You guys! Thank you so much for the positive response to the previous chapter, I'm SO glad you liked it. Here's some more anxious angst, I'm quite nervous about it but I really hope you'll like this one, too..?


Chapter Two - Convergence

She woke on a gasp.

Elizabeth felt herself flail uncontrollably in the bed, too late to stop it, her limbs feeling not her own for the several seconds it took her to wake up enough to realise where she was. Her legs caught in the blankets, constricting her just as an invisible band around her ribs constricted her chest and stole her breath, and she kicked out to try to get herself free.

Her foot collided briefly with warm skin, and the collision was followed by Henry jolting abruptly beside her before he moaned and swore and blinked surprised and pained into the dark. "Fuck," he said.

"I'm sorry." The apology was automatic and heartfelt, even as she continued to try to free herself from the blankets, struggling to get her fingers to sufficiently cooperate to push the fabric away from her legs. Guilt at causing Henry pain coupled with the memory of their unfinished fight from the hospital and the runaway panic that had forced her to wake. Her stomach roiled with the combination.

I think you should quit.

She remembered walking into the hospital to find her husband with bullet wounds in his legs. Remembered Blake coming into her office with a look of hesitant necessity on his face after he had received an urgent call to tell her that Henry was in the hospital and she needed to come. Remembered the blind panic of those first few seconds that hadn't really left her since. Ma'am, it's Henry…

Her husband could have died and he didn't seem to get it, didn't seem to entirely get the impact it had on her to learn what had happened, to be told by his buddy from the FBI that his car had been shot at when he went to meet his asset, that the windows had been shot out and he was really lucky to have made it out in the shape that he did.

Lucky.

Elizabeth didn't feel as though they had been quite so lucky.

Not when Henry was lying next to her in pain. Not when all he wanted to do was get back into the game when the game had so recently nearly killed him.

Not when she'd had to seriously consider what she might tell the kids if their father was to be killed, and had lied to them about what had caused his injuries, and he didn't quite get that the bullet landing in his ankle wasn't very far off it landing in his head: he had been spared by a distance that could be measured in inches.

That wasn't lucky.

That made her feel angry, with him and with his job and with the cult that had the bomb and the drone with the serial number filed off just like the weapons that she was dealing with at the State Department. It made her feel angry, and it made the panic well in her chest in a way that it hadn't in a long time, in a way that had teased at her recently after the incident with President Andrada in Manila when he had put his hands on her against her will, but with an intensity that shocked her and that she didn't think she'd experienced since Iran, and maybe not even then. Because while Iran had affected her and haunted her for months to come, she had known throughout that her family was safe.

Even when she had been face down on the ground in Tehran while chaos reigned, or stood in Manila with her back to a predator, she had known her family was safe.

That hadn't been the case today.

She couldn't breathe. Couldn't see even though she had her eyes wide open.

She felt like she was suffocating in the dark.

"Babe?"

She knew that Henry was next to her but this was because of him. She couldn't lean on him to make it better, couldn't rely on him to fix things when he was recovering from bullet wounds and he was the cause of her pain and he didn't even seem to realise how much it made her hurt. All he saw was his asset, just like before when he was in too deep when Dmitri, and his frustration was at his inability to fix the situation rather than concern for what he had made her feel because of it.

Maybe it was unfair to blame him.

Trouble was, she needed someone to blame.

"I – I can't," she stuttered out, aware of the panic inside her like tightly knotted ball that was about to unfurl just enough to reach up to drag her back down with it and hold her tied tight there while she struggled against it, aware that even as she told herself to work against the now-familiar beginnings of a panic attack and resisted its pull she could feel herself slipping irretrievably towards it. A cruel joke.

A corner of her own damn mind was laughing at her struggle and it made her shrink slightly into herself and slip again.

Then Henry's voice came soothing and soft from somewhere just behind her. "Hey." His hand touched her back gently.

Instinctively she jolted away even as a part of her knew it wasn't the rational thing to do. The rational thing to do would be to acknowledge her husband, to reach out to him and use him as something to hold onto, to hold tight onto him to stop herself from being dragged down into the fluster of her own mind and to reassure herself that he was OK, still with her. That the bullet had landed in his ankle and not his head. To take care of him and remind him that she loved him.

If only the panic blooming in her gut was over what had actually happened and not the thought that Henry might never stop, that he might keep going back and back to work that hurt him and snarled him up before spitting him back out – only one day it might just swallow him whole.

That was the thing she couldn't contend with. And the look on his face when he had challenged her to tell him to quit…

She had to get out, needed to get out.

Elizabeth scrambled to the edge of the bed, gasping for air that wouldn't come and physically pushing herself away from the one person she wanted to hold closer than anyone. She stumbled to a stand but her legs refused to carry her far, adrenaline burning through her veins like fear –

Or maybe it actually was fear.

She could feel it, hot and visceral, an inferno inside her and surrounding her and she could distantly hear Henry saying her name and could hear the pain in his voice and the shuffling on the bed as he tried to sit himself up, but her mind was wheeling too fast to slow down and face him.

She staggered down to the floor, pressing her back to the wall just below the window, feeling the cool plaster against her back and the ridge of the window seat at her neck and a cool draught that cut through the sweat on her body but did little to cool her temperature. She couldn't stop herself from shaking.

Even in her frantic state she could remember as clearly as anything the almost snarl on Henry's face as he had practically dared her to tell him to quit, like he was giving her a test he knew full well she couldn't pass, because when her husband was lying in front of her in a hospital bed with stitched up bullet holes in his body there was only one truthful answer she could give. And it wasn't the one he wanted to hear. It made her mad, made her so angry to think that there might be even a part of her husband that resented her concern for him, who felt that seeing his operation through to the conclusion was more important than keeping himself alive for his family. Maybe that wasn't how he had meant it to appear.

But he hadn't been the one who'd had to tell the kids the lie about what had happened.

She almost envied the kids; even if they hadn't entirely bought the story about the car accident, at least they'd had the option of believing in it so they didn't have to think about the alternative.

Elizabeth could feel her head spinning, could see lights sparking in front of her eyes even though the room was dim, could feel herself getting lightheaded as her lungs allowed her to draw only shallow breaths, barely even letting her sip on the air as her diaphragm constricted. Then light flooded her vision as Henry switched on his bedside lamp.

"You need to talk to me, babe," he said, and his voice was thick with physical pain and fatigue and worry. "Elizabeth. Look at me. Deep breaths, come on." He sounded frustrated with himself that he couldn't get out of the bed without help.

There was something tickling at the back of her mind, the initial swirl of a thought, something important, something truthful. Spinning just out of her grasp as she tried and failed to focus on anything other than snatching enough oxygen to keep herself conscious.

Henry shifted on the bed, using his hands to push himself towards the edge and it looked for a moment like he might be about to try to get up, but then his face blanched white as he moved his injured ankle and the hissing breath he sucked in was sharp enough to pierce the fog of Elizabeth's clouded panic and she snapped her head up to look at him.

The thought was clear now. She found enough breath to be able to say, "Henry, I can't lose you."

And that was it, wasn't it? That was the truth of it. The simple truth, really. That was what she had wanted to say when he had told her to tell him if she thought he should quit. She had wanted to say she didn't want him to die, that she needed him with her. But he had challenged her and forced her hand like he had been looking for the fight and she'd been struggling to find her way back from it ever since.

She just needed him to be safe. And not reckless. And not in too deep.

He always got himself in too deep and she was terrified that she didn't always know how to help him get out of it.

And now look what had happened.

Henry gave her a sad smile like he knew whatever he said wasn't quite going to cut it. "Babe, you're not gonna –"

"But I might," she cut him off. She drew in a breath, better able to regulate her breathing and control her thoughts and the physical ball of panic now that she'd spoken the truth of the matter. "If you don't stop, if something doesn't change, then next time –"

"There won't be a next time."

He sounded like he was trying to reassure her but it came across as placating, as a fob off that couldn't be substantiated. Given the fact he'd so recently had bullets shot at him maybe she should let him off, but Elizabeth could only control so much; in order to keep the panic at bay, she gave into the anger. "You can't promise me that! You don't know what's going to happen."

Feeling stronger now, Elizabeth pushed up from the floor to stand by the window, glad of the draught from the window as she felt her skin flush as she berated Henry. "Henry, you're supposed to be safe! I get that you need to manage your asset, I really do, I get that it's intense. But it shouldn't be this thing that takes you over like it does. You shouldn't find yourself desperate to get out of the hospital to get back to work when just hours ago you got shot in the leg. You shouldn't even have been shot in the leg in the first place!"

Unable to keep still as the words and emotion flowed out of her, Elizabeth paced the floor in front of the bedroom window, her steps punctuated by the loud thump of her heart in her chest. "You can't tell me to tell you if I think you should quit and then be surprised when I actually say it." She didn't see how it was that he didn't seem to get that. "And Henry, it's not exactly like you're a low profile guy. Even without being married to the Secretary of State, you're a public figure. That can make you a target and you don't have security when you're not with me. You can't just take these risks that get you hurt or put yourself in situations where this kind of thing can happen. And why the hell did you go in there on your own without any backup?!"

"I didn't think I'd need backup, I –" Henry shifted on the bed like he was trying to get comfortable or perhaps settle more securely into the brewing row, but then his face screwed up in pain as he jarred his knee and his hands shot out to readjust his injured leg, his skin simultaneously too pale and flushing red with exertion. He groaned as moving put more pressure on his injuries and he couldn't coordinate himself enough to get into a comfortable position.

Whatever she had been planning to say next dropped away. Elizabeth still had plenty of anger and plenty of hurt to work her way through, but seeing the look on Henry's face stalled the argument before it could really start and she felt a chill run through her at the sight of him in pain – the thought at how close it had been. How she couldn't lose him because of how much she loved him. "I'll help you," she said quietly, her body taking a second to get itself into gear before she stumbled around the bed to Henry's side. "Let me help."

She reached down to him to let him take her arms and use her as a support while he carefully shifted his position, feeling from the amount of weight he put on her the level of his fatigue from the injury and unexpected middle of the night wake-up call. She watched his face closely, aware he'd be able to read everything she was feeling on her own face as he looked steadily back.

"I'm OK," he said, when he had settled back against the pillows. He sounded like he believed it.

At least one of them did. "Yeah," she said, but her heart wasn't in it.

Her heart was still hurting too badly at the thought of it all being so much worse; she hadn't quite built herself up yet to being simply pleased that it wasn't.

Henry caught her hand in his as she stood up, pressing the back of her hand against his face and smiling when she turned her hand to cup his cheek gently in her palm. "Elizabeth," he started.

She looked at him with everything she felt. "Tomorrow," she said. "You need to sleep now. We can talk tomorrow."

He watched her for a moment before he nodded in defeat and turned his head to kiss her palm, his expression already drowsy. "I'll be here," he promised, and it sounded like he was promising more than that.

Elizabeth nodded in acknowledgement and reached out with her free hand to switch out the bedside light. Then she stood for a while in the dark with her hand on Henry's face, the better to feel him breathing.

The better to distract herself from the tight ball of dread in her gut that still lurked there, just waiting for another moment to unfurl.