Thanks to: XBlueShadowX, Aimee5, Charmboy4, starryeyes10, Nikki, dansingwolf, jag4ever, lei, Jackia, EternalSleep, Cristina, Tina Frank, achaon, Abigaile, Hieros Gamos, froggy0319, joanoa, JadeAlmasy, SpaceMan546, dansingwolf, carbygirl , JAGJenni, Manda, starryeyes, BiteBeccy, ng59678, LtColDevilDog, martini, mizukimarr, jtbwriter, Macaroon, Lissie, and anyone else I missed for the Feedback..
Enjoy gang!

PS: 70 percent chance that a sequel will be doable!

PART 4 – Torture Or Treason?

July 3, 2005
1955 Zulu
Mac's Apartment
Georgetown

Mac felt the wind rush out of her. So many months believing he was still alive and now. . . was her mind playing tricks on her? Was someone partaking in some sick cruel joke? "Mac, it's me. . .it's Harm." Even if she doubted, his voice, one that she knew anywhere, made her believe.

"Oh my God." She reached out, practically pulling him into her apartment and wrapped her arms around him. Mac held him tight, weeping tears of joy. Her body shook from the emotion. "You're alive."

"Barely. . ." Harm's voice hitched as he spoke. He'd taken such a physical and emotional toll to get to this destination that it was becoming difficult standing up anymore. His legs were shaking so much that his body started leaning into Mac more, making her take on his body weight.

"Harm?" She noticed a wince as she ran her hands up and down his back soothingly. Then, his body started to sink against hers. Mac helped him over to her sofa and took a good look at him. He looked physically drained, there were blood spots on his clothing. His lips were dry and cracked and there was some dry blood on his forehead where she noticed a small gash. His eyes, that once were alive and expressive, had the light in them all but extinguished. As her hands moved down his torso, she felt an absence of muscles that would've normally been on his body. "You need to go to the hospital."

Harm shook his head fiercely, his tired body coming alive. "No. . . No hospitals!" He cried out before shrinking into the corner of the sofa, completely petrified.

Mac nodded. "It's okay Harm. . . I promise, no hospitals. . . but we. . ." She was going to suggest a private doctor; someone that could nurse his wounds when she heard a knock at the door. Harm seemed to be frightened of the sound and watched, helplessly as she headed towards the door and looked out of the peephole. "Shit." Mac didn't know why, but a gut feeling told her that Harm was being hunted and not by the usual 'bad guys' but by their own government. She hurried across the living room, helped stand Harm up and led him into her bedroom. She sat him on the bed and motioned for him to be quiet. "You need to stay in here and be quiet okay?" The banging on the door became more insistent and Mac headed out of her bedroom, closing the bedroom door as she headed to open the front door. "Webb, what is it now?"

Clay glanced into her apartment, seemingly in search of something, or more specifically, someone. "Nothing. . . I just wanted to see how you were." He lied and pushed his way into her apartment, using a force that he was afraid to use on Mac before. He had an agenda.

"Busy. . . You can go now." She left the door open and stood right next to it, hoping he would get the hint that he wasn't wanted or needed in her home. "I mean it Clay, I am tired and want to be alone."

"It's your birthday, Sarah." He set a small box on the coffee table, next to the open bottle of vodka. "Open it."

In the bedroom, Harm sat on the edge of the bed, slowly taking in his surroundings. His hands were stuffed deep in the sweatshirt pockets, fingering the only savior he'd had during the whole ordeal. Outside, he heard Mac and Webb talking. A bit of jealousy and anger coursed through him. Did she return to the spook after he'd spent so many months missing? He took the items from his pocket and sat on the floor in front of the night table. He pulled out the lower drawer, reached his hand in towards the back and then downward, under the table. He placed the items there and then closed the drawer knowing no one would find them, or, at least, hoping Mac wouldn't. With a heave, he brought himself up, wavering slightly as was hit with a slight bit of vertigo. He waited for the sensation to pass then began disrobing. Harm needed a shower, badly. He needed to feel clean, to get rid of the caked blood on his body.

Mac stared at the small box, only mildly curious as to why a man, which she has repeatedly thrown out of her house for the past six months, would bother buying her a present. "Webb, we are through, we've been through for a long time, I don't want any gifts from you." She took the box and handed it back to him, not even bother to opening it up and see what was in side. "Please, get it through your head, I don't want anything from you . . Now, get out, before I use my initiative and throw you out." Mac would have succeeded in getting the spook out of her home if it wasn't for a muffled, groaning sound coming from her room. The groans were accompanied by a muffled sob and the sounds of water running. Immediately, she sprung to action. She saw the trail of clothing on the floor, leading towards the bathroom.

Harm was in the shower, curtain drawn, hot water pouring onto his mangled body, leaving a trail of bloody water towards the drain. He sat on the floor of the shower, crying, hurting over the pain that the water was inflicting on the wounds on his body. A shower had seemed like a good idea at the time. He needed it to cleanse himself, to feel like a whole man again. But, the moment the stream hit his face, he wasn't home anymore, he was back in his prison. . . back in hell. They'd used water against him once or twice, pushing his head into a basin full with mucky, algae and larvae infested water. He tried hard not to inhale it, to stop his lungs from taking their natural breath once the nitrogen had filled his veins, but he couldn't. He'd vomited the disgusting liquid, only to be pushed back into it. They weren't planning on being merciful, that wasn't part of the gig if you were into the torture thing, but, when his body gave up and passed out, he was given reprieve for the moment.

Now, as he sat in Mac's bathtub, being pelted with the warm water, it was coming back to him in painful, pitiful flashbacks that were engraved into him permanently. He'd be scarred for life. "No. . .don't do this." He cried, curling into a ball and rocking back and forth which is how Mac found him.

"Harm. . ." She turned the water off and sat at the edge of the tub, ignoring his nakedness and the fact that she'd always been curious to see him just like that. Gingerly, she brought her hand to his head, brushing away the long hair that the water had plastered to his face. "Get me a towel." She said, turning to Clay who stood there with a look of horror on his face. "I said, get me a towel." With a sigh, she slid herself into the tub and wrapped Harm up in her arms, rocking him gently as a mother would a child. "It's okay. . . shhh. . . I'm here, I promise I won't let them hurt you. . .shhh." Taking the towel that Clay had brought, she wrapped Harm up as best she could and proceeded to coax him into standing and heading towards the bedroom.

Webb was slightly put off at having to see another naked man, but after a few stern looks from Mac, he helped get Harm settled in her bed and tucked in with the sheets and blankets. "You need to go to the hospital, Harm."

"No hospitals, no doctors. . .Nothing." Harm managed to say as his teeth rattled. His body was going into shock, something that he'd managed to fend off until he reached safety. Now, he was shutting down, falling into a deep sleep that his body craved so much.

"It's okay, Harm. . . No doctors, no hospital." Mac said, her hand soothingly running over his forehead. He was running a temperature. "Webb go to the living room and wait there." She waited as the agent stepped away from the two of them, and then sat by Harm. "Are you going to be okay by yourself for a little while?"

"I'm tired." He said in a monotone, his eyes were starting to close by themselves.

"Okay, rest then, I'm going to go get rid of Webb."

She went to move away, but was startled when a strong hand wrapped around her wrist. Harm pulled her towards him. "Don't let them take me." He whispered with a frightened look in his eyes. "Please, don't let them take me."

Mac gently removed his hand from her wrist. "I won't . . . just rest, you're safe here."

Only when Harm's body sank back into the bed, did she leave the bedroom. And, even then, she left the door ajar, just in case he needed her. When she stepped outside, she saw Clay pacing the living room, cell phone in hand. It made sense now, all of the visits, the phone calls, the way he was annoying the hell out of her. He had an agenda; he was waiting for Harm to come to her. "Who were you calling Webb?" She was tempted, so tempted to throttle him, pound him into a bloody pulp, leaving him with only inches to spare on his life.

Clay snapped the phone shut and shoved it into his breast pocket. "No one, they called me."

"About what?" Her fist were balled and resting at her sides, her finger nails biting into the palms of her hands as she tried to make the anger stop.

"All this is classified." He scrubbed a hand over his face then plopped down on her sofa. "Harm's partner was found, shot by Harm's own handgun. . ."

"Harm didn't do it." She said automatically knowing; full well, Harm wasn't one of them he wasn't a cold blooded killer.

"How do you know that?" Clay spat back. Regardless of what people knew about their close friends, he'd seen good men turn bad. Sometimes, they were brainwashed, sometimes it was just pure survival and, Clay believed, Harm wasn't above crossing over.

Still, Mac stood her ground, the man in the other room wouldn't, couldn't do something like what Clay was implying. "Because I know him. . . And I trust him with my life."

"You may have known him Sarah, but that in there is not Harm."

Okay, so he was right on that. Whoever was in her room, wasn't Harm, just a shell of what he used to be. "What did they do to him?"

"Why do you assume someone did something to him?"

"Go and take a good look at him! People don't just get that way out of the blue. . . Tell me what happened!"

"I don't think you really want to know."

Mac sat on the chair across from the coffee table, keeping a safe distance from her and Webb. She took a breath; one deep, calming breath. "It's obvious you've been lying to me all along, Webb. . . All of the calls, the visits. . . You knew he'd come here eventually." She leaned forward in the chair. "Please, if you ever cared for me, tell me the truth."

The truth, she and Harm always wanted the truth no matter how badly it all sounded. Clay was sure she didn't want to know the whole truth, hell, he was still trying to digest it. He took a deep breath and repeated the same thing he'd been told, something he wasn't too sure he believed. "The agency happens to think that he turned. . . went rogue, whatever you want to call it."

"The Agency's on crack."

He nodded. "Maybe, but it doesn't look good." He shifted uncomfortably on the sofa. "You were right, I was sent here to keep tabs on you. Because I knew he'd come to you before going anywhere else. . . But, I am not following some agenda, I came here because he is important to you and I want to help."

"Help? NOW? After all of these months?"

"We weren't sure he was a alive, Sarah. . ." He moved forward, placing his elbows on his knees, keeping his hands crossed in front of him. "And even if I did know, I couldn't tell you. It's all. . ."

"Classified, yea yea, save me the bullshit." She rolled her eyes, shaking her head from side to side. The word classified, was not part of her vocabulary anymore. She loathed the word and all of the negative undertones it carried. Harm was her friend, her close friend and classified just did not cut it. "So where's he been?"

He tapped the arm of her sofa, nervously contemplating whether to tell Mac the truth or not. They'd have his head if the agency knew what he was up to. Clay glanced towards the open door of her bedroom. He knew Harm would tell her eventually, there was no point in withholding information. "Ever hear of a plane called the Aurora?"

Mac nodded. "It's a hypersonic spy plane which supposedly doesn't exis. . ." She trailed off suddenly, catching the amused expression on Webb's face. She turned towards her bedroom and then glanced back at the agent. Classified Information. "He knows how to fly it doesn't he?"

"Yes, and he's the best pilot we had. . .until that stupid stunt with the C-130. . . Anyway, we needed him to help train two new pilots. It was just a small run, up to Northernmost Canada, then down to South American and back to base. . .except that the planes. .just . . . went off the radar. They disappeared."

"Planes? You mean you have more than one?" So that's what he was doing when Harm was flying for the CIA. She couldn't help the small smirk that appeared on her face thinking that Harm was probably in Heaven, literally, over flying the Aurora.

"We had two. . ." Clay said, putting emphasis on the implication that they were no longer in the CIA's possession.

In a flash, Mac visualized Harm's past disasters: their crash in Paraguay, the time he dumped the F-14 the night before her wedding, the ramp strike, them being shot down over Russia. True, they were just a handful of examples considering that he probably had hundreds of exemplary flights under his belt. Mac felt a bit ashamed that the first thing she recalled was his problems with planes, but this was Harm we were talking about, trouble and he were synonymous. "He crashed them both?" It was even slightly comical. Mean, but, comical.

Exasperated, Clay threw his arms up in the air and stood up to resume pacing her living room. "We don't know what happened. . . One minute we are tracking the planes as they headed over Canada. The next thing we know, they disappear. Two months ago a farmer found his partner's body buried in a shallow grave with Harm's gun. We have no clue what happened to the other two members of the team. This is why I need to speak to him."

"Not now."

He stopped his pacing and stared down at Mac. "When Sarah? This isn't a game. . . I need to find out what he knows and what he did. And how the hell Andy Watson wound up shot with Harm's gun."

"Clay, just give him a few days. . . You saw him; he isn't in any shape to start recalling whatever happened to him."

He slid down onto the coffee table and sat as close as he could to Mac. "And what if he turned, Sarah? What if he sabotaged them, what if someone got to him. What then?"

Mac looked down and closed her eyes. Harm couldn't have turned, he had too much pride to do that to his country, his friends, to her. "If he turned . . .I. . ." She didn't want to think about the possibilities and got an unexplained pain in her chest just thinking about Harm going to the dark side. "Just give me time to talk to him, please."

"Okay." Clay said, followed by a deep sigh. "Okay, I'll give you until Monday."

It had been over a year since she'd felt anything but hatred and contempt for Webb. She wasn't going to fall back into his arms or anything. But, at least, some of the tension between them died down. Still, she kept on her toes, knowing full well that he was capable of trickery. She closed the door behind him, and then headed towards the balcony, waiting for his car to drive off. Once it did, she headed into her bedroom with a glass of water and aspirin.

Harm was out cold, sleeping deeply wrapped up in her covers. She turned on the bedside lamp and sat next to him on the bed. Unwrapping him slightly, she saw the marks on his chest. There were cigarette and cigar burns. There were marks like those on Clay's torso from the steel wool connected to car batteries. There was a gash on his forehead and things that appeared to be tracks on his forearms, the type junkies sported. Turning him slightly, she saw the blood on her sheets that had seeped from the blankets that were covering his back. She gingerly pulled back the blanket and saw, what appeared to be whip marks sprawled across his back. "Oh God. . .why did they do this to you?"

Mac felt a wild, ravenous anger building inside of her. The Agency could not be right. People who turned wouldn't be in Harm's shape. They weren't tortured and hurt. No, people that turned would be the ones doing the torture on others. Tears welled up in her eyes at the thought of how much pain he had, no doubt, gone through. "I'm so sorry." She said in a soft voice as her hand traced his facial features. His lips were so dry and cracked. His hair, now a little past jaw length, was dirty and greasy. He was running a high fever. Mac's hand shook as she reached over and took the cordless phone from her bedside table. Someone needed to help him and there was only one person that she really could trust without involving their close friends. "Hi. . .it's Mac. . .I need your help, can you come over? It's. . . it's important." Her own voice scared her. She never sounded so desperate or helpless before. "Thank you." She spoke into the phone then placed the cordless back on its base.
--

JAGJenni – And I am looking forward to updating!! :)

Manda – Yea, I sorta like cliffhangers. I am mean! ;)

carbygirl – trying not to let you guys hang too long!

Froggy – But you LIKE it when I am evil. LOL!!

Lei – Don't scream! I have a few people threatening to scream! Please don't!

Aimee – Random dude? Noooooooooooo!!! Harm may see the bottle, but he has a few 'things' to work out first. ;)

Bite Beccy – Thanks for the warning!! Yet another person to add to the list of people willing to mangle poor lil ol me ::puts that whole innocent act on::

Jackia – Actually, at the moment it's Mac to the rescue. ;)

Cristina – Webb might get his yet! I have two scenarios going on gotta figure which one I want to use on Webb.

Ng – Thanks!! I actually think some of my stories are a bit too far out, but I don't want them to sit on the PC forever. About her new partner, well, we (if not Mac) are going to hate him more than you know. ;) Oooooooh yes.

LtColDevilDog – You're crying too?! Marines DON'T CRY!!!

Nikki – It's Tuesday!!
Dansingwolf – Neither of them will be "okay" in seconds. She's going to be strong but a breaking point will happen. As for Clay, he is being used and knows it. You'll see what I mean in chappies to come. ;)

Jade – I am not THAT devious. ;)

Charmboy – Makes you wonder what happened to get him all gritty. It's a necessity for the moment to use as a shipperish part coming up soon.

Heiros – It's HARMY!!! Dirty Harmy but Harmy non-the-less. Clean him up, shave him and slap them dresswhites and goldwings ;)

Mizukimarr – 1- Stop the heavy medication, you are freaking out on me here. 2- I am a DAUGHTER of a bitch not a son of a bitch seeing as I am female, 3- Not a bastard, my folks love me very much. At least, I pay them enough for them to. ;)

Jtbwriter – Webb weasel has his moments, but don't hold your breath for him! You jus tnever know with the spookboy.

Macaroon – Maj. Steele will not just be disliked, he will be hated, mark my words on that. Mac will still be strong during this episode, or try to be but something's might bring her to the breaking point. That bottle IS still in her place, one never knows.