Warning! Character Death
The surging movements of the baby fade and still, and he hears the slight shift in her breathing as it deepens and evens out, carrying her off into sleep. He brushes a kiss into the silky strands of her hair and silently consigns Sadik Fahd's memory back to the lowest depths of the hell from whence it came. In those final moments before he allows the peaceful oblivion to take him, he clings just a bit more tightly to all that he holds dear and takes a moment to tell himself that this time, it's real…
He ignores the sound of the two distinct gunshots, discarding them as little more than a figment of his imagination. He no longer feels the cold or the slicing pain in his chest as he allows the warmth of her body to seep into his. There is no filthy, hard concrete beneath his fingers, but only the softness of clean cotton sheets and feminine skin. The sounds of a woman screaming fade into the distant wail of a child. The chattering of gunfire he hears not at all.
One month later…
She wakes suddenly in the middle of the night. Her heart is pounding in her chest, the adrenaline rushes through her veins. A light, faint and distorted, is shining through the glass wall at the foot of her bed and she is still trying to figure out exactly where she is when his soft voice caresses her from the darkness.
"Mac?" He speaks tentatively, not quite certain whether she is awake or still dreaming.
"Clay," she whispers. Her throat feels cracked and dry. "Where's Clay? We've got to help him!"
"Sarah," Harm says, and his voice is firmer now, but there is a catch in his throat as he takes her gently by the shoulders. "He's gone."
"Gone where?" Her voice is high and frightened, almost like a child's and he pulls her roughly to his chest.
"He's dead, Mac," he whispers, and tucks a tangled lock of her hair back behind her ear. "He didn't make it."
"No!" she shoves at him angrily, pushing away from him. "No! We have to get to him. We have to get him out. I promised!"
"Promised what?" he asks gently, even though he already knows.
Her voice chokes in a strangled sob. "I promised I wouldn't leave him," she whispers. "I told him I wouldn't leave him behind."
"You didn't," he assures her, his voice cracking just a bit. "You brought him home, remember?"
He does. He can't forget that long flight home from Paraguay, or the way she sat on the CIA jet, with one hand, bloody and bandaged, resting upon the flag draped body bag. He thinks she might have gotten into the hearse with it if they'd let her.
There is a long silence as she finally answers. "Yes," she says, but her voice is small, and he's not sure that she really believes it.
She's shaking uncontrollably now, and he doesn't know how much of it is memory and how much is neural damage from the torture she endured. Not that it really matters at the moment. Holding her to him, he rocks her gently and mutters soothing words, all the while silently cursing a dead man. He will never forgive Webb for this –for dragging her to Paraguay and allowing her to fall into the hands of a mad man. He will never forgive himself for letting her go.
The committal papers were filed today. Tomorrow, he must take her to Bethesda and consign her to the care of the best psychiatrists the Navy has to offer. She is the strongest woman he has ever known, but Fahd's torture and Webb's death have broken her. He doubts she ever gave Clayton Webb much more than a passing thought in the many years that they have known him. He was rarely much more than a contact and colleague, a peripheral friend at best. But disturbing as it is, even he can not help but recognize the deep bond that was formed between the two during the days of their imprisonment and torture. And it angers him that even though Webb is responsible for the indelible scars inflicted upon her mind and her body, she is neither willing nor able to free herself from that connection.
Still, he vows that he will not allow this to become a long-term solution. Doctors, medicine –whatever it takes—he won't rest until she's whole again, until the ghost of Clayton Webb has finally been exorcised from her mind and soul.
"I can still hear his screams, Harm," she murmurs faintly into his shoulder. "I still see him. I still hear his voice."
"It's not real," he tells her, and somewhere deep inside her, she knows that what he says is true. But she stares vacantly over his shoulder to where Clayton Webb waits for her with those haunted, hazel eyes, and she also knows that it's only a half-truth at best.