I loved writing this chapter for a lot of reasons... Didn't really think it would still be going on but I kinda love digging around Harm's mind from S3.

So if you haven't guessed, these are "out of order" - Dalton is still alive because I moved up the Gypsy Eyes Episode to almost immediately after P V. Rabb.

Chapter 8

Mac's in my arms again as we lay on a bed that is much too small, albeit cozy, for the two of us. I should have splurged for something better but then when I booked this hotel in Moscow sleep and comfort were the furthest things on my mind.

She's asleep. Her soft breath fanning over my chest and one of her hands is pressed just above my heart, fingers lightly curled. She's soft and warm and it's her body heat that keeps me from falling apart again.

I almost got her killed. A thought that makes me want to rage because I let my emotions cloud my judgement. I almost got her killed and even if she would have begged me to stop - I would have pushed forward. I had to, I needed to know the truth.

What's more, Mac would have remained at my side. She would have fought the fires of hell if it meant keeping me safe. Maybe she's just as stupid as I am? Maybe the military has turned us both into irrational machines? Maybe this is the side effect of love?

Diane would have never come along. The few times we ever discussed my father usually ended badly. She wanted me to let it go and I argued that she had never lost anyone before. She came from an all Navy gene pool, brothers, uncles, her father who retired after skippering submarines.

No one in her family knew war, not like I did. My first taste coming in Laos with a futile search that led to an innocent's death. I told her about that too, how my first love - a teenage crush - died before my very eyes. I needed comfort the day Diane and me discussed that subject and we fell into bed together. Her hands on my body making me forget the past.

It may have done the trick but, I still needed someone to confide in. To really know what happened. I wanted to find someone I could be vulnerable with and Diane wasn't it. As a Navy man, an ice for blood pilot, I wasn't supposed to show weakness. I wasn't supposed to cry. So yeah, she would never be in Mac's place and would chalk it up to my obsession getting the best of me.

She may have loved me at some point but, Diane would have left me to die. For a squid, Di wasn't the kind to get her hands dirty. She would have never been able to save my six because my desperate attempt to find my dad forced Mac and me onto deadlier adventures.

First, it was the stolen MIG which I'd foolishly believed I could simply fly out and… do what exactly? Where would I land? If I did...where exactly? I hadn't thought that through but, I didn't have to. We were shot down and had to eject.

I regret never telling her how bad it would feel, how to prepare for being ripped out of a plane going a zillion miles an hour. I wished with all of my being that Mac wasn't there at that point because the probability of being killed as our plane was ambushed by a missile was likely. When my parachute fluttered open, I saw hers on the horizon and prayed she would make it, that a hard landing wouldn't shatter Mac's legs or have her drop into enemy territory injured and alone. Somehow she survived better than I had because in my concern for her safety I pulled the lines the wrong way sending me slamming straight into a tree. It left me dazed and confused and I would be remiss to ignore a possible concussion. Mac was at my side in a flash protecting me from the Gypsies that would become good friends.

Gypsies. I almost laugh at how ridiculous I looked in Vasya's clothing while Mac ...Good Lord! She looked good enough to ravish. I felt my body tighten in all the right places and had it not been because of our companions, I may have forgotten that I was a gentleman.

"You love her." Rusza asked once Mac disappeared into the woods to relieve herself. She must have seen me looking, I certainly couldn't help myself. She definitely laughed when my Marine told me to stay put because she didn't need a chaperone to pee. "You don't need to answer, it's written on your soul." I didn't answer, merely smirked as she sat next to me and hoped that with the firelight she couldn't see me blush. "She loves you too. Very very much. But, you need to set the other woman free."

"Other woman?"

"The one who looks like her." She motioned towards the woods where her brother was leaning against a tree keeping an eye out for Mac. I followed her eyes and felt the oddest pang in my chest. Diane. Mac wasn't Diane.

"I have let her go."

Rusza rolls her eyes and places a hand on my forearm. The touch makes me focus on something I hadn't realized but was true. "You still compare from time to time."

I raise a brow trying to study this mysterious woman and what, if anything my Marine could have told her. They had been talking while picking out clothing but it sounded more like female chatter than any serious talk. My eyes went back to the woods and that lone woman walking back to us. The skirt moved with Mac as she walked, the blouse hung low giving an ample view of her neckline. She was lovely, a vision even as cliché as that sounded. "Did Mac tell you about her?"

"No."

"Then how?"

"I am a gypsy." She said casually and came to her feet as Mac approached. "Harm, you and the other had no future don't destroy Sarah over what would never be."

I often think about the future Diane and me were going to discuss and find all possible paths usually ended badly. Neither of us were going to leave our commissions for one another. Neither of us were willing to bend. While my fights with Mac are a battle of wills, the ones with Diane were always angry, mean.

What little happiness we had together always ended in some argument followed by long sessions of make up sex. At one time I thought she was provoking me on purpose because that was the only time our intimacy was super explosive. Even our last time had nothing to do with love and everything to do with need. It was fine, I enjoyed it but only because I ignored the bereft feelings that came afterwards.

As Mac shifts in my arms, I think about the last few hours that shouldn't have happened how they did. I know I'll need to make it up to her because it shames me greatly to know I used her for comfort - for sex. I used her for sex like Diane used me and it pains me even more to know that Mac trusted me enough to let me funnel my sorrow through the softness of her skin. I abused that trust. I'm so sorry, Mac.

I managed to hold it together when Pitcha spoke about my father's last days, his death at the hands of enemy soldiers because he was protecting her. I guess I wasn't the only Rabb with a hero complex. There was more to that story and one that she shared over a hot bowl of goulash as we sat in her meager home. My father had fallen in love again and somehow I hid the twinge of pain as I thought of my hero finding someone else and leaving my mother and me behind because he knew he'd never make it home. "He loved me but he was always looking out to the horizon wishing he was somewhere else."

And it was with a great deal of pain that Pitcha gave me a black and white photo; its edges worn and tattered to the point that I thought it would crumble. Somehow it had survived the ejection, the hiding behind enemy lines, his capture and I assume, torture. It lived through his transfer to Russia and his escaping the grasp of the KGB until Pitcha and her brother found my father injured and at the brink of death. "He loved her too, always spoke about Little Harm...You."

She watched me with great interest, certainly searching for the differences between me and my father. We looked so much alike, twins born in different lifetimes. Mac translated the woman's words and I found my mind drifting off searching the small home for some semblance of how he lived.

We said our goodbyes and she told me I would always have a home where my father once lived with her although she knew I would never return. She was right because then and there I made a pact with myself to let things go. Unfortunately, my mind wouldn't stop churning as we traveled back to Moscow. My hand was constantly gripping to the picture, the image I don't even remember taking because I was too young and most of my youth had been a wash of emotional pain.

We were happy in that photograph; they were happy and I feel so much regret when I recall their laughter. When dad was home that was always so much happiness, joy and laughter. One Christmas Eve it stopped and never returned although my mother finally found happiness with Frank. In the picture my father has a two year old me in one arm and the other wrapped around my mother. It seems to be some sort of holiday because we're dressed in Sunday best. We were happy.

For years my mother tried to keep things normal as if my father was simply on deployment and would one day come home. But, the tears came when she thought I couldn't hear them, muffled by the sounds of the pillow she used to scream in behind the closed closet door. Anguished cries, cursing God, I remembered it all, my mind choosing to file those particular memories away and leave me devoid of anything good but their laughter. Tom Boone asked me to be the man of the house and I took on that job, perhaps a little too seriously because a young boy would turnout to be an awkward and brooding teenager.

Frank had eventually calmed my moods especially when I returned from Laos and my mother wanted nothing to do with me. I would eventually confide in him, trust him but the damage from years of mistreatment from me had taken their toll and I will forever hate myself. I hate that I couldn't accept that my mother found happiness again. I hated that I didn't understand why she had to let dad go. I hated that my memories of my hero were dwindling day by day. I hated everything.

As I glance down at Mac, I can't stop the lone tear that falls from my eye as I wonder what would have happened if I were in my father's shoes. Could I love again? Could I abandon my wife and child despite knowing I would never make it home? Could I give up fighting?

No. I couldn't abandon her; I wouldn't stop trying to make it home for anything in the World. Even in death, I would have come to her if just to tell Sarah that I loved her. But, maybe my father didn't love mom like that? Maybe we weren't enough for him to fight for?

No. I know that's not true if not he would have been purely happy not looking into the horizon as Pitcha described. Oh Dad, I wish I would have known you better.

My tears are now streaming down my cheeks unchecked and I wonder how much more I've left to cry. I broke down out in the Taiga but it wasn't until we arrived back into this crappy little room that my body simply gave out. I couldn't hold my emotions in check anymore.

I collapsed into the armchair wracked with an ugly kind of crying that I'd never experienced before. I didn't cry this way when I found out dad went missing. I didn't cry this way when my first love died in my arms in a Loatian jungle. I didn't cry this way when I learned of Diane's death although that tore me apart.

Gut wrenching, emotional crying that turned into sobs and had me gasping for air. My life long search had finally ended and I felt...empty inside. No...gutted. Devastatingly gutted.

I failed him. I failed myself. I failed my mother and I failed Mac.

She sat on the edge of the bed when the initial tears began and then, somehow I was on the floor wrapped in her arms. She cooed unintelligible words, caressed the expanse of my back and simply held me as my tears soaked her blouse. She told me that she loved me, told me it would be alright and then Mac kissed me. Her lips pressed against the crown of my head, over each of my cheeks, nose and then the corners of my mouth.

It wasn't meant to be passionate and yet one simple kiss to my lips had me clinging onto her for dear life. My mouth fused onto hers, hands slipped the heavy jacket off her shoulder and then my fingers worked on the buttons of her blouse.

I expected her to stop me. She had to know it wasn't right and yet, Mac didn't. She stripped off my clothing and then hers; slid into the center of the bed beckoning me to join. It wasn't gentle but then neither was she when she hooked my ankle and rolled us over to be on top. Mac used passion to stave the ache in my heart, to make me forget. She didn't come...it was all about me, all for me and whenever I heal I promise myself to make it up to her.

"It's okay." Her voice says in the darkness as her body snuggles closer into mine. "It'll be okay."

"I used you. Why did you let me?"

It's barely morning but enough daylight shines through wispy curtains that I can see her. She shifts so that we lay side by side and then runs her fingers over my cheeks, my eyes, swiping away at my tears with such care. "You needed me and I didn't do anything I didn't want to."

"This wasn't how I expected our first couple of times to be." And Lord had I thought about making love with Mac. There was usually a bed, mine because it was big and comfortable and for some reason I always expected our first time to be at my loft. She would look good between my sheets, I decided and frowned that it didn't happen that way. The first time I was a fugitive and now it was for comfort and I feel like such a heel.

"Me neither but we'll have time to make up for it."

"Have you thought about it?"

"Fantasized, yeah...Endlessly." She chuckles and leans in to brush a barely there kiss on my lips. "Even when I tried to move on with Dalton, I hoped there'd be an...us."

Damn. Damn. She amazes me and my heart hammers hard when I think that my stupidity could have ended this. "Do you want an us?"

"Yes. Do you?"

I sigh. it will take work; a lot of it because we're the same rank, work together and will have a lot to prove. That scares me a bit and has been one of the main reasons I hadn't made a move in the past. I didn't want a repeat of Kate where we couldn't separate sex from work and eventually she left because of it. Everything was an innuendo, every look from Kate stated she'd seen me naked. It was fun for a while but drove a wedge between us.

I also didn't feel like this, I didn't love Kate Pike. I love Mac. I will always love Mac until the day I die. "We work together."

"We just need to tell AJ. We'll figure it out."

"It's that simple for you?"

"No, Harm. Nothing is that simple but, I spent seven months without you and despite feeling something for Dalton, I missed you. I hurt without you...I needed you...I just...I didn't want to compete with the ghost of a woman that looked like me. I don't want to be the third wheel."

"You're not." I roll us over and my body is nestled between her thighs. My fingers find her and lightly begin to caress, eliciting the most wonderful sounds. When her slickness covers my fingers, when her body is aching for mine, I join us and this time it's worlds away from what happened earlier.

This time it's not about her comforting me although there is much of that. This time I love her body until she's breathlessly calling my name and her own spills from my lips. This time we tumble over the edge together and laugh when it's done because it was so damned good it takes us forever to be able to breathe normally. "I love you, Harm"

Maybe it isn't so bad to fall?