A/N: Hi! Nothing much to say, and this will probably be my last update for the week...got to get back to real life for a while :-)

Let me know what you're thinking about the story/chapter :-)

TW: loss and miscarriage

Elizabeth

When her eyes open to the morning sunlight, she sees Henry sitting in the desk chair beside the balcony door. The smell of coffee overwhelms her as she flutters her eyelids a few times, not moving one inch yet—not with the way everything makes her so nauseous. The mixture of the smell and the movement could easily set her off. He's looking outside as his coffee steams in his lap, and he has one hand wrapped around the mug.

A chill runs through her and she snuggles deeper under the cover, suddenly envious of his palm—or maybe envious of the cup. Either way, there's a warmth near him that she doesn't have right now.

His jaw is tight, and from what she can see of his face, it looks like his eyebrow is scrunched down. She's seen this look so many times—mostly while he's writing, but also when he's concerned about something. They called it his writer's face, but they both knew it also went past that.

Her body tenses a little when she thinks about what could be going on in his mind, and the nerves flood back over her. Their life—the life that has barely been steady since she left the CIA—is about to flip on its side again. Her mind flashes that not-distant memory of when he accused her of cheating, but this time she doesn't get mad. This time, she just feels sad. Sad for him. Sad for herself, even. Aside from everything this surprise changes for her in her own life, she knows that he probably, at some level, blames himself for their lives turning upside-down like this. Though they both thought there were precautions in place and there's really no one to blame.

She rolls slightly onto her side, taking her hands from her sides and tucking them up beside her chest and chin, curling herself in the cover some more. Outside, it's gray, and it just looks cold. She assumes it probably feels cold, too. Suddenly, she feels frigid. She assesses: her body feels warm, and she has no goosebumps, but something about this room is making her feel as though she's taking an ice bath on the inside.

Staring at the steam rising from his mug, she becomes increasingly aware of the heaviness in her chest, a sensation she can only describe as dread. But something about it—it's not the fear of their lives changing or even the dread of having something happen that they hadn't intended. This dread feels primal—it feels…spiritual? She can't quite put her finger on it as she watches him bring the mug to his lips, sip, and set it back in his lap. Something tells her that this is instinct, an other-worldly warning that feels so deeply unsettling that it couldn't possibly just be about the practicality of their lives.

She closes her eyes now, clenching them tight as she swallows the lump down in her throat.

The images of them having four kids were never clear—bringing their three kids to the hospital to see the new one, showing Stevie and maybe Ali how to change a diaper (definitely not Jason—he's still at the age where poop would definitely be much too fun), or even teaching this one to drive when Jason is off at college. None of that ever formed in her mind the way she could do it with her other three. She'd written it off as tiredness, exhaustion, and shock.

Now, she feels a guilt wash over her, suffocating her from her lungs and all the way up to her neck. What if she didn't want this enough, and this dark whisper is a warning about what's to come?

She has to pull the covers from her neck as she feels like she can't breathe suddenly, and when her eyes open next, she sees Henry's looking back over his shoulder at her.

"You're awake," he murmurs, giving her a tired smile.

She blinks once, trying to resist the tears that are wanting to flood her eyes, "What if…" she whispers, but she can't make her lips form the next words. She closes her eyes again.

There's a click, and she recognizes that in her foggy brain as the chair turning around. When she opens her eyes, he's turned toward her completely. His coffee is setting on the desk. "What is it, babe?" He asks, "Did you have a nightmare?"

She shakes her head, "No." She breathes. It feels much worse than a nightmare—nightmares aren't real. A mother's intuition is.

He stands up and walks to her, leaning his hips on her side of the bed as he reaches out for her, feeling her skin on her cheeks with the back of his fingers. "Are you feeling okay?" He asks.

She doesn't answer. It's as though she's lost her entire vocabulary, her entire ability to nod or shake her head. The ice-bath feeling has immersed her entirely inside and out now.

"Babe?" He asks again, his tone shifting to one thick with worry.

She closes her eyes and forces herself to take a breath, sounding much more strangled than she meant for it to. "I…what if this…" She stutters, shaking her head. She peels the covers from her chest, feeling as though they're weighing her lungs down to the point where she can't even talk. "We've been so lucky in the past."

He furrows his brows and slides up on the bed a bit more, his feet now dangling from the side as he turns to face her better. "What?" He asks, not following her.

She feels delusional, though. She realizes that she probably also sounds delusional. Her eyes shut again as she tries to gather the courage, the energy, to say what she's trying to get out. But every way she forms it in her mind sounds crazy—an intuition? She looks up at Henry again through blurry vision, blinking a few times to clear it. She sniffles, searching his kind eyes that are so heavy with concern for her, and she swallows hard again. He holds her in those eyes, he holds all the kindness in the world in those eyes, too. If he can look at her so lovingly, she can get this out.

"Something tells me we don't have to worry about this," she whispers, "Call…call it…" she shakes her head again, staring up at the ceiling for a moment to gather herself once more, "Call it mother's intuition. Whatever." She murmurs, "But…I have this terrible feeling, Henry." Her lips open to say something else, but she closes them as she feels a whimper rise into her throat from somewhere deep inside her. She shuts it off and takes a second before continuing, "What if it's my fault? My fault for not—"

"Shhh…" Henry shushes, putting his hand over her stomach with the cover between his palm and her bare stomach. He slides it to the side and pulls her body closer to him, and she feels like a ragdoll, just able to be moved anywhere. She's not sure she has the energy to be anything else. "Whatever it is, it isn't your fault." He whispers.

She shakes her head, "You can't know that."

"Call it husband intuition." He says.

She wants to roll her eyes—they both know that's not the same thing as a parental instinct. But he knows her, too, so she doesn't roll her eyes. He has a chance of being right because he knows her better sometimes than she knows herself. So she hopes that he's right.

"There's so much we can't control." She murmurs, sliding her hand up and gripping onto his forearm for steadiness.

He looks down at her and she watches his neck move—he looks like he's swallowing a rock. It takes him a moment to speak again, "We've never…we've…" he takes a shaky breath, "We've never lost before." He reminds her.

She nods, "I know." She whispers, "But I've never been this age, and I've never not wanted something so badly." When she strangles those words out, it's followed by a cry, and she hates herself for it. She's sick of crying—she's sick of making him watch her cry.

But he leans down and pushes her hair back and away from her face—she hadn't realized how sticky she felt.

"It feels like we're just…" she murmurs through sniffles, "Like we're on the edge of something we can't stop, Henry. Don't you feel it?"

He doesn't answer right away, and it makes her heart sink further into the deep parts of her body.

"What if this is the time…" She can't finish the sentence, she just shuts her eyes and feels the tears stream down her temples and into her hair.

The fear she felt yesterday is unmatched with today's. Yesterday, she was scared for how their lives would change, how they would be able to get through this and make it out together even. She was scared for having to tell their kids. She was scared for her job, for their financial stability. She was scared about everything that had to do, in some way, with her. Now, this fear is turned in a new direction. She's so fearful of something that has nothing to do with her, really. Fearful for a life that she's somehow created and now in charge of and maybe didn't love enough. Somewhere in her logical mind, she knows that love isn't all that keeps a child on this earth—there would never be heartbreak when it came to babies if so. But she can't find her logical mind right now. This is all she's got.

She hadn't realized it, but at some point, his hand slid back over to be on top of her stomach. She glances down at it and forces herself to take a breath, watching as her bare chest rises and falls between her eyes and his hand. The lump in her throat has returned once more, and she just lets it sit there, lets herself feel the weight of it.

"I'm scared, Henry," she admits.

Henry

When she says those three words, he knows it's different from yesterday. Yesterday, she was scared for all the reasons they've ever been scared. What would happen to her life? What would happen to her job? What would happen to their kids' lives? What would happen when bringing another life in this world? Now, he recognizes that this isn't that same type of fear. She sounds petrified today, like she's seen a ghost. He hoped it really was a nightmare, but he knows this is much worse.

Though both versions of her fear are coming from a mother's heart, he knows how terrifying it must be to have your mother's heart tell you that this is the time you aren't lucky. He can hear it in her voice, but mostly he can see it in her pale face, in the way her eyes are searching for some sliver of hope to hold on to.

The last time she was so scared, he remembers, is when Jason had been so sick with pneumonia. At only two, he had to be life-flighted to the children's hospital, and he was unable to ride with them in the helicopter.

"I don't want to go alone," she spewed as they were riding the elevator to the roof of this hospital, the medics carrying Jason on a hospital bed to the side of them. She had a grip on Henry's hand, and he had his other hand resting on her lower back.

"I know babe," he said, trying to stay calm, though his own heart was up in his throat, too. "But only one of us can go." Their voices were so drowned out by the sound of the IV machine and the nurses that he almost wasn't sure if he'd even said it out loud. He didn't want her to go by herself, either. He didn't want to leave either of them.

They'd already said she should be the one to go, but in the time it took to get to the rooftop, she'd already changed her mind. He looked over at her as they were reaching the top, and he watched as she stared at Jason, her bottom lip quivering just slightly. She looked like a child—this strong, amazing woman who he's loved for so many years looked as though she needed held, and he did the best he could by wrapping his arm around her side and nuzzling her into his body. As the elevator doors were opening, he thought about the fact that three could go to two so easily, that they never had this bad of a scare with Ali or Stevie, and that he'd remember to hold his kids a little tighter every day. Life happens so quickly.

They walk out together onto the platform, the helicopter already there and waiting for them. The nurses move quickly to load Jason in, and then they're yelling at Elizabeth and Henry, asking who's loading with them. "She is!" Henry said quickly, pushing Elizabeth forward. She started to protest, but he kissed her cheek, "You're the one who should go. I'll be there as fast as I can." He said, kissing her one more time before giving her a gentle shove and stepping away.

He made it to the hospital in half the time he should've that night, and this morning, here in this hotel room with her, he would give anything to make her fear go away.

But ultimately, she's right. This could be the time. It could've been the time any of the other times, too, but she's older. They weren't ever considering the fact that they could have another child, and though she's still healthy and in great shape, she hasn't been taking the precautions that she would've been had she known.

So he takes a deep breath and he leans down, kissing her on the forehead first, and then once on the nose, and then once on the lips, lingering there, closing his eyes and letting himself be scared, too. Even if it was for just a moment, a moment long enough to not let her worry too much. When he pulls away, he brushes his thumb against her cheek. He doesn't say, "It'll be okay," or "Don't worry." He just lets her have this worry to hold on to for a while. Maybe that's the only thing that can help them from sliding—keep ahold on the worry? He shakes that idea away, he doesn't even like the sound of it.

Instead of giving her false reassurances, he squeezes her hand, his other one still resting on her stomach absentmindedly, "Let's get out of this room," he whispers, "I don't think it's good for us to be couped up in here just…alone with our thoughts."

She looks at him like a fawn, and he wants to just scoop her up and forget all that bullshit about false reassurances. He wants to tell her it'll be okay. He wants to take every little worry and ache and put it on his shoulders. He wouldn't say he's stronger than her—she has a strength of her own. But he doesn't want to see her in positions where she has to be strong. He takes a deep breath, trying to not let himself pepper her in encouragement.

"And do what?" She murmurs, wiping at her face.

He shrugs a little, "We could go sightseeing…"

She thinks on this for a moment, then she shakes her head and sits up a little, adjusting them so that his hand is resting on her thigh instead on top of the cover. "I just want to go home," she admits, "See the kids…I have papers to grade from midterms…" She pauses to sniffle, then wipes underneath her eye at the remnant of mascara that exists there.

He nods, leaning in and kissing her head once more, continually resisting just holding her and telling her all will be alright. "Okay," he replies, "Let's hit the road."

Elizabeth

Walking to her office, she realizes she's stiff from the ride home yesterday. There was a lot of silence in the car on the way home, and though sometimes she wanted to just yell and scream and beg him to say something, she also felt at peace with the silence. She tried to let it cocoon her most of the time, but then when there was silence when one of his favorite songs to sing was playing on the radio, she'd tense up again. This is not normal. Nothing about that ride was normal.

She's hoping that today she'll be able to ease her worries—that she'll be able to get in to see her doctor last minute and that they'll know for sure. They'll either be heartbroken, or they'll be scared, and she can handle one or the other, just not both anymore. When she sits down in her seat, she looks at the stack of papers on her desk and sighs, the anxiety washing over her again. She takes a shaky breath, making herself pull one from the top and start marking it up as she reads through. "It's not going to get better by not doing your work," she tells herself while reading the first sentence.

After about an hour of grading and a phone call to make a doctor's appointment for today, she does some minor prep for her lecture, then walks across the campus to the building she's teaching in this semester. She used to appreciate the walk a little more in the warmer part of the semester, the earlier part, but now she's feeling the weight of the cold. She looks down at her watch and sees she has two minutes until class starts, and she knows Henry is probably already in his classroom. They teach at the same time, just in different buildings.

When she walks into her classroom, she sees only six of her twenty-three students in there. "Where is everyone?" She mumbles, half to herself, but half to the rest of the class. She checks her watch again, then checks the clock on the wall—it was right on the hour. Everyone should be here.

She sighs, rustling through papers and trying to push her thoughts away. Finally, she leans against the podium and looks up at the six faces staring back at her. "Do you just not care about this class?" She asks, something she shouldn't have said. But instead of immediately regretting it, her question somehow fueled her. "Do you guys just not care at all? Because I, quite frankly, am sick of coming in and—" she's interrupted by the seventh and eighth students filing in through the door, and she sighs. "I was just asking your classmates if you just don't care about the class or what gives." She murmurs.

She looks out at each of them, eyeing them one-by-one. No one budges. Finally, Blake Moran speaks up, "It's…" he says, then clears his throat. She eyes him harder. "It's…it's a lot of work, Professor McCord." He explains, "And it's definitely my hardest class."

She eyes him a moment longer before moving to the person next to him, then the next, and then the next. She makes it through all eight students with her lips tight, pulled together, "Fine," she mutters, not even loud enough for any of them to hear it from the podium. This is an undergraduate class. If they want it dumbed down, sure, she'll dumb it down for them.

Once she finishes with that class, she makes the long trek back to her office and sees Henry walking into the building at the same time. "Hey," he says, and she tries to give him a smile.

Their car ride yesterday back home was silent, and their night was equally silent—but that was because they were a bit busy again like the night before. She didn't know what was wrong with her, why she felt the urge to absolutely have him ravage her, but she did. She didn't want to be ravaged in a reckless kind of way, but she wanted every part of him that he could give, and she got it both nights. Neither of them, she's pretty sure, had the words to say about any of this situation. But sometimes words aren't needed.

"Hey," she says back, reaching up and kissing him.

"How's your morning going?"

She shrugs, "My undergraduates apparently hate me," it feels dramatic even as she's saying it, but she can't help herself. She has never been able to connect with this class.

He tilts his head, "I doubt that?"

Again, she shrugs her shoulders and shakes her head, "Doesn't really matter," she breathes, then moves on to the new subject, "I got a doctor's appointment for one today." She says, glancing down at her watch. Twelve already.

He looks down at his watch, too, "I can be there." He says, then looks up at her, "If you want, of course."

She hesitates, thinking about a time when she wouldn't want him there. She can't even imagine that time, so she shakes her head, "Of course I want you there." She says, swallowing hard as she's unable to keep her mind from roaming back to that "what if this is the thing that breaks us" question from over the weekend. A wave of nausea rolls through her and she has to shut her eyes, steadying herself as she tries to control her breaths, but it doesn't help. She bursts into her office and grabs the trash can, losing everything—which only included a little bit of coffee and some water—that she's consumed this morning.

In no time, he's there beside her, his hand resting on her back and rubbing little circles with his palm. "Sorry babe," he mutters, grabbing the napkin that doubles as a coaster on her desk and handing it to her.

She wipes her mouth with it and stands up straight, grabbing the bag from the trash can and setting the can back down on the floor with no grace and ease. Frustrated, tears fill her eyes again as she ties the mostly-empty, puke-filled bag in a knot overly tight, strangling the life from it. "Why?" She spits out, and she feels the circles on her back stop. "Why is it that this has to happen? If I just…in the end—" she stops herself, reminding herself of when she said she wouldn't get worked up about this. That whatever happens will happen. That however the pendulum swings is the way it's supposed to go. But she can't stop her body from feeling that weight of dread tugging at her constantly.

"Babe…" he murmurs, taking the bag and setting it on her desk, then wrapping her in his arms from the front. She rests her forehead in his shoulder and cries a bit longer until she's shaking and she finally makes herself take a deep breath, making herself pull it together.

This helps nothing.

She pulls away from him and wipes her tears, shaking her head, "This is ridiculous." She says, talking about her tears and her upset. What she wants to add is, "To be so upset over something I wasn't even asking for in the first place." But she knows that's foolish to say for so many reasons, so she stops. She thinks, again, that maybe this is her fault. She makes herself think that maybe there's not even anything wrong, and that the baby is perfectly healthy. She reminds herself of the appointment she'll have. She thinks to the three times she first heard her babies' heartbeats.

Yet her heart feels no lighter.