't sit on the furniture," he tried to distract her again when he realized that she wasn't going to leave him alone with his thoughts.
"You're sitting on the furniture," she pointed out.
"But this furniture is meant to be sat on," he said reasonably, sitting up and leaning forward so he was face to face with the fourteen-year-old.
"And it's my house, my furniture, end of discussion," she said cheekily. Before he could get in another comment to reprimand her insubordination and further divert the conversation, she got back to the topic that had prompted all of the diversions in the first place. "So if it's not the admiral, and it's not Sturgis, it must be that ungrateful Marine who has been the catalyst of all of your personal and professional upheavals recently."
Harm gave her a strange look. "What's with all of the big words? Have you been reading the dictionary?"
"Close. I had to study for a vocabulary quiz in language arts tomorrow morning," she temporarily forgot her mission and allowed him to distract her, but she quickly realized what had been done and reclaimed her control over the discussion. "So what happened with Mac? I thought that you were finally getting along."
"Mattie, you already know way too much about my personal life," he sighed as he leaned back against the couch cushions and covered his face with his hands.
The young girl vacated her perch on the coffee table to sit next to her self-appointed protector on the couch. She met his gaze as he pulled his hands away from his face. "You know everything about my life," she quietly reminded him.
She could tell that her statement had made him feel guilty for holding this back from her. "Mattie, it's not that I want to keep it from you, it's just that everything with me and Mac is so messed up that I don't want you caught up in any of it."
"I already am," she pointed out. "If you hadn't quit your job to save her life, you would never have been forced to leave JAG and ended up working for me. But you did, and here we are."
Harm just stared at his pseudo-ward because she had made a legitimate point. Since that short time that he'd been an employee of Grace Aviation, Mattie had shared everything with him about how her life had turned upside down, and he had repaid that trust with his own story of how he ended up dusting crops (minus the confidential details he was bound to withhold). Now they shared just about everything that happened in their daily lives, or used the other as a sounding board while they vented.
"Okay, you win," he told her as he put his arm around her. She leaned back into the embrace and waited for him to tell her what was on his mind.
"I wasn't thinking, and I said something I shouldn't have to Mac today," he confessed, "and I said it in front of an entire courtroom full of people."
"And they all heard you?"
"Well, let me put it this way--enough people heard me to earn me death- glares from Mac and a serious six-chewing from the judge," Harm cringed as he remembered being in the crosshairs of both parties' anger.
"What happened?"
Harm looked almost sheepish as he admitted, "My client passed out and saved my sorry six for the moment."
"Is he okay?"
"Yeah, now he is," Harm paused before getting back to the original subject-- this time without any prompting from Mattie. "I knew the second the words were out of my mouth that I shouldn't have said them, and I wanted to take them back, but it was too late. I really need to practice thinking more before I speak sometimes."
"What did you say that could have been so bad? Did you call her something obscene?" Mattie wondered aloud when she failed to come up with a plausible scenario on her own. Under her breath, she muttered, "She probably deserved it after everything she's put you through."
"It doesn't really matter what I said, and she didn't deserve to be embarrassed in front of everyone like that," Harm said as he studied the pattern on the armrest of the couch. "I've just been annoyed with her attitude since she made her opinion known about this case, and I'm not even really sure why. This afternoon, I slipped up and said the first hurtful thing that came to mind when I should have kept my comments to myself."
"Did you apologize?"
"Yes, but I still feel horrible about the whole thing."
Mattie watched the emotions play across his face as she waited patiently for him to continue. Sometimes she was still amazed at how close their relationship was after only a few short months, but she had come to the conclusion that he reminded her of his mother, mostly because of his patience with her and his concern for her well-being. She'd caught herself wishing that her mother had married someone more like Harmon Rabb, and that was the reason she could rest comfortably leaning against his chest like she had with her mother.
When Harm didn't say anything for a few minutes, she looked up at him. "Harm?"
"Hmm?" she smiled when she got an immediate reply, even though he was still engrossed with the upholstery of the arm rest.
She cautiously ventured her opinion on his present situation. "Don't take this the wrong way, but you let Mac get to you way too much. She told you where things stood, and I know you weren't happy with the way things ended up, but if she told you point blank that it would never happen, don't you think you need to get over her?"
"Easier said than done, kiddo," he squeezed her shoulder and smiled sadly down at her.
"Why?"
"Because I'm in love with her."
Mattie smiled. "I already knew that, but that's the first time you've actually said it."
"Really?"
"At least to my knowledge," she affirmed. "I know you tried telling her through your actions, but she chose not to understand. And I know that you've been hopeful that maybe she's changed her mind now that you're back at JAG, especially since you both promised to talk. Would it hurt so much to tell her what you just told me, even if it just confirms that there is no way for it to work?"
"Mac and I did say that we would talk, but I'm not walking willingly into another rejection." He anticipated Mattie's next question as to how he knew Mac would reject him, and continued in a hurt tone as he looked away, "She's seeing Clay again."
"That was the guy you rescued with her, right?" Mattie asked for clarification.
"That's him," he confirmed blandly.
Mattie's heart went out to Harm, but if Mac had upped the timetable for their 'talk' and made it perfectly clear that she was more interested in this other guy, then Harm just needed to suck it up. If, on the other hand, Mac was just playing with his heart, then Mattie could think of a few choice words to say to Colonel MacKenzie that would probably top whatever Harm had blurted out in the courtroom. In the meantime, she asked Harm another question to gain a little more insight to the present predicament, "She told you she was seeing him?"
"Not directly," he sighed, "but when you called me this afternoon, she had just turned down my dinner invitation because she had made plans with him."
"I'm sorry."
"It's okay. I guess I just need to take some advice I've been offered and get over her," he gave her a weak smile as he helped her up from the couch. "Why don't you go get ready for bed, and I'll clean up in the kitchen. We can watch some TV before I leave and you head off to dreamland."
"Okay," she acquiesced, not bothering to begin a battle over bedtime for the time being.
"And Mattie?" She turned around with her hand on the banister of the staircase. "Thank you for listening to me. I'm lucky to have you in my life."
"I thought it was the other way around," she smiled back at him.
He approached her at the foot of the stairs and looked down at this teenager who had just appeared in his life one day and would continue to affect him for the rest of his days if he had any say in the matter. "I guess we both needed someone who cared unconditionally. You couldn't have come into my life at a better time."
She studied his face as she turned his words over in her head. Finally, she asked, "Is that why you're doing this?"
Harm gave her a blank look. "Is what why I'm doing this?"
"Mac wouldn't let you take care of her, but I need someone to take care of me."
The seconds ticked by as Harm considered the validity of what she had just said. "If I'm honest with myself, I suppose it does a little," he admitted. "A better reason is I've always wanted to be the father-figure to somebody. But I was never able to be a permanent fixture in the life of any child in the end for one reason or another, with the notable exception of my godson, but that's different. And it's different with you."
"We haven't been to court yet," Mattie stated, hating to play the pessimist, but unable to silence the voice inside her head that said that all of her good fortune was just too good to be true.
"Don't be thinking like that, Matilda Grace. I am going to do whatever I have to do in order to make sure you and I are a family. Never lose faith in that."
She unexpectedly hugged him. "You're the best," he heard her say, her voice muffled by his shirt.
After a few second of surprised shock, he hugged her back. "I don't know about that, Mattie, but for you, I'll try to be."
******
Written December 5 - 26, 2003
******
2012 EST Grace Residence Blacksburg, Virginia
"Harm?"
The only response from the opposite side of the dining room table was the clink of metal against ceramic as the brooding Navy Commander absently scooped food from his plate to his mouth.
"Harm?" Mattie queried again, slightly louder. For his part, Harm continued eating as if she hadn't spoken. Impatiently, Mattie pounded the table with her fist as she tried a third time to capture his attention. "Harm?"
He looked startled as the table suddenly jumped under his plate. Mattie had a hard time smothering her laughter behind her napkin at the expression on his face.
Finally realizing that his companion was trying to talk to him, Harm glanced up, shaking the remnants of the dilemma he'd been puzzling over out of his mind for a moment so he could focus on the person in front of him. "Mattie, I'm sorry. I've got a lot on my mind."
"I noticed," she said dryly. "You've been kind of distant tonight. What's bugging you?"
"Nothing."
Mattie looked at him skeptically as she stood and cleared her place setting. "It's not 'nothing' if it took me shaking the table to get your attention, Harm," she chided.
"Okay, let's put it this way, it's nothing you need to worry about," he informed her as followed her into the kitchen with his dinner remnants. The teenager moved over as he joined her at the sink so that he could rinse off his plate. She noticed that not only was he conversationally disinclined during the meal, but his appetite was suffering as well if the half of his homemade dinner that ended up going down the garbage disposal was any evidence.
"Is it a case?" she asked as she took his plate and set it in the dishwasher. "And that's why you can't talk about it?"
"Not really."
She closed the dishwasher and looked up at her ad hoc guardian, trying to put a finger on whatever had put him into such a funk. "Is the old bald guy being mean to you again?"
Mattie had hoped for more of a smile than he actually gave her when he replied, "No, the admiral and I are getting along fine. Don't you have homework to do?"
"I finished it while you were making dinner," she said as she followed him out of the kitchen, "Is your friend still going through his crisis of faith?" She wasn't going to let him sulk in silence, so she continued her interrogation. Harm plopped down on the sofa, so Mattie made herself comfortable sitting cross-legged on the coffee table in front of him.
"Last time I talked to him, he was still trying to get through it, but he's been working out of the office a lot lately. You know, you really shouldn't sit on the furniture," he tried to distract her again when he realized that she wasn't going to leave him alone with his thoughts.
"You're sitting on the furniture," she pointed out.
"But this furniture is meant to be sat on," he said reasonably, sitting up and leaning forward so he was face to face with the fourteen-year-old.
"And it's my house, my furniture, end of discussion," she said cheekily. Before he could get in another comment to reprimand her insubordination and further divert the conversation, she got back to the topic that had prompted all of the diversions in the first place. "So if it's not the admiral, and it's not Sturgis, it must be that ungrateful Marine who has been the catalyst of all of your personal and professional upheavals recently."
Harm gave her a strange look. "What's with all of the big words? Have you been reading the dictionary?"
"Close. I had to study for a vocabulary quiz in language arts tomorrow morning," she temporarily forgot her mission and allowed him to distract her, but she quickly realized what had been done and reclaimed her control over the discussion. "So what happened with Mac? I thought that you were finally getting along."
"Mattie, you already know way too much about my personal life," he sighed as he leaned back against the couch cushions and covered his face with his hands.
The young girl vacated her perch on the coffee table to sit next to her self-appointed protector on the couch. She met his gaze as he pulled his hands away from his face. "You know everything about my life," she quietly reminded him.
She could tell that her statement had made him feel guilty for holding this back from her. "Mattie, it's not that I want to keep it from you, it's just that everything with me and Mac is so messed up that I don't want you caught up in any of it."
"I already am," she pointed out. "If you hadn't quit your job to save her life, you would never have been forced to leave JAG and ended up working for me. But you did, and here we are."
Harm just stared at his pseudo-ward because she had made a legitimate point. Since that short time that he'd been an employee of Grace Aviation, Mattie had shared everything with him about how her life had turned upside down, and he had repaid that trust with his own story of how he ended up dusting crops (minus the confidential details he was bound to withhold). Now they shared just about everything that happened in their daily lives, or used the other as a sounding board while they vented.
"Okay, you win," he told her as he put his arm around her. She leaned back into the embrace and waited for him to tell her what was on his mind.
"I wasn't thinking, and I said something I shouldn't have to Mac today," he confessed, "and I said it in front of an entire courtroom full of people."
"And they all heard you?"
"Well, let me put it this way--enough people heard me to earn me death- glares from Mac and a serious six-chewing from the judge," Harm cringed as he remembered being in the crosshairs of both parties' anger.
"What happened?"
Harm looked almost sheepish as he admitted, "My client passed out and saved my sorry six for the moment."
"Is he okay?"
"Yeah, now he is," Harm paused before getting back to the original subject-- this time without any prompting from Mattie. "I knew the second the words were out of my mouth that I shouldn't have said them, and I wanted to take them back, but it was too late. I really need to practice thinking more before I speak sometimes."
"What did you say that could have been so bad? Did you call her something obscene?" Mattie wondered aloud when she failed to come up with a plausible scenario on her own. Under her breath, she muttered, "She probably deserved it after everything she's put you through."
"It doesn't really matter what I said, and she didn't deserve to be embarrassed in front of everyone like that," Harm said as he studied the pattern on the armrest of the couch. "I've just been annoyed with her attitude since she made her opinion known about this case, and I'm not even really sure why. This afternoon, I slipped up and said the first hurtful thing that came to mind when I should have kept my comments to myself."
"Did you apologize?"
"Yes, but I still feel horrible about the whole thing."
Mattie watched the emotions play across his face as she waited patiently for him to continue. Sometimes she was still amazed at how close their relationship was after only a few short months, but she had come to the conclusion that he reminded her of his mother, mostly because of his patience with her and his concern for her well-being. She'd caught herself wishing that her mother had married someone more like Harmon Rabb, and that was the reason she could rest comfortably leaning against his chest like she had with her mother.
When Harm didn't say anything for a few minutes, she looked up at him. "Harm?"
"Hmm?" she smiled when she got an immediate reply, even though he was still engrossed with the upholstery of the arm rest.
She cautiously ventured her opinion on his present situation. "Don't take this the wrong way, but you let Mac get to you way too much. She told you where things stood, and I know you weren't happy with the way things ended up, but if she told you point blank that it would never happen, don't you think you need to get over her?"
"Easier said than done, kiddo," he squeezed her shoulder and smiled sadly down at her.
"Why?"
"Because I'm in love with her."
Mattie smiled. "I already knew that, but that's the first time you've actually said it."
"Really?"
"At least to my knowledge," she affirmed. "I know you tried telling her through your actions, but she chose not to understand. And I know that you've been hopeful that maybe she's changed her mind now that you're back at JAG, especially since you both promised to talk. Would it hurt so much to tell her what you just told me, even if it just confirms that there is no way for it to work?"
"Mac and I did say that we would talk, but I'm not walking willingly into another rejection." He anticipated Mattie's next question as to how he knew Mac would reject him, and continued in a hurt tone as he looked away, "She's seeing Clay again."
"That was the guy you rescued with her, right?" Mattie asked for clarification.
"That's him," he confirmed blandly.
Mattie's heart went out to Harm, but if Mac had upped the timetable for their 'talk' and made it perfectly clear that she was more interested in this other guy, then Harm just needed to suck it up. If, on the other hand, Mac was just playing with his heart, then Mattie could think of a few choice words to say to Colonel MacKenzie that would probably top whatever Harm had blurted out in the courtroom. In the meantime, she asked Harm another question to gain a little more insight to the present predicament, "She told you she was seeing him?"
"Not directly," he sighed, "but when you called me this afternoon, she had just turned down my dinner invitation because she had made plans with him."
"I'm sorry."
"It's okay. I guess I just need to take some advice I've been offered and get over her," he gave her a weak smile as he helped her up from the couch. "Why don't you go get ready for bed, and I'll clean up in the kitchen. We can watch some TV before I leave and you head off to dreamland."
"Okay," she acquiesced, not bothering to begin a battle over bedtime for the time being.
"And Mattie?" She turned around with her hand on the banister of the staircase. "Thank you for listening to me. I'm lucky to have you in my life."
"I thought it was the other way around," she smiled back at him.
He approached her at the foot of the stairs and looked down at this teenager who had just appeared in his life one day and would continue to affect him for the rest of his days if he had any say in the matter. "I guess we both needed someone who cared unconditionally. You couldn't have come into my life at a better time."
She studied his face as she turned his words over in her head. Finally, she asked, "Is that why you're doing this?"
Harm gave her a blank look. "Is what why I'm doing this?"
"Mac wouldn't let you take care of her, but I need someone to take care of me."
The seconds ticked by as Harm considered the validity of what she had just said. "If I'm honest with myself, I suppose it does a little," he admitted. "A better reason is I've always wanted to be the father-figure to somebody. But I was never able to be a permanent fixture in the life of any child in the end for one reason or another, with the notable exception of my godson, but that's different. And it's different with you."
"We haven't been to court yet," Mattie stated, hating to play the pessimist, but unable to silence the voice inside her head that said that all of her good fortune was just too good to be true.
"Don't be thinking like that, Matilda Grace. I am going to do whatever I have to do in order to make sure you and I are a family. Never lose faith in that."
She unexpectedly hugged him. "You're the best," he heard her say, her voice muffled by his shirt.
After a few second of surprised shock, he hugged her back. "I don't know about that, Mattie, but for you, I'll try to be."
******
Written December 5 - 26, 2003
