From Ch 2...

When the party was over, she kissed all of her Godchildren goodbye, thanked Bud and Harriet and walked out to her car. Being the last to get there, it was also the furthest from the house. She was glad of the privacy and sat for a short while in the driver's seat, trying to get herself together. She'd never felt closer to crying, not even on the dock, that morning. She knew it would be a different matter when she got home and got ready for bed. Crying herself to sleep was a regular occurrence, these days. She may be a marine, but she had just seen a vision of all that she wanted with Harm, knowing that it would be wrong of her to pursue it, not when she knew it could never possibly happen. It hurt, to love that deeply, yet still deny oneself. Mac knew her heart would never quite be the same again.

OOOO

Ch 3

A knock at her window startled her out of her inner thoughts. Harm was standing at her window, looking concerned. She wound the window down and tried to cover up the emotion she had roiling around inside of her.

"Are you okay, Mac?" Harm asked her, "Back there…I don't know, you just seemed kinda upset."

"It's nothing, Harm," Mac shook her head, "It's just been a long day…"

"Are you sure?" Harm persisted, "When Nikki took that tumble, you really began to look pale. Would you like me to run you home? You really shouldn't be driving, after a shock like that. I could ask Bud to bring your car over, later."

"I don't want to bother them…" Mac began, but Harm pulled open her door, gently but insistently persuading her out of her seat.

"Then I'll come back and get it myself…and you know that it isn't any trouble for me, I wouldn't offer if it was."

He led her to his car, which was parked close to her own.

At her questioning look, Harm explained, "I wanted it as far away from the carloads of children as possible. You know what parents are like when they're got kids grappling for their attention. There was sure to be a fender-bender and I'm sure my vette would come away worse off than an SUV."

On their drive to her apartment, Harm gently questioned Mac about her bad-turn, back at the party.

"What happened, Mac? Was it something to do with Nikki's tumble?"

Mac didn't want to hurt him by telling him that he had been the cause of her funny-turn, so she decided to go with some thing that was embellished truth.

"Kind of…I just had a really horrible morning, that's all. The General asked me to go down to do a preliminary investigation at Norfolk. Some officers aboard the USS Stennis found a body on the dock when they reported for duty, this morning; the body of a baby. It looks like she was left while she was still alive, but the elements became too much for her, sometime before sunrise, this morning…"

"I'm sorry, Mac…" Harm took her hand in his and squeezed it, "It's a horrible case, one bad enough on it's own, but I bet a children's party was the last thing you felt like coming to, afterwards."

"Much as I love my Godchildren, yeah, I guess so," Mac nodded, taking a deep, steeling breath.

Her proximity to her object of desire was doing nothing for her self-control. All of her reasoning was beginning to unravel before her very eyes. Her mind even asked her what would be so bad about establishing a relationship with Harm and seeing what life brought them.

"Nikki's growing up to be a beautiful little girl," Mac tried to keep her mouth busy, so that her mind would stop harassing her.

"Yeah, she is," Harm's whole demeanor softened when she spoke their Godchild.

Of course, all of their Godchildren were special to them, but Nikki Roberts was the first Goddaughter whom they had had the opportunity to be hands-on with. Although they both refrained from spending time together with the Roberts children (It was totally unintentional on both of their parts, but would have just hurt too much in the face of their seemingly impossible relationship) they both played an important, separate role in the children's life.

"She's looking more and more like her Mom, every day…" Harm continued and then silence fell upon the space around them.

Harm was giving her another one of those meaningful looks that could so easily shatter her resolve, if she let it.

Mac looked away and noticed the traffic light they had stopped at turn green. A beep from the car behind them soon told Harm as much and Mac let out a quiet sigh of relief when Harm dropped the subject and continued the journey towards Georgetown without another word.

When they pulled up to Mac's building, Mac murmured a quite 'thank-you' to him, before climbing out of the vette and making her way inside. She wanted to look back, she really did, but knew that Harm wouldn't take her at her words if he kept catching snippets of hesitation.

She didn't see Harm as he sadly shook his head, before pulling away.

OOOO

Mac was back to slamming things around, the next morning. Including the newspaper. The front page carried a piece about the baby girl found at Norfolk. And it carried a lot of detail that should not be public knowledge; what the baby was wearing; details of the crime-scene; the estimated time of death, even.

Mac threw the whole thing in the trash, angrily. If she ever got hold of that reporter, recon marines wouldn't be able to keep her off him!

Grabbing her briefcase, she set her coffee mug down in the sink and headed for the door.

OOOO

Three weeks later and still, they were no closer to discovering who this baby was. The press had started calling her 'Baby Angel'. A quiet and unceremonious burial took place, in a quiet little churchyard near to JAG Headquarters in Falls Church. Mac passed this churchyard everyday on her way to work and she liked how peaceful, how serene it always looked. It was small and not crowded and it seemed to Mac like the perfect resting place for an angel taken too soon from this world. But since it was the state of Virginia burying her, they hadn't wanted to pay the extra for a burial in a private cemetery. Mac had eventually convinced them by saying that she would pay the extra. She felt that it was the little that she could do for this poor child. There were a handful of NICS officers attending that morning, who had involvement with the case. They kept their attention focused on the churchyard around them, in case the baby's mother had a twinge of guilt and decided to attend at a distance. Mac kept her attention focused on the small casket. It just seemed wrong, to have a casket that small. It didn't seem real. Bud had shared these exact thoughts with her one time and Mac realized that was exactly it! Life should not be given and taken away with the next breath…this all just seemed so wrong.

OOOO