Sept 2022
"Want me to take her for a bit?" It was shaping up to be another long night. After some initial trouble Callie was generally a pretty good sleeper, but she still had the occasional night like this where nothing could settle her down.
"You don't mind?"
Aaron sighed. Little comments like that sometimes made him wonder how much Emily really saw him as an equal partner in their family. "Em, of course not." He said, holding out his arms. With a somewhat reluctant look on her face Emily transferred Callie to his arms and he stood up from the couch. "Why don't you get some sleep. I'm going to walk around with her a bit."
"You sure?" Once again she had a doubtful look on her face. As if he was an underprepared babysitter she was being forced to leave her child with. He half expected a reminder to support her head.
"We're fine. You need to get some sleep." Emily claimed she rested during the day when Callie napped, but Aaron wasn't sure he totally believed that. She was constantly exhausted and stressing herself out about the smallest details of things that he couldn't imagine anyone else worrying about. He was pretty sure she was getting less sleep than him, which was saying something. At least she got up with him and walked down the hallway to their bedroom.
He continued walking up and down the hallways trying to get Callie to calm down. Usually this was the one thing that could get her to stop crying, but apparently tonight she was not feeling it. Or maybe it was him, the little nagging voice in the back of his head said. He tried to do everything Emily would do, but Callie just kept crying. He couldn't help but think that maybe Callie would settle right down in David's arms if he was here.
Sometimes he wondered if she could already sense that she had been deserted by her own father and she found Aaron to be a poor substitute. He'd selfishly focused all his thoughts before Callie was born on his own feelings. Would he be able to connect with her, and how would he feel raising a kid that wasn't his, at least not biologically? And now that she was here and those fears had been swept away, he realized he had been asking the wrong questions. He shouldn't have been so worried about his own feelings but about Callie's. He now understood exactly why Emily was so determined to get David to at least acknowledge he had a daughter. Because he saw every insecurity that Emily carried with her and realized there was nothing he could do to keep his daughter from feeling the same way.
The powerlessness of it all scared him. Some days he considered calling David up and really just laying into him. He hadn't spoken to him since that day at the hospital, and logically he knew there was nothing he could say that Emily had not already said a million times. But on nights like this, left alone with his own thoughts, it felt like the one concrete action he could take.
But instead he kept pacing and trying to calm Callie until she finally fell asleep in his arms, and then thinking that trying to get her to sleep in her bassinet was likely an impossibility and was certain to wake Emily up, he walked with her into his office and sat down at his desk. He figured he might as well try and get some work down while Callie slept in his arms.
He tried his best to focus on the speech he was supposed to be giving this weekend, endorsing some candidate running for Governor of California, but he kept finding himself distracted by the picture of his father on his desk. He'd spent countless nights staring at this photo, especially last year. All he could think about back then was how far he was from the kind of man his father would have been proud of. He hoped that these days he was at least a little closer.
Looking down at Callie, still fast asleep in his arms, he said to her, "This was your Abuelo, Callie. He would have loved you so much." That was one thing he felt confident about. His father would have loved Callie and Emily. And he would have been one hundred percent on board with Aaron making them a part of his family. " He was the best Dad. And I'm going to do everything I can to be that for you. Caroline Rivera, how do you think that sounds? It sounds a lot better than Caroline Shore I think. Daddy made some silly decisions sometimes, but he's going to fix them for you okay?" Thinking about his Dad always got him thinking about what a mess he had made of things, changing his name.
Hearing the creak of the door Aaron looked up to find Emily standing at the door frame. Suddenly feeling self conscious he cleared his throat. "Ah, Em. How long were you there?" he asked sheepishly.
"Not long. And my Spanish sucks anyway. So whatever secrets you two were discussing are lost on me."
He smiled at her. No matter how bad she claimed her Spanish was, Caroline Rivera and Shore were the same in any language.
"You think she'll stay down for the night now? You need your sleep too, you know."
"I think she's pretty worn out. I don't think you can cry for hours like that without needing a break."
"Ok then let's get you two to bed." Emily crossed the room and lifted Callie into her arms.
Back in their bedroom he watched as Emily transferred Callie into the bassinet. There had to be something special that she did differently than him, because if he had been the one doing it Callie would have been back to sobbing inconsolably in a matter of seconds. But Emily made it look easy.
After she got Callie settled Aaron was surprised to feel Emily wrap herself around him in bed, spooning him. He was a bit embarrassed to admit that this was the most physical contact that they had had in quite some time. It was his fault, he'd been shying away from her ever since that night he ended up crying in her arms. There was something so inviting about her, something that let him put his guard down around her without even realizing it, and it made him terrified of repeating that night. But this felt too nice to pull away from.
"For what it's worth, I like the sound of Caroline Rivera too."
He cringed. Just as he'd expected, Emily had picked up a lot more of what he'd been saying then he would have liked. "I wasn't trying to step on any toes or anything, I know you're not ready to think about adoption yet. And you're still trying to get David in the picture."
"Fuck David. You're her Dad. We just need to be married for a year then we can file. If David doesn't pull his head out of his ass by then, I don't see what's stopping us."
He clutched her hand. While him adopting Callie had always been on the table, it had been some distant someday plan, totally overshadowed by Emily's near obsession with getting David to pay any attention to Callie. "Really?"
"Really. I want her to feel secure. Loved. You do that."
"Thank you." He muttered. He wanted to turn around and pull Emily in his arms, but once again he could feel tears pricking at his eyes, and thought better of it.
"And I was thinking. If you do still want to change your name maybe we both could do it when we get married. Kind of a family thing, and it would bury the story a bit with everything else, take the heat off you."
"I thought you weren't changing your name." He felt guilty that she was thinking about doing something that she had been so strongly against the last time they had talked about it that she had launched into a mini lecture before he was even able to say that he didn't care what she did with her name one way or another.
"I don't know. It's not like I have any huge connection to the Rhodes family." He could hear the slight bitterness in her voice.
"Still, you worked hard to earn your reputation, you don't need to change your name just for me." Now he was parroting back the same thing she had said to him the last time they had had this conversation.
"It's just something to think about. We're a team now, I've got your back." And she kissed the back of his neck.
Once again he was blinking back tears. "I love you."
"I love you too. Now you should really get some sleep."
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The acrid smoke was filling his lungs but Aaron continued into the building. He could hear crying coming from somewhere inside and he needed to get to it. He was totally disoriented, but his mind kept telling him over and over again, 'Get inside.' His body was screaming at him not to go any further as he could feel his lungs struggling to draw a breath. He ignored that and continued forward, his eyes stinging with tears as he ran down a corridor. The further in he got the harder it was to see anything. He stopped and listened again for the crying, but now it seemed like it was getting more and more faint. He ran through another hallway, turning at the end, hoping that would lead him to the source of the crying, but now there was a siren going off making it harder and harder to hear anything else.
Turning around he saw what looked like a light so he fought his way toward that. When he reached the end of the corridor he realized it was the exit. Trying to turn back he felt arms reaching out and grabbing him. He struggled against them but they overpowered him and pulled him out. Finally he was able to draw a breath. "There's still someone in there," he panted.
He heard voices around him shouting orders, but he was distracted by bodies on the ground. Getting closer he realized Emily's body was among them. She looked peaceful, barely a hair out of place, but when he got over to her he was filled with the sudden awareness that she was gone. He could feel himself shaking uncontrollably as he collapsed beside her lifeless body. And then with a start he realized that the crying had been Callie. She was all alone in the building. Feeling his body about to shut down, he forced himself to get up and fight his way back to the entrance. But the door he'd come out of was nowhere to be found. The building was a wreck, totally collapsed around him. He turned back to try and find Emily's body again, or anyone but he realized suddenly that he was all alone.
And then with a start he awoke. The room was dark and for a moment he could not get his bearings. But then he felt Emily's hands rubbing his arms, and heard her voice in his ear telling him that it had all been a dream.
Still feeling panicked all over he managed to get the word "Callie?" out between gasping breaths.
"She's fine. She's still sleeping. We're all okay. You're okay."
The panic was starting to recede and was replaced with shame. He was losing count of the number of nights he had woken Emily up like this. He thought guiltily of the conversation he had with Kirkman last week, and the therapist's card that was sitting in his wallet. He had promised Kirkman he would take care of himself. And he did want to, he knew he needed to if he was going to take care of his family, but just like he couldn't bring himself to talk to Kirkman, or Emily, or Seth, or any of the other people who had expressed concern over him, he couldn't bring himself to make that call. Even the thought of it made his chest contract. After lying there in Emily's arms silently for a while longer he finally managed to fully control his breathing. "I'm sorry." He mumbled.
"Aaron, you have nothing to apologize for." And then after that sat in silence for a moment she added, "Do you want to talk about it?"
It was her constant refrain when he woke up from dreams like this. Honestly he wasn't sure he understood the point. Telling her about the terrible way she died in his dream certainly didn't seem to stop them from coming. But she was so patient with him, he generally went along with it. "There was a fire, or the building collapsed, and Callie was in there. I couldn't get to her. And then you were gone too."
She pulled him closer to her, and ran her hand up and down his back.
Feeling a little better he tried to start a conversation with her, "Do you ever think about the Capitol Bombing?"
"Yeah, sometimes."
"It should have been me."
"No it shouldn't have." When he didn't answer she repeated more forcefully, "Aaron listen to me. I needed you then and I need you now. You deserve to be alive and you deserve to live your life."
"I know." But he wasn't sure he was convincing anyone.
"I'm sure Josh wouldn't want you feeling like this."
"I don't know," he said darkly. "Josh was kinda an asshole."
"That doesn't mean he'd want you to feel like this." He noticed that Emily didn't correct his statement that Josh had been an asshole. He wondered if he had died that night if that is what Emily would have written him off as, some asshole DC douchebag, that wasn't worth being too upset about.
"I guess." He shrugged, it was hard thinking about Josh, and all the ways his life could have been different if just one small thing had changed the day of the bombing. Pulling Emily closer to him he kissed her forehead and tried to drift back off to sleep. He knew this couldn't be the way anyone wanted to sleep in the still hot and hazy days of September, but after waking from a nightmare it was the only way he could get back to sleep.