| manette |
Invisible Ink |
November 11, 2003 |
Disclaimer: All things JAG belong to DPB.
Author Notes: This is a vignette from Mac's POV during season nine. I don't think we have been given much on the show about what is going on inside her head but lots of things have been written about her cold, unfeeling attitude. I know lots of fans seem very angry with her, but I just have trouble with the POV that paints the heroine of the show as a bitch. I just can't believe that TPTB intend for us to see her that way-- so this is my way of dealing with the season so far. My real view is that neither Harm nor Mac have dealt with what they are really feeling about each other yet, and I hope that is what we get to see in the coming weeks. I am a maniacal shipper and I am not comfortable putting blame on Harm or Mac when it comes to the trials and tribulations of their relationship--I like them both or I couldn't call myself a shipper. I wanted to post this before next week's episode since it looks as if we get some interaction between them and of course it could blow my take on things completely out of the water. LOL. It wouldn’t be the first time!! This also takes nothing away from how badly I feel about what Harm has gone through....I want to hug them both.
I watch as he steps off that plane and onto the Seahawk carrying the little girl. He is larger than life, certainly larger than the small TV screen he fills. And there it is—that smile that can bring me to my knees.
He looks happy. He looks good. He looks like he has moved on with his life.
I feel such pride—even if it’s not my place to feel it, but since when do feelings have to make sense? Harm is saving the world one little part at a time. It’s what he does best no matter what his job description might be, and I will always be proud that I have known this man.
I wander back into my office and sit down in my chair. The bullpen is buzzing as they all talk about Harm’s latest escapade, but I need to be alone. I want to close my eyes and hug that image of him close to my heart. Just the sight of him is enough to explode the flimsy façade I have stubbornly erected around myself.
Putting up a brave front is my specialty. Even before the day I came home from a sleep over to find out that my mother was gone and wasn’t coming back, I have been good at pretending not to care.
To anyone who asks, I say I don’t miss him. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it, but it’s a big fat lie. I miss him every single day when I wake up in the morning and every single evening when I go to bed at night. I miss him when I am busy at work and when I am doing absolutely nothing at home. The only time I don’t miss him is when I am asleep because then I am free to dream about him—free to imagine that I didn’t wake up from a nightmare called Paraguay only to find myself with a life that didn’t include Harmon Rabb.
Everything seemed to spiral out of control so quickly. When did we get so mad at each other? What single instance set this thing in motion that wrecked the lives we used to have?
For two years we had been moving cautiously toward each other, even if it was still entirely too slow and too platonic for my taste. I was madly in love with him—that was nothing new—but he seemed perfectly content with the way things were.
Then sometime last year things seemed to change—Harm became preoccupied and secretive. It wasn’t my choice, but we stopped spending as much time together. It wasn’t until he was accused of murder that I found out about Singer and her baby. I have to admit it hurt that he never once turned to me for help over something so important. He shut me out at the very time when he should have needed me the most.
By the time I agreed to help Webb, I really didn’t know where things stood with us. I was actually surprised when Harm said he didn’t want me to go on the assignment. He’d had two years to make his interest in me clear and he waited until I was leaving the country to say anything, so I called him on it and I felt a little foolish as soon as I did. He never trusted any of Webb’s assignments so his concern about my going away was probably more professional than personal anyway.
Webb called him oblivious, but I was starting to have doubts about that. Harm never backed down from going after anything he wanted. I had seen him doggedly chase down everything from his missing father to a part he needed for his Corvette with equal fervor. I was beginning to suspect that the only reason we weren’t lovers was because he didn’t want us to be. If he really wanted me then he would have made some attempt to let me know it.
Then he burst into that room and saved my life.
I was probably in shock from the near torture and I was worried that Webb was going to die, so I probably wasn’t thinking too clearly, but I just couldn’t figure out why Harm seemed so annoyed with me. He acted like I was some irritating problem that had to be taken care of because I couldn’t take care of myself. So I clamped down on the joy I felt at the sight of him and concentrated on the missiles and finding Sadiq.
We fell into the banter that we always used with each other—the banter that hid a racing heart and covered an anxious moment—the kind that said, ‘hey kid, we made it’, without getting mushy—but this time it had an edge to it that had never been there before. He seemed mad that he had to come all this way to save my six, and I was mad because he was treating me as if I was incapable of doing my job. In all the years we had been partners he had never before made me feel inadequate.
I knew that he was upset that I seemed close to Webb, but he of all people should have known how I was feeling after what we had been through. I had seen the kind of bond he shared with Skates and Teresa Coulter and even Webb on occasion if he was being honest with himself, and that was a part of his life that didn’t include me. So I didn’t understand his unrelenting sarcasm about Clay unless despite his denials he really was jealous.
I never even wondered how Harm had become a part of the mission. I just assumed the Admiral sent him, or the CIA borrowed him. I didn’t think to question it until Clay did. And then I found out that he resigned his commission to come find me. I allowed myself one brief moment to believe that meant he was there because he loved me. But that was before I remembered that he would do the same for anyone he cared about. There was a big difference between caring for someone and loving someone, and frankly, I was in no emotional condition to try to guess which category I fit in to.
I needed answers, but even being inches away from me in bed, he managed to circle around the subject of ‘us’, fending me off with stories about fake marriages and sarcastic references to Webb. Even though I told him I didn’t have a thing for Webb, I shamefully threw the fact that Clay had revealed his feelings for me in his face trying to force him into some admission that he wasn’t able to make.
Whatever he felt for me—loyalty, affection, even desire—they didn’t add up to love—at least not the grand passionate kind of love that he deserved to feel for someone. We shared a past, a bond, and a commitment to each other that I thought was unbreakable, but I think Harm felt trapped between our friendship and the possibility that we could be more. Something had always held him back from making that leap, and this time when he backed down, when he asked to table the discussion, it finally just seemed painfully clear to me that I needed to let him off the hook.
By the time we were ready to get in that cab I just couldn’t spar with him anymore. I couldn’t compete when my emotions were on the line, so I told him things would never work out for us. Never—with that one word I freed him of his obligation to me and extinguished any hope I had of ever making a life with him.
He probably felt relieved. After all, this wasn’t the first time that he had expressed sympathy for any poor man unfortunate enough to be involved with me. And boy was he right. The men I pick have always had to pay a price, and Harm had to pay dearly this time.
I never expected the Admiral to process his resignation. I still don’t know what to do with the guilt I feel about that. I never expected him to join the CIA and move on so easily without me. But then again, why not? My mother didn’t have a problem moving on either.
Sometimes when I’m home alone at night I go back to that hotel room in Paraguay and try to rewrite that scene in my head—wondering what would have happened if I had reached across those blankets and touched him. Wondering what would have happened if I had silenced him with a kiss when he stumbled over what to say. I should have touched him. I should have kissed him. I should have whispered all my dark secrets and offered myself to him in any way that he'd have me.
“I love you, Harm, and I always will.”
But I write my lines in invisible ink where no one can read them but me.
To anyone who asks, I don’t miss him at all.
The End