VoyForums
[ Show ]
Support VoyForums
[ Shrink ]
VoyForums Announcement: Programming and providing support for this service has been a labor of love since 1997. We are one of the few services online who values our users' privacy, and have never sold your information. We have even fought hard to defend your privacy in legal cases; however, we've done it with almost no financial support -- paying out of pocket to continue providing the service. Due to the issues imposed on us by advertisers, we also stopped hosting most ads on the forums many years ago. We hope you appreciate our efforts.

Show your support by donating any amount. (Note: We are still technically a for-profit company, so your contribution is not tax-deductible.) PayPal Acct: Feedback:

Donate to VoyForums (PayPal):

[ Login ] [ Contact Forum Admin ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: [1], 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 ]



[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Date Posted: 01:23:47 03/10/15 Tue
Author: Alicia
Subject: In The Same Breath (Part 3)

Standard Disclaimers. However, I do take full credit for all mistakes, omissions, grammatical incongruities, and overall angst.
Apologies for taking so long to write this next part.

Previously:
Mac couldn’t help her curiosity “Did you and she..?”

Harm immediately knew what Mac was asking. He also knew it wasn’t the easiest of answers.“Kate and I crossed that line Mac. You know that. With Kate…. it was different. We cared about each other in our own way, still do. But with Kate it was about sex. Great sex. But sex none the less. Still even with that, I didn’t handle it very well, and believe it or not, I do try to learn from my mistakes. Meg……she was different though. She was also part of the reason I was meeting Diane.”

In The Same Breath (Part 3)


Mac’s eyes were transfixed on Harm as he spoke. Although his years as an investigator and attorney afforded him the ability to read people by their expressions as much as their words, the look on Mac’s face was one he was having trouble understanding. Her eyes said so much, almost too much. In some ways it seemed a look of conflict, but it was one that also seemed to be going off in so many directions. What he didn’t realize is he was reading her better than he thought.

At that moment her mind was filled with so many thoughts, reflections and questions happening at the same time. Mac again felt as if she was in the middle of a whirlwind. It was one that she knew wouldn’t stop any time soon. The only respite was that for a time, the focus was not on her. As much as she wanted Harm to continue, she realized there was a part of her that really didn’t want to know. Yet, she was the one who asked. Wasn’t it always this way with Harm?’ she wondered to herself. He tried to give her what she wanted, and then she wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. She also felt the stirrings of an all too familiar feeling where he was concerned.

When Mac found out that Harm slept with Kate, she wasn’t as much surprised by the fact that he did, as she was her reaction. She had taken an immediate dislike to Kate, not really because of anything the woman said or did, but because Kate had known Harm in a way that she had only been able to fantasize about. Though Mac wouldn’t admit it to herself at the time, Kate saw right through her denials. Mac wondered now if she would feel the same way about Meg, a woman she had never even met. Still at the same time, this was not the only thing going through her mind. It was him. Then again, wasn’t it always him in one way or another. He was a big proponent of nothing changing who they were, but she was again faced with the fact that he had changed.

Harm began to pale under the intensity of Mac’s gaze.

“What?” he asked a bit defensively.

“Me… you…. The realization of how much you’ve changed right before my eyes…..yet I didn’t see it.”

“Your focus has been elsewhere Mac.”

“It’s almost like….like you’ve grown past me.”

“It’s not a competition,” Harm tried to say reassuringly.

“Isn’t it?”

“It is, only if you want it to be.”

‘Isn’t that part of the problem,’ she thought. Still, even sitting there tonight, she didn’t know what she wanted it to be. She only knew what she didn’t want. She didn’t want to lose him.

“I shouldn’t have interrupted you. You were telling me about Meg.”

“I think actually Mac, you were asking me about her.” Harm forced a smile. “Let’s just make something easy. What do you want to know?”

‘Nothing, everything..,’ she pondered. She wanted to come right out and ask him, but she knew this was his story and not an interrogation, and she wanted him tell it in his own way.She thought best to continue with his words. “Why was Meg different?”

Harm hesitated for a moment. He was thankful he had remained standing in the kitchen putting some physical distance between the two of them. His eyes then met Mac’s again. “Because Mac…. In spite of myself, in spite of everything I didn’t want to happen…… ……I was falling in love with her.” Harm was taken aback for a moment hearing those words come out of his mouth. This chapter in his life was something he never spoke about to anyone. He never thought he’d be telling Mac, especially not like this and especially not tonight. His history with Meg was just something he tucked away, like so many other events in his life. These events often managed to come to light, usually in ways he hadn’t expected. Harm just stood there, trying to gauge Mac’s reaction to his revelation, and trying to decide whether he himself wanted to continue.

“C’mon Mac. While I am sure the life and times of Harmon Rabb Jr. would make a great book someday, a trip down my memory lane isn’t what you came over to talk about is it?”

“I want you to tell me Harm….. I want to know.”

“Why?”

She didn’t have to speak. She simply looked at him, and he saw the answer. He knew he had to continue, for both of them.

“You know it was funny in its own odd sort of way. On our first assignment together, I saved Meg from drowning.” Anticipating Mac’s question before she asked, “It’s another long story. In her own way, that’s what she pretty much tried to keep me from doing the rest of our time together in one way or another. There were some pretty high currents that year. As I said……. She got me though a lot, even things at the time I really didn’t know I was going through. But she knew. She always knew. Things just started gradually building between us, and neither one of us pursuing it for all the obvious reasons. Work. Our friendship. Diane. And after Kate…..” Harm became quite for a moment, almost having to force the words out. “Then Meg was shot…………………….I almost lost her………”

For a moment Harm was transported back in time, feeling the guilt for not being there to protect Meg, and the fear he felt those moments by her bedside as he prayed for her to wake up. Mac saw the feelings wash right over him, feelings she herself became all too familiar with as she waited for news of Harm’s rescue from the Patrick Henry. For both of them, no matter how much time had passed, they were feelings neither one of them would ever forget.

“I guess deep down I knew then…there would be no turning back. Then Meg saved my life. Actually Meg and Krennick both did—rescuing me from the Chinese.” Harm shook off the memory with a soft laugh. Despite the nightmare of what he went though, he always found some humor in the rescue team of Austin and Krennick.

“Rescuing you from the Chinese?” Mac was not able to mask her surprise.

“Yeah… yet another long story. In this one, she thought I had been killed. After that, feelings were coming too close to the surface for us both, and we could no longer neatly tuck away what was happening. It was getting harder to continue on as we had before. She and I had changed. We changed. With the way Meg and I were heading, it was only going to be a matter of time until the reasons didn’t matter. And if we crossed that line………………. And there still was Diane. Though we agreed to see other people, what was happening with Meg was different. So Diane and I were getting together to figure us and the future out. I owed that to her. To us. And to Meg too.”

Harm stopped for a moment to collect his thoughts.

“But you never got the chance,” Mac offered trying to gently help him along.

“No… we didn’t. How about some coffee?”

“Sure, why not.” Mac saw through Harm’s invitation.

Harm busied himself making coffee. For him it served two purposes. It gave him a little breather, and it would help steady him for what he knew was still to be a long night ahead. After setting the coffeemaker, he continued.

“The dust began to settle from the investigation. I really don’t know what I would have done without her during it all. We started settling back in, trying to get back to normal, whatever that was.” Harm turned and began staring out the window. Staring at nothing really, but he didn’t want to look at Mac when he continued.

This wasn’t lost on her. “What happened next?” Mac asked.

“One night we happened. So there’s your answer Mac. Yes…… we did. It wasn’t planned. It just happened. I don’t know. Maybe it happened too soon after losing Diane. I was still so wrapped up in the loss….the guilt. I blamed myself. I even managed to blame the feelings I had for Meg for setting the events in motion. You’d think that after all of these years I’d have all the answers. I don’t. I don’t know if I ever will. Here was this woman that I was falling in love with, and at that point wanted to hold onto more than anything, needed more than anything, and I pushed her away harder than I pushed anything away in my life. I just didn’t know how not to at the time. Then I would just get angrier at myself. She deserved a hell of a lot better. She tried to stay in there though. Meg was a fighter, but even for her the fight got to be too much. I still don’t know what bothered her more. Me hurting her, or the effect my hurting her had on me.”

Mac fought the urge to go stand beside him. Right now she never felt closer to him, yet she never felt so far apart.

“Working together was becoming more and more difficult. She made a decision for us both. She requested an immediate transfer. I had no idea. I found out in a letter the day she left. She knew, despite everything, that I would try to talk her out of it.”

“Did you go after her?” Mac asked.

“No. She asked me not to. In her way she loved me enough to walk away, and I loved her enough to let her go. She said it was the best thing for us both, and I did my best to believe her at the time. And Meg, being Meg had recommended Bud’s transfer to JAG to make sure I still had someone watching out for me because she wouldn’t be there to anymore.”

Harm turned back to face Mac with a wistful smile. “In the end I guess for her it was the best thing. I hear she is married to some Texas oil tycoon, has a couple of kids, and she made commander not too long ago. Things turned out ok for her.”

“If she stayed, I probably wouldn’t have met you Harm.” Mac couldn’t help but feel a bit selfish at her remark.

“Maybe. Maybe not. Fate has its own way of intervening Mac. You know that. I guess losing Meg like that made me afraid of history repeating itself, but in a way it did, and it has….”

A light went off in Mac’s head. Though they had touched upon it in the past, it was still a moment in their history which Mac, immersed in her feelings of rejection, never quite understood. That is until now. “Sydney Harbor?”

Harm nodded. “Sydney Harbor.”

“Harm, why didn’t you tell me any of this before?”

“I don’t know Mac. Tell you what? I had a penchant for sleeping with my partners and driving them away?”

“Don’t do that. You know that’s not what I mean.”

“Mac…The day you walked into my life…. It was like everything coming back full circle. Then the same feeling of almost being stuck in two worlds. You can’t move forward, yet you can’t step back. . ”

“And I was in the shadow of not one, but two women….”

“Yeah, you were in the beginning. Maybe, even more than I realized at the time. I meant what I said though. I never did resent you for it. So many times when I would look at you……….But as time went on……… I guess that is why I tried to keep things at bay between us. In Australia it would have been so easy to take you to bed…to give into it all. It was you I wasn’t ready to let go of. I wasn’t ready to take a chance of losing you too. In hindsight though, maybe what I was doing was simply staving off the inevitable.”

Harm poured them both a cup of coffee, giving them both a moment to regroup.

“So did I answer your question Mac?”

“Yes you did…… and more.” Mac, in her own way, was still trying to process everything he said.

“Good.” Harm brought the coffee over and again took the seat next to Mac. “Now maybe we can get back to mine…………. Why did you come here tonight Mac? What is it that you want from me?”

To be continued………………………………………………………………

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]



Replies:

[> Thank you Alicia ! :) I still am curious to see what will follow ! -- Laurence, 05:17:22 03/10/15 Tue [1]


[ Edit | View ]
[> [> Great story line....loving it! -- FJN, 11:59:37 03/10/15 Tue [1]


[ Edit | View ]

[> Glad I tuned in tonite, good chapter, worth the wait Alicia. Thanks! -- JoyZ, 19:56:15 03/10/15 Tue [1]


[ Edit | View ]
[> Great emotional chapter. Can't wait for more. -- Beth, 07:33:01 03/11/15 Wed [1]


[ Edit | View ]
[> Great story! -- Cd, 18:09:26 03/22/15 Sun [1]

Please continue, soon! Thank you


[ Edit | View ]




[ Contact Forum Admin ]

Forum timezone: GMT-5
VF Version: 3.00b, ConfDB:
Before posting please read our privacy policy.
VoyForums(tm) is a Free Service from Voyager Info-Systems.
Copyright © 1998-2019 Voyager Info-Systems. All Rights Reserved.