A/N: Hello everyone! My annual Madam Secretary phase is happening, as you can see. I am rewatching/easing in. Feel free to visit me on tumblr cassandramccord and send me one-shot prompts with the full knowledge that I might not ever get to them! This is set during/after season 6, episode 4, "Valor". The first scene uses the dialogue from that episode, and the fic itself deals with the same topics addressed in the episode, including PTSD, trauma, depression and suicide. Proceed with caution! Lots of love.
Elizabeth sought out Henry immediately upon hearing the news.
Brad Jenkins' death hit her square in the chest, bringing up the instant image of the Medal of Honor ceremony, of his wife and young children beaming with pride in the front row. Unbidden, she also saw her own hero, as he had been once in his own dress blues, the shining pride in her own gaze on him back then.
When she found him in his office, she saw him pretty much exactly the same way. He looked up when she entered, and Elizabeth could instantly feel the pain in his eyes. He reached out to press pause, effectively cutting off the report in the middle of its sickening retelling, and Elizabeth wondered how many times he'd watched it by now. Henry pressed his hands together and started without preamble.
"I thought his animation was just…enthusiasm for the legislation."
The bitter note in his voice was impossible for Elizabeth to miss.
"I should have known better, a guy with his history."
"That's taking on a lot, babe," Elizabeth answered softly.
"I just got off the phone with his wife," Henry pressed on as he rounded his desk. "She said that he was suffering from depression, probably due to his PTSD."
Elizabeth watched him carefully as he pulled his glasses off of his face and pressed the back of his hand against his brow, entirely ineffective at smoothing away the worry and guilt that were painted vividly into the lines there.
"But he stopped going to see his therapist," Henry continued as Elizabeth pushed off the doorframe to meet him in the center of the room. "He thought he had it beat. He said that helping other vets was enough."
Helping other vets. The phrase felt piercing. It was what Henry himself was doing, something that he, too, was devoted to.
"Oh, poor guy," Elizabeth breathed. "People don't realize what a beast PTSD is."
Elizabeth was too keen to miss the look Henry gave her, the sharpness of his eyes when they fell on her, but she pressed on anyway.
"You know, I was talking to Ellen Hill, and she was saying that…the suicide rate for veterans is twice what it is for civilians."
Henry, too, was keenly aware of the implication, of the way Elizabeth's blue eyes were raptly attached to his face. This was personal, in ways that they had danced around for plenty long enough. He sighed, and sat down across from her.
"Brad sent me a copy of the speech he didn't get to give before the Veterans' Affairs Committee last night," he told her. "It was attached to this…long, rambling email."
Henry shook his head slightly.
"It's another sign. I just put it down to frustration, wanting to get it off his chest."
"Well," Elizabeth said, "I think people get good at hiding PTSD."
She hesitated only a second, leaning back in her chair.
"I worry about Stevie," she continued, "and what happened to her in the White House bombing."
"Not everyone who experiences a traumatic event suffers from PTSD," Henry said- he meant it, but Elizabeth knew that it didn't mean he hadn't also thought of their daughter from time to time, worried that there were signs they missed. "That's part of the problem," he went on. "It's entirely unpredictable."
Elizabeth looked at him for a brief moment; in the back of her mind, she saw her young, handsome soldier, just returned to her, and herself, unequipped and unprepared to know what he might need from her, or anyone else.
"What about you?" she asked, and heard the shade of softness in her voice that had not entirely been there a moment before.
"Not from the Gulf War," he answered readily, open to her as he'd always been. "I struggled for a while after I got shot." He shrugged slightly and added- "Well, and as you know, Fourth of July is no longer my favorite holiday."
There was a wryness in his voice, but Elizabeth felt a twinge in her chest at his words. She recalled when it was his favorite holiday, when he'd held their kids on his shoulders and beamed as the fireworks lit up the sky, the way he'd so proudly told them what the day stood for.
They had all lost parts of themselves in the process of getting here.
"I could go a lifetime without hearing any more fireworks," Henry added, and Elizabeth had to concur with that sentiment.
"Well," she said, "I still struggle with triggers."
She saw the way his face began to change at her words, the tenderness that crept into his hazel eyes, and something in her chest ached at the sight of it, but she went on nonetheless.
"Sometimes…when you think I'm listening to a podcast?" She nodded. "Whale sounds."
Henry's gaze was serious on her.
"Why don't you tell me when that's happening?" he asked.
"Well, because I don't want to dwell on it, you know?" she answered. "I mean, that bombing in Iran was a long time ago. I feel like I should be over it."
She saw the tilt of his head, could practically hear the argument he was about to make, but she kept talking instead.
"And then there's this thing where…" she trailed off, and he watched her eyes land on the window, the way they often did when she was deciding how to phrase herself. He let the opportunity to interrupt pass by, wanting to hear everything she was saying.
"If I'm talking about it," she continued finally, "maybe I'm bringing it into the house. Like…like I could keep it at bay if I just…don't give it a name."
Henry paused, thinking of the days after the bombing in Iran, the pieces of Elizabeth that had been taken away and rearranged by the events she'd suffered.
"I don't think you're alone in that," he said gently. "That is why we have got to educate people about this issue."
He looked at her for a moment.
"Hey," he said, leaning in toward her, pulled in closer to her by the love that gripped his lungs and heart.
When she looked into his face, his hazel eyes were dark and serious.
"You can always tell me anything," he said. It was not at all the first time he had told her so, but in a way it felt like it. A little, fleeting smile flickered over her features.
"You, too," she said quietly, and he reached for her hand across the space between them- and just right then, in the midst of everything else, it was just the two of them for a brief moment.
When she reluctantly got up to leave his office a few minutes later, she found that she did so with renewed courage.
The Henry Effect, she supposed, and smiled very slightly to herself again as her high heels clicked on the floor of the hallway away from the sanctity of Henry, and back to the work that awaited.
In the days that followed, neither Henry nor Elizabeth spoke of the things they'd discussed in Henry's office. Major Jenkins' funeral loomed close, and some unspoken agreement passed between them that they didn't need to talk about. Even so, there was a warmth and an attentiveness in the way they lingered a little longer in the mornings and took care to be gentle to each other in the evening.
The morning of the funeral, Henry wordlessly took Elizabeth's necklace out of her hands and fastened it around her neck. And when he was finished, she quietly turned around and knotted his tie with a practiced hand that lingered, pressed against his chest, after the tie was perfectly in place.
Later, as they sat side by side in the front row, and the salute began, Elizabeth didn't miss the way it made Henry flinch in his seat next to her. Her hand itched in her lap, drawn to him and held back by the situation.
Later, she reminded herself, but as she watched the newly widowed woman next to her accept her folded flag, she briefly closed her eyes against the sight. The children were crying, and their mother was utterly and obviously devastated, and Elizabeth's heart ached for them. At the same time, she harbored a gnawing, guilty feeling of gratitude that her own husband and hero was still here, sitting at her side.
She thought back to their little talk in his office and swallowed hard at the idea of ever being in that position herself. There had been days, decades gone now, in which she had been quietly consumed with the fear of it. And here it was again, staring her in the face after all this time. She wanted to screw the optics and take Henry's hand, but again she waited, feeling his eyes on her.
For now, the warmth of his gaze and the hum of his presence at her side would do.
But later that night, when it was all said and done- when the funeral had ended, and everyone had shaken hands and the somber quiet fell over the cemetery, and the conversations were had, and they eventually worked their way back to their own space- Elizabeth needed much more.
Henry, unsurprisingly, had made it back before her. By the time she went looking for him, he was already in sweatpants and a UVA t-shirt that had seen better days, his legs crossed and a book open in his lap, his glasses slipping off of his nose. Elizabeth thought she'd never seen anything better.
And when he looked up at the sound of her footsteps and offered her the familiar and warm kind of smile that he reserved only for Elizabeth, it warmed her from the inside out and wrapped itself around her lungs in a way that brought tears to her eyes.
Henry closed his book and held his hand out to her.
Still in her funeral clothes and smelling like gunpowder- though perhaps that part was just in her head- she unceremoniously collapsed into his waiting arms and let him hug her. Henry held her tight for a long, quiet moment, and then she looked up into his face with a certain look in her blue eyes that spoke of long-held fears and the pain of seeing them up close.
"Henry, I don't know what I would have ever done," she said quietly. He shook his head; she didn't need to elaborate for him to understand.
"I know," he whispered. "I still don't know what I would do."
She brushed her fingertips lightly against his cheek and took in the way he looked at her, and thought of everything they could have missed.
"I love you," she said.
The ghost of a smile flickered on Henry's face, lighting up his eyes for an instant before it was gone. He kissed the top of her head, and his grip on her grew tighter.
"I love you, too."
She sighed, and he smiled slightly at her.
"If you want to go shower, I'll go sneak into the kitchen for the ice cream I bribed them to hide for me," he said.
She sat up straighter, staring at him.
"What?" she asked. "Is it rocky road?"
"Oh, you know it, babe," he said, and grinned in a way that felt, for at least a moment, like something normal.
"Henry," she said, "I really think you deserve like, a trophy or something," she said seriously as she started to stand and head for the en suite and the waiting shower. Henry smiled, and the love in his eyes was unmistakable.
"Best Husband or Best Espionage?" he asked.
"If you really manage to get that ice cream up here without it being confiscated," she answered, "then you get both."
"I serve at the pleasure," Henry teased, and Elizabeth smiled as he stood up, suddenly unable to tear her eyes away from him.
"What?" Henry asked, catching her paused in the doorway.
"You really are the best," she said, the joking eased off and the sincerity shining through.
Henry smiled.
"Let's save it for when I actually get the ice cream past the guard dogs," he said. And then he was gone, and Elizabeth was left leaning against the doorway.
Tomorrow, everything else would come flooding back in. But tonight, it was held at bay. Tonight, she would just be Elizabeth- a wife who was overwhelmed with the gratitude of having her husband home with her. Even if the house looked a little different these days, at the end of the evening home was, and had always been, wherever Henry happened to be.