A/N: Hello! Back with another throwback ficlet. I think I'm going to make this "story" into a series of one-shots, so give it a follow because I'll likely be updating more in here.

Hope you enjoy!

June 1992

"Just…I don't want to fight." Elizabeth breathes, sinking her back into the seat and slouching down into the leather further. Her hand is resting on her forehead as she stares out at the city night sky, the stars invisible up there from all the lights.

She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, wondering for possibly the thousandth time this week when this would get easier. She'd heard the stories of families who had gone through deployment—she'd heard all the horrors and warnings, but she's not sure she'd really put much belief in them.

Instead, she wrote it off as something like an old wives' tale. Military wives seemed dramatic to Elizabeth sometimes, so she tried to just stay to herself anyway and ignore all the chatter about how their lives would be different. But maybe, just maybe, she should've listened to the women who had shipped their husbands off and gotten them back already. Maybe there was truth in their drama.

Just last night, they'd sat at their little kitchen table in utter silence. Before he'd left, they normally would've been chatting about their days they had or about something that had happened at work, but now that he's back, she's noticed a darkness around his eyes and the new way his shoulders tense when he thinks she's not paying attention. She noticed, too, that there was a tension between them—she and Henry—and that realization hit her late last night when they laid inches apart from each other in the bed.

They lived separate lives for the past year. And now…what? They're just supposed to go back to being married? They can't go back to newlyweds, they've passed that point. So what now?

"I'm not trying to fight," she can sense the tension here, too, in his voice, so she keeps her eyes closed and pushes her thumb and index finger harder into her pounding head, wondering if they would make it through this. She'd always thought the deployment itself would be the hardest, not this. "I'm just trying to talk."

"Your talking sounds a lot like fighting, Henry." She points out, dropping her hand and looking at him sternly as he grips the wheel tighter, turning the turn signal on and waiting.

He lets out a sigh, and she can't decide if it's because he's frustrated with her or just at this entire situation. She's frustrated with the situation, for sure, and maybe even frustrated with him. He won't talk unless it's a borderline fight. "Let's just go to dinner." He mumbles, looking out the driver's side window as he leans his elbow against the door.

She stares at the side of his head for a few moments, blinking, wondering what he'd gone through over there. Maybe it wasn't anything that traumatic, but she can't read his mind. Either something happened or their marriage is falling apart already.

That thought makes her shiver.

She looks back out her own window and swallows thick, watching as the restaurant sign passes them by when he turns into the parking lot. They get out, get a table, and when she looks up, she sees Graham.

Quickly, she looks away from that booth, tucking her napkin into her lap like nothing happened.

Low and behold. "Elizabeth?"

She looks up again and tucks her hair behind her ear, "I thought that was you." She says, trying to avoid the fact that Henry is staring a hole through her. "How are you?"

"Elizabeth Adams!" The man says again, standing up from his booth and leaving the woman behind, looking very confused. "I am well, but better now." He says, coming over and standing beside her table, folding his arms with a smile.

Completely ignoring Henry, he pipes up finally by clearing his throat. Elizabeth looks over at him and clears her own throat awkwardly, "Oh, Graham, this is my—this is Henry." She cuts herself off, then cringes internally when she hears how it came out. Why didn't she call him her husband? He is her husband, the husband she loves very much, even if he's a different version right now.

"Henry," Graham says, extending his hand in a much-too-macho way. Elizabeth is sure he sees Graham's chest stick out, and then when she watches Henry grab his hand, she acknowledges the way her husband's knuckles turned white as he shook the other man's hand. "I'm Graham. Graham Reynolds." He says as the two of them let go, and he folds his arms over his chest once more, standing a little taller.

Posturing, Elizabeth realizes. But it's too late to do much now.

"I'm Henry McCord, her husband." Henry reintroduces himself, looking up at him as he stiffens his shoulders. "We're celebrating my coming home from deployment."

"Ah," Graham says, "Desert storm?"

"Mhm." Henry says.

Without another word, Graham turns back to Elizabeth and smiles, putting on a new charm, "I haven't seen Elizabeth here in ages," he points out, "What's it been now…six years?"

She shrugs a little, trying to stay nonchalant. "I think that sounds right." She admits, even though she remembers it clearly. It was April 1986, a month before graduation, and he dumped her. He'd said long distance wasn't going to work out—she was going to UVA, he was going to Harvard. And she guesses, judging by the expensive looking suit he has on, that he did end up fulfilling that Harvard promise. Not surprising, though, since he's a third-generation Harvard student.

Her tongue drifts across her lip as she tries to think of something else to say, but the woman at the table where Graham had come from calls his name, and it's like he's pulled from a trance. "Oh, this is my girlfriend, Marina." He says, stepping aside. She waves, but nothing overly friendly. Elizabeth waves back, and she notices Henry staring at her once more.

"Nice to meet you," she says to Marina, giving her best winning smile.

"Well," Graham says a little too loudly, "I'll let you get back to your celebration dinner. Elizabeth," he pauses, looking at her and smiling before shaking his head as if he were in disbelief, "It was so nice seeing you. You were always the one that got away." He whispers the last bit, then turns to Henry after a moment, "Good to meet you, Harvey."

"Henry." He corrects, but Graham had already walked away.

Elizabeth looks at Henry after a moment, watching him stare at his hands. She drops her gaze down to look at his fingers dancing with each other, maybe even fighting with each other. "We dated in high school."

"I can tell." Henry answers, not looking up.

She swallows thick, "Henry…"

"Or is it Harvey?" Henry shoots back quickly, looking up at her pointedly. His hands stop, lay flat on the table, then he huffs, "Let's just go…"

"Henry." She warns, sitting perfectly still. "Don't be that way."

"You say that like I didn't just watch my wife melt in front of me upon seeing her high school boyfriend." Henry snaps.

She swallows thick, cocking her jaw to the side just slightly. She tucks her hands into her lap, taking a deep breath and trying to calm down before thinking what to say next. And then she realizes: she has no idea what to say. She's silenced, in a way, and whether that was by Graham or by Henry's accusations, she's unsure. Maybe his accusations were true, even, upon some quick reflection.

She looks down into her lap, reaching over in silence and grabbing her purse before sliding out of the booth. Without looking, she can hear Henry following suit, sliding across the vinyl material and out behind her. Together, silently, they walk to the car without another look at Graham.

Once the car starts, Elizabeth looks over at Henry, "He's just an old boyfriend, Henry."

"It looked like you'd let him jump you right then and there, Elizabeth."

The way he says it makes her chest ache, but then burn. She can feel her neck reddening, creeping up to her jaw and her cheeks, then to her ears and making it all throb as the redness spreads. "That's not fair." She seethes.

He looks over at her, raising a brow, "You should've seen yourself, Elizabeth." He says, "That's an old flame, and it has not burnt out one bit."

She swallows thick, looking at him in disbelief. "What's wrong with you, Henry?"

"What's wrong with me?" He asks her.

She just stays silent, wondering if he's going to answer the question she'd posed.

He puts the car back in park before they've ever even moved. "What's wrong with me?" He asks again. "I've been through a war and back, Elizabeth. You wouldn't understand."

"Then help me understand." She practically bellows, somewhere between crying it out and yelling it at him. She takes a deep breath through her nose, trying to stay calm, but the anger is still bubbling inside her and her cheeks are still red and throbbing with the rhythm of her heartbeat, "Stop shutting me out. You've been home for two weeks and you've barely spoken to me at all."

"Speak to Graham," Henry mumbles, looking the other way out his window.

She bristles, looking at the back of his head for a few moments. Finally, she reaches for the door handle and throws her door open.

"Where are you going?"

"Home." She snaps. "Maybe I'll get Graham to give me a ride since you think I'm going to bone him anyway!" She yells, grabbing her purse from the passenger floorboard and slamming the door shut.

She starts walking away from the car, away from the restaurant where Graham sits inside with Marina, and just walking. She tosses her bag over her shoulder and folds her arms in front of her chest angrily.

She always knew, one way or another, that the whole thing with Graham would come back to bite her. When she and Henry had been dating for a while, when things were clearly getting serious, they'd discussed their past love lives. Henry, being an ROTC devotee, had not had much time in high school to devote to a girlfriend, too, so he'd never had much of a serious relationship. Sure, he'd had dates and prom dates, but nothing more than that. Elizabeth, on the other hand…

After her parents died in the ninth grade, she started attending Houghton, and Graham sat beside her in biology and algebra. Over the course of that year, they'd gotten to know each other fairly well, and in the tenth grade, she finally agreed to go out on a date with him. Up until then, she'd been more cautious—everyone warned her against dating him, at least all the people who'd mostly grown up in the same circles as him. But she finally ignored their advice and went out on a date. A few months later, February of her sophomore year, she found herself on a date with Graham in his car for Valentine's Day, and then found herself in his backseat, and then found herself crying in her dorm room later that night. Nothing about that had felt right, and now she just felt…dirty. But they continued on—persevered, if you will, because that's what you do in a high school relationship with a beautiful man who is undoubtedly going to Harvard and becoming a third-generation Harvard lawyer. You save the relationship by offering your body again and again, and again, and then you get dumped senior year.

And then, you find out from rumors swirling around the school that had been so thoughtfully kept from you, that Graham was also sleeping with Jessica, a girl whose parents bought her a Jaguar for her sixteenth birthday and then a Porsche for her seventeenth. Elizabeth hadn't paid attention for the eighteenth, but she was sure it was something just as extravagant.

She hears a door slam behind her somewhere, and she hopes to God that it's not Henry. She doesn't want to talk to him. She doesn't even really want to see him. Instead, she just feels like that tenth-grade-girl crying in her twin bed after Graham had taken advantage of her—a token of someone, and just a toy to play with. A toy in both Graham and her own husband's eyes.

"Elizabeth!" She hears, and she just keeps walking, tugging her arms around her a little tighter. After a moment goes by, she hears it again, "Elizabeth!" And she hears his footsteps closing in, "I know you hear me! Stop!"

She doesn't stop. She doesn't look back. Instead, she digs her heels into the ground harder with each step, gripping tightly onto the bag draped over her shoulder, and she jerks around whenever he grabs the purse from behind her. It almost makes her fall from the sudden way her movement stops, and she glares at him once she sets her eyes on him. "You want to chastise me more?" She snips.

They'd discussed Graham before, albeit briefly. That conversation after they'd been together for a while was, looking back, shorter than it probably should've been. But whose fault was that now? Hers or Henry's? And why's he blaming her for something she couldn't actually help? Yes, she dated Graham, and it went terribly almost the entire few years and then terribly wrong at the end. Even though after meeting Henry she realized she was never actually in love with Graham, that she hadn't even known what true love was, she still was heartbroken when Graham broke up with her. Her freshman year at UVA was dreary. But to throw it back in her face like this just isn't fair, and Elizabeth's not sure what to do with it.

"Do you love him?" Henry asks, staring into her eyes furiously.

She examines him, hoping he's going to crack a smile or burst into laughter to let her know he's joking. But he never does, and she sees him desperately searching her own face for a sign of something. She's not sure what, exactly. "No, Henry." She answers in disbelief, relaxing her hand on the purse strap, "I don't love him."

He continues his stare, "Why did your eyes light up when you saw him?" He asks, his voice losing some of the sharpness.

She opens her mouth to say something, but then she realizes she doesn't know how to answer that. She didn't know, really, that her eyes lit. And maybe that didn't—maybe Henry was just feeling a bit more jealous because, he's right, he did just experience war.

Still.

"I didn't know they did," she answers honestly, shifting her weight and becoming a little less ridged in this parking lot, feeling sweat drip down her back uncomfortably from the rush she'd been in to get away. "I told you a long time ago, Henry—he broke my heart. I really thought he was the one, and then he threw me away so easily and I found out all at the same time I'd not been his only one anyway." She admits, shaking her head and staring at him, then dropping her eyes down to look at the asphalt, "Obviously he wasn't the one, but I thought he was. And you have to respect that. I never hid him from you." She reminds carefully, looking back up at him and folding her arms over her chest, "I was honest with you."

It comes off more defensive than she means for it to, she realizes after she says it, and he's lighting back up. "You told me he was your high school boyfriend and that he took your virginity," he says, "You didn't tell me that you were in love."

"You think I'd just let someone sleep with me who I didn't love?" She asks pointedly, squinting her eyes at him. "Henry—" She cuts herself off there, not wanting to blow up even more than they already have at each other. She shakes her head and throws her hands up, "I didn't know you thought of me, your wife, the woman who you married, as such a whore." She snaps, turning back around and walking. Walking where? She has no idea. Home is too far away to walk, and it's plenty dark enough.

But she didn't want a ride from him, that's for sure. He can pout on his own.

When she gets to the first crosswalk, she sees a car stop in the middle of it, and Henry has his window down. "Elizabeth, come on." He breathes, hanging his head out the window slightly, "Just get in the car and come home."

"No," she answers sternly, standing still in the crosswalk. "Why would I do that?"

"Because home is eight miles away." He says, and it infuriates her that he knows the distance to home from this restaurant. How does he know these things?

She shakes her head again, "I don't care. I'll get there eventually." She says.

Without another moment passing, he gets out and takes her a little too forcefully by the arm, dragging her to the car and opening the door for her. She just stares at him, then narrows her eyes and gets in after another moment of making him wait.

She slams the door behind her, secretly hoping his fingers were in the way, but to no avail. He gets in the driver's seat again and, in silence, starts driving them home. About two miles down the road, they come to another stop—a traffic jam at eight in the evening only could mean that there was a wreck ahead. No one was moving, and it was bumper to bumper, standstill traffic.

Her jaw cocks to the side as they sit for what felt like hours, though it had only been 8:02 when she looked at the radio, then 8:06 when she looked again. "I didn't love him." She whispers, feeling as though she's being forced to speak against her will by some unknown being. "I thought I did. And I thought he loved me." She says, "But none of that was real. Now that I know better, that I'm older, I realize that everything he did was classic—and I was naïve enough to believe it." She wants to add that he knows how much she hates feeling naïve, but she doesn't feel like she should have to add it. He knows her well enough to know that about her.

She looks over at him and sees him staring again, his hands off the wheel as they sit still in the traffic. Feeling uncomfortable, she looks out the windshield again at the string of taillights, "He only wanted me for sex. And maybe I should've told you that—been more clear. But at the time, it was still…it was hard for me to grasp. I thought, still, whenever I told you about Graham, that he had actually loved me. It's only once I got older that I realized none of what he did was love." And again, she wants to add that Henry is the one to have shown her that, to show her what real love actually was, but she is feeling salty enough that she doesn't add it.

However, she does look over at him when she only gets silence in return, and she sees him staring at a spot between them somewhere. She tries to follow his gaze, and the best she can tell, he's looking at her wedding ring. Feeling frozen, she holds her breath to be sure to not move, though she can't really place why being under his gaze makes her feel like that. It never used to. But he also never used to stare at her so emptily.

"Henry…" she breathes, "Say something, for God's sake."

He looks up at her as though he'd been asleep, blinking a few times before clearing his throat. "It's getting to me." He whispers.

"That I had sex with Graham?" She asks, confused out of her mind. "It's been years, Henry, and I—"

"No," he stops her, his eyes darting away to the floorboard to stare at the blackness there. When he doesn't continue, she realizes, finally, that this isn't about her at all. This is about Desert Storm. This is about what he went through over there.

She stares at his hand for a moment that's resting on his leg, the other propped up on the door, wondering what she should say. Should she ask him what happened? She doesn't think that's a good idea. Should she say anything at all? Or should she just be quiet? She's not sure that's a good idea, either, because she wants to acknowledge that she's worried about him. She just has no idea how.

Finally, she scoots her hand across the center of the car and taps her fingers on top of his gently, not quite holding his hand, but letting him know she's there. He startles, looking down at them, and then slowly flips his hand palm up and takes her hand in his, giving it a good squeeze.

"I shouldn't have blown up about Graham." He admits quietly, looking up at the traffic and inching forward, noticing the space between their car and the next one. He shakes his head when he brakes, looking back down at their hands for a few quiet moments and taking a deep breath. "It had nothing—well, very little to do with that."

She studies him more, her brow lowering a little as she tries to read this man she loves so deeply. He's always been the reader in this duo—he's always known how to diagnose her problems, what's wrong with her. He's insightful, she's…not as much as he is. Her mouth feels sticky, like her tongue is glued to the roof, and she has to rub her tongue along her teeth to try to create a little saliva. Her bottom teeth come up to her top lip, scraping gently, trying to think of something to tell him.

"I don't know what to say, Henry." She finally settles for that, shaking her head and feeling like those words alone are a letdown both to him and even to her. She looks at her hand in her lap, her fingers mindlessly playing with each other and popping her knuckles—a trait she had gotten rid of once already in her life.

"I don't either," he admits, making her shiver a little. She looks at him as he clears his throat, "I'm okay, and then I'm not. It hits me." He whispers, leaning his elbow against the door now, laying his head in his palm as he stares forward at the taillights in front of them, "It comes in waves, but when those waves hit…it's bad. And sometimes it's these stupid outbursts like tonight, other times it's just…" he shakes his head, his shoulders deflating.

She squeezes his hand a little, taking a sharp breath as if she'd forgotten to breathe for a moment. Biting at her bottom lip, she just looks down at her wedding ring, silently wondering what all is hitting him and why and how she can help and if she can help and why he hasn't told her before now and how she can fix it. She sniffles, feeling herself spiral, then looks up at the side of his face, "You have me to lean on." She whispers, "You know that."

When she says those last three words, she bristles at herself.

"Right?" She asks, adding it in. Her mouth feels sticky again. "You do know that, right?"

He drags his gaze to face her, shrugging his shoulder. "Some things are too heavy, babe." He admits.

She shakes her head immediately, swallowing the lump in her throat. "I don't care if you shot a man point blank, Henry." She confirms, her voice shaking enough to make her feel jittery. She knows, though, that he wasn't on the ground fighting like that—something happened in the air for him to feel this way. She threads her fingers through his tightly, squeezing until her arm feels weak, "I don't know what it is, and I don't have to know if you don't want me to, but I need you to know that I'm not going to see you differently just because of something that a war forced you to do."

She watches as he swallows hard, his neck tightening before he looks away and out of the driver's window. Only a brief second later, she watches as his shoulders shake, as he brings his other palm up to his face to shield it, and her heart breaks for him as she hears this big, strong man of hers let out the saddest whimper-turned-sob. She gasps for a breath, looking in front of her at the traffic to be sure that they hadn't moved, and then she moves the gear shift into park. Her hand lets go of his and slides up his arm to his shoulder, trying to pull him as close as she can within the confines of this car.

His torso leans over the console and she wraps her other arm around his body, pulling him into her chest and letting his head rest there. She wonders if he can tell how fast her heart is beating, too, or if it's only her who can feel her heart racing. She bends her neck slightly to kiss his head, "You are the love of my life, Henry McCord, and I don't ever want you to wonder if you are ever again." She murmurs against his head, feeling his hair tickle her lips as she moves them. "No high school piece of work will ever change the way I feel for you."

His cries have stopped, and she listens to his breathing as it starts to even out. The cars in front of them inch forward, and he sits up slowly, pulling the shift into drive before letting the car roll forward a little, and then a little more, and finally the cars are moving at a steadier pace.

She watches him the entire time, and when they get up to a decent speed, she reaches over and takes his hand again, giving a good, solid squeeze.

He glances over, giving her the tiniest smile before squeezing back, and the drive home is silent. They've said all they need to for each other for now, and when they get home, she knows they won't have to speak to be understood. They'll find their rhythm again—first while (probably) making sandwiches since they didn't actually get to eat, and then later when they sit down on the couch and watch television together, and then even later when, well…