Chapter 29 - Debrief

Mac and Harm's Apartment

Georgetown

Dismissed.

Harm felt absolutely dismissed. He was dismissed by Webb who claimed he had nothing to offer but would only be in the way. Dismissed by Mac who got into a large SUV with the spook and two guards on route to Langley. He was also dismissed by Chegwifden who sent him home.

There were no logs to chop through, no punching bag to slam his fist through and he had already returned from a ten mile run and was currently sitting on the floor of the living room with a tall glass of bourbon in his hand, the bottle on the coffee table.

He'd purchased the bottle on the way home and didn't care if Mac came home to find him passed out drunk or reeking of alcohol and dry sweat. He didn't care about anything at all until he took a sip and the spirit burned down his throat. "Fuck."

Harm took another sip and then set the glass down next to the bottle, finding the drink repulsive. No, he couldn't do this to himself or her. He wouldn't because finding her disappointed in him would cut through like a knife and he loved her too much for that.

"What am I doing?" The knock on the door surprised Harm who stared as if it were a foreign object. When the second knock came with a little more force, he picked himself off the floor and opened up to find his commanding officer on the opposite side. "Sir? What? Why are you here?"

The man was in civvies, simple dark blue slacks, a grey polo and a heavy jacket. He motioned past Harm who stepped back to let him in. Chegwidden had been to Mac's apartment once and that had been so long ago he barely remembered the place. "I needed to speak to you, privately."

Harm studied his CO, the normaly gruff seal was speaking entirely too calm for his liking. "I just got back from a run, mind if I take a quick shower first?"

"I'm in no rush, Commander."

"If you want something to drink you can see what's in the fridge. There's a bottle of bourbon on the coffee table. Make yourself at home."

"Thank you." Chegwidden casually looked around, finding the apartment to be warm and inviting. It was a home that was lived in with several items that belonged to both its inhabitants. What interested him the most were the pictures on the mantel.

He was in one - standing alongside Harm and Mac who held a baby AJ next to Bud and Harriet. That was a happy memory for him especially given he had brought the little boy into the world on the floor of his office of all places! There were other images, of course but one made him take pause.

Mac stood with her arm linked through Harm's. She wore a simple but elegant white dress and he a grey suit while they posed outside a small white church. They were smiling and happy and every bit the married couple he still had trouble believing could wed in secret. Neither were the kind to elope, he figured. If that were the case Harm would have run away with Mac on the night of her engagement party - a night when she was far more interested in her partner than fiance.

He took the picture and held it up to see better, the Marine was absolutely radiant. In fact he'd never seen either of them so happy. It made AJ a little melancholy over his own lovelife. The marriage with Meredith never panned out and he found himself nursing a lonely heart again.

"You still didn't believe me did you?" He heard Harm ask and turned to find his most senior attorney leaning against the doorjamb with his arms across his chest. "You still wondered if it was true."

Chegwidden looked at the picture once more and then placed it back in its spot. "I wasn't sure what to believe, honestly. Rabb, you almost went off the deep end a few times. I thought we'd need to have you committed at one point."

"There were dark days for a while. Can you blame me?"

"No. I can't. The last few years you've been a mess. Frankly the only reason you still have your commission is because the SECNAV was terrified you'd seek legal action for being falsely incarcerated."

The former seal glanced around the room and spotted the table in the corner with Mac's bones and Harm's model planes. This space was definitely shared by both officers he surmised because there were touches of the both of them. "When did you move here?"

"In early 2003, her apartment was bigger so it made sense."

Chegwidden agreed and while he liked Harm's open concept loft, it wasn't made for a couple. "This is more of a home than your loft was." He looked at the picture of them recently married and smiled softly. "I have to say, I'm a little disappointed I didn't give away the bride. Maybe next time? With your's and Mac's permission?"

"Next time?"

Chegwidden grinned sheepishly. "You can renew your vows, Commander. It may be good for the two of you once the dust settles. Maybe even have your friends there for the ceremony this time?"

Harm hadn't thought about the reaffirmation of marriage vows now that they were back together. Would she want to? "I'll run it by my wife."

"Smart man. Now, about that wife of yours...Mac seems to think you're falling apart." Off Harm's exasperated look, Chegwidden raised his hand in defense. "She came to me. She came to me and seems quite concerned. Should she be?"

He knew Harm never made it back to being the man he once was. Part of him would always lay dying out in the Chaco where he died trying to rescue Mac. Chegwidden wasn't sure he could longer take the man who replaced him. It took nearly two years for his senior officer to have some semblance of a normal life. "Harm. Does Mac have a reason to worry?"

"Mac wants me to see a head shrinker...I'm fine." Fine? Hadn't she said that too and yet was not? He wasn't either, Harm knew that and the continuing attempts to shoulder her pain was breaking him. "I'm fine."

"You're fine?"

"Yes."

Chegwidden sat on the sofa and folded his arms across his chest, already preparing for the verbal melee with his subordinate. "That's a sure sign that you're not."

"Seeing a shrink did nothing for me before...It just...just pissed me off more. Irrationally so."

"I can order you."

Harm rolled his eyes and snorted, that sort of idle threat would get them nowhere fast. "And I'll quit, again. I don't need the Navy anymore, maybe I never did."

Chegwidden stood and restrained himself from ordering Harm to snap to attention. "Cut the crap, Rabb. This tortured hero thing isn't cute and it won't help Mac either. She's worried and she's scared over you."

"She shouldn't be. I wasn't the one missing for three years. I wasn't the one married to someone else or made to believe she was someone she's not...I didn't…I didn't lose..." He paused and sighed thinking about the child she purposely lost. That had to cause an immeasurable amount of pain that he couldn't fathom. Even if it wasn't his child, there was still quite a bit of grief that he felt especially that he wasn't there to take care of Mac.

"Harm." Chegwidden's tone was gentle as was the hand he placed on the former aviator's shoulder. "How much did Mac tell you?"

"As much as she could remember."

He nodded, it was clear on Harm's face the wrongs that she lived through, the memories that likely tortured him by proxy. The man had a penchant for carrying the pain of others and clearly had hit some kind of breaking point. "Did that bastard hurt her?"

"Not how you think. She claims any punishment was because of her own actions. Claims he took out his rage on the other two and mostly spared her."

"Mostly?"

Harm nodded, still not able to understand how she could simply take Farid's punishment at face value. "Nazanin...loved him. She genuinely did even though she suspected something was wrong...missing. I'm terrified she'll want to go back." What scared him the most was that he fell too tired and too run down to continue to fight.

"That woman isn't going anywhere. Not if she could help it. Trust your wife."

"I'm trying."

"Start by seeing a therapist, Harm. Don't be stubborn. But her worries to rest."

Harm took a deep breath. "I hate shrinks. But, if you found someone for me...I'll try...for her."

"No. You'll try for you."

CIA Headquarters

Langley, Virginia

The room she sat in looked nothing like the vault Mac imagined in her mind. There were no windows, that much was true but instead fancy paintings of nature, mountains, forrests all meant to put the interviewee at ease.

She sat in one of the most comfortable armchairs made of soft, overstuffed leather that seemed to hug her body when she sat. There were two of those separated by a large, wooden coffee table on top of which fancy looking cookies and a french press with two coffee cups sat.

It looked more like a scene out of a casual coffee date amongst friends than a run of the mill debrief. Eugenia Lang, the agency's best, sat in a similar chair sipping a cup of coffee while she flipped pages in a folder labeled 'classified.' It gave Mac a chance to study the other woman with her well tailored business suit, perfectly manicured fingers and dark blond hair that was recently styled.

She took good care of presenting herself a certain way, no-nonsense and business oriented. Cold at times and yet she was able to get the deepest secrets out of her subjects. Hypnosis. Mac decided, the woman must be a wizard at it.

"This reads like a cheap spy novel." Eugenia said with her eyebrow hitting her hairline. "We've had officers train to get in this deep for years and still they're discovered. Tortured. Killed. What's your secret?" She tossed the file on the coffee table and leaned back glaring at Mac over the brim of her mug.

Mac shook her head. Her throat feeling insanely dry at the implication that Nazanin could have been a cover. "No...It wasn't...It wasn't a cover."

"But you can't remember. Or so you said...Tell me, are you a double agent, Sarah?" The woman had dark brown eyes, almost like onyx and her stare was positively unnerving. It gave Mac the shivers and all of her Marine bravado wavered. It wavered as it never had.

Fuck. What if the woman had a point? What if this had all been some scheme that she'd been used for. Mac snorted and rolled her eyes, the posibility of her or Nazanin being a double agent was preposterous. She was simply trying to help Clay when things got severely out of hand. She'd paid for it, so had Harm and even if she'd somehow been turned to work for the other side, Mac knew she'd never try to hurt him.

"What do I call you?" Off Eugenia's raised brow, Mac leaned forward and pressed her hands together. She would treat this woman like she would someone in court, a witness she needed to extract info from. "Are you a doctor? An agent? Is it Mrs. Lang or simply Eugenia?"

The woman scowled, obviously not pleased by Mac's audacity to question anything about her. She carefully placed her mug on the coffee table and sat back, cool and relaxed. Her eyes found Mac's and the pair stared one another down for a minute before Eugenia's lips curved in terse grin. "Like most that work for the agency, neither of those are my real name. If you want to call me something, Eugenia is perfectly fine."

Mac nodded slowly. "Okay...Eugenia... I can't remember everything. It's like one life suddenly stopped and another suddenly began. What happened in between is a mystery."

"I'm not here to unravel mysteries, Colonel. I was given strict instructions to extract whatever information you have about Farid Ahmadi and his involvement with Sadik Fahd."

"I remember seeing him once...once when…when I was someone else." Nazanin's memories were muddled at times, clear in other instances.

"And you don't want to remember being Nazanin Ahmadi."

"It worries me that she'll take over Sarah MacKenzie's life. And while it hadn't been a picnick, I want my life back. I want it intact. I want to pick up where I left off and fix mistakes I made." And what she wanted most was to never lose Harm again.

Eugenia sighed, poured herself another cup of coffee and one for Mac as well. "This is one of the most expensive brews in the world. Most people don't like it because they can't savor the finish. It's like wine, the taste is in the finish...that bouquet." She waved her hand in the air dramatically and slid one cup towards Mac.

"I don't drink alcohol."

"Mmm. An alcoholic, recovered from the looks of you." She sat back and grinned off Mac's surprised expression. "Colonel, I work here in this place because I am the best at reading people. If you still drank regularly, there would be jitters, darkness under your eyes, a scent that I would pick up on. Humans don't realize how many smells we give off that warn about certain...imbalances. You have none of that."

"Do you still believe I'm a double agent?"

"I'm still deciding that." Eugenia said, then reaching into a pocket to pull out an oval shaped crystal banging from a silver chain. "Know what this is?"

Mac nodded. She'd seen one while playing witch in Gulfport in order to uncover a possible rapist within a coven of Wiccans. "A pendulum. I just don't know what it's used for exactly."

"There are different uses depending on what mystic religion you care to dabble in. Some people have used it to find water, missing items. I use it to find missing memories."

"How?"

"Hypnosis."

Ah, so the rumors were true. The fabled Eugenia Lang was skilled at debriefs because she dabbled in hypnosis. Mac wanted to be scared of the process, one that she once scoffed at and now believed. She'd seen too much at JAG, been a part of the oddest of investigations. She was curious and yes, she was scared but if it helped her remember...if it helped them find Sadik Fahd… "Will it change me? The hypnosis?"

Eugenia shook her head. "No. Not in the way you think but it may heal you." She softened, became almost friendly as she let the pendulum dandle between her pinched thumb and index finger. "Ready?"

"Now? Here?" Mac couldn't help the apprehension or the way her hands gripped onto the arms of the chair. She was caught between wanting to know more and the fear of the unknown. The room that once felt inviting began to close in on her and yet her eyes focused on the crystal. Light filtered through it, the chain glistened in the soft lighting.

She followed how it moved side to side, transfixed and barely noticing Eugenia began to speak in a low voice so rhythmic it drew her in. "Stop…"

Her vision began to tunnel, her eyes feeling heavy as if all Mac could do was sleep. There was a sound, something like a snapping of fingers and then her mind went blank.