Disclaimer: Don’t own’em

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<b> Missing – Part 3</b>

<b> Honesty </b>

“You’re not going to invite me in, Sarah?”

Mac stepped aside as Clayton Webb entered her apartment for the first time in months. She watched him closely, trying to determine the reason behind his sudden visit. Something about him was off key and she knew that would bother her until she found out what it was.

He didn’t look much different. He had lost some weight. He looked paler and yet, oddly, flushed. And his eyes. They had seemed so empty on his deck at Manderley, had held such loss that it had taken all her strength, buffeted by frustration, to walk away. She could still see those eyes sometimes, that look. But something was different about his eyes. They seemed distant, unfocused-

“Have you been drinking?”

“No, Sarah,” he leaned slightly towards her and pretended not to notice her pull away. “Do you smell it on me?”

She eyed him wearily, worriedly. She knew that look. “I didn’t know vodka was your new drink of choice.”

“How would you? You didn’t stick around.”

Thick, slimy prickles of discomfort suddenly began their slow crawl up her back, around her legs, down her arms. She did not want to do this. She had been doing so well. She could not face this now. Face him. Face her actions and decisions. How did everything go so wrong?

“Are you going to blame my job and your demands again, Sarah?” She started at his reply; she didn’t realize she had said that last thought out loud.

She studied his face carefully. It was in some ways unrecognizable from the face she had been acquainted with, had cared for. She wondered what would have become of her if she hadn’t had all those years of alcoholism and sobriety under her belt. Would she have handled – or rather, been unable to handle – the situation the way Clay was? Something else to thank her father for. He had cost her her childhood, her friend, her faith in men and commitment. But she did get firsthand experience in overcoming adversity. Hourah.

“Now you have nothing to say?” he gave a sardonic laugh, “actually, abandoning people who love you runs in your family, doesn’t it?”

Her eyes flew to his, looking for some sign of remorse, of guilt. She didn’t see anything beyond that mocking, uncaring vacancy she had once been on familiar terms with in the mirror. Thank god he didn’t use her name. That was not something she would have been able to handle without remembering things better left forgotten. Thank god she had a thick skin when it came to the things men told her while drunk.

“How many notches on your bedpost, Sarah?” her name oozed out from the pores of his derision.

This conversation was getting out of hand. She could feel her control over herself, over the situation, slipping. His words were bringing back everything from the past year. Everything she had tried so hard to bury in a place where she would never find it again. And then a few words from him and it all erupted out of its own grave. Fucking fantastic. She clenched her jaw. She would not cave in to anger. She took a deep breath. Another. She would not give in to anger because if she did, she would have to figure out whom she was angry with. She searched valiantly for her well-worn cloak of sadness and despondence. She was on very good terms with loss. It was time to strengthen that relationship.

She heard the door to her bedroom open and closed her eyes. This was going to get ugly, she could feel it in her bones.

“Hey, Mac, we could go-” Harm stopped in mid-sentence and mid-step when he noticed Webb standing in the entrance to her apartment.

Webb looked away from Mac and towards the source of the male voice. His eyes fell on Harm and their gazes locked. Harm tensed, willed his hands to stay at his side and not grab Webb by the collar and ream him a new one.

Harm glanced towards Mac and his anger was fuelled by the sadness he saw once again firmly wrapped around her. Damn it. What the hell could Webb possibly have said in the last five minutes. Asshole.

“You need to leave,” Harm’s words clipped out on the edges of fury.

His response was a mocking Webb smile, “you don’t speak for her.”

Harm frowned, clenched his fists. The hell he didn’t.

Mac decided it was necessary to intervene. She reached around Clay for the doorknob, “Leave, Clay. Come back when you’re sober. When you really want to talk.”

She felt Clay’s hand wrap itself around her wrist. She felt more than saw Harm take a step in their direction. She straightened, sadness fleeing in the wake of anger, until she was face to face with Webb. Hadn’t she just been telling herself to take ownership? This would be the last time she gave in to something just because she was tired of fighting the good fight. She put her free hand on the doorknob and opened the door, her eyes never leaving his. “Leave.”

They stared at each other for a long while until Webb finally relented. His hand left her wrist, he turned to leave but not before letting his eyes slowly roam her face. “It’s just the way you operate, Sarah. You can’t escape that. No more than I can.” Then he left without another word.

Mac leaned heavily against the door to shut it. Damn it. The echoes of memory hung heavy in the air and she fought to remind herself that the circumstances were different. He would never hurt her while sober, she knew. But this. This didn’t bear thinking about. And she wouldn’t think about it because nothing had happened. And if he had tried anything, she would have broken bones he didn’t even know he had.

“Mac.”

She heard Harm’s voice, soft and warm, from behind her. She sighed before turning and levelling him a defiant look.

“What?” The word came out harsher than she had intended, but she didn’t want to talk about this. And it felt damn good not to hear that all too familiar note of resignation in her voice. She was not going to give an inch ever again. Ever.

He gave her a tentative smile as he walked towards her and nodded towards the door, “That was impressive.”

She could see his obvious pride in her. Well, she conceded, Harm could have half an inch. But that was it.

She returned his smile with a tentative one of her own.

His eyes latched onto her soft smile while his head replayed her confrontation with Webb. A look she was all too familiar with overran his features.

She put a hand on his arm. “You can’t be angry with him,” she hesitated before continuing, “You used to be friends.”

Harm gave a disbelieving laugh, shook his head ruefully “I don’t pretend to know what the hell I was thinking.”

“Harm,” her tone held warning and reproach. “He helped you in the past. Right now...Right now, he’s having...” she hesitated, “difficulty. And I think he’s turning to the wrong kind of temporary fix.”

Harm eyed her curiously until suddenly the meaning behind her words dawned. This time she could feel the tension and anger radiate off of his skin and slam into the empty spaces in her apartment. “Bastard. In front o f you...”

“Harm. Don’t. Please.” She didn’t think she could bear to have both of them rehash the last, painful year of her life. She stopped herself and made a concerted effort to remove the pleading tone from her voice. He needed to forgive Webb, or at least get beyond what had happened. Because if he couldn’t forgive one friend a mistake, how would she ever know if he would forgive her hers.

“He’s lost. He’ll get help. I’ll-“

“Mac. He is not your responsibility,” neither his emphatic tone nor the urgency in his voice went unnoticed by her.

She removed her hand but he grabbed it before she could pull away completely.

“Mac, you can’t fix this. You know that.”

She stared at him. How could he say that?

“If I can’t fix that,” she waved her hand towards the closed door, “then I-” she stopped, suddenly realizing exactly what she was about to confess.

“Then you what, Mac? You move on from him. He is not worth the dirt on the bottom of your shoe.”

She watched him intensely, her focus not wavering. “What about you?”

The question took him by surprise. He frowned, tried to determine the direction of her thoughts. “What about me?”

She remained silent, her eyes fixed on his.

“Mac, this has nothing to do with me. You and Webb-” he was stopped by the vehement shake of her head.

He still didn’t understand, “Then what, Mac? Talk to me.”

“It has a lot to do with you, Harm.” She pulled her hand from his grasp and wandered aimlessly around her living room before sitting on the couch, leaning into the cushions.

She studied him for a moment as he stood behind her coffee table with his hands on his hips, before her eyes unseeingly fell on the coffee table surface. “I couldn’t put my finger on it, but some piece was missing.” She looked up at him, hesitant yet thoughtful, “some part of you just wasn’t there. I still don’t know what it was, is. But I want so badly for it to come back. Because I need us to get past this. I need to apologize for everything-”

“You,” he said softly, cutting her off, his gaze steadily on hers.

He slowly made his way around the coffee table, raised his eyebrows expectantly, wondered how she would react to his confession. “You. You were missing.”

“What?” shock reduced her voice to the barest of whispers.

Suddenly, in front of his very eyes, the tension returned, made her shoulders taught, her spine stiff, her bearing determined. He watched her, sitting cross-legged on the couch, leaning slightly against the backrest, hands resting on her knees, jaw set. But the sadness still lurked in her eyes, a thief in the night.

He sat down beside her on the couch, facing the coffee table. “Talk to me, Mac,” he turned his head to look at her and tried his damndest to offer encouragement and support instead of crowding her.

She shook her head. He could see she still had her jaw clenched. Slowly, suddenly, he saw the tension leave her until she deflated. She put her head in her hands, her elbows on her knees. Her form hunched.

“I can’t,” she whispered. The words gently wrapped themselves around his heart.

Harm rallied his courage. This was it. Final step. Honesty.

“You know,” he watched her from the corner of his eye to gauge her reaction, “I didn’t even talk to my mom the whole time. Didn’t contact her.” He waited for the censure but knew it wouldn’t come. She would understand, always had. Even if she didn’t always agree.

Mac looked up; her eyes widened in surprise, her mouth fell slightly open. Let no one say Harmon Rabb had lost his ability to shock the hell out of her.

He looked away, didn’t want to see the question in her eyes. But he answered it anyways. Honesty. “I couldn’t bear to. Couldn’t explain it,” he suddenly shook his head and pursed his lips, “no that’s a lie.” He took a breath, expelled his impatience with himself on an angry spurt of air. “I was ashamed.”

There. He said it. That wasn’t so bad. He turned to look at her. “I was humiliated. I am not in the habit of losing. I expected,” he paused, debated whether to divulge anymore. To hell with it. It was past time for honesty. He had been lying not only to her and the world, but to himself for the last god knows how long. “I expected you to be so happy to see me that everything would just fix itself. For that one moment, when I-” the words caught in his throat. He stared at the floor between his feet. The image of her lying there, strapped to a table, helpless, had weaved itself into the very fabric of his soul. It would be his constant companion through every moment of his life, would follow him beyond death.

“When I found you…there…”- enough, he forced his thoughts to move on - “a small part of me was high on my heroics.” He gave a humourless laugh before sobering. “I had saved you,” he shook his head sadly. “My pride, Mac, is not something I can give up easily. It’s what kept me going after the ramp strike. It’s what has kept me going after a lot of,” he searched for a word that wouldn’t reveal too much, “difficult things. Down there, back here, I saw you and Webb and-”

“Harm.” He felt her hand on his arm, but dammit he was on a role with the whole honesty thing. He didn’t know how much longer it would last if she interrupted him.

“Mac, I have to say this. I need to.” He felt her slowly remove her hand.

“Thing is, Mac,” he turned to her, pulled one leg up onto the sofa and took her hand in both of his, but still he couldn’t look at her face. He was still ashamed. Some nights when all he could feel was the darkness permeating his room and all he could see was her face, guilt was the only thing that separated him from sleep. But he only saved that for the night and the privacy of his room. During the day he had his pride to maintain. His stupid pride. “Thing is, I forgot why I went down there. I forgot why I did it, the whole thing. I didn’t do it because I was expecting something in return. We both know that’s not how we work. You didn’t traipse across Russia, twice, for anything but my wellbeing. Hell, you’ve never done anything only to want something in return.” The burden of memory softened his words, “I’d never done it either, never expected anything, until Paraguay. I forgot. I forgot that I did it for you,” he ended on a whisper, “Not for me.”

He finished his hard-won confession, “and I’m sorry for it.” He made himself look at her. Tears were trailing down her cheeks, her eyes were focussed on their still-joined hands which rested in the space between them.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated because he didn’t know what else to say.

She shook her head, sniffed and suddenly the tears would not stop. He watched as they flowed down her cheeks and fell onto her lap, he watched as she tried to wipe them away with her free hand, he watched her sob quietly and felt every grief-filled breath deep in his heart.

“Sarah,” he took her in his arms and felt her cry in earnest. He held her as her shoulders shook with each sob and her tears soaked through his shirt, imprinting his skin with their cool wetness. He repeated her name because he did not know what else to say.

Moments or minutes or a lifetime later, she pulled away, her face averted from his. She reached for a tissue from the coffee table, tried to wipe away the tears. Finally, finally she looked at him and he could see her eyes. Eyes which never lied to him, even if he wasn’t willing or ready to listen.

“I’m sorry, Harm.” She hesitantly reached out and ran her thumb over his knuckles. A small part of him was saddened by the tentativeness of the gesture; a larger part was simply relieved by the gesture itself.

“I haven’t been fair to you,” she paused and he didn’t know if she would continue.

“You had things to work through,” he ventured. He remembered their words in the hospital on Christmas. “I should have been there for you.”

She shook her head, her eyes fixed on her thumb as it traced the ridges of his knuckles. “I didn’t make it easy. I just, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know who this person inside me was, who I’d become, why I was doing what I was...” she trailed off before continuing, “I didn’t want you seeing her and hating me. I didn’t want to see her and I was well on my way to hating myself.” The tears again started to fall. “I’ve never felt so...unmoored. I’d get so angry in one moment, I couldn’t see straight. And in the next moment I’d feel so sad I couldn’t breathe. And then I couldn’t feel anything. Just numb. I didn’t know what to do. So I just reacted. I pushed you away. I hurt you.”

He took a quick breath in through his nose, tried to keep the tears at bay, watched her thumb as it traced the veins on the back of his hand.

“Mac. Sarah,” he paused, felt his voice crack, tried to reign in his whirling emotions, “I don’t want you to be sorry. I should have understood. I should have tried to see it from your where you were standing.”

“I should have done the same, Harm,” he could hear the tears still thick in her voice and felt his own sneak their way into his eyes.

Softly, delicate, her fingers wiped the tears from the corners of his eyes and never in his life had he experienced such a distinct, paralyzing mixture of comfort and relief as he did in that one gesture.

His eyes met hers.

“Sarah, I should never have walked away.”

She shook her head slowly, traced a finger down his cheek. “I should never have pushed. I hope somehow, some day, Harm, you can forgive me. I’m so sorry.”

He couldn’t decide whether to shake his head at her need to apologize or nod in acceptance and absolve her of her self-inflicted guilt. He attempted both before giving up and leaning forward to rest his forehead against hers, momentarily closing his eyes.

Suddenly honesty didn’t seem so hard. “No matter what, Mac, don’t ever doubt that you’re everything to me. You’re all that I am.”

He opened his eyes and saw that she was once again silently crying, her gaze once again focused on their joined hands.

Relief gave him access to levity, “You’re going all soft on me, Marine.”

He heard her gentle, teary laugh, felt it on his lips. She looked at him and for the first time in months, that glimmer of sadness was in retreat.

“I think you’ve cornered the market for tonight, Sailor.”

A smile, unbeckoned, graced his lips. He had missed her so much, the sound of her laughter, the lilt of her voice, the warmth in her eyes.

“I missed you, Mac.”

She frowned, confused, for a moment before realization dawned. She looked away.

“Sorry, I’m so sorry.”

For one brief moment, he was terrified of seeing the sadness claim dominion over her and nullify all their effort and progress.

“None of that, Mackenzie. New plan. No more sorries. We’re done with that.”

She gave an incredulous laugh, her eyes still teary, “What? Just like that?”

“Just like that. This last year has been one royal clusterf- umm,” he gave her a sheepish look, “Sorry. Mess. One royal mess. No more of that. It’s done and we can’t change what’s past. We can change what’s coming up. The golden rule of friendship: we forgive each other. I’ve accepted your apology. You?”

She nodded, not entirely convinced of the merits of this plan.

“We can’t throw this at each other when we’re upset. Agreed?”

She nodded and seemed to genuinely agree on the importance of this particular stipulation.

“And if one or the other of us needs to talk about this, we talk about it. Before it gets to be too big for us to handle. Agreed?”

She nodded.

“Most importantly, Sarah,” his voice softened, caressed her name as it always did, “we forgive ourselves. Agreed?”

She nodded, the tears once again laying their silent tracks. But she looked doubtful about being able to hold up her end of this particular caveat.

So he asked again, with a bit more emphasis, “Agreed?”

She paused, her brow furrowed, before nodding resolutely.

“Anything you would like to add?” he raised his eyebrows in question.

She studied him, gave his question some thought before nodding once again. He waited.

“You never forget that you’ve always been all I ever wanted, Harm.”

He pulled her in for a tight, consuming hug, buried his face in her neck and held her. Or she held him. Or both. He couldn’t tell and he was past caring.

“Never,” he repeated.

The End.