HarmAndMac4ever: Thank you for your review!
When I post my fics I know that not everyone will like what I write and I thank you for the review that was polite, even though you strongly disagree with what I wrote. There are many out there who would not review so gracefully and they would resort to flaming. I appreciate your civilized approach.
In the following paragraphs I will explain why I wrote what I wrote, and they are completely my personal opinions and I do not, in any way, try to force them on others, I just want to explain why I think/write this way. Thank you!
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About H&M being soulmates and about other people liking Meg: this is unfortunately the point where many people have differences of opinion. I personally don't believe that H&M are soulmates, but I let anyone believe it if they do. My personal reasons for disbelieving in it are many, among them the fact that if they were soulmates they wouldn't have been starting from scratch so many times, like after Bugme and Renee and after Paraguay. IMHO soulmates would never let it get that far, nor would they fight, argue, resent and destroy their friendship so many times and with such intensity as these two did. They also are in my opinion much too different in personalities to be soulmates, starting with their beliefs, eating habits, views on fidelity, being members and supporters of two branches of the military that strongly dislike each other,...
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Some like Mac, some like Meg, some like both and some like none. It's a completely subjective thing.
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I know I seem a little harsh on Mac, but the thing is that every single mark on her record would destroy a service(-wo-)man's career by itself in real life. Yet, we have seen her career never take a hit, on the contrary, it flourished every time she did something that would've sent her to prison in real life and have her demoted and disbarred. She cheated on her husband, multiple times, that alone would destroy her career in RL (yet she didn't have a problem prosecuting people for the same crime and push for maximum punishment, pretty hypocritical). She was also found guilty of fraternization at the same time, which alone destroys her career, combined with adultery it brings being stripped of rank and serving time in Leavenworth. Yet, instead of being punished, which she deserved since she fully consciously broke the laws, she was rewarded, with a promotion and had her studies at Law School paid by the Corps...
When she lied under oath (with which she would earn disbarrment and prison time even if she was a civilian lawyer, much less a military lawyer and an officer) she was subjected to an Admiral's Mast - in real life she would never get that much lenience - (which was so light and biased that it just proved favoritism on the side of Cheggwidden) and just a few months later she was promoted AHEAD OF TIME!, with perjury conviction and Admiral's Mast just months before.
Yet Harm, who had more time in service and in rank, was more decorated, had a cleaner record (he only shot up a courtroom's ceiling and that was placed into his short-time record and not into permanent because he paid for the repair out of his own pocket; he also did not have any of the high-caliber convictions and black marks that Mac did), had been the Chief of Staff for 3 years, from "We the people" to December 2004 Harm had won 18!! cases against Mac while Mac had clearly won only 2!! against him (statistics of trials taken from a Mac fan site!) and such clear superiority in skills and wins also have a big effect on promotions and this fact was obviously ignored on the show due to favoritism of Mac, ... and he was promoted 6 months after her!
As for what she did with Bugme, I stand by what I wrote. What LCDR Brumby did was textbook sexual harrassment and plain harrassment. These are the two crimes that the military takes very seriously now, because of the Tailhook scandal, and Mac's not-reporting and encouraging his behaviour would also earn her a reprimand. There is a law by which someone who was witness to a crime and did nothing to stop it or didn't report the criminal, can have charges brought up against him. Harm wanted to act, but she stopped him.
What Mac did with her behaviour was encouraging and condoning a criminal behaviour and I find it appalling that a woman, who had so passionately explained the situation of women and dangers of rape and other dangers to women in the modern times to the Admiral, could condone and encourage sexual harrasment, which sometimes turns into rape itself. Not only was she obligated by law to report it as an officer of the court, she was also obligated morally and as a woman in order to help remove one to-women-dangerous man off the streets. Yet, not only did she not do as duty demanded of her, she also encouraged that behaviour. For that alone she should've been punished as the law dictates.
Lastly... it is my personal opinion that Mac had stopped being a true friend to Harm when he changed designators, when she started resenting and hating him for that decision. Their friendship was never the same again, mostly because Mac was unwilling to get over it. When he came back she was cold and hostile towards him, something he did not deserve. Not only did she show him that he was no longer her friend, nor did he count among the people important to her, when she never told him of her promotion, but she also constantly pulled her new (undeserved) rank on him and treated him like shit once he returned to JAG. We've seen her treat rapists and murderes better than she treated Harm.
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JAG has failed to treat many heavy issues properly during the years of the show and I blame TPTB for it. Issues, such as sexual harrassment (Krennick, Bugme, Vukovic,...), favoritism, H&M's 'relationship' which had successfully disrupted good order and discipline of the office many times would not be tolerated in the military and both parties would've been transferred to the different poles of the Earth,... I find it curious that a man, who had been repeating over the years millions of times that he is a former Marine, would do such stupid, obvious, basic mistakes on his show, mistakes that were so transparent that many people had caught them. I mean, Gunny was telling details of a top secret mission over a pay phone!, over an unsecured line in Paraguay, which is the first thing they teach you in basic not to do.
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Kaydeek: tnx for the review!
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Syrae: I don't know what were the reasons, but IMHO they are not good enough for such blatant disregard of basic laws, not only legal, but also of logic, real world, of combat,... For a show that called itself 'military drama' it showed remarkable ignorance of basic laws and ways of everyday life in the military and of standard operating procedures.
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Eventually Rabb returned and the office seemed to have regained a part of the peace that it'd lost when he changed his designator.
It had lost a lot of the balance when Austin was transferred out, but when Rabb left also, it had lost all order and balance.
The few that were left weren't able to do anything, most of them weren't even interested, they just cared about their own asses.
Only LT's Roberts and Sims-Roberts cared about what had happend to the office, but neither had the rank, charisma, presence nor a personality that could match Rabb's and that could steady the office.
Cheggwidden was constantly closed up in his office, rarely coming out, never connecting with his subordinates, having completely lost all contact with the staff.
Mackenzie and Bugme were together most of the time and didn't care about anything but themselves, each other and their cases.
Rabb's former partner (she was now partnered with Bugme) was definitely cool and had a superior attitude towards Rabb. In fact, I had seen her treat convicted rapists and murderes better than she treated the man who had been nothing but a best friend to her.
The man who had been vegetating for these past few years had lost another thing important to him, another friendship.
I had never seen anyone with such a bad luck in relationships as him.
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A few weeks after he was finally, rightfully promoted, even though he should've been months earlier, Rabb came into work with a bounce in his step.
For the first time since 'Before' all had work stopped in the bullpen that day.
The whole staff dropped everything and just stood there, staring at him.
You could've heard a pin drop. He stopped, noticing the silence, and glanced around.
He cleared his throat uncomfortably and motioned for us to get back to work.
General consensus was that it was nothing big because, with the way his life had been going recently, even a row of green lights on his way to work could've made him that happy.
It was a plausible explanation.
So, why didn't it feel right?
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Because the answer was given a couple of hours later when I'd heard him talking on the phone, agreeing to meet a 'her' in a parking lot.
I was confused, who could've made him that happy?
Whoever she was, I hoped she wouldn't break his heart like all the others did. This man had his heart broken more times than it's allowed.
I talked to other members of the staff that had been there since before Cheggwidden's time. There were only very few of us left, but we stuck together like glue.
Our joint decision was to take a chance and stakeout the HQ's parking lot immediately after work.
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We were there, pretending to be minding our own businesses, when we saw Rabb leave the building.
At the same time his SUV entered through the entrance checkpoint.
What was his SUV doing on the road without him?
The car stopped at the curb and the engine shut off.
The few seconds it took for the door to open and the driver to step out were the longest for any of us. Everyone seemed to be holding their breath, waiting to discover the identity of the mysterious woman, for the beautifully shaped calves, that were seen under the door when it opened, definitely belonged to a woman, a very fit woman.
Finally, there she was...
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AN: the next part is the last one and everything will be revealed. Thanks for sticking with the story, despite the bashing of Mac and Bugme (believe it or not, I don't like to write bashing, it leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth), but with the way Season 5 went and due to Mac's behaviour, I couldn't be sticking to canon and not touch that unpleasant topic.