Looking down at his empty glass Aaron considered pouring himself another drink. He hadn't been planning on drinking at all tonight, but he'd forgotten that Emily would still be at the White House with Penny when he got home. Coming home to an unexpectedly empty house had been hard. Harder than it should have been considering Emily had really only moved in a month ago. But he'd gotten used to having her around after a hard day and to say his visit to Arizona was difficult was putting it lightly. The grieving parents, the site of the explosion, the rosary service he'd attended against his best judgment, every single piece of it had been too much. Put it together and he felt like he was drowning.

Pouring more than he probably should have into his glass he looked back up at the TV. He hated the commentators nasally voice, always harping on something wrong with Aaron. Or to be honest it wasn't always him, Aaron just happened to be his favorite punching bag. Tonight he had apparently spoken too much Spanish at the interfaith prayer service in Arizona, and clearly that meant he was attempting to use a national tragedy for his personal political advantage. It was like trying to thread a needle, embrace his heritage too much and he was exploiting it, distance himself from it and he was a fraud. He just wanted to be the person that felt truly authentically him and let the chips fall where they may, but he always found himself dragged back into watching the 24 hour news cycle and over analyzing his every move.

And now they had an even more far out guest on claiming that Aaron was trying to allow Mexico to annex Texas. He watched intently as the man laid out his argument that Aaron had used the Capitol Bombing to infiltrate the government and now was using this explosion in Arizona to push his radical agenda even further. Apparently he even thought it was possible that there had been no explosion, that no kids died, and it was all some elaborate ruse by Kirkman and his administration to gain more power. It made Aaron sick to think of the poor parents grieving their children who were forced to deal with assholes like this guy pretending the tragedy never even happened.

"Hey stranger." He must have been too caught up in the show and missed Emily coming in. She sat down next to him and kissing him on the cheek said "I missed you."

"I missed you too." He leaned in closer to her and wrapped an arm around her. It was still hard to believe sometimes that he and Emily were really together. They'd spent so much time dancing around their feelings that just simple things like sitting here with her had felt out of reach for so long. Pressing a hand against her bump he asked, "How's our girl doing today?"

"She's good. She had the hiccups earlier, weirdest feeling. But I think she must be sleeping now."

"I didn't know babies could get hiccups."

"According to Dr. Google they can."

"Speaking of doctors, did you drink enough water today?" Aaron knew Emily though he was over the top with all the water reminders, but she could get so caught up in work sometimes she would forget to eat or drink for hours. Her midwife had told him half jokingly to keep an eye on Emily.

She rolled her eyes at him. "Yes. And I see you're hydrating with whiskey tonight."

He couldn't tell if she was judging him or just making a joke. "Long day."

She squeezed his hand. "I know, how are you doing with everything?"

He just shrugged. He should be able to let his guard down with Emily, and he did want to talk to her, but just like last night on the phone now that she was here he didn't know what to say. He started feeling panic rising in him, even just thinking about talking about everything. Beyond just feeling terrible about what happened, he felt an undercurrent of fear running through him that he didn't know how to explain let alone talk about. He'd been through many high stakes, dangerous situations so it made no sense to him that this situation where there had been no risk to him whatsoever had him feeling panicked like this.

"I can't imagine watching that bullshit is helping."

"It's what everyone thinks anyway."

"Really Aaron? Everyone thinks that you staged an explosion in a high school in an attempt to help Mexico overthrow America?"

"Well maybe not everyone, but they wouldn't be airing this if people weren't watching."

"I know. People suck."

It was not a very Emily like statement, but he liked it all the more for that. Sometimes she could still be a little Pollyannaish, so he appreciated it when she owned up to that fact that sometimes people did indeed just suck. "And the worst part is, they say all of this when I spent so long doing everything I could to deny my heritage. At least if I'd stuck my neck out there or something I could feel some pride in what they're attacking me for. But instead I'm a coward who can't even complain when they say this shit, because all the crap I did is the kind of stuff that fuels this shit."

"You can't blame yourself for this Aaron."

"Did I ever tell you about my first job out of college?"

"Um, you worked in the mail room for Richmond right?"

"Yeah, so one day, I'd been there for a few months at this point, one of his aides tells me that the Senator wanted to meet with me. And I was so excited, I was a bit like your guy Ash back then, overeager you know, I was always writing up these policy proposals no one was ever going to look at. But I assumed Richmond must have looked at one of them and wanted to talk to me about it. I remember I even ducked into the bathroom to fix my hair and straighten my tie. I get up there and he wants my thoughts on a bill to make English the official language of the United States. He says obviously it's not something he really supports, but it would play well with Independents in the upcoming election, and if he doesn't get reelected whoever comes in would be that much worse. And even if it passed the president would veto it anyway. And that's when I realized, not only did he not read shit I wrote, he didn't even want my thoughts on this bill. He just wanted me to be a mascot that he could stand next to and say 'see I'm not racist.' Because of course I was the only Latino working in his office." He let out a breath, it must have been the alcohol, for that whole story to have come out. He hated thinking about the naïve kid he'd been when he first came to DC.

"So what did you do?"

Typical Emily. Of course she would think there was a chance that he had at twenty-two stood up to a Senator, and delivered some impassioned speech about America being a melting pot or something and convinced the Senator that not only should he vote against the bill, he should lead the charge against it. "Told him he should vote for it, and everyone would understand why he had to do it. I was such an idiot."

"We've all done things we regret Aaron."

"That's all I've done."

"You've done a lot of good. I know I've always been proud of the work we did together."

Again he just shrugged. He didn't even know why he was having this conversation right now. "I think I'm going to go to bed." And before she could say anything else he got up, kissed the top of her head, and left the room.

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Emily woke with a start, and turned over to see Aaron tossing and turning in bed. Worried, she lightly shook his arm, he must be having a bad dream she thought to herself. He wasn't waking so she shook his arm a little more firmly and whispered his name in his ear. She wasn't sure if you were supposed to wake people from nightmares, or maybe that was sleepwalking where you weren't supposed to wake them, but either way she could not stand to see him seemingly hurting and do nothing.

Finally he jolted awake and glanced around the room almost frantically. After a moment he pulled her into a tight hug. He sounded like he was gasping for breath, his skin was clammy, and she could feel his heart beating fast in his chest. He was holding her tightly so she couldn't even really move her arms but she forced herself to take long deliberate breaths, hoping she could impart some calm on him. After what felt like a long time he pulled away a bit and just laid in bed looking at her. His eyes were glassy, she reached out to touch him but he flinched away. As she pulled her hand away he stopped her, grasping it. "I'm sorry Em." His voice was hoarse, trembling a bit.

"You're fine Aaron. Bad dream?"

He just nodded. She always felt like she was walking a fine line between letting him bottle too much up, and pushing him too hard to talk about things he clearly did not want to. After a while he said, "What if I can't do this?"

"Do what?"

"All of this." He reached out and clutched at her t-shirt, so she tried again to hold him and this time he didn't pull away.

"No one's going to force you to do anything. And I'm here for you no matter what." And then she just held him as he cried. She realized that she'd never really seen him cry before. Maybe tear up at something, but not like this. Maybe it was a good sign that he was letting it all out, but she couldn't help but feel a general sense of dread at his statement that he couldn't do this. All her mind could focus on was if this meant them, and their family.