Yep totally took a break from this now just gonna work on wrapping it up.

40 Chapters?!? How the hell??

Chapter 40 - Grieving

"You stink and you look like shit." Clay had come up behind Harm clasping a hand over his shoulder. He grinned when the Naval officer shook his head and watched as the corpsman was pressing his fingers against Harm's midsection checking for broken ribs.

Harm knew he looked terrible, the way his body felt absolutely run down didn't give him high hopes that his physical appearance was any better. "Gee thanks, Webb...I've ouch! That's tender."

"Tender, sir?" Off of Harm's nod, the corpsman rolled his eyes and reached for something that looked like surgical tape only thicker. "Your breathing is labored, your eye isn't looking too good, I would recommend a facial CT to rule out any severe trauma. Best I can tell, you have a couple of fractured ribs and your shoulder is either fractured or dislocated...How the hell are you still upright?"

"He's a tough, stubborn sonofabitch, that's how." His hand slid off and Webb stepped back for a moment to allow the medic to tightly wrap a bandage in order to keep the arm and shoulder in place. The idea was to stabilize in order for transport to a local hospital but that was denied by the stubborn sailor who was eager to arrive stateside and not spend another minute in Tehran. "The flight is gonna take hours, you know? You sure you're gonna make it?"

"Corpsman Lukas agreed to jab me full of morphine if it gets too rough." Harm stood and wavered slightly, his head felt stuffed and the room spun until his bearings were his again. "I just need to get the hell out of here."

Although Webb didn't agree with Harm's methods, he knew the faster they moved, the easier they could hide any American involvement. This was his mess because the greed of capturing Sadik had given him such tunnel vision he was unwilling to bend or see how serious the situation with Mac had been. "I'm sorry. I know that probably doesn't mean much but I needed to get Sadik."

"She shot him. I know you wanted him alive but there wasn't a choice. She did it to save me." He would have certainly died then, Sadik had his gun trained and it was his wife that took aim and ended the terrorist.

"It's the agency that wanted him alive, not me. I wanted to put a bullet through his skull. The higher ups can go fuck themselves. I'm through after this, retiring." Webb shifted slightly, relying on the cane to keep himself fully upright.

"What will you do?"

"I don't know.. You know? I'm a bit jealous but if it couldn't be me, I'm glad it was Sarah that killed him, she suffered more… Speaking of which, where is she?"

Harm didn't follow Webb's gaze when he scanned the room that lay in complete shambles. Chairs were broken in two, there was blood everywhere especially where Farid and Sadik's bodies once were. The scene was not unlike a horror movie, the gore enough to last a lifetime as each death flashed through his mind in slow motion. "I don't know. She walked out after your team took Farid. Look, I'm heading out of this place, Lukas said they'd start moving me to the airport as fast as possible. I want out of here, I never want to step foot in Tehran again."

"You're not gonna wait for Sarah?"

"No." Harm shuffled to the nearest exit with his arm draped over another member of Webb's team who was just as tall and could handle his body weight. "Find her yourself."

The estate really was ornate and beautiful, so beautiful but much too opulent for her personal tastes. Even Nazanin preferred something smaller although she'd enjoyed many aspects of her rooms and the gardens beneath where she'd spent countless hours meandering through.

The bathtub had been her favorite, of course, the one with the golden claw feet where her tired body would recover from certain events that plagued Nazanin's life.

She ran a hand across the porcelain, stopping only because memories of Nazanin began to overwhelm her until a muffled sob poured out of Mac. Her hands were stained, the pinkish hue of blood covering them from where she'd tried to stop Farid from bleeding out. He'd saved her. He'd saved Harm and because of it had died something of a hero's death. God, she needed to get that blood off of her hands, it felt sticky and the smell was beginning to make her nauseous.

This would be the last time she'd see this bathroom or her apartments where four years of her life came and went. As she carefully scrubbed the pink tint off of her fingers, her mind wandered through the memories - good and bad. There was far too much pain inside of these walls, the likes that could never be vilified by any of the better memories she initially shared with Farid. Her heart ached over his death but she felt free as well. For the first time in years all of the fear that Nazanin held within was completely gone. She would have a life again. Her own life without someone dictating how a woman should act.

Her hands, now clean and dry, grabbed a fistfull of the black fabric covering her toros, angrily pulling but it wouldn't tear. It felt so oppressive and wrong to wear such a thing which Nazanin had mostly been embarrassed about because a good Iranian woman wouldn't show skin to anyone but her husband.

Her husband. Only Farid Ahmadi wasn't her real husband, was he? She never divorced Harm although she did leave him for a while, walking away as he stood in the center of his apartment wondering what the hell went wrong - the biggest mistake of her life.

With a sigh she glanced up that her eyes could focus on the reflection staring at her through the large bathroom mirror. It had always been Nazanin's sad eyes projected back, the amber hues that had dimmed so much they were almost unrecognizable. Now some of that sadness was gone, the lovely shade of her eyes began to return and it was Sarah looking back at her. "Hi stranger."

She nearly laughed when her hand pressed against the mirror as if she could touch the woman on the other side. She looked different, youthful or perhaps it was the hair she had cut several weeks ago so that it no longer covered her face.

A trip around the living area brought to life more memories. The countless nights she collapsed on the sofa crying over a husband that didn't want her while knowing there was someone out there waiting. Nazanin had always felt something was missing, her heart knew she belonged to another but duty kept her faithful to Farid.

There were some good times, the gifts he'd given her, the few times he was man enough to protect her. Some of the nights they spent in her bedroom that was just as opulent with it's four poster bed with drapes sweeping over it. The mattress was comfy, the sheets made of silk and it was covered with pillows of so many sizes.

She dropped onto the mattress one last time and simply looked up at the ceiling and the intricate patterns designed in gold leaf. Her hands ran over the cover and as she took a deep breath Mac felt the tears that filled her eyes and spilled out.

It was over. She was free. "Thank you...thank you God, Allah...whoever, thank you, thank you, thank you." The tears were happy ones followed by hysterical laughter that poured from her soul. She was free of Iran, free of Sadik, free of Farid...but what of Nazanin? Who would free that woman?

She heard a voice in the living area calling her name and when Mac sat up she hoped Harm would walk in through the door. Instead she found Clayton Webb standing in the door frame staring at her with the oddest expression. "Sarah?"

"I'm okay. Where is he? Where's Harm?"

Clay winced knowing that he would never be a person she would ever trust again. She saw how Mac looked around him, her eyes fixating on the next room searching for her husband. "He left with the corpsman, he needs a hospital but refused until we're in the States."

"I can't blame him."

He followed her when she walked into a large closet and began to pull out outfit after outfit until she found something that was light and airy. "What are you doing?"

"Remembering...Forgetting." Mac tossed the old niqab at him and quickly slipped on the dress that mostly covered her but felt less oppressive and wasn't covered in blood.

"You're free, Sarah. You don't owe me anything anymore, you sure as shit don't owe the agency anymore. I'm sorry it led to this...But the bastard is dead. Sadik is dead. Farid is dead, you're free."

Mac flinched, not wanting to think of Farid's death. While it was true that he was in the best of man, there was hope that he would change the evil political field in Iran for good. "Farid wasn't bad, Clay. He wanted to change things and could have for better."

"His father and uncle were. You have no idea what I've discovered about them. Afshin's human trafficking plan with Sadik went across a few countries."

"Afshin was a pig." She agreed. Farid's uncle was evil incarnate, a man that would leer so lasiviously it scared her. "What will happen now?"

There had been different teams spread across different locations. The main crew set to capture Sadik, the others had followed Javad and Afshin Ahmadi who's lives were also terminated that night. "There's no one left of the Ahmadi clan. We've been spreading false information that a rival family was trying to take over... Looks like they finally managed it."

"Afshin and Javad are dead?"

Webb nodded. "They knew who you are. They would have brought hell down on us and there can't be American involvement."

"What happens now? The Ahmadi's ran the country."

"There are a few trusted allies we can put in power. They'll rise up once the dust settles and we'll finally have a much needed foothold here."

Mac felt disgusted as Webb laid out the plan with an almost clinical explanation. Business as usual, she supposed only this assignment had been messy and lengthy - she was the perfect agent in a way, Nazanin a cover she never wanted to slip into. "So this...Paraguay...all of it was political?"

"In a way but it's over...I'm sorry you got caught in the middle. Your involvement was never meant to go beyond Paraguay"

"I was more than just caught in the middle...I lived a life here.. or she did...Nazanin lived a life here.. She has her combs, her clothes jewels, her drawing pens, sketch pad…a husband, a child."

"Nazanin isn't real, Sarah...And it's over now."

"Is it? Yes I'm free but you don't get it...No one ever will." It wouldn't be easy to carry on as if nothing happened. The memories of the other woman were real and incapable of being erased. "One life paused four years ago and another began...I want to leave here and go home but is that fair to Nazanin? What if she wants to stay, this is her home."

"Mac...You belong in Washington...You belong with Harm."

Harm. Just the mention of him made her heart ache. The hell he went through because of her was unforgivable. He needed to heal as well, to be free and Mac didn't know how to give him that. "I love him. I always loved him and didn't realize how much...Nazanin, she was falling for him too."

"You sound jealous."

"I am." Christ, she was losing it.

"Mac, we have to go now. We need to get Harm to the States. I'm not sure how he's even standing."

"Because he wouldn't stop until I was safe."

"You are safe. It's over."

It would take a few more minutes for her to leave, needing one last pass through her rooms to collect the drawings Nazanin had hidden in her desk. She clutched the drawing pad to her chest as the team made a hasty retreat out of the compound amidst the sound of sirens nearing the estate. Sometime later, Mac would be escorted into a black SUV, her last views of the home obscured as they passed the tree lined fences and high walls.

It was over but it would never be over.

Two Weeks Later

Harm and Mac's apartment.

They hadn't spoken much since leaving Tehran. Harm tried to hide the extent of his physical discomfort but Mac noticed his pallor, the sweat that dripped off of him and the way he clenched the arm of the seat he was buckled into. Once it was safe to move, she came out of her own seat and dropped to her knees next to him demanding the corpsman help.

"Sleep, flyboy. We'll be home when you wake up." She ran her fingers through his hair with one hand, the other took hold of his. Mac didn't let him go until they landed in Dulles.

Harm was taken by helicopter to Walter Reed where he spent a week in treatment for various ailments. Arthroscopic surgery was needed to set his shoulder properly, antibiotics administered to stop infections. His ribs would take a few weeks to heal, his eye fared much better. He was definitely too old to play superhero much longer and felt like Superman when he gave away his powers.

The medication kept him sleepy which made the incredible tension between him and Mac somewhat bearable. If he was asleep, they couldn't talk. If he was asleep, he couldn't hear Mac tell him she was in mourning over someone else.

When he was awake she doted over him and even slept in an uncomfortable looking cot that was set up in his room. It was oddly tense and they silently agreed to let it go until he was better.

"Mac, go home. You don't need to be here."

"I'm not leaving you."

"Please go." She did, leaving him reluctantly because she knew that staying would only make things worse.

Mac didn't have the strength to argue, the events of the last week were enough to suck all of the fight out of the Marine. When she went home without him the empty apartment felt intolerable. The walls were crushing in as was the depression, the fear that this bump in the road would derail them completely.

She thought about Nazanin almost constantly and wondered if the universe was dishing out it's odd brand of karma. Mac had taken Nazanin away from Farid. Maybe Nazanin was trying to rip her away from Harm?

That could be why he slept alone in their bed and she spent two nights on the sofa. He slept most of the days and although Mac was there even when he needed her, the strain was unbearable until she could take it no more.

There couldn't be another minute of this uncompanionable silence. It appeared that Harm too had enough. Which is why he spoke up when they sat in the living room, he on the armchair pretending to leaf through a magazine, Mac on the sofa holding a Clancy novel she couldn't get through. "Mac, we have to talk."

"You've been avoiding me. I let it go because I don't want to fight but...Both of us...Harm, I'm…"

"Do you miss him?" Harm asked quickly. He kept his eyes partially downcast, the weight of his query hung between them and when Mac didn't immediately answer, he felt his heart sink. "Your grieving for him."

"I don't know." She sighed wearily and then slid to the edge of the sofa, her hands clasping together. "He died trying to protect us...You can't ignore that."

"Fuck." He tried to stand and the pain in his ribs took his breath away. Mac was at his side instantly and it took all of his strength to not push her away as she helped him back into the chair. "Did you love him? Not Nazanin but you. Did you love him?"

"No. But, I'm allowed to have some feelings, aren't I?"

"Mac…"

She dropped onto the coffee table. "Harm, he pulled me from a burning wreck. He stopped his uncle from taking me, he stopped Sadik from hurting me."

"He lied to you about who you were. For years, he lied."

"His deceit saved my life. Nazanin saved my life in a way and we can't just ignore it or pretend it didn't happen."

Only he didn't want to think of those good qualities, none of them a damned thing each time he thought about Farid beating Mac. Had he not intervened on the streets of Paris, she could have been killed. "Never mind, I don't want to talk anymore."

"Well I do...Don't walk away from me!" She yelled when Harm stood and began to gingerly make his way to the kitchen. Her voice stopped him mid way and Harm used the dinning table to lean against. "Mic used to do that. So did Farid. They'd both walk away when I wanted to discuss something serious."

"I'm not either of them."

No, he wasn't but she couldn't deny he had a habit of brooding and sulking that was rather unbecoming. "I know you're hurting over me. I know this hasn't been easy for you. I'd give anything to go back four years, to not leave with Clay. I'd kill to go back four years and stop you from investigating Singer too. But, we can't go back. You need to talk to me, Harm."

He sighed heavily when the palm of her hand made contact with his back. As usual, her touch calmed him and got his mind working properly again. "I'm trying to understand but it all comes out wrong...I'm mad, I'm so fucking angry."

"At me?"

Her voice was so soft it broke his heart. When he turned those beautiful brown eyes stared sadly at him. "At you, at me. At Webb and at the whole goddamn world...Did you love him? Did you?"

"Stop asking me that."

"Answer me."

"Can't I grieve over another human? Or be sad that someone is dead? Farid atoned for his mistakes."

Atoned? In Harm's mind one right didn't fix years of wrongs. Especially when it came to his wife. "He hurt you. Over and over and I can't get Paris out of my mind. Seeing him hit you. Knowing what I know about Nazanin's life...the baby….I hate him so much."

"He's gone, you need to let that go."

"Did you love him?"

"Yes, Nazanin did but that was short lived. She was falling hard for you."

He shook his head and then pulled out a chair and sank into it. Why couldn't she give him a straight answer? And why was he so hung up over her feelings for a dead man? He should be happy that Mac was home but his brain wouldn't give up, it kept pushing for more. And if she did love Farid, what would he do then?

"Why do you talk about Nazanin as if she were someone else?"

Because she was someone else to Mac. It wasn't her but something of another woman who lived in her body while Sarah MacKenzie was asleep. "Because she was. It's...almost like sleep walking. I was asleep and she wasn't. She had a life and it wasn't my life."

"But you remember now and it wasn't Nazanin kneeling over him as he died, it was you."

"It was me but she is part of me. A small part that I want to forget. Do you think it's easy for me to know I slept with another man? That I loved another man because I didn't know better? Wait...stay here." Mac walked to the small desk that held her dinosaur bones and pulled out the small drawing pad from a drawer. She gave it to him and then pulled out a chair placing it just in front of Harm who was leafing through the pages.

His expression fell, she could see him understanding when he stopped at each drawing and studied it as if he were walking through a priceless art gallery. "He showed me these."

"Did he?"

He looked at each drawing, taking in the lines, the shading where her delicate fingers blended colors together to form expressions he wasn't aware of. His eyes. Over and over she drew them with hues that likely changed with his moods. "They're beautiful."

"She knew you. She knew someone was out there waiting on her." She reached across and flipped to the end, a page that was ripped and she pieced back together. It was a look she drew the most, the one Farid took from her and ripped apart. Nazanin managed to find the bits that he'd scattered to the ground and taped together what she could. "I didn't realize it until the other night when you were asleep and I went through these."

His eyes were so blue in that drawing, like ice. His expression of awe and something else that was indescribable. "That's how you looked at me the day we were married. I'll never forget it because it took my breath away. She drew this over and over. She knew you and she was falling in love with you. The wifely duties made her have feelings for him and I can't lie to you about that."

Harm placed the pad on the table, his fingers tracing across the edge of the book. "I want to believe you."

"Then listen to me. Stop doubting me because I'm insanely in love with you. What happened with Farid is over and I am grieving. Nazanin lost everything. Her home, her husband, her life."

"Nazanin isn't real."

"She was for a while." And the moment when Farid died, she began to slip away. "She's almost gone, I can feel it and in a way I'm going to miss her."

He was still looking at the drawings when she stood and very carefully came onto his lap. His arm was still in a sling, his ribs screamed bloody murder but when she cupped his face, when her lips touched his it was like a healing balm.

"I love you." She kissed his lips. "I love you." She kissed his chin. "I love you." She kissed his nose and punctuated with more declarations of fidelity Mac kissed his brow, his eyes, his chin, his neck. "I need you to heal so that I can show you just how much."

One of her hands dropped over his heart, her fingers popping open a few buttons of his shirt so she could feel his skin. "This needs to heal too. I know you don't want to. I know you don't think it works but, I need you to see someone. If you love me, really love me you'd do this."

"And if I don't? Will you leave me?"

"No. But this anger you have inside is going to eat you alive. You need to let it go."

"I won't hurt you...I could never…"

"Physically no. But emotional pain, hurtful words can hurt more. I don't want that between us...We've never been good at communicating, we assume...that ends now."

She was right, he knew. Harm had a habit of using words to hurt just as well as he used them to save people. The rage he still had inside was consuming him, he saw that now and the irrational thoughts about her feelings for Farid perpetuated the discontent. Mac was right, it needed to stop, he couldn't live with this tension between them. "When I go see Dr. Hughes, I'll tell him I need help. I promise."

"There's one other thing...Do you love me?"

His eyebrows hit his hairline and now Harm was angry for a whole different reason. "Of course I do. How could you ask that?"

She kissed him again and her lips lingered over his. "You haven't said 'I love you' since that night in Tehran. My internal clock isn't fully functional but I can sorta tell you how many days it's been if you want...Also, you're so darn adorable when you blush."

And he was blushing, he felt the heat crawl from his neck to his face. What embarrassed him the most was that Mac was actually smiling and her lips had resumed kissing random spots on his face. "I love you."

"I love you too." And when her lips brushed his neck she felt the evidence of his ardor for her, it made him blush even more.