There were days when he truly regretted taking the War College job, for reasons ranging from difficult lessons filled with competing nationalism to manipulating his best student into spying on his home country.
The fear in Dmitri's demeanour was always kept beneath the surface, but the young man was never trained in spycraft and the figurative tremor was always just beneath his skin. Henry hadn't even asked much of him, just to keep an ear out at the Russian embassy at the memorial service for Ostrov tomorrow, and already his asset was walking around with the quiet trepidation of a dead man.
Yet there was a voice in his head, the colder, more pragmatic, former NSA side that questioned whether Dmitri would be loyal to them given his mental state, a cautious voice warning that he needed some sort of confirmation in a game with stakes as high as war with Russia. If Dmitri snapped and reported to his higher ups that the Americans were using the War College to recruit spies, then they were all done for.
Henry picked up his phone, fingers gripping the frame tightly for a moment as his ethical side pleaded and begged and for a moment he considered setting the phone back down until he caught sight of the headlines of the day's newspapers - 'Tensions within Russia's top ranks' - and thought of increasing strain in Elizabeth's demeanour ever since Anton Gorev dropped by their place, and his commitment to the job that he signed up for hit him like a wave of cold water. He fired off a message to Jane Fellows with a conciseness that bordered on crypticism before he could convince himself otherwise.
'Run the test' was all he sent, though he was sure Fellows would understand. He knew that this was what she had in mind when they talked that morning.
Taking Jason out for football later in the afternoon tasted a lot like hypocrisy to him - acting as the caring father who just wanted to talk to his son while ordering an interrogation on a boy just three years older than his eldest daughter - but he washed it down with every throw he made, reminding himself that it's the job he signed up for.
Watching Dmitri through the glass panel was easier than he had expected, mainly because he could still put some distance between himself and the (young) boy who was being beaten up with a phone book on his orders. Henry could pull himself back from his personal attachment and distance himself, which he was much more used to after the handful of years he spent working for the NSA.
Sitting in the same room with Dmitri afterwards was a lot tougher. The emotions were all bare on the surface - relief mixed with bitterness, anger mixed with helplessness - and Henry wondered if the boy knew how similar their feelings were, except for the fact that Dmitri was angry at him while Henry was angry at the warped situation that made all of this necessary.
"How do you sleep at night?" Dmitri all but spat at him, his expression hard with a tinge of hurt.
Henry glanced up at the boy, his casual countenance belying his personal struggle. "Just fine," he lied, returning his attention to the snacks in his hand - he wasn't actually sure what it was that he was eating - before dismissing the boy.
…
He had thought that having his asset interrogated was the worst thing he could do to the boy, but he had just realised that the news he had for Dmitri was so much worse.
Dmitri stood just outside his room, staring blankly at Ivan's body and the pool of drying blood around the head of a man that he considered his closest friend. He was paler than Henry had ever seen, paler than he had been during the interrogation when he thought his own life was at risk and Henry knew that they were having the same thoughts - that they had messed up and misread Ivan, and pushed him to the trigger.
"We did this to him," Dmitri said later as they followed the paramedics removing Ivan's body from the dorm, his words hollow. "Why did I say anything? This is my fault," his voice shook on the last word.
"No, it's not," Henry replied firmly, both for his sake and Dmitri's.
"No, it is this coup, these, these - these power-starved men and their straw dog Maria Ostrov, they will not stop until they take us back to the days of Stalin -" Dmitri's voice hardened, his volume increasing until he was almost shouting and the resentment he bore towards his own government surfacing more clearly than Henry had observed even in the boy's most liberal of assignments.
"Okay, come on, come with me," he intervened, pulling him aside. "We can talk about this later."
"No, we're not going to talk about this, later we're going to talk about this now -"
"Just keep walking. You need to calm down," Henry insisted.
"No I am through with Russia! I am through with Russia!" Dmitri shook Henry off sharply, turning to face him. The raw anger and loss in his eyes was almost unbearable.
"I want to take the deal you offered Ivan. Let me defect. Give me asylum."
"That's not possible," Henry sighed, feeling the almost familiar conflict rise up within him, even though he chose national security over his innocent intelligent student everyday.
"What, why, because for five minutes I had some crazy idea that I could be a spy?" Dmitri almost choked on his words, his breathing heavy and his eyes filled with desperate sorrow. "I want out. I want to stay here.
Henry exhaled. He could think of one way forward, but he didn't necessarily like what it would mean for Dmitri. "Look, you can take Ivan's place. But not by defecting, not by giving up."
"What do you want me to do?" his asset looked lost and almost docile for the first time.
"Tell General Doroshevich to recall you to Moscow, to work by his side. That's where you can really make a difference. Don't let Ivan die in vain," Henry instructed, knowing that there was no way Dmitri would protest against that.
Yet a creeping dread in his gut grew with every step he took as he headed back to his office to inform Fellows of the new development, swirling in a pool of helplessness and inadequacy. He was actively sending Dmitri closer and closer to danger - away from him and the protection that America could offer. But if he couldn't even protect a student on US soil, what could he possibly do for a spy on Russian soil?
The road to hell is paved with good intentions, his mind reminded him softly.
…
He left Elizabeth alone in Geneva, his anger dominating over every other emotion he felt, even the tinge of relief that they finally had a peace deal in place. This, this was the worst thing that he could do to Dmitri - turning him over to the Russians.
"You know what they do to spies in Russia," Dmitri had said, just moments away from crying, his words both an accusatory statement and a terrified plea.
"I'm not ready," he had almost begged right before they sent him back to Moscow in their last conversation in person.
And he had promised that he would do anything in his power to keep him safe, but the boy was probably being tortured somewhere at that very moment while all that Henry could do was to wait for his flight to arrive in Stockholm.
He had been so full of adrenaline and an odd sense of hope the previous morning when the exfiltration had been aborted because he had strings that he could pull and connections that he could use, and he was going to, finally, do something with Dmitri's best interests in mind. He had been all pumped up and ready to move and get his asset back from the Russians, until he saw the expression on Elizabeth's face that conveyed guilt, devastation and crushing regret.
And boy, was he mad at her and Dalton for making that call - what kind of call was that even? He didn't hesitate for even a moment to let her calls go unanswered, his heart devoid of the usual affection that gushed up at even the briefest mention of her name. In its place was an anger directed at the government, and by affiliation his wife, for tossing his asset into the fire after all the sacrifices that they put Dmitri through, for playing chess with the lives of their own people.
They had been so close.
The thought bubbled up inside him and once again, the burning sensation of failure and inadequacy surged within him like bile, filling him with bitterness and frustration.
Meet up with Fellows and secure Talia, he reminded himself, pushing down the negativity that threatened to overwhelm him.
He was still angry hours later, even when Fellows suddenly sat up in the driver seat beside him. "There's been an explosion outside the conference location. No news on casualties yet."
"What?" Henry looked over sharply.
"This just happened fifteen minutes ago, that's all the intel I have," Fellows replied apologetically.
Anxiety flooded him as he dialled Elizabeth's number, praying that his last words to her were not a terse farewell the previous night, but even that was temporary. He knew that his short responses that bordered on cold were not what Elizabeth needed at the moment for the frenzy in her voice was evident even in the few words they spoke, but in that moment, she was just not the priority.
A part of him wondered how they ended up like this, the strain in their marriage almost palpable and all too clear in the distance he had to put between them, but then they saw Talia and Henry filed that thought away to the back of his mind.
…
"I'm sorry, Henry, I wish I had an answer for you," Fellows said before hanging up.
Jane Fellows might not know why, but Henry had an intuition.
"Did you block me at DIA?" he demanded as he walked into the kitchen.
Elizabeth turned around, caught off guard. "Excuse me?"
"I was rejected. Somebody had their finger on the scale." They didn't speak to each other that way, but in that moment Henry could easily believe that she had interfered with his request to rejoin DIA.
"Are you actually accusing me here?" Elizabeth said, the disbelief clear in her voice. "I'm on your side, I -"
"Good. Then call the President and ask him to reinstate me," Henry interrupted, handing her the phone. He was pushing it, he knew, but there was an itch in his mind and he had to do something, with the day old bombing still all too vividly imprinted in his mind and something else eating away at him.
It was that same anger he had felt back in Geneva - the manoeuvres that their government were capable of making to get things done. It wasn't rational, that much he knew, because while Elizabeth could, she would never stand in his way just as he would not stand in hers.
But the itch to do something was there, blocking out the voice of reason and calmness, buzzing in his ear and deafening him even to the bewilderment in Elizabeth's voice.
He apologised for accosting her afterwards, once Conrad and Russell had left but he had a feeling that Elizabeth didn't really buy it, but accepted it in her eagerness to end that exchange. Truthfully, he did mean it when he called his actions a knee jerk reaction to anger, but he wasn't quite sure if it was a moment of anger as he had claimed.
…
"How do you sleep at night?"
Three men were forcing Dmitri into the van behind them as theirs sped away, leaving his asset alone to struggle in futility, his face visible in the back window, impossibly pale in the sunlight.
"How do you sleep at night?"
Americans posing as FSB were bashing the boy over the head with a phonebook while Dmitri tried and miserably failed to keep his composure, suddenly looking much younger than 24, much too young to be involved.
"How do you sleep at night?"
The wild terror in his eyes when he first agreed to spy for the US government blended with the despair that Henry saw again and again, after the boy drank too much at the Russian embassy, after the boy lost his best friend, after the boy was recalled to Moscow -
Henry had woken with a start that morning, only registering after a moment that he wasn't there in Geneva anymore and that he had to move on from the occasional human cost of the intelligence game.
Yet there was Talia and now Hijriyyah, and occasional was beginning to sound a lot less like every now and again, and more like again and again, and he would have thought that Elizabeth of all people would understand that because she was committed to saving as many lives as she could the same way that he was, but they both knew and appreciated that she would choose the greater good if she had to.
The bigger picture, the greater good - Henry understood what they meant. It was the same reason he joined the Marines, NSA and DIA because he would put himself in harm's way for the rest of the world to live peacefully. But it didn't mean that he would trade individuals to be sacrificed for the cause when it was of their own choosing and definitely not when he could prevent it.
The door handle had been within his grasp, if he had just pushed it -
"What does in process mean? We need it, like, today," he had told Elizabeth the next morning when she brought up the expedited visa for Laila Ayyad's brother. That almost familiar indignance and frustration at the government and higher ups had risen within him because in process reminded him of cancelled exfiltration and of his own inability to save his own asset because he was too slow too helpless too useless -
Elizabeth's face had conveyed guilt, devastation and crushing regret while his heart grew cold.
So Henry had taken it out on her, on his Elizabeth even though it had been far from her fault but his mind had been chanting do something over and over again like a mantra playing on a loop that was only interrupted when he caught her expression after his accusatory tirade. He had wanted to apologise again, but in that moment he hadn't felt particularly sorry for his words so he had left instead.
And now they were here, in the horse farm together yet sleeping separately for possibly the first time in their marriage because he had hurled the full weight of his struggles onto her, after working around her and undermining her work. It had felt good for the first few seconds after the outburst to finally get everything out in the open and admit that Geneva still hung over him, that her expression that day still sometimes flashed across his mind, until he looked up at Elizabeth and saw not tears but a barrier in her eyes as she rapidly retreated into herself.
Deep down, he knew that this was his burden to carry and not hers. He knew that she made the best possible call under a warped set of circumstances and that the world was safer because of her efforts. He knew that she bore the weight of every loss on her watch, be it from her CIA days or her current job at State. But her expression still haunted him, as it dawned upon him how powerless he truly was.
He had kept his head down as Elizabeth collected herself, her regulated breaths audible even at a distance. She had held her breath for a second and Henry had braced himself for her response, but she had turned and headed for the stairs instead.
That had felt worse, somehow.
Henry hadn't had the heart to move his things out of the bedroom that they shared because that felt too final, too far from her. He ended up spending the night on the couch, wishing he could take everything back even though he knew that one way or another he had to let all the tension out. He just wished it wasn't like this, by hurting his dear, dear Elizabeth.
…
She had shut him off when he tried to approach her in front of Buttercup's stall, her body tensing up and her movements stilling. It was clear that she wanted space, and more importantly, space from him, and after his outburst the previous afternoon Henry couldn't deny her that. He pressed a kiss to her hair anyway as a weak gesture that he still loved her but Elizabeth didn't react, not that Henry expected her to. He hadn't given her much of a reason to have faith in him in recent days.
When he returned to the farm that evening, Elizabeth was still standing by Buttercup's stall, her soft voice resigned and soothing at the same time and in that moment she looked so alone, stroking the head of her dying horse with no one around on whom she could lean.
She looked over at him after a moment, the pained expression cutting away at him more so than the defeated air around her as she slowly moved towards him, her steps almost laboured.
"Thank you for coming back," she whispered, exhaustion and devastation seeping through her words.
"Whatever happens, we're together," he told her firmly, holding her close. She swallowed and nodded before returning to his embrace as he tried to share the weight of her grief.
Henry stayed with her until Mitch came back in the evening, one arm around her waist and the other resting on Buttercup's forehead. By the time they arrived, Elizabeth's tears had run dry and had mutely wrapped her arms around herself in a rare display of fragility, enclosing herself in a circle completed by Henry's arms around her. The only signs of her grief were her shuddering breaths and the quiet tremors running through her as they watched Mitch put down her favourite horse of nearly two decades.
After it was done, Elizabeth bowed her head for a minute but made no move to touch the dead horse, as though she was preserving her memories of Buttercup's last moments. They made their way back to the house slowly with his arm still wrapped around her while hers dangled by her side as she leaned heavily on his side, neither speaking about everything that had transpired in the past two days.
It was only when they were both on the couch and wrapped up in the the duvet that Henry had used the previous night that she spoke.
"If staying is hurting you, you can leave, you know. If, if you think we can't get pass this, we can start talking to lawyers. I don't want you to stay, not if you're in pain," her voice was the same bare whisper as it had been hours ago.
Henry pressed a kiss to her hair. He had expected something like this, given the parallels between his situation and Buttercup's illness. "No way. You're not losing me so easily after all these years," he whispered.
Elizabeth laughed shakily. "I didn't expect to have to lose Buttercup today after two decades either but I just did. I can handle it."
Henry paused. "Hey. We're together, remember? Whatever happens," he repeated, clutching her even tighter to him as he felt the tension in her body finally trickle away. A minute passed before she finally leaned back on him fully, retreating not into herself but into him.
They both knew that this was far from over, but he figured that if they kept clinging to each other no matter what, they'd walk out of this stronger than before.
…
Ironically, it was only when he was walking down the streets of Islamabad with Jose propped up between Jane and him, straining his ears for gunfire or footsteps that the buzzing in his ears faded away.
There was a calmness in his mind that seemed out of place given the danger he was in at that moment, stealthily moving towards the cricket field with his heart pounding in his chest. It took a moment for him to reconcile this strange, new yet oddly familiar sensation with the reality of his situation, and then it hit him.
He did something.
Disah was dead, along with the core members of Hizb al-Shahid, and in contrast, the three of them were alive.
The wave of relief almost bowled him over which he covered by pretending to shift Jose's weight on his shoulder. He did his part for national security, he accomplished something without breaking any promises and crossing any lines, and with every heavy step that he took towards their exfiltration team, the haze in which he dwelled upon his own helplessness dissipated like the fog clearing off a window, revealing the reality that lay beyond.
And in that moment, all he wanted to do was to hold Elizabeth in his arms and curl his body around hers like he used to before this whole DIA business threw his life for a loop.
In his newfound equilibrium, he hadn't even noticed that he had sped up until Jose hissed at him and cursed something unpleasant but Henry didn't have it in him to take offence, simply enjoying his hard-earned peace of mind.
He was going home, at long last to Elizabeth, to his old life, to his old self, and good god did he miss all of those.
"I look forward to being a couch potato for a while," he called over the headset later, buoyed by the euphoria of their achievements, knowing that Elizabeth would catch the reference and understand that much as he looked forward to being home, what he was truly anticipating was being hers.
…
Elizabeth was waiting for him when Murphy Station touched down at Andrews early the next morning.
She didn't approach him immediately, ensuring that Jose was ready to be transferred to the hospital before walking up to Jane and him. "There's a debrief at the White House tomorrow morning so in the meantime, go get some rest," Elizabeth directed the last line at Jane, giving her a tired smile.
"Yes ma'am," Jane replied, nodding at both of them as she left.
Once her job was done, Elizabeth turned to him and silently wrapped her arms around him, breathing in his scent wordlessly. Henry had been worried that she would be mad at him for running off to save the world despite his earlier promises to stay out of the action, but for now she seemed content to just stay in his embrace and that was good enough for him.
"I'm so sorry Elizabeth, I am so sorry," he murmured into her hair, relishing in the warmth of his wife in his arms. She shook her head softly. "Complete chaos is a good smokescreen to get things done. I was CIA, I get it. I backed your play, remember?" she asked, turning her head up to look at him. He rested his forehead on hers. "I'm sorry I had you worried," he whispered.
Elizabeth laughed a little. "Guess we both have the habit of risking our lives for national security," she said lightly, tugging on his arm towards the SUVs waiting for them.
None of the kids were around by the time they got home, which was a testament to Elizabeth's composure that none of them had figured out where their father truly was and stayed home to await his return, unlike how both Stevie and Allison had known that something was wrong when Elizabeth went to Iran. They were both quiet as Henry prepared for a long, comfortable sleep while Elizabeth checked in with the office to make sure that nothing burnt down while she took the morning off.
Eventually she spoke, once they had comfortably snuggled on the bed. "You okay?" she asked, pressing a kiss to his temple, her hand stroking his hair lightly.
"Mm. I'm okay. I'm better than okay, actually," Henry replied, his head resting against her shoulder.
"What do you mean?"
"The humming in the back of my brain. It's gone," he said, propping himself up to look her in the eye.
Her eyes searched his face carefully before blinking twice. "It's gone?" her words sounded hoarse and Henry had to fight the wave of guilt within him for hurting her so much.
"Gone," he affirmed, wrapping his arm more tightly around her, "or at least silent."
Elizabeth let out a shaky breath. "So we're fine?" she asked.
He pecked her on the lips. "We're fine."
"Totally fine?"
"We'll always be fine."
She seemed to digest this for a few moments before sitting up in bed, reaching for her phone. "I'm letting Blake know that I'm taking the whole day off instead," she said, her even tone almost masking her relief. Henry laughed and tugged her back into bed, pulling her into his embrace instead, feeling her tuck her head under his chin.
"I'm sorry for all the pain that I caused you," he breathed, toying with her beautiful hair gently.
She kissed his chest in wordless acknowledgement. "Sleep," she coaxed.
Yet neither of them could fall asleep, the adrenaline of the previous day keeping them up despite their fatigue. After half an hour, Elizabeth spoke up again. "Can I tell you something really embarrassing?" she asked almost tentatively.
"An embarrassing Elizabeth story? Always."
She smacked him lightly on the arm. "Anyway, remember that trip to New York that Allison was talking about…"
Henry hummed softly in contentment, drinking in the familiar cadence of Elizabeth's voice as she told him about her latest encounter with the Quaker tyrant, his spirits light both with the weight on his mind lifted and with amusement over his lovely, lovely Elizabeth's tactics.
"The next time Allison mentions Dean Ward, I'm telling her that story," he promptly informed her after she finished.
"Henry McCord, don't you dare," she warned, feeling his body shake with laughter.
"I love you," he said abruptly, his voice turning serious.
"I love you too," she replied without a pause and finally, after the longest time, Henry could fall asleep peacefully, safe in his old normal and surrounded by his greatest love.
Author's note: I just want to say, thank you so much for the reviews and feedback for my previous two stories! It's a wonderful encouragement to keep writing.