Disclaimer: JAG belongs to DPB, Paramount, CBS et al. This is for fun, no copyright infringement is intended.


August 2007, Sunday

- Webb residence, late afternoon

She had done her best to bury any thought in work. She had stuck her head in files as soon as they had returned and skipped lunch and had even annoyed some people with phone calls. But in the end Sarah Mackenzie had to admit that she had failed. She wasn't able to get this morning out of her mind.

Maybe ... if it had been possible they would have run from each other as fast as they could after they had reached the stables. She would have for sure. Only that they had had to take care of a horse, ride back in the same car and were trapped in the same house... And Clayton had continued to behave the same way he had done since she had waltzed back into his life: Calm, polite, composed ... cold. As if nothing unusual had happened. As if IT had not happened ... whatever IT had been. Because IT was ridiculous. IT was terrifying. IT was absolutely impossible.

But somehow the living room had drawn her like a magnet and now she was disappointed that it was empty.

Mac jumped as she felt a soft push at her leg. Dammit brushed past her; her claws clicking quietly on the floor. For some unknown reason the dog had chosen to follow her around this afternoon and now was even looking over its shoulder as if to say: 'What? You're coming or not?' She could swear she even raised a brow.

"You know what? Sometimes you really remind me of Jingo."

The dog responded to that by flopping down on the floor and heaving a long, long sigh. Involuntarily Mac grinned. But the grin faded as her gaze fell on the chessboard. Still sitting on the same table by the window just as it had yesterday. Slowly she walked over, circling the lying dog on her way. After a moment of hesitation she picked up the black king and turned the smooth stone in her hands.

What was happening here? What on earth was happening here?

Had they really nearly kissed on that hill? Had she really seen this longing in Clayton's eyes? Or had it been her imagination - her own wishes that she had projected onto him?

It wasn't right. How could she feel like that ... now? How could she dare feel like that after ... everything? It should be impossible. It wasn't fair. Not after all these years, not after all this pain. Not fair to her ... and not fair to Clay. She was such a fool. He had no reason to harbor any feeling for her anymore. It had been her decision to end it and he had accepted it. She had hurt him three years ago. She knew she had hurt him. But she had been hurt too. Oh, all these words spoken in anger. And bitter disappointment.

But what she had felt on that hill, in that moment... This stab in the pit of her stomach ... this tightening of her heart... It - it had been real and that was what frightened her the most. Because she had felt like this before. When things had started to go wrong. When there had suddenly been emotions which hadn't been supposed to be ... only to be shattered into pieces by - by a LIE! By the lie he had promised her to never happen.

Those emotions hadn't been there at the beginning. At the beginning they had simply decided to 'give it a try'. More seriously from Clayton's side than for her. Then, probably as the stress, the pressure of Paraguay and its aftermath had finally started to catch up with them - God, had they been naïve - the reason for dating had changed a first time. Then the reason had become ... not to be alone. Not to be alone with the memory. The nightmares. To be with someone who didn't ask the wrong questions, who didn't want too much of something neither had been ready to give. Even when they had finally been in bed with each other - and yes, it had taken them a long time to get that far - it had been mostly comfort ... at first. Oh, and not to forget the occasions they had used each other as punching bag especially after their personal demon had returned to haunt them. Sadik Fahd would have been satisfied how deeply his manipulations had affected them.

Slowly Mac closed her fingers around the black king until she held it in a tight fist. She felt the stone cut in her flesh.

Everything had been shifting just before Clay's DEATH. Everything. She had made first progress in accepting that she had killed Fahd in cold blood ... he had stopped drinking too much before he could have become a real alcoholic. It - it had been ... nice. Comfortable in a different meaning. Almost safe. And this safety had been brutally destroyed by a killer on his heels and the decision to leave her in the dark. She had never got over this. She hadn't wanted to. Too much damage had been done.

Looking down at her fist Mac opened her hand slowly until the black king was lying on her flat palm. Then she smiled bitterly. It was the joke of her life. Whenever she had something she wasn't able to appreciate it ... and when she hadn't she wanted it.

A sound from the door made her turn and he was there in the doorway, a pile of magazines on his lap and his hands still on the wheels. Looking as surprised and a bit shocked as she felt. Meeting her eyes.

Mac was suddenly very aware of the soft rise and fall of her own chest, the slow beating of her heart. She almost jumped as Webb stretched his arms, pushing the wheelchair forward and into the room then stopped again, a few steps from the entrance. And still he was watching her with this distant gaze she couldn't read.

On the floor between them Dammit was throwing little glances left and right under twitching brows without ever lifting her head.

The silence was complete.

Finally Mac swallowed and looked down at the black king she was still holding then turned a bit to put it gently back on the chessboard. The clicking sound seemed overly loud.

"Fahd was wrong, wasn't he?"

Webb's eyebrows arched up a notch but he said nothing. Mac searched his eyes.

"In Paraguay. He thought as soon as you heard my screams you would cave in and tell him whatever he wanted to know. But he was wrong. You would never have told him. Not more than you told Tanveer when he asked those questions about your last mission."

Webb looked away and turned the wheelchair, dropped the magazines onto a chair. She could see his deep intake of breath.

"I would have died for you. But I would not have betrayed my country to save you."

Mac closed her eyes. And she could feel a somewhat bitter smile play around her lips.

"Was the information worth it?"

"I don't know." Webb only whispered. He ran a thumb along the pile of magazines, still avoiding looking at her. "What is worth to be protected and what not? Would saving - maybe saving - one or two people I know personally be worth risking the lives of a dozen informants or even agents I had never seen? Would it be worth giving away information that might be vital for national security? I had been a Deputy Director. I had profound knowledge of the CIA network not only in South America. I was so close to breaking into the Hawk's circle as nobody had been before. Where am I supposed to draw the line? How can I be allowed to draw the line?"

Mac shook her head and looked at the ceiling. She crossed her arms in front of her chest as if that would console the hollow emptiness she felt inside.

"You know what's funny, Clay? I guess I always knew your answer. And I guess I wasn't all that angry because you lied to me while you had promised you would never do that. Or because you didn't trust me and played with my feelings. I guess I ... was angry because I ... already knew that you would have sacrificed me. That part of your taking Fahd's torture in Paraguay had been because you didn't want to face that decision. Because you would have let me die."

Her gaze returned to the man in the wheelchair who was still turned away from her, still avoiding her eyes.

"That hurt the most, Clay. That hurt so much that I actually wished you were really dead."

Webb's hand on the magazines curled up into a fist.

Mac exhaled slowly. "How funny that I was hurt because I was with one of the few men who really live up to their principles no matter what."

"I don't know if those principles were worth living up to," Webb admitted quietly after a short silence. His eyes finally searched hers. "I ... was working on the decision to leave the agency when the accident happened."

Mac breathed a laugh that was more a sob at the bitter irony of her life, of life itself. And now it was she who turned away to look out of the window.

"I hated your job. The Agency. What you expect of people. I hated waiting for you. I hated not knowing if you were late because you had some shopping to do or a meeting went longer or if you were lying in some dirty little road in a country I had never heard of with your throat cut. I hated the thought of how many lunatic enemies you might have made over the years. How many of them might have been lurking in the shadows to get you."

Webb snorted. "You know damn well that whatever went wrong between the two of us had nothing to do with my job."

His eyes were somewhat angry as he met her startled glance.

"Would it have been different if I had been ... I don't know ... a submariner? A SEAL? Gone for six months in a row or putting 'the team' above anything else including family? No. Because you were addicted to control. Control over your own life and anything and anyone in it and whenever something didn't go as you had it in your head you threw a tantrum or turned away in disappointment. But life doesn't work that way, Mac. It can't."

Three years ago Mac would have gotten angry. Would have started shouting, maybe even slapped him again. And she would have had quite some points to make. But now, almost two sometimes frustrating years of paper work at the Pentagon, a ruined marriage and way too much time to think later she only returned to looking out of the window and admitted quietly:

"Maybe you're right."

She heard Webb's soft sigh.

"I know that lying to you wasn't fair, Mac. But it made things so much easier. It was so much easier than dealing with your lack of understanding when I couldn't answer your questions. Keeping you at arm's length was so much easier than dealing with the fact that you seemed only ready to commit to me when I had one foot out of the door."

Seconds ticked by, minutes. They didn't look at each other. Mac shook her head at the screwed irony how her own words from a different time, to a different man had come back to her.

"You said you needed me ... in Paraguay," she whispered finally towards the window then turned around to face him. "But for all I saw you didn't. You pushed me away, you shut me out, you lied to me ... maybe more than I knew up to now. You didn't need me."

Webb stared into his lap.

"Does it really matter any more?"

Mac closed her eyes. "No, I guess it doesn't."

She pushed off the table with the chessboard and crossed the room, fighting against the pain in her chest, the emptiness in her soul. Webb didn't move as she passed him, never lifted his bent head. But his barely audible voice stopped her in the doorway.

"Maybe I said it because I needed someone to remind me I'm still human."

Mac braced herself against the door frame, pressed her forehead against the back of the hand she had placed on the smooth wood. And with sickening clarity she remembered the sound of the shot as he put a bullet into the head of their driver in Paraguay, without warning, without the slightest hesitation. Remembered the cool remark he had made earlier that it was all part of the job, heard her own answer that she knew him better. Remembered the look on Fahd's face the very moment before she pulled the trigger. And what she had felt. She shut her eyes.

"I'm sorry, Sarah."

"For what?" How could her voice be so calm? So without any expression?

"Because it wasn't fair to ask that from you. You had enough problems of your own. And I'm sorry that I wasn't able to solve those problems for you."

Mac inhaled deeply and as she opened her eyes she felt a single tear slipping down her cheek.

"I guess that was a little bit much to ask for too."

A long time Webb listened to her steps disappearing down the corridor and to the silence that followed. Then he lifted his gaze and looked at the chessboard on the small table by the window.

Where black king and white queen were sitting side by side.

Slowly he wheeled over to it. An endless moment he considered the marble stones with an expression that was as cold and closed as their smooth surface. And suddenly something changed in his face and he lashed out, whipped his arms violently across the chessboard, sending pieces all over the table and to the floor.

Dammit bolted to her feet at the sound of the tumbling stones then stood there, glancing uneasily at the man in the wheelchair. Laying her ears back she opened her mouth and panted a bit, turned her head towards the door for a moment. As the silence continued she finally stretched out on the floor again and put her head between her paws. Her eyes never leaving the man in front of the windows who had buried his face in his hands.