Los Angeles, CA – October 2014

She sits in silence for a long minute. Every few seconds or so, she opens her mouth to speak and then closes it again as she changes her mind. He does his best to remain patient and understanding. But his mind swirls with questions and scenarios. He's on the edge of nauseous as he waits for her to speak.

"This is so hard." She admits. He can see the wheels in her head turning as she's looking for the right words. "You know, we've had this conversation a million times over in my head. And I was always able to know what to say. But now, you're here and…" she pauses again, and he watches her take a deep breath. "Henry," she sighs, "I was raped. And beaten. And starved. And tortured." She says the words, and she watches him carefully. At first, his eyes read of surprise and then hurt and then rage. A rage that was barely comparable to the rage she saw in her office. This is his fists clenching and his cheeks reddening. This is his body vibrating with the complete need to murder someone. "Henry, I'm okay though. I promise I'm fine."

"Elizabeth," he sighs her name on the edge of tears and has no more words to follow. His mind is turning a mile a minute, and his stomach is churning. The thought of someone putting their hands on her, of hurting her, of torturing her. It makes his stomach lurch.

She sees the look in his eyes, "Do you want me to keep going, or do you need a minute?"

"Keep going. I can do this. I want to hear it. I need to." He says. He can't believe she's the one trying to comfort him. He briefly thinks that he needs to break out of this shock so he can be the one comforting her, but his mind keeps replaying the word rape. He can't imagine someone hurting her that way. He can't imagine her being scared, alone, in pain. And he thinks the least he can do is listen to everything she has to say to him.

She can tell by the look in his eyes he is going to have a tough time. The last thing she wants to do is hurt him further. "Okay... Um, like I said, the timeline of it all is still pretty messy and probably always will be, but there are parts of it that still stick out so vividly in my mind. Like, I remember him pulling my hair, and... He wasn't feeding me enough, so sometimes clumps of my hair would come out when he'd pull me by it. There's all the physical abuse and all of the sexual assault and just the complete violation of my body to the point where it no longer felt like my body. It was like he owned every aspect of me… And it took me a while to get over that feeling," She pauses and looks up at him. He's not crying. He's not shaking. He's not even blinking. It's as if he's a statue made of stone, just listening. But his jaw is clenching and relaxing over and over as if he is trying his best to remain in control of himself.

"Keep going if you're comfortable." He nearly whispers.

"And I think the worst part was not knowing when it was going to end. Every day was the same. The same breakfast of rice while he ate like a king. And the same conversation where he told me everything he was planning on doing that day to me. And then the assault. Every. Single. Day." She stops to swallow the crack she feels coming into her voice. There is a balance she's trying to maintain. She's had five years of therapy, but Henry is hearing and processing this all for the first time.

"Every day? Elizabeth, I am so sorry." His voice is so low she can hardly hear him.

"It was horrible, and I felt so alone. I mean, I was alone..." She says. She's focused on the physical torture and not the assaults on her mind. She's not ready to tell him about her wedding band, or the photo of the kids, or the dances he forced upon her, or the name calling, or the times he had convinced her she was ruined. Those are things that still wake her in a cold sweat at night, the memories of them still too fresh in her mind. She takes a few deep breaths before continuing.

"It was really hard, and I felt so isolated, and helpless, and scared, and angry, and hopeless, and lost. And when I finally realized that no one was coming for me, I knew I had to save myself. If I wanted to live, I had to fight." Her voice is strong and clear. Her mind is focused on her memories of the kitchen and the beating she took the day she got the knife. The moment she finally got the upper hand and overpowered her captor.

"No one came for you?" He questions his voice on the edge of tears.

"No, and I didn't know why for six months after I came home. George... George got most of the information... I was pretty useless at the time."

"Can I ask..." He sighs. He feels so useless at this moment. He wants to balance between asking too much and not asking enough. He can't tell what's too much, so he keeps asking. "How did you get away? You don't have to tell me."

"No, it's okay. You can ask, and it was a delicate long-term plan. Um... I behaved the way he wanted me to in order to earn his trust... He, um, the day I stole the knife, he beat me pretty severely for backtalking him, and I got an infection in one of the deeper wounds from a cut from his boot." She pauses to breathe through the memories of the pain, "And I knew I was out of time; I had to do it then, or I was got to die there. So when he came in that night to... Rape me, I let him. And when he was just about to... You know, I slit his throat." She closes her eyes, still remembering her surprise at the feeling of cutting through another person's flesh. The blood sprayed across her chest. The sound of him choking and gurgling on his blood. The panic rose in her chest as she realized she could leave.

Henry can't handle it anymore. His body deflates into her couch. He thinks about what he was doing at the time this was happening to her. He was falling in love with another woman. He was taking her on dates, kissing her, and planning a future with her. And Elizabeth was being held prisoner, abused, and starved.

She hears his sobs, and she gently puts her hand on his back. It feels so weirdly familiar for something so intimate. Henry crying in front of her is an act of true intimacy for the retired fighter pilot. He doesn't cry in front of people he doesn't trust.

He tries to apologize. "I'm sorry," he says between gasps. "You were alone. Oh God, you were alone."

"Henry, I'm okay. I promise I'm okay." She rubs his back gently.

"How? How can you be okay?" His voice is shaky, and his face is wet.

"I have a lot of help. And I've worked through a lot of it. It took a lot of time and a lot of work, but... I'm better. I'm healing."

"Elizabeth, you shouldn't have to. You shouldn't have had to go through any of that. Not for a second." He wipes his eyes and takes a shaky breath.

"No." She agrees, "But I did. And then I had no choice but to deal with it." She says. Though she does suppose that's not completely true. She didn't deal with it for years. For years, she filled her body with drugs and alcohol and kept it locked away.

"What happened next?" He asks, his sobs turning to sniffles.

"Um, well, I escaped. I honestly don't remember much from the medical tent at Bagdad or the first few days at the LRMC. I almost died. The infection was pretty severe. But I'm pretty sure I had four surgeries in that first week. It's all a blur; I don't really remember much until I had the first pelvic exam. That I... The exam, the photos... I remember that. That was hard. Really hard."

He sighs, "I can't even imagine. How do you get over that? I mean, how do you get over being... I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that. That was the wrong thing... I... God-" He stumbles over his words as his thoughts all jumble together. He shakes his head and takes a breath, but it doesn't work.

"Henry, it's okay. You're shocked and a little freaked out." She says calmly. "I would be too. And I guess it would depend on your definition of over it. If it's that I've learned to live with it and, through therapy, have learned to identify and prevent triggers, then yeah, I guess that I'm over it. But if your definition is that I never think about it, or get triggered, or that it doesn't bother me anymore... Well no. If that's the definition, I'll never be over it. But it's gotten a lot better. I've found peace. Or some semblance of peace, which is the best I can hope for."

He sits in silence for a few moments too long as the mood tries to shift back to awkward. He feels bad for being so overwhelmed, and he knows he needs to get it together. But his mind can't rid itself of the images of her being hurt by a faceless monster. He can't rid his mind of her lying alone in a hospital bed. He can so clearly hear her screaming for him even though she hasn't told him that it happened while she was there.

"I have questions. I have so many questions." He admits, wiping his face. "I don't want to sound like I am blaming you. Please don't take this that way, but why didn't you call from Germany? I would've been there." He says. And he would've been. Maybe he wouldn't have left Jess, and his twins would still very much be a fixture and a focus in his life. But if he had known, he wouldn't have left her to deal with this alone. Never should she have been alone.

"Every time I wanted to call you and then decided not to, I had a reason. Maybe they weren't good reasons... But I did the best I could."

He nods. He can read her exhaustion, and in reality, they've only barely begun this conversation. But maybe neither of them is ready for all the details. "Can you give me the basic timeline of the ten years, babe?" He needs that. He thinks all the rest of it can come with time. Little does he know that none of this is that simple. To explain the timeline, she has to explain her thoughts and emotions during the years. And she has to explain how she came to know what she knows about the president of the United States.

"Yeah." She sighs and nods, "It's not that easy." She confesses in a whispered, teary voice, "I wish it were, but unfortunately, it's not. And there are things that you don't know that you need to know to understand why I made the decisions I did. They're not great, and you may hate me." She confesses.

He shakes his head, "Nothing you say can make me hate you." He says honestly, "I am mad at you. Furious even... But I don't hate you." He says, and his words are so honest they nearly break her. A relief so powerful it tilts her off-axis and enters her body. The fear that he'd hate her was the one thing she was worried about most. The idea that he would never look at her again. She loses all sense of control she's had and throws her arms around him. Her face burrows into his neck as her tears escape her.

"I'm sorry," she cries, "I'm so sorry."

His arms are hesitant to wrap around her, but when they do, he melts into the hold.

"God, Henry, I'm so sorry." She keeps repeating.

He holds her. He lets her cry. He doesn't have the words right now; he doesn't even know what's going on, so instead, he holds her. And her body still fits against him, and her perfume is still the same. And he's missed her. He's missed her so much that he has gotten used to the ache in his heart. He feels mending as she is in his arms. It's the most natural thing in the world, the way his lips graze the crown of her head.

"I missed you. I missed you so much." He whispers into her hair, and her fists gather his shirt in her hands.

Washington, DC – October 2014

George sits at his desk as he uses a new CPU on his desktop to access the dark web. It's not his primary computer; that one is locked up tight. This is a separate one he uses for other things, such as communicating with his team and doing research. He starts to upload scanned images of all the documents he has on Conrad Dalton. All of the secrets the man is keeping. He knows he needs to get all of his contingency plans in place immediately. He knows a threat when he hears one, and Munsey isn't bluffing.

Once his uploads are complete, he starts to draft an email to Bess.

Kiddo,

I'm sorry that I've thrown you into the deep end. You're not ready. You never really are for these kinds of things. But you have a way of surviving, so I'm sure you'll figure it out.

I'm so proud of the work you've done so far and the person you have become. I love you, kid. I could not be more honored to have received your trust these last ten years. I know you had to fight your demons, and I was privileged to see the victor emerge. I have no doubts that you will finish the mission.

I have faith that you'll make the right choices. And i have faith that everything will work out for you in the end.

It goes without saying that if you're reading this, I'm gone. And I want you to know my life was worth it, and I wouldn't have done it differently. I hope my sacrifice buys you the time you need to complete the mission.

With all the love in my heart,

G.

He sets the email to send if he doesn't log into his desktop in the next 24 hours.

As he sits there, he takes a moment to reflect on his life. He has no regrets. He's been blessed. And he decided a long time ago he was willing to die for his country. And if this is his time, he'll gladly give his life for his country. And he's even more sure about giving his life for Bess McCord.