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Date Posted: 19:00:18 06/10/08 Tue
Author: .
Subject: The Eighteenth Message


Prompt: (from The Golden Girls, submitted by HarmMacLove)

Sophia: Rose, I need some advice too.
Rose: You need advice from ME?
Sophia: Yeah, frightening, isn't it?

Wordcount: About 2100 words

Category: Romance/drama

Rating: PG, just to be on the safe side

Disclaimer: These characters don't belong to me. I am using then just for fun, and will make no money from it.

Author's Notes: This story is set early in season 9. Carolyn Imes's deception hasn't been discovered yet.

Summary: Mac won't give up before trying once more.


*******************



The red car edged along the street, the driver craning her neck to look up at the windows in one of the buildings. "Finally!" she whispered to herself. "Finally, he's home." Mac had made many trips along that street in the last few weeks, and the light pattern in the apartment had been always the same, telling her that timers were set to suggest someone was there. She pulled her car to the curb and parked. She reached for the door handle, then paused to let her heartbeat slow down. After all this time of waiting and hoping and planning, she found that actually going in to talk to Harm, to just see him after months of the huge absence in her life, was going to be even more difficult than she had anticipated.

I have to do this, she thought. I can't just keep walking around, living day by day in a fog. I have to do something definite and figure things out. It will change everything forever, but … I can't keep on like this. She took a deep breath and climbed out of the car. She walked to the building, her feet feeling like lead weights. On the way up in the rickety old elevator, she rehearsed her careful speech. She was glad to see him, she hoped all was going well, she needed to talk to him…. Mac paused for a moment before his apartment door, closing her eyes and gathering her courage. She lifted a hand and knocked, intending to sound firm and confident but fearing she only sounded hesitant.

After a moment, the door opened to reveal Harm in a tee shirt and jeans, holding a guitar. He looked surprised to see her, and not especially welcoming. Mac opened her mouth to start her prepared remarks, but couldn't remember a thing about what she had planned to say. Harm raised a questioning eyebrow, then stepped aside so she could enter.

As she sidled past him, Mac tried to gather her wits. "I've left seventeen messages in the last five months."

"Yeah, I guess I have been gone a lot."

"Your friends have missed you. I've missed you." Ouch. Mac mentally kicked herself. That sounds like I'm not one of his friends. She tried again. "How have things been going?" She glanced around the apartment, feeling a pang of nostalgia as she thought about all the occasions she'd been here, in better circumstances.

"All right," Harm answered without enthusiasm. He sat back down in the large chair and began picking out a passage on the guitar.

Mac stood for a moment, undecided, then went to the sofa and sat, leaning her head back. She closed her eyes, letting the music wrap around her, its haunting melody exactly matching her mood.

After a few phrases, Harm stopped playing. "You're looking pretty tired. Webb keeping you up too late?"

"No," Mac answered without elaboration.

"So why did you come?"

Mac still couldn't remember how she was going to start her prepared speech, so she just said, "I wanted to talk to you."

"I thought we'd done our talking. You made that pretty clear."

"When did we really talk?" Mac asked. "We just sniped at each other, in between stretches of trying to figure out how to get out of that mess."

"Yeah, Webb's mess. For which he got … a warm reward after someone else saved the day."

"I thought he was dying. I was trying to encourage him to hang on."

"Encourage him for what? Hang on for what? Another go-round in the honeymoon suite he so helpfully pointed out a few days later?"

"Of course not." Mac sighed in discouragement. This was not going in any way as she had planned.

"I guess he was encouraged, judging from that cozy scene in the hospital the day we went in to see him," Harm continued.

"Well, at least he returned phone calls," Mac retorted. "He didn't ditch his friends when they tried to help. He didn't disappear without talking to anyone."

"What was there to stay around for? The Admiral booted me, and you didn't object much that I could see."

"I most certainly did! I said everything I could without setting his back up even farther! I hoped that when he'd calmed down, he'd reconsider. If I'd said too much, he would have felt that he had to stick to all he'd said. I've even tried to mention you from time to time, and all the good things you did around the office. He still just clenches his teeth, so he hasn't cooled off yet."

Mac shut her eyes and leaned back again, trying to keep the stinging in her eyes from becoming tears. She could almost feel Harm's gaze boring into her. At last, she spoke again.

"Harm, I need some advice."

"You need some advice from ME?" Harm sounded scornful and disbelieving.

"Yeah, frightening, isn't it?" Mac tried to grin and chuckle, but her face felt stiff and the laugh sounded dry and forced.

Harm just watched her, waiting for her to speak again.

Mac couldn't think of how to begin, so she just jumped into the middle. "I'm thinking of leaving JAG."

Harm looked startled, but then the look was replaced by an expressionless mask.

"Webb taking you away somewhere?"

"No. I'm just considering asking for a transfer, and going to work in a new place."

"What's Webb think about that?"

"Webb doesn't know about it, and has nothing to do with it anyway."

"What's happened? Is there a bit of discord in Wonderland? Lovers' spat?"

"Webb and I have only been friends. Friends and support to each other, after an awful experience that only the two of us were in. For most of it, anyway," Mac hastened to add. "I heard his screams when he was tortured, I saw two people shot right in front of me, I thought sure we were both finished, and we would have been if you hadn't charged in to save us." Mac winced at her choice of words; ‘charged in' sounded sarcastic and ungrateful.

"I couldn't talk about it to anyone else, of course, since it was CIA stuff. I could maybe have said things to you, because you had been there, too, but I couldn't reach you. I needed to talk to someone, and Clay was there, and Clay knew what had happened and had gone through it, too."

Mac paused, studying Harm thoughtfully. Harm was looking down at his guitar, but his jaw jutted aggressively.

"It almost became more than that. I know Webb was thinking along those lines, but I realized the connection wasn't any good basis for a relationship like that." Mac tried again to laugh. "That at least was one good decision I made."

"So what do you want my advice about? I'm not exactly a big career success at the moment." Harm looked back down at his guitar, and idly strummed a few chords.

"Why did you come to Paraguay?" Mac asked suddenly.

Harm continued to play. "You know why. We've been over all that."

"No, I don't know why! I don't dare assume anything. I've gotten into trouble that way."

There was no answer as Harm kept playing without looking up at her. Finally, he said, "You knew how I felt about you. I resigned to come down after you."

"You also resigned when you planned to go look for Sergei, back a few years ago. Did you feel the same way about him?"

Harm tossed her a look of disgust, but said nothing.

"Once I thought we were friends, and might be more than friends someday," Mac went on. "But somehow we could never work it out." The silence stretched between them, and Mac hurried to fill it. "It's hard, being around here with all the memories. Maybe a new station somewhere will help me get my life going again."

"So where would you go?"

"I don't know. Just somewhere else. Somewhere different. I need to start again."

"I'm a great one to ask for employment advice," Harm repeated. "I'm out on the street again. CIA dumped me."

Mac looked surprised. "They dumped you? But wasn't the mission a success? You rescued the people, and saved the plane! We had the TV on in JAG ops and we saw you."

"Yeah," Harm muttered. "I'm a hero all right… an unemployed hero."

Understanding dawned on Mac's face. "Oh…you wouldn't be able to go under cover any more. But couldn't they use you for something else?"

"I'm just a liability now, because my face is known. I'm out, and if anyone asks, they never heard of me."

"What are you going to do for work?"

"Who knows?" Harm got up, picking up his empty beer can. He walked over to a cabinet, opened it, and tossed the can into a bag inside. He opened the refrigerator and reached for another can, then paused. Instead, he pulled out two bottles of water and handed one to Mac, who had followed him over to the kitchen area. Mac opened her bottle and took a sip, then fidgeted with the cap.

"I need to know it in words," Mac finally said. "Please be honest. Do you care if I'm around? If not, say so, and it will help me make my decision."

"You were the one who said ‘never.'"

"And you didn't disagree."

"I thought that was what you wanted."

"It wasn't a matter of what I wanted. It was what I felt was happening." Mac shook her head in frustration. "I was tired and stressed and … it had been an awful few days. I couldn't see any way out of it all, especially after…." She hesitated. How could she admit how bereft she felt when Harm had just released her shackles without any visible reaction? No hug, no quick words of relief or glad-to-find-you or…whatever. Saying anything like that would make her sound petty, yet it had hit her hard. Rescuing her was just a job, just another assignment, not something important to him. "…especially after everything that had happened."

The silence lengthened. Harm took a long pull at the water bottle and glanced around the room, looking at anything except Mac.

Mac tried once more. "Was that what YOU wanted?"

Harm shrugged. "It doesn't matter what I wanted. You had obviously chosen Webb."

"I chose to share the hotel room with you," Mac reminded him. "I could have stayed with him."

"Yeah, you could have gone back to the honeymoon suite. I gather he let you be on top."

Harm's remark was so illogical and so crude that Mac's heart sank. He clearly wasn't going to let it go. This whole thing had been a waste of time just as she'd feared. Now she'd burned her bridges, and there was no reason to prolong the pain. With a soft sigh of resignation, she took a step closer to him, reaching out to lay her hand on his arm. "Okay, I guess it's goodbye, then. I'll remember all the…." Her voice was muffled as Harm abruptly pulled her against him.

"No." Harm said firmly. "No, I don't want you to go. I don't want you to be hundreds, maybe thousands of miles away, where I can't see you." His arms tightened. "Notice that this time, I didn't wait until you had one foot out the door."

Mac was numb with amazement which soon became hope. Were things finally going to get straightened out?

"Of course I was glad to see you," Harm continued in a rough voice. "You're crazy if you thought I wasn't. I would have been glad to save anyone, but to save you, well, I was so relieved you were still alive that I couldn't think about it, much less say anything profound. I also was trying to figure out how to get us out of there safely."

Mac just relaxed against him, closing her eyes and feeling a wave of warmth and safety flowing through her.

"I'm sorry I didn't return your calls. I didn't want to talk about work, since I wasn't there any more, and I didn't know what else to say." Harm eased back to look at her without releasing the circle of his arms. "I hope you don't go."

"Then we're still friends?" Mac asked, figuring that would be a good place to start.

"Yes, of course."

"Maybe more than friends?"

"Maybe."

Mac's soft smile became a pert grin. "In that case, I guess I'll stick around. After all, it's never easy to negotiate top or bottom when you're talking long distance."

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Replies:

[> made me want to see more! great tension. -- Jill, 19:36:08 06/10/08 Tue [1]


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[> *happy sigh* I wish we got to see something like this. -- Mandy, 19:48:05 06/10/08 Tue [1]


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[> Ended too soon! -- kate, 20:01:01 06/10/08 Tue [1]


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[> Well done! However....the dialogue ended too soon. -- lotilu, 20:08:47 06/10/08 Tue [1]


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[> Oh, I wish ... (sigh) ... (inside) -- Teacup, 20:15:18 06/10/08 Tue [1]

Nicely done. Felt the emotion - pain, conflict, relief. I really wish that they had gotten things straightened out before Mac got involved with Webb on the show. In your story it was definitely "one good decision" that she made not to pursue something more with him. And of course, it's nice to see her giving the extra effort, even though Harm was being stubborn and difficult. Good to see him come around too and set everything right.


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[> Nice Job. -- BlueJay, 20:31:10 06/10/08 Tue [1]


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[> Wonderful! Loved the emotion! If only it had played out this way. -- ...., 20:58:40 06/10/08 Tue [1]


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[> Have you heard of the word epilogue??? PLEASE!!!!! -- Katiegirl, 21:03:32 06/10/08 Tue [1]


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[> Nice dialogue. Good job building the scene. -- siri, 21:51:29 06/10/08 Tue [1]

I agree with the above though: the denouement left me hanging...


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[> I agree also. This ended much too soon. Please More! -- Debbi, 22:15:37 06/10/08 Tue [1]


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[> Ditto everyone else's comments, and this one sooooo begs a sequel! You're not done here! Thanks! -- judy52sa, 22:39:57 06/10/08 Tue [1]


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[> Great dialogue and alternative to what happened on the show -- keep going!!!!! (if you feel it) -- mj, 03:19:13 06/11/08 Wed [1]


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[> This was so in character for both Harm and Mac at this point, but I agree with the others. Surely there's more to this story. -- Lee, 14:11:23 06/11/08 Wed [1]


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[> I agree with everyone it ended to quickly but i did enjoy reading it. -- Bev uk, 16:14:20 06/11/08 Wed [1]


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[> Re: FF: The eighteenth message -- Marianne, 16:23:23 06/11/08 Wed [1]

This started off very scarily, especially the bit about Mac's wanting a transfer, but then it got all H/M shippy and kind of fluffy (or pre-fluffy?) and lovely, thanks!


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[> Oh, this was the way it should have happened! Great job! -- JAG Junkie (Ronda), 18:25:56 06/11/08 Wed [1]


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