Spoilers: some leading up to "Pulse Rate" (I'm too lazy to list them), anything with Catherine Gayle;  Summary: Expecting perfection in a partner will only lead to disillusionment.  After eight years, Harm and Mac are faced with the bitter truth that they can't live up to each other's standards and it's time to move on.  AN: The lack of inspiration so far in 2004 convinced me to go back and piece together some of the thoughts I'd drafted for an ending to the Shifting Sands series before TPTB redeemed Mac's character in "A Merry Little Christmas."  This would have been inserted after "Humoring the Shifting Sands" where Harm promises that he and Mac will talk.  You'll have to assume that Harm could have gotten guardianship of Mattie without Mac's help.  I am a shipper, but this piece is not (consider yourself warned).

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0944 EST

JAG Headquarters

"So Sturgis, what do you know about Harm's new mystery woman?"  Mac tried not to sound too interested as she queried the only person in the office that could possibly have this insight since Harm wouldn't talk to her about much of anything non-work related anymore.  She walked over to the sink in the break room and grabbed her coffee mug from the drain board.

Sturgis raised his eyebrows as he peered at her over the top of the newspaper he was reading.  "I'm sorry, but I'm not keeping tabs on Harm's personal life.  If you hadn't noticed, I'm working through some stuff right now, and adding Harm's load to my own isn't a viable option.  And that's assuming that he's willing to tell anyone around here about it."  He straightened up, folding the newspaper.  He turned to swap the periodical for his coffee mug, which had been sitting on the counter behind him.  "If you hadn't noticed, he's taking his time warming up to all of us again."

"I'd noticed," she replied to his rhetorical statement as she poured her coffee.  She wanted to verify the scuttlebutt she'd been hearing, and going to the source wasn't an option for her with the tenuous balance she and Harm had established between them since his return.  Maybe Sturgis did have some intel on the subject and she just needed to try a different technique to get him to share.  "Well, I've heard that he's really robbing the cradle with this one."

Stirring some sugar into the brew, Mac turned to face the naval commander.  "I can just imagine some young thing hanging on his arm, dazzled by the gold wings..." she trailed off as she belatedly noticed Sturgis looking past her toward the doorway.

"Commander," Harm greeted his Academy classmate coolly.  "I didn't know you endorsed the spread of gossip in the workplace."

"I was just on my way back to my office after skimming the headlines, buddy," the former submariner said, grabbing the folded paper he'd been reading to corroborate his story as he made a hasty retreat.  He knew better than to get stuck between Harm and Mac in one of their innumerable squabbles.

Mac cringed inwardly as she realized that Harm could have heard it all since her back had been to the door the entire time.  She usually wasn't this catty, but she was too curious to not try to find out more.  Even though she had told him it would never work between them, it didn't mean that she wanted him with someone else either.

"I didn't know that you were one for gossiping, either, Mac," Harm said politely as he refilled his coffee cup.  He didn't look up at her, focusing instead on preparing the perfect cup of coffee.  "And I though you knew me better than to believe the information you were passing on."

"I'm sorry.  I shouldn't have said anything," she apologized as she stared into her coffee, realizing this was probably how he felt after she'd overheard his comment about all of her ex's during the time of the Jag-a-thon.

Holding his cup in front of himself with both hands, he finally looked at her.  She knew that look because she'd worn it a time or two since the whole Paraguay fiasco.  It was a look of disappointment that things could have gone this far downhill for them.  "And I shouldn't have said what I did in the courtroom about your alcoholism.  We apologize too much for things we've said to hurt each other."

He paused for a second, collecting his thoughts before making the conscious decision to proceed with the conversation.  He'd promised her that they would talk, and this seemed like the time to do it, even though they could have chosen a much better place than at work.  "You were right that we'd never be able to have a relationship.  Heck, I'm having problems accepting 'friendship' right now."

To her credit, Mac looked sufficiently shocked.  "Don't say that, Harm."

"Why not?"

His calm acceptance was rattling her more than she would have liked, but she couldn't seem to keep her emotions in check at the moment.  "We're just at a bump in the road.  It will blow over," she promised.

"It hasn't blown over in almost seven months."  His voice was hard.  An emotional appeal would do nothing to budge him when he was like this.  "And before that we alternated between coexisting and wringing each other's neck.  What makes you think that this will ever blow over?"

"I can hope, can't I?"  She prayed that she hadn't sounded as weak to Harm as she had to herself.  Here they were, not even halfway through the workday, and she was about to dishonor the Corps with tears over a squid.  She sniffed them back as best she could, wiping at the corner of her eyes with the back of her hand.

"Mac, there's just one problem with our friendship," Harm sounded resigned as he traced the rim of his mug with his finger.  "I wanted more, and you told me flat out that it will never happen.  I'm finally accepting that and trying to go on with my life.  You need to accept that if we don't want the same thing, there is no basis for anything beyond an amicable working relationship.  We've got some good memories--let's not cloud them with more hurtful words and nasty confrontations."

She finally set down her coffee cup, which she hadn't realized she had been holding, white-knuckled, through this entire ordeal (which had actually only been three minutes and fifty-eight seconds).  "So poof, we're just not friends anymore?  That's it?" she said, using her hands to demonstrate the sudden poof she'd articulated.

"Should there be anything else?"

Mac glanced at the doorway, but thus far, no one had intruded, and it didn't appear that anyone would for a while longer.  Sturgis knew better than to enter the kitchen again before she and Harm left, and everyone else was in court, in meetings, or otherwise occupied outside of the office that morning.  Mac clasped her hands together as she refocused on the situation and blinked back a few stray tears.  "I thought that you didn't want to lose me."

Harm wearily responded, "I've come to the realization that I've already lost you."

"That's not true," she said with as much force as she could muster at the moment, which wasn't much.

"Think about it for a little while and you'll see that I'm right on this," he told her with that same, heartrending voice.

"Dammit, Harm!  I'm right here.  You haven't lost me!" she said louder than she'd intended.  Once again, she furtively glanced at the door, but her outburst hadn't attracted any immediate attention from the few stray people in the bullpen.  After a few moments of not breathing for fear that someone would walk in on this tête-à-tête that was definitely not work-appropriate, she looked back at Harm.  He was standing in the same position with his coffee cup in front of him like a subconscious barrier between them.  She took a risk and stepped up to him, just inside his personal space.  Looking up into his eyes, she took a deep breath and risked it all.  "I love you."

He gave her a sad smile.  "I needed to hear that back in Paraguay, or when I admitted I was in love with you at the hospital."

"But I said it," she protested feebly.

"And I think you mean it.  Mac--Sarah, I'm not the same person who went after you in Paraguay.  I have other priorities in my life now, and your last ditch effort to keep a hold on me didn't work.  I'd say I'm sorry, but there have been way too many apologies between us recently."  He leaned down and kissed her on the forehead before backing away with the words, "I love you, too.  But you said it first--it will never work between us."

Mac just stood there, staring at the empty doorway for a full minute before she forced herself to not to think about anything other than making it back to her office before she broke down.

By the time Mac had recovered enough to walk across the bullpen, Harm was already back in his tiny office behind the safety of a locked door.  It had been more emotionally draining than it had appeared for him to stand there stoically as Mac contradicted her Paraguayan declaration by saying the words he'd always wanted to hear from her.  He collapsed back into his chair and mused over the irony that they had both finally said that they loved each other, but instead of ending up with a happily ever after, they got an emotionally-charged mess.  This would be fun to deal with at work from now on.  As if he and Mac didn't create enough drama around the place already, they'd probably just added a nice dollop of awkwardness to the mix.

There was no cosmic justice in the fact that when she'd told him it was over, she was fine and he was miserable, but when he told her it was over, he was still miserable.  He shook his head disgustedly as he realized that they had both wanted something more from the other, but they had each wanted it on their own terms and that wasn't the way things like this work.  Mac had expressed it as the desire to always want to be on top.

Harm sighed as he looked at the unfinished paperwork spread out on his desk.  Picking up a pen in order to motivate himself to get back to work, he muttered, "As long as I don't get another lecture about pushing her buttons from the Admiral, I don't really care anymore."

1231 EST

20 December 2004 (approximately two weeks later)

Some random D.C. restaurant

Harm set his glass down after taking a sip of ice water.  Christmas music wafted through the air in the somewhat crowded restaurant as he and his companion waited for the waiter to bring them their lunch.  "Do you know if it's a boy or a girl?"

Catherine Gayle beamed at him from across the table.  "I want to be surprised."

"You sure are glowing for someone who didn't want to have kids less than a year ago," he couldn't help but comment good-naturedly.  She rolled her eyes and picked at the roll on her bread plate.  He chuckled, deciding to let it go and move on to other topics.  "Have you picked any names?"

"If it's a boy, he'll be Peter, after my father," she informed him, still radiating the motherly glow he'd picked up on the moment he'd met her at the door.  "For a little girl, I've always liked the name Wendy."

"And people say I have a Peter Pan complex!" Harm exclaimed with mock indignation.  "I'd risk saying that you're obsessed with it if you used the story as your database of baby names."

"A complex is different from an obsession, and in my case, it's not even an obsession, it's just a coincidence," she reasonably prattled back at him.  At the funny look he gave her, she couldn't help but self-consciously ask, "What?"

"That's something that could have come out of Mac's mouth.  She always had this annoying habit of trying to one-up me."

Catherine quickly picked up on the verb tense he had used to describe the colonel.  "She had?  Did she transfer out of JAG and I missed the memo?"

"No," Harm immediately interjected to clear up the miscommunication, "We're still both at headquarters, but... well, it's complicated."

She relaxed back into her chair as she realized that she'd jumped to conclusions as a result of Harm's vague wording.  Pursing her lips, she guardedly looked her dining companion in the eye.  "Harm, I told you to call me when you figured things out and decided you still wanted to try a relationship.  You invite me to lunch, and you compare me to Mac.  What should I be thinking about this?"

"I didn't mean to bring her up.  I'm sorry," he broke eye contact as he apologized.

"Don't be sorry, be honest with me," Catherine said gently as she reached across the table and touched the back of one of his hands.  He turned his hand over to squeeze hers before looking back at her.  She smiled for a fraction of a second at the small sign of affection before she dropped an ultimatum on him.  "You have two options today--do you love Mac, or are you interested in pursuing a relationship with me?"

He pulled his hand away as he leaned back into his chair and began nervously running his hand through his hair.  She listened to him voice some of the thoughts that she knew were troubling him from the moment she'd looked into his eyes.  "I... loved... Mac, the way she used to be, faults and all.  But she's changed since she accepted the Paraguay assignment, and I don't recognize the person she's become," he stopped and looked at Catherine, visibly pulling himself together.  "More importantly, I don't really like the person she's become.  We finally got to a point where both of us had admitted that it would never work.  Since you asked me for honesty, I will admit that sometimes you remind me of the old Mac, and maybe that's why I called you.  And maybe it's because we have a lot in common, especially now that we're both making drastic changes in our lives to take care of a child."

The last was said with a lopsided grin as he watched her reaction to the news.  Leaning forward again, he conspiratorially whispered, "I thought we could at least compare notes."

Catherine's open-mouthed look conveyed all of the million questions brought on by Harm's statement.  She couldn't seem to get her tongue untied long enough to compose any of them into coherent questions.  "And why...?  How...?  I mean..."

"I met a girl when the CIA let me go.  I dusted crops for her, found out she was all alone in the world, and ended up with a daughter."

"But that was only how many months...?  I mean, it takes a lot longer than that for a baby..."

Harm broke out in a full-fledged grin and decided to finally put Catherine out of her bewildered misery.  "I petitioned for custody of a fourteen-year-old girl who was running an airfield by herself after her mother died and her father ran off.  It just sort of happened that I met her at the right time when we were both looking for someone who cared.  We had our day in court yesterday, and now she's officially part of my life."

"So you've taken on a teenager," Catherine said to herself as comprehension kicked in.  She finally smiled at him.  "That's why you seemed so happy when you walked in here."  She didn't bother to add that she had automatically assumed that Mac was the reason behind his cheerful demeanor and that he had just wanted to let her know face-to-face that he was no longer interested.  She had been mentally preparing herself for that inevitability from the moment he'd called, convinced that Harm would never be able to let go of the thing he had with Mac.

"I admit, it hasn't been the easiest thing I've ever done, this whole parenting thing, but it feels right to be doing this because we're better off together," he said as he pulled his wallet out from his uniform jacket.  He opened it to display a picture of his ward, like any other proud father.  "Her name is Mattie, and I asked her if she'd like to meet you."

Catherine raised her eyes from the formal school photograph that occupied the front pocket of Harm's wallet.  "You put a lot of thought into this, didn't you?"

"I have a child to think about now, so I'm trying to cut back on rash decisions," he once again flashed his infamous smile that could melt even the most impassive woman.  "So what do you say--would you like to join Mattie and me for New Year's?"

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Written December 5, 2003 – February 19, 2004