THIS IS THE REAL CHAPTER FOUR. THE SONG WAS A MIS-CLICK ON MY PART. SORRY.
TITLE: Pall
DEFINITION: PALL
Pronunciation: 'pol
Function: verb
Etymology: Middle English, short for appallen, to become pale
1 to lose strength or effectiveness
2 to lose in interest or attraction his humor began to pall on us
3 to become tired of something
4 to cause to become insipid
5 to deprive of pleasure in something by satiating
(Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary)
RATING: PG-13 or R. R to be safe. Mostly for language to begin with, maybe for... other things... later on.
SUMMERY: After an attack on a graduation ceremony at Annapolis the JAG office is thrown into a state of flux.
SPOILERS/TIMELINE/ALTERATIONS I'VE MADE:
-A little AU. See previous chapters for further details.
-Special Agents William Regnier and Marilyn Rowe are my creations. William is loosely based on a composite of Michael Vaughn from ALIAS and Fox Mulder from the X-Files, both physically and personality-wise, and is named after all the Williams there are between the two shows (didn't it ever occur to them to name the kid something other than William?). Marilyn is a mixture of all the female role models in my life, and is named (first name, at least) after my mother, the strongest person I know. If you feel you just have to use them, just accredit their creation to me, please.
- No goats were harmed in the making of this chapter.
DEDICATION: To Tracey Needham, for bringing the character of Meg Austin to life, and to all the Harm/Meg shippers out there.
JAG HEADQUARTERS
1041 (EST)
FALLS CHURCH, VIRGINIA
WEDNESDAY, JULY 19After avoiding Mic Brumby for over an hour, Meg had gone to the break room for coffee and she'd been cornered by the cocky officer.
He'd put his hand on the small of her back, trying to slip it a little lower, and led her to his office so they could go over the cases they would be working together.
Jennifer, who had seen Mic leading Meg across the bullpen, had waited for about half an hour before going in to talk to Harm about it.
"Sir?" she said, poking her head through the doorway.
"Come in," Harm said while signing off on some forms. He looked up at her after closing the file and moving it to his OUT box. "What can I do for you, Coates?"
"Permission to speak freely, sir?" Jennifer requested. Harm inclined his head, knowing that, when the Petty Officer decided to speak freely, she really went all out. It was one of the things he liked about her. "I just thought you would like to know that Commander Austin and Commander Brumby have been in his office for the pastfifty five minutes and she does not look very happy about the subject matter, sir."
"How unhappy?" Harm asked, his entire body tensing up at the thought of Mic harassing Meg.
"Frankly, sir, she looks like she wants to jab her pen through her eye," Coates said bluntly.
"Okay, I'll take care of it. Thank you, Jen," Harm said, letting her know that he appreciated her eagle eye on a personal level rather than a professional one in this instance.
Jennifer smiled and stood at attention before heading back to her desk.
Harm left the Admiral's desk and went out to the bullpen, quickly sending out a page to Meg's satellite pager with a message that he hoped wouldn't get him in trouble with his former partner.
Before anyone could see him, Harm went back to the Admiral's office and closed the door.
JAG HEADQUARTERS
1043 (EST)
FALLS CHURCH, VIRGINIA
WEDNESDAY, JULY 19Meg sighed heavily as Brumby pulled out yet another file. She hadn't even gotten the cup of coffee she had headed to the break room for over an hour before, and her patience was fading fast.
Before Brumby could sit back down in the chair that he'd pulled a little too close to hers, Meg's pager went off.
Thanking the Powers That Be, Meg looked at the screen and bit her lip to keep from smiling.
If you need an out, this is your chance. I suggest you take it. Harm.
"I'm sorry, Commander, but I have to tend to this," Meg said, holding up her pager.
"Please, call me Mic," Brumby said.
Meg suppressed the urge to shudder. "This could take me a while. If there's any cases you want me to take over, just leave them in my office. I'm sure I can get up to speed without taking up any more of your time," Meg said, smiling sweetly before making a hasty exit and heading back to her temporary office.
Closing the door and locking it, Meg took a slow breath before heading for the phone and calling the Admiral's office.
Coate's answered. "Judge Advocate General."
"Hello, Coates, its Commander Austin. I was wondering if the Commander is busy at the moment."
"No, he's not busy right now, ma'am would you like me to patch you through?" Coates asked with a smile.
"Yes, thank you," Meg said.
A moment later Harm picked up. "Commander Rabb."
"Thank you for the escape route," Meg said. "I was this close to making up some fake meeting to get away from that guy."
"No problem," Harm said.
"How did you know, though? You haven't left the Admiral's office all morning," Meg said.
"Petty Officer Coates has an eye for this sort of thing. She said, and I quote, that you looked ready to jab your pen through your eye," Harm said, provoking a soft giggle from Meg. "How bad was he?"
"Lecherous, but non-threatening," Meg said honestly. She never could lie to Harm, not even over the phone.
"Good," Harm said. "Other than Brumby, how is it being back here?"
Meg paused for a moment, thinking about the best way to word her response. "It's… odd."
"Odd? Could you possibly make that answer a little vaguer?" Harm teased.
"I could say it's 'weird'," Meg offered.
"Odd is better," Harm said. "But odd in what way?"
Meg sighed. "It's just… I love it here, and I'm so glad that I got the chance to come back. But I'm replacing someone I know, someone who came to JAG on my recommendation. I feel like I should be feeling guilty that I'm back here when Bud is in the hospital…" she said softly. "I feel like I'm being resented for being here."
"Meg, you are not here to replace Bud. I mean, you are, sort of, but the Admiral was looking to bring in more people even before Bud got shot," Harm said. "No one resents you. Anyone who was here when you were before is glad to have you back, and the people who haven't worked with you before will fall in love with you soon enough. Remember, you felt this way when you came in to replace Kate before, and everything worked out fine, then."
"Kate left of her own free will, though. Bud didn't," Meg pointed out.
"That's besides the point," Harm said. "Look, most of us are going over to the hospital after work to see if we can get in to see Bud for a little while. Why don't you come with us?"
"I'll see how the rest of the day goes before I answer that one," Meg said.
"Fair enough. But at least join me for lunch," Harm said.
"That I can do," Meg smiled.
"Good. Come by whenever you're ready," Harm said.
"Will do. Thank Coates for me, will ya?" Meg said.
Harm chuckled. "Already done."
"You know me too well," Meg said with a warm smile that Harm couldn't see but could feel. Then she hung up.
JAG HEADQUARTERS
1200 (EST)
FALLS CHURCH, VIRGINIA
WEDNESDAY, JULY 19Unable to find her witness, Mac had left the detective and had gone for an early lunch, hoping that, by the time she got back to the office most people would have dissipated for lunch and she would get some time to sit in her office and stew over how she knew she was going to lose her case without the witness and her client was going to end up going to Leavenworth for the rest of his youth.
The bullpen was virtually empty, a few Petty Officers sitting at their desks to eat or working through the break for whatever reason—usually when the Admiral was away the office slowed down a little, especially when Harm was in charge because he wasn't as pushy and definitely not as intimidating, despite his height.
Mac slipped into her office, hoping no one had noticed her, and, after checking her messages to see if there was anything important, she closed the blinds and sat down at her desk with her head in her hands, the silence helping her figure out what, if any, alternate options there were for her client.
She was just about to give up and call the prosecutor about a deal that he'd offered before when her cell phone rang. Without checking who was calling she answered.
"MacKenzie," she said with a heavy sigh. She wasn't sure if she could take more bad news.
"That's not a happy greeting," William commented. "Is this a bad time?"
"No, this is the perfect time," Mac said, cheering up immediately. She tensed up a moment later, though. Years of dashed hopes and her father's unique brand of drunken psychological warfare had taught her not to look forward to something too much. "That is, unless you're calling to cancel or to tell me you're married with eight kids and that it wouldn't be right for us to have dinner tonight."
"No, actually, I'm calling to ask if La Tours at eight is alright with you for our date," William said. "Why would you think that I would be married with eight kids?" he asked. Mac could almost hear his forehead creasing in the adorable worry lines he had. The man was like a big puppy sometimes, and she loved that about him.
"No reason. It's just been a pretty shitty day," Mac said. "And La Tours sounds great. I haven't been there in ages."
"Good. I'll pick you up around seven thirty," William said.
Mac mentally figured out how much time that would give her once she fought traffic on the Beltway and then she smiled and gave him her address. "See you then," she said before hanging up.
Her case wasn't looking any better, but Mac's mood had improved by about a hundred points.
JAG HEADQUARTERS
1207 (EST)
FALLS CHURCH, VIRGINIA
WEDNESDAY, JULY 19"So, Twenty-Questions, or Back-and-Forth?" Meg asked as they sat down in the courtyard with their lunches.
"I've got a conference call with the SecNav and a couple Senators at 1300, so Twenty-Questions is out," Harm said, somewhat reluctantly. They always ended up revealing more than they were entirely comfortable with when they played Back-and-Forth. And Twenty-Questions was better for getting to the details of what had happened over time.
"Okay, I'll start," Meg said as she stabbed at a piece of spinach in her salad and sent out a little plea that the tines of her plastic fork wouldn't break on a crouton or something. "Since we last saw each other I learned Italian and I've started working on Japanese."
Harm nodded, then said, "I checked a total stranger for dilation," he said.
"I hope she was in labour when you did it," Meg teased. Harm shot her a look and she went back to their game. "I let myself get conned into being auctioned off at a Navy fundraiser and the guy that 'bought' me ended up being the brother of my best friend from grade school who I happened to have the biggest crush on until I was fifteen and realized that just 'cause he was hot didn't make him nice and that he didn't rate locker-door space."
Harm replied to that with the story of his time playing bodyguard/escort to an honest-to-god princess who looked remarkably similar to the whiny girl on the college edition of Saved By The Bell that Chloe had managed to make him sit through one night when he and Mac had been trying to work on a case.
Meg laughed at that story and replied with a humours assignment of her own involving the explosion of a base's armoury in Honduras that had ended up being caused by a pair of goats getting into the armoury and literally eating a grenade. Harm cringed at the thought of an innocent goat chomping down on something that probably looked like an apple to the animal and ending up in a billion pieces.
For almost forty-five minutes they went back and forth with stories of things they'd done or seen since they had last seen each other, then, reluctantly, they threw out the trash from their lunches and headed back to the office.
"So, I was thinking that maybe after we visit Bud some of us could get together for dinner," Harm said to Meg as they made their way up the stairs to avoid the elevators that they knew would be jammed.
"Some of us?" Meg inquired innocently.
Harm shrugged. "You, me, Mac, Jen and Tiner, maybe Harriet if we can get her away from the hospital for long enough," he said.
"I haven't met Mac yet," Meg reminded him.
"She's been working out of the office all morning. She should be back by now, though," Harm said as they got to he right floor. He glanced across the bullpen and noticed that her blinds were closed. They hadn't been that morning. "Her blinds are closed," he said.
"So?" Meg asked, not getting the significance of Mac's closed blinds.
"So something is weighing heavy on her," Harm said. "She's shutting herself off from the rest of us."
Meg nodded and put her hand on Harm's forearm. "You have that conference call coming up," she said, knowing Harm well enough to know that he would rather look after his friend than play politics. He would rather run buck naked around a carrier in the middle of a level three than play politics.
"Yeah," Harm said with a deep sigh. "Do me a favour?"
"Anything," Meg said.
"Keep Brumby away from Mac for the rest of the day," Harm said. Meg nodded, not entirely sure how she was supposed to do that, and Harm headed off to the Admiral's office, leaving Meg standing by the copy machine trying to figure out how to do what Harm wanted her to.
What did you think?
M