Paraguay
MAY 2003
1130 EST
ROCK CREEK PARK
WASHINGTON DC
Mac had taken the day off from work and given Clara the day off from daycare to spend a day at the park. With Mother's Day being that weekend, Mac felt like it would be nice to have a mother-daughter outing as an early celebration. She had been TAD for two out of the three weeks in April, and wanted to make up for lost time. She loved that she was able to still work and be a mom, but she would love it more if she could be in two places at once - at work and with her daughter, but unfortunately technology has not advanced enough to allow people to teleport.
But Mac was doing her best, and she had to keep reminding herself that that was enough. She was going to devote the whole day to being with Clara, and that meant turning her phone off and ignoring any incoming calls.
Her JAG coworkers were understanding enough to not call her on her days off, but there was one person who wasn't. Clayton Webb. Granted he would have no way of knowing it was Mac's day off with her daughter, but of course he would pick that day out of any to call her three times after leaving her alone for months.
He'd finally visited Harm and Mac to see Clara when she was six months old, a visit that lasted all of twenty minutes. This wasn't all that surprising - Clay wasn't the most sentimental person, and it was a little obvious that he wasn't super fond of children. The card he'd sent them in the hospital had a simple Congrats, written on it with his professional signature underneath it. Mac wasn't expecting a lot from Webb, but after all the times her and Harm put themselves in danger for him, she'd expected at least a full Congratulations - perhaps even with an exclamation point.
And now he wanted something from her, once again? If Mac ever bothered to pick up, she'd tell him where he could shove his cell phone.
"Mama!"
"Yes, baby?" Mac asked, crouching down at the edge of the sand box. Clara had two favorite things at the park - the swing and the sandbox. The swing was most likely attributed to her father's love of flying and the sandbox to her mother's paleontology hobby. Today was a sandbox day.
"Look!"
Mac's gaze followed Clara's tiny finger as it pointed not to something in the sandbox, but rather to something - someone on the outside of the sandbox. Mac instantly jumped up, alarmed at the strange man standing there watching them from the other end of the sandbox, until she recognized who that man was.
"Clay?" she demanded, almost wishing it was stranger. That would make their exit much easier and more straightforward. "What are you doing here?"
Webb shrugged. "You weren't answering my calls."
Mac gestured to their surroundings. Clara was still sitting in the sand, watching Webb with wide, curious eyes. Webb acknowledged her with a small wave.
"I'm a little busy Clay," Mac responded, not bothering to hide the irritated edge in her voice. "It's my day off."
Webb took off his sunglasses. "Don't worry. I won't take up too much of your time."
Mac raised a skeptical eyebrow.
"Fine, I'll only take an hour," Webb amended quickly. "I promise. I don't make a habit of getting between mother bears and their cubs," he looked around at the park. "Do you want to find a bench somewhere or do we have to stay at the sandbox?"
"Let's see," Mac crouched back down. "Clara, are you ready to go?"
"No!"
Mac looked up at Webb. "You have your answer."
Webb ended up sitting cross legged on the grass beside Mac outside the sandbox. Sitting on the ground in his suit made him stick out like a sore thumb among the much more casually dressed park goers.
"What do you want, Webb?" Mac asked.
He shrugged. "Do you want the long version or the short version?"
"The shortest version, please," Mac leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees as she watched Clara play in the sand with a little blue shovel she'd found somewhere else in the sandbox. She was doing this mainly to distract herself from Webb, but also to make sure Clara didn't try to eat anything she wasn't supposed to.
"I want you to be my wife."
That was enough of a statement to make Mac tear her glance away from Clara. She stared at Webb in disbelief.
"A little abrupt, don't you think?" Mac held up her left hand, where Harm's grandmother's ring was firmly placed on her ring finger. "I hate to break your heart Clay, but my dance card is full for the foreseeable future - Clara honey, don't put sand in your mouth. Sand's yucky, don't eat that."
Webb paused for a few moments. "I meant you'd pose as my wife," he corrected slowly, briefly glancing over at Clara. "I'm going undercover and need someone to pose as my pregnant wife."
"First you're proposing and now you want to get me pregnant?" Mac teased lightly. Clara toddled over to them, holding out the plastic shovel to Webb. Mac and Clara both waited while Webb just stared blankly.
"Take the shovel, Webb," Mac finally said. "She's giving it to you to hold."
"What if I don't want to hold it?"
"Just take it, Webb."
Webb unceremoniously plucked the shovel from Clara's tiny hand and held it loosely in his as Clara settled into Mac's lap, more interested in the adult's conversation than the sandbox. Mac wasn't quite sure how much she'd be able to understand of what they were talking about, but Mac hoped it wasn't much.
"It would be a fake pregnancy, obviously," Webb continued, sitting the shovel down in the grass.
"So you want me to be your fake, pregnant wife….for what exactly? Where are we going undercover?"
"Paraguay."
Mac's eyes widened, and Clara mimicked her mother's surprised expression.
"That's a little far, don't you think?" Mac asked. "How long would it be?"
Webb shrugged. "For the foreseeable future, at least."
"At least?" Mac looked down at Clara. "Would I be back in time for her first day of Kindergarten or would Harm have to handle that on his own?"
"Very funny, Mac."
"Nooo…what's funny is that you're asking me to go undercover thousands of miles away from my fiance and child in Paraguay, on a mission that's probably extremely dangerous because everything with you is a danger to my health and sanity," she lifted Clara up, turning her around so she was facing Mac. "That's just so silly, isn't it?" she asked her. "Uncle Webb's being so silly, isn't he?"
Webb tried his best not to look offended from Clara's giggles.
"Harm could watch her," he offered weakly.
"And what if I just don't want to do it?" Mac turned to look at Webb, suddenly serious. "I have a family now, obligations outside of my job that you could probably never understand. I'm sorry if I don't want to put my life on the line doing you a favor."
"Motherhood's made you cagey," Webb replied, his tone only half-joking.
"I'm cagey because this was supposed to be my day off with just my daughter and me, and now I'm listening to you talk about one of your crazy ideas."
"I would've known it was your day off if you'd answered one of my calls."
"Maybe you should've taken me not answering as a hint."
Clara shifted her weight in Mac's lap, looking up at her with her wide, blue eyes. Mac smiled down at her, smoothing her hand over her fine brown hair. Webb watched the two of them for a few moments before clearing his throat and rising to his feet, dusting the blades of grass from his pants.
"Well, I guess I'll leave you two to it," he said, putting his sunglasses back on.
"Let me know if you ever want to grab coffee and catch up like two normal people sometime," Mac replied, raising her hand up to shield the sun from her eyes so she could look at Webb. "You know, and not make strange undercover propositions to me."
"Sure, Sarah."
"Good luck in Paraguay," Mac added as Clara stood up from her lap and grabbed the shovel from where it lay on the ground near Webb's feet. They watched as she walked back into the sandbox. "Also, thank you."
Webb's eyebrows shot up. "For what?"
Mac looked at him wryly. "You gave me something very hilarious to tell Harm tonight."
Webb tried to smile, but it came out looking more like a grimace. "Glad I could be of service."
After watching Webb walk away until he was out of sight, Mac turned back to Clara, watching her build…whatever it was she was trying to build. She couldn't tell if her goal was an actual building or just her best recreation of a hill.
"I have some advice for you," Mac told her. "Don't become friends with spies."
Mac appreciated Webb thinking so highly of her to ask her to go on such an important mission with him, but she wasn't in the mood for risking her life anymore - not now, when she had this much to miss out on.
A little musing about how the dreaded Paraguay storyline would've fit into The Case universe.
Thanks for reading!
-Harper