This fic takes place during the early stages of Tony's imprisonment, before the anger consumes him.

I realize this is yet another relatively depressing subject, but what can I say? I don't do so well with fluff, not that I don't try :p… Anyway, I hope it at least gives you something to think about…

The only thing that stopped her from turning and running away from this horrible place as fast as her feet would carry her, was the thought that if she stayed, she would see him. She wouldn't get to hug him, or kiss him or even touch him, but the idea of just seeing his face, of hearing his voice- even if it was just through a phone on the other side of a glass wall- kept her going, kept her placing one foot in front of the other.

She had come from Seattle last night, and her heart had broken once again as she entered their house. She usually told people that it was CTU that she couldn't face without him, CTU that held way too many memories for her to do her job well- but if she was honest with herself, it had been their own house that had led her to request a transfer barely two weeks after his arrest. Everywhere she looked, it was as if his absence taunted her, blamed her, simply sucked the life out of her. She had hoped that some time away would help, but she had felt the heavy coat of guilt and self-loathing start to strangle her once again as soon as she entered the bedroom. So she had spent a restless night on couch instead.

She forced herself to shove these thoughts aside, not wanting the first thing for him to see to be her pain. She tried to put on a happy face, but it had been so long since she had attempted anything that even remotely resembled a smile that she found it harder than she could have ever thought possible. It had been only a month since he'd been taken from her, but it was as if the life that had once been hers was now further away than anyone could ever realize.

He was already there when she finally arrived, and with one look in his eyes, she saw they so clearly reflected everything she felt. Her breath caught and she automatically reached for the phone, even though she knew nothing would come out if she tried to talk. Neither of them said anything for a moment; they didn't have to. The connection was already enough for now, the mere knowledge that if they wanted, they could talk to each other. That was a luxury they had only been able dream of for the past month.

He spoke first, and his voice was soft and hoarse, as if it hadn't been used very often lately.

"Michelle…"

It was only the mention of her name, and yet it already brought back so many memories of all the sentences he had ever begun like that. She made another attempt to smile, and this time she managed just a little, even though it felt unfamiliar and out of place.

"Hey."

She wanted to say so much more, but that was all that she could muster for now. They looked at each other again, and she could feel her own pain slowly start to dominate her features, despite her fierce attempts to hold it back. He easily caught it.

"It's okay, sweetheart."

It was just a whisper, but she heard the crack in his voice just the same. No it's not okay, she wanted to scream at him, Of course it's not okay, how can you even say that?

Instead she just closed her eyes in defiance, and asked him after a moment, "How are you?"

Now it was his turn to smile for her sake, and she could tell that it was as much an effort for him as it had been for her a moment earlier.

"I'm getting by."

There was another silence, and she struggled to say something. There were a million things she wanted to tell him, ask him, but it was is if her brain refused to form coherent sentences with all the words that were swimming around in her head.

Seeing her distress, he spoke instead.

"How's Seattle?"

She had written him to tell him she was moving, promising that she would be back once a month to see him. He had willingly let her go, knowing a change of environment would be good for her. It wasn't as if she was permitted to come see him every day anyway.

She hesitated. "Different."

He forced a curious glint into his eyes. "Good different?"

She looked at him. How can anything be good different without you?

She shrugged her shoulders and helplessly shook her head. "I don't know."

She was back to whispering again, and he didn't want that. He wanted to hear her teasing voice, her flirtatious voice, her laughing voice. He wanted her eyes to dance like they had on their wedding day. He wanted the corners of her mouth to turn up into that smile that never ceased to make him go weak in the knees. If only she would do that, then he felt certain he could go back to face the terrors he had survived in the past month. Now he wasn't so sure.

"It'll get better, sweetheart," he heard himself telling her, although his own voice seemed far away, "I know it's hard now… but it'll get better once we get used to…"

She couldn't believe what she was hearing, not when she could so easily read in his eyes that he didn't believe a word of what he was saying either. And the fact that he would lie in a desperate attempt to ease her pain, proving once and for all that he would do anything for her regardless of what it might do to him- made her do exactly what she had sworn to herself that she wouldn't. She started to cry.

"Tony," she said, her voice thick with tears, "Honey, I miss you."

He felt his stomach turn, just like it always had before on the rare occasions when she had cried.

"Ssshh, no, Michelle, don't…" His hand automatically reached out to her, and when it banged mercilessly against the glass, he though he would go crazy for not being able to hold her when she needed it so badly.

"I'm sorry," she uttered, bringing her hand up to her forehead, trying to protect him from her own tears.

"Hey," he said, leaning forward, "Hey, look at me." When she hesitated, he repeated, "Baby, look at me."

Slowly, she removed her hand and forced herself to look into his eyes. He held her gaze for a long time, before saying softly, "Michelle, this is the best way things could have ever turned out. You could have died, I could have died, millions of other people could have died… this way everyone gets to live, right? That's the most important thing."

"But… but you…" She could feel herself getting worked up again, and he almost unnoticeably shook his head at her. "It's so… it's so unfair." She felt like a three-year-old saying it, but it was the truth.

He shook his head at her again. "We can survive this. I know…" his voice shook slightly for the first time, "I know it seems like everything is falling apart right now, but… We can do this, Michelle."

She looked at him through her tears, and the raw pain in his eyes sent fresh waves of guilt and agony soaring through her body. How could he be so sure about that? It had only been a few weeks and he was already different. How was she supposed to come back month after month, watching him slowly break into tiny pieces that she was afraid she would never be able to put back together?

Catching on to her hesitation, she said, his voice reaching new levels of pain, "Unless… unless you don't think you're up to it…"

She didn't understand what he was getting at, and looked at him in confusion.

"Michelle… we both know I'm gonna be in here for a very long time. If a divorce is what you want, I'll understand."

She was horrified that he would even think that. "No! Tony, no. Don't even say it."

"Are you sure?" he asked carefully, "Think about it. Twenty years is a long time, and that's if we get lucky. I can't expect you to-"

"I love you." Her voice was clearer now that it had been the whole time she'd been here. "I always will. You know that, right?"

He looked at her for a long time, before softly saying, "Yeah."

God, he knew; it was the one thing he had clung to this past month, the one thing that had always pushed him to keep going. She loves you. She needs you to pull through.

He wanted to change the subject, try to take her mind off what he knew had been eating away at her every minute of every hour of every day, but she spoke before he had even opened his mouth.

"Besides," she told him, "I talked to Jack. He promised he'd try to convince President Palmer to grant you a presidential pardon."

He sighed, knowing how slim the chances were of that ever happening, and hating the fact that when the inevitable rejection came, his wife would be even more broken than she already was.

"Michelle…"

"Tony, don't look at me like that. Please, just let me hang on to this."

He eyed her carefully, noting that there was something defiant about her now, something stubborn. And he welcomed this. Anything but the gut-wrenching helplessness he had only seen in her so far.

"Alright."

She looked at his features, letting herself get lost in his eyes for just a moment, just a moment where she could pretend she actually believed that Jack would be able to work his magic and that her husband would be returned to her in a couple of weeks instead of twenty years.

But as reality hit her again, she tore her eyes away from his, focussing instead on the greyish band-aid on the left side of his neck. Her heart clenched at what she had almost forgotten.

"How's your neck?"

Automatically, his hand flew up to finger the band-aid, just like she had seen him do so many times on the day he was shot. She knew what he was going to say even before he opened his mouth.

"I'm fine, Michelle, don't you worry about-"

She shook her head in frustration. "Don't do that, Tony, I hate it when you do that! It only makes me worry even more."

She remembered the sharp words he had uttered when she tried to approach him after Kim had voiced her concerns about his ability to run CTU in his condition. It was the way he had reacted that had led her to believe he really wasn't up to it; he had been so short with her, so impatient, so unlike himself- and that had caused her to really consider Kim's words to be accurate. That was what had driven her to Chappelle's office.

A painful silence hung between them as they looked at each other. He marvelled at how small and childlike those issues seemed now; he couldn't for the life of him remember why he had stayed angry with her for so long, over something which really hadn't been more than a simple misunderstanding that had been mostly his fault anyways.

"Michelle…"

"No. Tony. Just listen to me for a minute, okay?"

He just wanted to apologize for the many times he was a jerk to her that one day, but he sensed that she really needed him to hear her out, so he forced himself to nod. He hoped she wouldn't try to say she was sorry for going to Chappelle; he knew he wouldn't be able to stand hearing her apologize after the hard time he'd given her about it.

"Look," she said, "I know everything was all wrong between us that day. And if I had died, the last time we would have seen each other…"

Her voice trailed away as she saw his eyes close. It had haunted her the whole time she was in that hotel, just like it had undoubtedly haunted him. They had been so happy together these last three years, and she despised the thought it would end in a fight.

"But I hope this didn't affect your decision to choose me above…" she continued, begging herself to keep the quaver out of her voice, "Because I would have understood. I wouldn't have died thinking you didn't love me or anything…"

He shook his head, wanting to reassure her that he did what he did because he loved her, and because he couldn't bare to see any harm come to her. But his throat choked up and he felt tears coming to his own eyes at the obvious notion that she was blaming herself for the way things had turned out.

"It's not your fault," he managed to bring out, cursing himself for the single tear that he knew she saw before he had the chance to wipe it away. He hadn't cried in years.

She wanted to comfort him like he had tried to do for her before, but she found herself unable to think of anything that would make him feel better. It was her fault, and she knew that nothing would be able to convince her otherwise, not even him.

She though back a minute to her high school years, when she- like probably every teenage girl on the planet- had dreamed of a man who would love her enough to sacrifice everything for her. When he looked around at her male classmates, in truth, she hadn't really believed this person existed.

But now that she had found him, found a man that had indeed loved her enough to fling the rest of the world out of the window for her, she wished with all her might that he could have just let her die. And as much as she hated this thought, she hated what was happening to him so much more.

He had swallowed a couple of times, and was about to tell her that nothing mattered to him as long as she was alright, when one of the guards roughly tapped him in the shoulder and said, "Two more minutes. Wrap it up, Almeida."

With a sigh, he turned back to Michelle, answering the question in her eyes with the words, "I have to go."

She opened her mouth as if wanting to protest, but shut it again when she was realized that the whole thing was entirely out of his control. And the fact that other people had the power of how deciding how much time she got to spend with her husband, made her want to scream at the unfairness of it all.

Instead, she closed her eyes briefly, forcing away the thought that she wouldn't see him again for another month, and nodded.

He wanted to say something that would miraculously make everything alright again, something that would make her smile that stunning smile of hers one last time before he was taken away. But all he could manage was to grip the phone tighter for a moment, look longingly into her eyes and say, "I love you."

They'd never been the kind of couple that said that to each other a million times a day because they hadn't needed to; they knew each other well enough sense it and never question it. But now as she looked back at him, saw the pain and uncertainty in his stance, and knew that she had to say it, despite the fact that she had just told him not so very long ago.

"I love you so much, Tony."

And with that, she saw him slowly stand up and allow the guard to cuff him, his eyes never leaving her face. It was only when the guard shoved him forward and he was forced to break eye-contact that she automatically stood up and reached a hand out towards the direction he was being lead away. He didn't look back at her; she knew he couldn't bare to.

She managed to make it out of the building and into her car before the tears came.