Choose Your Ending

Disclaimers in part 1

I kept my hand at the edge of her mask as her hand moved to the edge of mine. At the same time, we finally revealed the other. Once we opened our eyes after pulling the masks off, we both stepped back in shock. Sarah MacKenzie stared back at me in utter silence.

Several things flashed through my mind quickly. The most important of which is the fact that the woman I had been fantasizing about all night is standing in front of me. I also thought about the fact that she even though she didn’t know it was me, she finally admitted her feelings for Harm. What other co-worker could she have been talking about?

We both started when a bright flash of lightning lit the sky soon followed by a loud rumble of thunder. I took her arm and led her to the overhang in case the impending rain surprised us.

“I am so sorry, sir,” she said obviously embarrassed.

"We didn't really do anything wrong," I tried to make her feel better. She had no need to know that I was thinking about her.

"Admiral, I just spent the last 4 hours thinking Prince Charming was you," she said softly.

"How did you know it was me?"

"I didn't.  I said that wrong, I wasn't thinking it was you, I was hoping it was."

"I'm the one you can't have?"  I didn't know what to say.  "What about Rabb?"

"I don't think of him that way anymore.  Beside, I knew you weren't him immediately, sir."

"How?"

"You have brown eyes," she said with a small smile making me wonder how I didn’t recognize her earlier.

We stood there silently for a few moments.  I just stood there letting myself remember the feel of her in my arms before she slipped further away.

"What are we going to do now, Sarah?"

"I'll transfer.  I'm sure you don't want me at JAG anymore now.  What we did was wrong," she kept insisting.

"All we did was admit our feelings, we didn't act on them," I said.

"I was the one who admitted my feelings, you did nothing."

"Who do you think I was dancing with, Sarah?" I asked tenderly, unable to resist stroking her cheek.  I think that my admission surprised her as much as hers did.

"We can't act on this," I said hating to cause her any pain.  I wasn't too surprised to feel a tear trickled down her cheek past my thumb.  "At least, not yet.  Someday we will.  I promise you that."

"You said before it was wrong," she said with a slight hitch in her voice.

"It was then and right now it still is.  I'm your CO now, but that doesn't mean that I always will be," I said trying to ease some of her pain.

"So we just go on as if nothing happened?  You want me to forget tonight, AJ?” she asked incredulously.

"Yes and no.” I was pleased to finally here her call my name even though I knew that it was something that I could not get used to.  “We need to get past this for now but I don't want us to ever forget what happened tonight.”

“I agree, sir. We do need to get past this somehow.” I was disappointed to see her turn and walk back in through the double doors leading to the ballroom. I didn’t say anything as she turned back and spoke so softly I almost missed it.

“You were right about something else. I don’t want to forget tonight either.”

The end