an. Without being spoilery, this chapter is dark. Please be warned.

Luna Happy belated birthday! I am suuuuper excited about writing a CIA plot too. The Christmas fics are all ready to go, they're going to be posted on the 22nd of December, so three days to go! I do love having a birthday toward the end of the year with so many holidays :D It's a super great excuse to continuously spoil oneself for an entire month. I am not sure how many languages Sasha officially speaks, but I think in the show she did at least 6? Maybe 7? And the show never made it canon but I 100% believe she speaks Russian. 'Moment of silence for Tex,' I don't know why but I laughed so hard at that comment. LOL. Fluff Tom is my second favorite, after protective Tom upon which we both agree. All is right in the world if these two things are happening, ha. You're going to get major fills of fluff Tom in the Christmas fics.

Guest Thank you so much! It's great being able to chat with others that are still passionate about this show. I wish I had found it sooner. I've missed Sasha and Tom being on the same side too. I don't want to spoil anything so I can't really comment in-depth on the other things you wrote but... generally yes. yes to all of that.

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Monday, April 22nd, 2019—USSOUTHCOM, Mayport, Florida

Until Mike saw Sasha leave the conference room after Tom—freely, with no escort—Mike had assumed the reason for his murderous fury was Reiss sticking her in a cell. Obviously, something else had gone down, for which he was both relieved and worried because any event that lit that kind of fire under Tom's ass was very bad news.

And he couldn't decide whether Sasha was amused or so disgusted there was nothing else to do but laugh or lose it all. It was an odd combination of tones to inhibit at once. The smirk on her face, more a sneer while she folded her arms and tracked Reiss' relocation to the Presidential Bunker above.

By the time Mike made it down, she was still leaning against the glass. And she stayed looking beyond, slacked jawed yet working her tongue against her teeth and ruminating when he approached.

He was on tenterhooks here, had to stop himself bouncing on the ball of his heel to dispel the awkward energy while he waited for some kind of reassurance. An elaboration.

Instead, she kicked her head up, and then shook it, laughing in a way that was bitter. "He agreed to release Martinez."

Mike's expression was a gigantic question mark.

Sasha raised her brows and quirked her neck. "The US is gonna stick him in back in Columbia, and he's gonna go round up all the Generals for Montano, make them turn on Gustavo, and then end up with fifty thousand soldiers at his feet."

There's no way in hell that Tom agreed to this.

"Excuse me?"

Her mouth opened, but somewhere between her statement, his question, and the past twelve days, Sasha appeared to have had enough. Her eyes trailed away; with the kind of fatigue he hadn't seen since Greece. Then she shrugged and unfolded her arms, pushing away from the glass wall.

"Tell Tom I went home."

For a full minute, after watching Sasha walk out of Command, Mike stood rooted to the spot.

She didn't have her car. Didn't have her cell. Both were at home, so she'd had to wait for a driver, likely the same one who'd ferried Danny home. Resisted the urge to pummel the leather seats of the SUV from the back and sat in a rigid dissonance instead. Keyed the garage code to let herself in and then jammed her fist so hard at the button that closed it, the white plastic dome-shaped casing cracked. It was satisfying for a tiny moment.

The house was still. Late evening sun streaming through multiple windows, casting orange streaks that were so beautiful it felt wrong and illuminating little particles of dust where it danced. After standing immobile, simply watching it, she dragged herself upstairs to their master bedroom. Kicked off her boots and left them wherever they fell. Tom hated that. Then went to her nightstand and pulled her cellphone.

'You're good. Reiss knows about you.

Can't afford the bad press. Pissed but leaving it alone.'

Danny text back in less than twenty seconds.

'WTF?'

'Talk tomorrow. I'm done today.'

'U ok?'

'Fine.'

She threw the phone down on the mattress and started stripping out of the BDUs she was wearing. The other nightstand vibrated, and a hunch propelled her over to Tom's side. She disconnected it from the charger, rolling her eyes when she saw the text from 'Green' aka Danny. Interestingly, Kara was just Kara in Tom's phone.

She keyed the passcode.

'Is Sasha good? With Reiss? She ok?'

She didn't know if it was cute, funny, or weird that their entire text thread was about her and god damn Panama.

With a sigh, she responded.

'His phone's at home, not with him. I'm fine, ok? Just tired.'

'K.'

When her own phone buzzed again, Sasha snorted more from sheer annoyance than amusement.

'U guys are super weird with the phones.'

'Nothing to hide. You should try it.'

'Low blow.'

'I did warn you.'

'Message received. Night.'

Tom loomed reticent near the cell's door, the disaffection in his gaze measured and planned, not unlike his visit. Hector rose from the meager cot, which served as a bed, seat, desk, and everything in between. The only furnishing save for the pitiful steel toilet with basin in this stark seven by eight room. The General's formerly suave appearance had suffered over the months, cheeks thick with a wiry, black, unkempt beard. The smell wasn't so pleasant either, and the look in his eyes was hinged and detached. The smirk was the same, though. Hector Martinez' defiant sneer that they'd yet to break.

"Admiral Chandler." It was said with some kind of challenge that set Tom's already hot blood boiling. The next comment adding more gasoline to that fire. "Will your wife be joining us?"

Tom gave no external reaction. Choosing in favor of business. "I'm here to offer you a deal."

"A deal," Hector repeated.

"Montano has turned his back on Gustavo Barras." He let that rest; eyes narrowed while the subtle play of intrigue danced across Hector's forehead. "He wants to recruit you. Intends to use you to take control of the other Generals and the army. They'll be here tomorrow, you'll say no. In exchange, you'll be transferred to a maximum-security cell. It's communal. Has people. TV. You even get to see the sunlight twice a day." Tom blinked once, languid with his hands resting palm over palm against his lap while he leaned with one shoulder against the door.

Hector scoffed. "And if I don't?"

A smirk tugged the corner of Tom's mouth. "Guard will find you hanging from that air vent." Flicked his eyes in the ceiling's direction for good measure before drawing them back to peer into Martinez' blackened ones.

The General stared in response, long and hard, before chuckling. "Tell me, how are your children? St. Louis, no? Ashley, Sa—"

In a second, Martinez was slammed into the cot, Tom's entire weight pinning him down while abject fury took hold.

Black.

There was nothing but black and tinnitus and rushing blood in his veins.

Hector struggled, attempting to buckle Tom's rigid, straight elbows to escape the crushing pressure around his windpipe. Futile. Gripping harder, until his arms quivered under the force, Tom watched with morbid satisfaction the way a blood vessel burst in Martinez' left eye. The struggles, which were violent at first, grew weaker and weaker under the vice of his grip. The bulge of Hector's jugular straining against the restricted flow, protruding too in the General's forehead. Started counting the seconds down until Hector Martinez was dead. Poetically, in the very way he'd tried to take his wife's life.

There would be no ramification. The visit was off the books, the guard a patriot who'd vowed not to see, nor hear anything, but what the official account stated. Hector Martinez had committed suicide by hanging himself from the cell. There would be no autopsy, a stroke of luck thanks to the cost of human loss in the pandemic. Their base didn't have one. That was the thing about the world now. There were things he could engineer and get away with—when provided the right motivation.

Hector wasn't struggling anymore. His eyes were dull and fixed in a glaze toward the ceiling, yet somehow the wound at Tom's side seared; pain harsh enough to make him falter. The lights had turned off. Tom peered around the cell, eyes straining in the dark for purchase. Didn't know how or how long, but something was different, mostly the feel of Hector's neck. Thinner, longer, fragile.

Something repugnant spread low and fast in Tom's gut.

He was dreaming.

In a second, Tom wrenched himself away, an undulating panic he'd never experienced obliterating every cell in his body. Thought he might be calling her name, but she wasn't moving, and he couldn't breathe. He saw that he was shaking in the frantic way he'd pulled her up. In the way he'd pressed his fingers in search of a pulse while her head rolled limp in the most sickening way. The marks on her neck… they were purple and welted. He wanted to die.

It felt like he'd floated beyond his body when he reached for the nightstand and ripped his cell. Didn't know what he'd said. How he'd managed to communicate, and then he'd discarded it, lifted her from the mattress. Laid her on the floor instead to administer mouth-to-mouth. Force the blood around her body with the same hands that had just suffocated her—terrified he'd compress too hard and break her ribs—breathed the oxygen into her lungs that he'd stamped out. It was all he could do. All he had to do until someone who knew more than him came and brought her back.

The concept of time had no meaning or bearing until responders were in their bedroom, and he didn't know how. Couldn't figure that out because the door was locked. Later, he'd comprehend that they broke it down, but now he was pulled away from her. Wrenched into reality when they took over the task of coaxing life into Sasha's body.

An officer sent by dispatch loomed grim in the doorway, surveying the scene after flipping the lights. Holy shit. He turned to his partner; words mumbled. "Is that Admiral Chandler?"

Tom's arms were covered in red marks. The wound on his side bleeding. Stitches ripped where Sasha had thrown a cheap shot in a desperate attempt to wake him. He was against the dresser now. Scooted back and on the floor, cold sweat pouring and wracked with violent tremors. The last thing she'd seen, or known, was the man she loved choking her to death in their bed. He needed to die.

Tom's entire body went rigid under Sasha's palms where they grasped his cheeks. She was leaning over him, felt like she'd been trying to wake him for hours, but in reality, was only a few minutes. A harsh, gasping sound pierced the tense silence.

"Hey, hey it's okay—you were dreaming." She was breathless but urgent, and her words seemed to snap him from the lingering haze. His bleary eyes shifted from the ceiling, landing upon her face where it loomed above him, illuminated by moonlight. Her soft features twisted with concern despite being drowsy, and Tom couldn't stop the intense, overwhelming surge of Hell.

He was in hell.

It was so abrupt Sasha hadn't time to react. He'd pulled her hands away, pushed himself out of bed, gone into their en-suite, and seconds later, she heard retching.

It was only then Sasha noticed the depth of her tremor, the way her legs shook beneath her weight when she followed him in. He was hunched over their toilet, body refusing to stop even after expelling everything in his stomach. The bile was acidic in his throat, the strength of his heaves punching his ribs and stretching the stitches, a welcomed pain, distraction from the abhorrent thing he'd just dreamed. Or lived, or foreseen. Couldn't decide because it was real. As real as the hard tile beneath his knees.

Sasha squatted beside him, rubbing his back through the damp shirt. "You're okay." Waited it out for several minutes while his system continued to revolt. She grabbed a washcloth once he was done and flushed while he cleaned up before throwing it aside. Tom slumped, his back hitting the wall while he sat there, exactly as he had after Shaw. Pale. Haunted. Staring into a void like it contained the worst thing he'd ever seen.

Sasha bit her lip and lowered herself again, kneeling in front of him. "Tom?"

He finally looked at her; his shirt swimming on her frame, her hands fisted in her lap, her throat, blemish-free—but then it wasn't, and he was clutching her limp body after he'd choked her to death, begging her to come back—he clamped his eyes shut, features crumbling and tucked his head, pressing the heels of his hands hard against them.

Sasha closed the distance, trying to draw him into her arms, but he stayed rigid. "Please, Tom. Please, just talk to me—let me help you."

She hadn't sounded like that for years, not since the last time she'd begged—and that had been after Charleston, when she told him she couldn't live with the guilt and the only way to fix it was if he'd let her go. He wondered if she remembered that part. If she realized that she'd said the same thing when she asked Martinez to put a bullet in her brain.

Tom cracked. Finally, he did it. And her heart crawled as she listened—only the second time she'd ever witnessed him cry in her life—but this was raw. Different from the pressure valve temporarily blowing under his overwhelming relief. Helpless when she buried her nose at his crown and tried to hold him together—as if it were possible—to lessen the burden of his pain as he'd done for her so many times in the past.

She stayed firm, clasping the back of his skull. "I'm right here, okay? I love you—we're gonna figure this out. Whatever this is, we can fix it." His hands twisted in her shirt, and he clung to her.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered. For so many things, she didn't know where to start, but as she sat there, on the other side of a situation they'd been in before, several clicked. Like a fraction of what he'd shouldered and then dealt with mostly alone for years. Life seemed to have a funny way of coming back around.

She waited. Until there was nothing left, and they were just sitting. Fingers worrying through his hair, while his breath warmed and then condensed against her collarbone. Cheek still resting against his forehead, and at this point, her right leg was numb. Circulation cut off from the awkward way it was jammed beneath her. Half sat in his lap.

"Tom—what the hell just happened?"

"I killed you," he breathed. When she tried to draw away, to peer down, he tightened his hold. Preventing her, and if that was easier, and what made the difference in him talking or not, Sasha let it be. "I thought it was Martinez, and when I woke up, it was you. I killed you."

There was a beat of stillness where she tried to understand that. "Tom, it was a dream, it's not real—"

"No."

She hadn't expected the conviction behind that. Thought it would sound broken instead.

"I strangled you in our bed, Sasha. You were dead. I killed you."

Worrying her lip between her teeth, she scrambled to get it. "Are you saying you think that could happen? That this is where it's going?"

She'd hit the proverbial nail, the pattern of his breathing uneven again. The beginning of choking back a fresh wave of despair. "Okay," she whispered. Cupping his cheek with the hand that wasn't cradling his head against her neck.

"You have PTSD, Tom. You need help." It was quiet, a simple statement made because it needed to be said, and she was glad that he couldn't see the way her lips trembled while she waited. At the point where she would beg him to acknowledge it if she had to.

A nod. Stiff and jerky.

Sasha clenched her eyes hard. Holding her breath with so much relief, it felt like she'd heard his voice on that radio again in Cuba. She shifted and held her lips against his forehead. Staying until she was sure her words would come even and calm.

"We're calling Grantham tomorrow morning, and we're taking a few days."

There was no argument. He remained silent. It was enough—a start.

Sasha kissed his forehead again. "I'm proud of you," she murmured against his skin. "I will always be proud of you."

It was close to imperceptible, but his hold around her torso grew tighter, and though it overwhelmed him again, it was different. More cathartic than broken. Like she'd said something he'd needed to hear but didn't know it. She closed her eyes and settled again, accepting that she may sit on the bathroom floor with him for the rest of the night, and if that's what Tom needed her to do, that's exactly what she'd do until he didn't need to anymore.

Apparently, whatever Tom had said during his hour spent on the phone with Grantham was enough to make the man insist he be given an office at Southern Command. Officially speaking, Joseph Meylan had recommended the appointment from St. Louis to Mayport upon learning that personnel were struggling in the shooting's aftermath. A decision Joshua Reiss scrutinized. All this she'd garnered by way of her cell phone and several texts with Mike, who was helping her move pieces like it was a chessboard.

The lie had been easy—complications from the shrapnel wound—and Mike had become so close with the physicians overseeing Andrea's care, that he'd solicited a fictitious recommendation instructing that the CNO be on bedrest for two weeks. There were some aspects of the post-plague world that Sasha did appreciate. The ease with which certain situations could be engineered being one.

And now she was exhausted. It was past mid-day, neither of them had dressed, though she had thrown on her robe when Tom eventually left the bathroom, only to sit on their couch—refusing to sleep in their bed, next to her, because he was convinced that he would kill her. And also, generally refusing to sleep. It was something she was going to have to accept; she realized. Until Grantham could begin unraveling whatever things had been crossed in Tom's mind—he was sleeping on the couch. Wouldn't even look at a bed. Sleeping being the operative word, because finally, finally, he'd passed out. Sasha was almost scared to leave the neighboring armchair. Scared that if she moved, he'd stir, and stay up for another twenty-eight hours. She waited for at least thirty minutes until the pattern of his breathing was deep enough to know she could creep upstairs to catch a couple herself without him waking. And it was only when she was down, curled around his pillow, that she let the tears flow.