A/N: Hi everyone! Hope your holidays have gone well so far.
I've spent mine sick this week, and am only just now back sort of on my feet. Wish me luck as I'm now behind in all of my school work, too. The joys of being a student!
This chapter is based around the time of Tamerlane, and has a lot of the dialogue from that episode with my own spin in places. Hope you enjoy this chapter.
December 8, 2014
They've already talked about the fate of the world hanging in the balance while Elizabeth nibbles at her muffin, nursing her one cup of coffee in her left hand as she leans over the sink as to not drop too many crumbs. He's already threatened her with a can of laughy string. She almost threatened him with cutting out all sex, but he changed the subject before the kids got downstairs and they started discussing the usage of the laughy string and the sixteenth birthday.
"Besides," Elizabeth says, grabbing her coffee and leaning over the island toward her kids, "How else are we going to have the most epic laughy string fight ever?" She asks, smirking as she thinks about the beautiful tradition of laughy string on birthdays—something she only regretted once when she was pregnant with Jason on Ali's birthday that year. Even though she was barely able to keep any food down, anything other than saltines at least, she had participated and dominated.
Stevie walks by with her brow raised, "Now that I'm back, you're all going down." She coos.
"Oh! Oh no…" Elizabeth says defensively, immediately teaming up with Henry and saying that they're going to take everyone down.
Jason moves into a speech about video games and Henry reels him back in with the reminder that he goes back to public school tomorrow. Elizabeth smiles for a brief moment, thinking about how maybe they'll have a quick sense of normalcy with Jason back in school, Ali still in school, and Stevie off working her job. A sense of normalcy will be nice before she breaks it all apart with this giant, bombshell news that only she, her husband, her doctor, and Blake Moran know about.
While Stevie tells Jason he might get whacked at public school for being a wiseass, Elizabeth hears her phone ringing and is ripped from this "loving" moment amongst her kids, heading over and answering it when she sees who it is. "Hi Nadine," she says, taking a deep breath and stuffing her other hand into her pocket, "What do you got?" She asks.
"Good morning, Madam Secretary," Nadine greets, then takes a breath and continues, "Jafar Alinejad—he's our coup leader."
Elizabeth shuts her eyes and brings her hand up to the side of her head, "I'm on my way in now." She breathes quietly, listening to the bustle behind her in her own kitchen and making a mental note to ask Henry for forgiveness at some point for always taking the brunt of toting the kids places. He would be on kid duty again this morning.
"I love you," she says to him, kissing his lips quickly before grabbing her coffee and heading out the door without any other explanation.
"Wait," he says, rushing after her as she's already through the front hall and opening the door to get out, "What about your appointment?" He asks in a hushed tone.
She swallows thick, shaking her head, "I'm going to have to reschedule."
"Elizabeth," Henry warns, giving her that look that makes her feel like she's being scolded by her parents.
"Henry," she whispers, "This is important."
"So is your health." He answers quickly, raising his hand up to settle on her waist, "And this one's health, too."
She looks down from his face guiltily and just reaches up quickly to kiss his lips again, "I'll be back tonight, I love you."
"I love you too." He says, but the tone of his voice makes her shrink as she walks out the door and to the SUVs waiting for her.
After spending most of the day jetting to Canada to talk to Alinejad, back to D.C., and then having an unsettling chat with the house-arrested Andrew Muncie, she finally makes it home. Before even walking any further in the house, she heads to the kitchen and makes two cups of tea. She sips Henry's to be sure it's perfected—just the exact way he's always liked it—and then she walks upstairs with both cups steaming.
"Oh, good, I'm glad I don't have to wake you up," she breathes, walking over to his side of the bed and handing him his cup.
He just takes a look at it before she turns away, walking over to sit on the chair in the other corner of the room, far, far away from him. "I don't like the sound of that."
"I've been at the White House," she replies, trying to shirk the subject as much as she could so that maybe he could get a few sips of that calming, chamomile tea in before he loses his head.
"Yeah, quite a while," he says.
She sits down and looks in her cup for a moment, "I had to convince the President that the only way out of this little pickle in Iran is to go there," she admits.
The reaction she didn't want, but had planned for, immediately ensues. He's standing up and walking toward her, and he's angry, she can tell, but she's not even sure she hears his words properly. She's not sure, really, that she's listening. "Going to Iran?" He's asking when she finally comes back to reality, looking up from her steaming hot tea, "When there's a coup in the works? No," he says sternly, "I'm playing the husband card."
"Babe, listen to me," she says softly.
"No," he says, his voice raising enough to make her eyebrows shoot up in disbelief, "I am not letting you do this, Elizabeth, and you know how strongly I believe in you and whatever you do. But I'm putting my foot down this time, this is not going to happen."
She swallows thick and looks down, opening her mouth to explain everything that's going on with Iran's government and what will happen if the coup moves forward. But he keeps arguing, his voice keeps getting louder, and finally she loses her temper, "What part of this do you disagree with?" She shouts.
He sits down on the bench at the end of their bed, "There are God knows how many radicals who would love to kill you," he says. She's only able to make eye contact for a brief moment before he starts talking again, "And do you know what they would do when they get ahold of you and find out that you're also carrying a child? Elizabeth, that would be like…" he stands up again and runs his fingers through his hair, shutting his eyes tightly and shaking his head, "That would be like the grand trophy, Elizabeth, and you and I both know that."
"That's why it's a secret mission," she says, trying to bring him back down to earth. It's not working, she's sure, because he's rolling his eyes and huffing at her. "They won't even know I'm there."
She lets him get out his anger a bit more as she throws in an argument occasionally, but finally she just stands up and takes his arms in her hands, wrapping her fingers around tightly and giving a little squeeze before leaning in and kissing his lips. She brings her hand to the back of his neck, her fingertips playing in the base of his hair as she pulls away slowly, "I'm gonna be okay," she whispers, looking directly into his eyes before pressing one quick kiss to his lips, "We'll be fine," she whispers again, wrapping her body around him as much as she can with him not budging one bit.
She's been in these dangerous situations before with a child, and this is not really all that different. If anything, this is safer since she has a team of security agents following her everywhere she goes. The likelihood of anything actually happening to her is so slim.
"Babe," she whispers again when she feels him standing rock solid, not making one move toward her or anything, "We'll be okay."
"Will you?" He asks, "Will we?"
She looks in his eyes, her own eyes dropping to search his lips for any hint of something to give her a clue as to what he's talking about. She looks back up into his eyes again and frowns, "What do you mean will we? We'll be okay." She assures.
He shakes his head, "You know that this terrifies me more than anything in the world, yet you're still going to do it." He says.
She swallows thick, ready to use the line "this is what I signed up for" but knows that he's already basically vetoed that by saying it to her earlier. Instead, she just glides her tongue across her suddenly dry lips and looks at him, "If this is what you leave me over, Henry, then we've got bigger problems than just this." She whispers.
"I think we do have bigger problems than just this," he admits, stepping away from her and sitting on the end of her side of the bed, "Elizabeth, you blew off your appointment today—"
"I—"
"Let me finish," he says, his tone switching to something that sounds so close to begging that it makes her shudder. She just sits down on the chair behind her, staring at him as her fingers mindlessly play with one another, "You blew it off. And it's selfish of me to say this, it really is, I know it," he says, "But I was looking forward to hearing this baby's heartbeat and seeing it, too, and you just…you blew it all off like it was nothing."
"National security is at hand, Henry," she reminds.
"Do you want this?" He asks, "Do you really? Because so far, you've said yes, but everything you're doing is telling me no, Elizabeth." His voice cracks a little and he pauses to clear his throat quietly, "So look me in the eye and tell me you're serious about having this baby." He says, "Because if you are, I can't see how you think it's safe to go to Iran any more than I do."
She looks down and feels as though someone has shoved a vacuum into her lungs, just sucking all the air out in one swift move. Her fingers become blurry in her line of vision, and she blinks once to let the tears release onto the carpet below her. One teardrop catches on her pants, though, and she watches as it soaks into the black material. "I don't know," she whispers.
"You have to make a decision," he says sternly.
She looks at him and opens her mouth, appalled, but then stops and takes a breath, "Do you think I don't know that, Henry?" She snaps, "Do you think that this isn't stressing me out to the point where I just wish we could go back in time and never have this happen? Do you really?" She asks, "Because I don't think you're understanding how much stress I'm under at work, at home, and now with this decision weighing constantly over me. A decision that I thought I'd made, but everything that has followed since then has told me it was the wrong decision to make." She retorts, standing up and moving over to him.
When she gets close to him, he stands up, and now they're eye-to-eye again—or they would be, if he wasn't just that much taller than her. "You may think it's changing our lives equally, but it's not, Henry, and I need you to get that through your head right now." She says, "You're not the one who will be blamed for everything in the media. You're not the one who has to worry about every little thing they eat or drink because it might harm another person. You're not the one who has to make time in their never-ending, fully blocked schedules somehow to drive back and forth to doctor's appointments God knows how many times a week." She growls, looking up at him with a fury that she's not felt in quite some time. "So no, I can't look you in the eye and honestly say I want this baby." She barks, and then she immediately gets hit with a terrible guilty feeling in the pit of her stomach that spreads all throughout her body.
She turns away from him and swallows the lump of guilt—or tears, or something—back in her throat and folds her arms over her chest, bringing one hand up so that her head can rest in her palm.
He clears his throat behind her, "Fine," he whispers, "I don't…no, I don't know all that." He states defeatedly. She hears the floor squeaking and she can tell he's walking away from her. "But I know that I care about you, and I care about what you want and whether you're alive or not, Elizabeth, and I'm not sure at this moment that you respect me enough to consider that." When she hears the lamp turn off, she doesn't even look back at him, she simply walks to the closet and packs her bag.
As she's tossing her clothes in haphazardly, she hears the light turn back on.
"Elizabeth," he murmurs, "I'm sorry."
She looks back at him with tears falling down her cheeks, "Are you?" She asks.
He's sitting up now, hanging his feet from the side of the bed for a moment before he stands and walks over to her, wrapping his arms tightly around her entire body, not allowing her to move. His face is buried in her hair, down in the crook of her neck, "I am." He whispers, "I don't want to spend our last night together before you leave like this." He says, "I don't want to fight."
She sniffles and finally relaxes her body enough so that her neck isn't quite as tense, allowing her head to fall forward into his chest as she cries quietly, "I don't either," she whispers, "But I'm also not changing my plans—I'm going, Henry." She whispers.
"Okay," he says after a moment, still holding tightly to her. "Just…come back to me, Elizabeth. I swear to God, if you don't come back to—" his voice cracks into silence, and just a moment later, she feels moisture on her neck. She shuts her eyes and snuggles into his chest a little further, knowing, now, that she has to come back to him.
She pulls away from him and looks up into his eyes, both of them crying a little too much for her own taste. Her hand comes up to his cheek and rubs at his stubble with her thumb, "If I don't come back—"
"No…" Henry whispers.
"Listen," she says, "If I don't come back, I need you to remember tonight."
"Why would I want to remember this night?" He asks quietly.
She pushes up to her tip toes and kisses his lips, gently walking him backwards to the bed, "I need you to remind me what I have at home, Henry, what I have to come back to." She breathes, "I need you to show me what our last night together might be like."
December 9, 2014
"I understand that you have three children, Elizabeth?" Minister Javani's wife asks, giving Elizabeth the perfect opportunity to gush about her children for a moment.
When she tells them she has two girls and one boy, something inside her makes her want to continue gushing about the secret she's carrying around with her. Instead, she makes herself talk about the ages, "He's just about your age, I bet." She says, talking to one of his sons.
Javani prompts his sons to go get their homework done, but Elizabeth is still thinking about this secret she's carried all the way to Iran. She has two girls and one boy, but what will this one be? As Javani is directing her into a seating area, her mind is buzzing, wondering how Jason would react to having a little brother or to being completely outnumbered, again, by girls. Would he be wrapped around a little sister's finger? Would he torture her to no end?
She realizes how quiet she is, though, and turns to Javani briefly as they walk, "You have a lovely family," she states, taking her mind off the loud thoughts swimming around in her head and trying to focus herself back on why she's here.
Later in the evening, after her brief call with Ali, she gets on the phone with Henry.
"Hey babe," Henry says, "We miss you."
She smiles a little, walking around a bit in the room, "We miss you too." She whispers, taking the chance on someone overhearing her and questioning whether it's bad English or whether she's speaking for two. "Hey," she smirks to herself and shrugs her shoulder up in her ear, feeling her cheeks blush, "Maybe when I get back, you can model that apron for me. You know, au natural." She says, then bites her lip, "I'm not on speaker, am I?" She asks.
"Deal," he answers, and she smiles again.
"I'm sorry about last night," she says quickly, "I'm sorry for everything I said."
She can hear him swallow on the other line, and she sighs a bit when it gets quiet. She's about to open her mouth and say she's just missing him and the kids a lot, but he finally speaks, "I love you, Elizabeth, and nothing will ever change that. I just want you in one piece, okay?"
"Okay, I should go…" she whispers, closing her eyes. "I love you."
"I love you too, bye babe."
When she hangs up, she hands the phone to her security guard and walks into the room with Javani. He's talking on the phone with President Shiraz, but then they have a chat of their own for a while before his son comes in and asks for help with homework. "Oh, been there." She says sarcastically, listening to Javani tell the boy that he can help him in a moment before she's suddenly shot forward.
She lands on her stomach and hears Fred's voice, "Get down, get down! Madam Secretary—"
The next thing she hears over all the ringing in her ears is a gunshot, and she feels a Fred go heavy on her back. Before she can even think about anything else, she looks for Javani's son, seeing him hiding behind the chair—but safe.
"Get down!" Javani is yelling, but Elizabeth watches as he crumbles in front of her after blood spatters from his head.
The screaming and ringing in her ears mixes so loudly that all she wants to do is swim in this sea of gunfire toward that boy—the boy Jason's age who is screaming for his father, his dying father. But all she can do with the weight of Fred on her own body is scream at him, "Abdul!" She says, "Stay down!"
When she looks back at Fred, she realizes why he feels so heavy, seeing his eyes rolled back in his head. She touches her fingers across his hair before looking away, trying to block out the screaming as the situation begins to be real. Her adrenaline is going so hard, though, that she ignores every single other pain in her body and is only able to comprehend the way her ears are hurting.
December 10, 2014
Walking in the door, she feels like a dead woman. She knows she should be a dead woman, and by the grace of something much greater than her, she is alive and walking through her door to her family. Something that Javani will never get to do again.
Henry is waiting there for her at the door, and all she can do is let herself be hugged. Her girls are next, and it feels as though she's in some sort of nightmare or movie that can't possibly be about her real life. Jason follows soon, and they're all hugging her, all feeling like they're suffocating her. It shouldn't feel this way. This should feel good. This is what she wanted.
The trip back to the States had her wondering the entire time what could have been. She knows she lost too much blood, she knows the blow to her abdomen from the shrapnel and from Fred's entire body weight landing on her can't have done anything good for the baby. Didn't she want this? No, she didn't, but she didn't know what she wanted. She didn't want this. But she didn't want the other option, either. Now she just feels guilty for ever thinking she could end this pregnancy that most likely just ended for her.
"Give Mom some space," she finally hears Henry say. Although she loves her kids, she's never been more thankful to hear those four words.
With his hand on her upper back, carefully placed, he guides her up the stairs and into their bedroom while the kids stay downstairs with the promise that she'll return when she's ready to do so. She looks around their bedroom, wondering how it was possible that just a few nights ago they were fighting in this very room about a baby that she's not even sure was ever in the cards for her. A baby that, really, shouldn't have ever been possible, but somehow happened, and now is probably ripped away just as fast.
She turns to look at Henry and bursts into tears, "I don't think it made it, Henry, I really…I don't know how…"
He wraps her up in his arms and just holds her, letting her cry there for a while before he walks them over to the bed and sits her down gently. He helps her with her coat and sets it over to the side, then swallows thick and takes the hem of her shirt, slowly rolling it up to get a better look at the wound.
She knows he's seen the magnitude of the injury when he winces, and she just shuts her eyes, feeling a sudden weight put on her as though she's failed him somehow. A baby, again, that should've never been hers anyway—she couldn't protect. She went into this dangerous situation knowing the risks. But she did it anyway.
She looks back at him and sobs again, "I didn't tell anyone about the baby, and no one had to know…they just stitched me up and sent me on the jet." She whimpers, "I couldn't risk it getting leaked right now."
"I understand," Henry says, and she hears the genuineness in his voice. Surely he does understand what a terrible media storm this would be on top of the Iran coup. "Can we take you to the doctor, please?" He whispers, "I'm worried about you—it's bleeding through the bandage."
She tries her best to look back at the bandage, but ultimately just winces in pain. She takes a sharp breath and leans forward, nodding as she feels that terrible pain in her abdomen again—the same one that she's felt since the blast. "Yeah," she whimpers, "Dr. Hoole…"
"I was thinking more like the emergency room."
She shakes her head, "I only trust Dr. Hoole."