The anticipation had been such that, for a moment, Michael was plainly disconcerted that nobody in the room seemed to pay attention to him.

His heart was still racing, his whole body preparing for scrutiny in vain.

Men and women dressed in thousand-dollar suits were standing or sitting, silent; nearly all were either reading or writing on their cell phones.

Some looked up at Bruce and greeted him in mild surprise.

Bruce answered mostly with nods, and when prompted to speak he only repeated, "A tragedy. A tragedy."

It took all but ten seconds for Michael to realize that Paul Kellerman wasn't in the room.

Then a woman with jet-black hair neatly cut to embrace the curve of her jaw-line stood up and walked toward them.

Michael recognized her immediately. She was Gretchen Morgan, Sara's Secretary of State; but there was no time for him to move, and anyway, nowhere to hide.

No going back now.

"Bruce," she said, familiarly enough that Michael assumed they had met before. Through the persisting haze of shock that cloaked the whole room, it was impossible to say whether she was pleased to see him. "It's been a while."

Bruce bowed his head.

"Are you here to join the Democrats, too?" She said. "There are worse times to become a party-traitor."

"You of all people should know, Gretchen, that allegiance to our commander-in-chief transcends party lines. But I'm not here as a politician," he said. "I came to see Sara."

Gretchen's lips formed a mild smile. It amused her anyone should think you could take the politician out of you at any time, even during the worst personal tragedies.

"I haven't met your friend." She turned to Michael and he felt his insides melt like butter.

"Ah, forgive me," Bruce said. "Manners at such a time slip quite out of my mind. This is my associate, Michael."

The sound of his true name, spoken out loud in this room, made Michael feel like a bright glare was burning a hole into his skin.

Of course, Bruce had deliberately omitted his last name. Now was not the time to draw attention to him, even with Paul Kellerman out of the room.

Bruce turned to Michael, "Gretchen and I knew each other before she left the Republicans in 2020. We called her a rising star – not one of us doubted you'd have a bright career in politics."

Michael nodded his head in silence. Bruce had told him to let him do the talking, but Michael longed to steer them away from such insignificant chatter, to ask how Sara was; were the doctors really optimistic, or was it all about putting up a strong front in a time of crisis?

Either Bruce sensed this, or he was himself uninterested in small talk. "Tell me, Gretchen – honestly. How is our president?"

Gretchen looked toward the wooden door at the other end of the room.

Michael's heart burned at the thought that Sara was there, must be there, so close to him, and if he raced for it right now he could get a glimpse of her before anyone tried to shoot him.

"She hasn't woken up."

"But she's –" Michael interrupted himself before he could finish.

The concern in his voice would betray him. Better he should come off as a stammering fool, intimidated by the people in the room.

Gretchen's eyes narrowed into cat-like slits.

"Naturally," Bruce said, "we're all terribly worried."

"Naturally," she said.

Just at that moment, the door that Michael couldn't help staring at opened, and his heart leapt in his chest.

Paul Kellerman stepped out of it, and before Michael could try to make out anything through the glimpse that opened on the hospital room where he knew Sara was, Kellerman closed the door and walked to meet them.

"Bruce," he said. His mind seemed elsewhere. "I thought I'd see you here."

Michael dug his nails into his hands.

How he wanted to jump forward and sink his nails into Paul Kellerman's face, to punish him for the unforgiveable fact that he had just seen Sara; that he saw her every day.

Bruce and Kellerman didn't shake hands. There was an undeniable mutual distaste in their eyes yet they seemed to accept each other's presence as unavoidable, seeing as they both cared for the woman who was currently lying in the nearby hospital room.

The woman the whole country was talking about and who would, if she died, send the country into national crisis.

Kellerman's eyes barely took a second to scan Michael's figure. "And this is –"

"My associate," Bruce said. This time, he didn't even mention his first name, which was for the best. Kellerman was already moving on, sighing, picking up his cell phone.

"You've been to see her," Bruce ventured after a few seconds.

"Yes," Kellerman sounded dreadfully bored.

The urge to punch him grew so solid, Michael had to dig his fists into his thighs.

"I take it that a visit from me wouldn't hurt?" Bruce said.

Michael shot him a desperate look. Why was he asking for permission?

But Kellerman dismissed him with a wave of the hand.

Bruce looked up at Gretchen who gave a polite smile. "Gretchen, if you'll excuse me."

"Of course. We'll talk later. A pleasure to meet you, Michael."

Kellerman's eyes shot upward and Michael's heart pounded; but the look in Kellerman's eyes wasn't one of suspicious alertness. Merely an afterthought, in which he remembered to take in the young man's face in case he should turn out to be useful later.

Bruce led the way toward the door and heat flooded Michael's body, more heat than he knew what to do with. It felt he was sweating through every pore. His heart was pumping madly, his brain haywire.

Before they went in, Bruce put his hand delicately on Michael's shoulder and breathed into his ear, "Remember. Stay behind me. Don't try to go near her."

Michael nodded though for once, he had no idea whether he would be able to go according to plan, if there would be room for restraint at all in the next few seconds.

Bruce pushed open the door.

There were three bodyguards in the room, and Bruce greeted them all silently.

Michael's eyes flew to the hospital bed, like following the force of a magnet.

He wished he could dress up the vision in his romantic ideals. Compare her to Snow White posing as dead in the crystal casket. But there was no red on her lips or in her cheeks, and she looked nothing like a sleeping princess.

Something inside Michael cracked, and the fissure grew faster and faster, with every second that he stood looking at her.

Sara's skin was sickly white, abandoned by the healthy peach complexion it had had when he first met her, and which the stress of her first two years as president had started to dull.

Her cheeks, her lips, her whole face was that same shade of yellow-white, and with her eyes closed, her features relaxed, she almost looked nothing like the woman he had fallen in love with.

Only her bright-red hair struck a chord of recognition, and Michael had to stop himself from stepping closer to touch it, to bury his fingers deep into it, to melt towards her and drop to his knees and lay his head against her side.

As if Bruce sensed the danger of Michael's doing something dangerous, he turned to the bodyguards and spoke, to distract Michael. To draw him out of the vortex-like attraction that threatened to pull him in.

"Oh, Jesus," Bruce said.

First, Michael thought he was playing the bereaved surrogate father to draw the guards' attention. But the tremor in his voice was true, and maybe there was no need for him to fake.

"This is hell for us all," Bruce said, "isn't it?"

One of the guards bowed his head.

"I've learned about your colleague, the one who died for her. I was sorry to hear it."

But Michael could hardly focus on the conversation that followed.

The guard assured anyone of them would have been happy to die saving her life, and Michael had to wonder would they, really?

Was their sense of duty as strong as all that?

It felt wrong to think this; to think maybe a good number of Americans would have been willing to play the hero, to sacrifice themselves for their president. It took away one of the few things Michael had left to give her. If so many men were willing to lay their lives at Sara's feet, where did that leave him? How was he special? What could he sacrifice that she would need?

His hand flew to the pocket of his coat of its own accord, and he felt the origami rose faded by the years.

Suddenly, he knew what he needed to do.

But there was no time to say or do anything before the door opened, and a worn Frank Tancredi stepped inside the hospital room.

His eyes met Bruce with a flash of hostility that instantly thawed into acceptance. It struck Michael that this one look had revealed to him the whole of Sara's childhood.

And he knew suddenly that he had met both of Sara's fathers today – the one who had raised her, and the one she had chosen.

"Frank," Bruce said, "old friend."

Though his voice didn't break down, there was the same stricken pain in his eyes as in Frank's, and the two men clasped hands awkwardly.

Frank paid no attention to Michael whatsoever.

His gaze lowered to his daughter and soon he was sinking to his knees, as Michael had so desperately wanted to do, and taking Sara's hand.

"I told her this would happen," he said. "It was bound to happen, the way she waged war on those big corporations. I tried to tell her. But all her life, she wanted to play the game without following the rules. Now, we're all paying for it."

Michael felt this was unfair, but this was no time or place to speak his mind. Right now, his part was to be silent as a picture. And if he could look at Sara with none of the other men noticing, if he could finally drink in her image after all those months, years, of enduring for her to be out of reach, gone but everywhere – so much the better.

Bruce was the one to voice Michael's thoughts, "You can't say that, Frank. What she did was brave."

"That kind of brave is called reckless, Bruce."

"You say that because you love her, as I do. But she's more than your daughter, more than the Sara we love. She's the president. She put the people first. I wish she hadn't been the one to do this, to take on such a formidable enemy – but someone must, and I know Sara enough to know that's what she must have been thinking when she did what she did."

"But it's my daughter lying on that hospital bed. Not yours," Frank said.

Bruce's face showed no sign of pain at his words. The truth of Sara's love was sure enough in his heart that her father's grieving anger couldn't shake his confidence.

"So you've got no right to tell me this like you know how I feel."

One of the bodyguards cleared his throat awkwardly. "I'm sorry, sir." He looked at Bruce when he said this. "The room is getting a little crowded. Doctors said one visitor at a time. I don't know if much can get to her in the state she's in – but if there's even a slight chance, then we have to keep that in mind."

"Of course," Bruce said. He turned to Michael, "We'll show ourselves out."

Michael took one last look at Sara, hoping he had made himself unimportant enough to the eyes of the bodyguards that they wouldn't notice.

It was hard not let crude devotion drip from his gaze as it set on the diminished form of the woman he adored.

What was it he had first fallen in love with? If she had asked him, he would have answered it was her strength, maybe, because it was as good an answer as any. But that wouldn't have been the truth. There was no right answer to that question.

Michael had not fallen in love with Sara.

His mind had adhered to her every thought as he saw her during speeches on television, so she had gained his enthusiasm and his loyalty before he ever set eyes on her.

Then they had met at Charles' charity, and he had simply been in love with her, ever since.

If he could have brushed his knuckles against her cheek, if he could have felt that she was warm, that life still breathed inside that frail body, it would have been easier to leave.

He and Bruce didn't exchange a word until they were out of the hospital.

Then, the old man's hand was on his shoulder again. "This can't have been easy for you, Michael. You behaved yourself very well."

Michael said nothing. In his mouth, a taste of bile and anger was brewing, but he knew it was wrong, that it was only the pain of what had happened trying to break out.

"You've done something priceless for me today," Michael said. "Thank you."

Bruce didn't reply. He didn't say there would be a price for this. That Michael had shown himself plain to the eyes of all the biggest players in Washington, and there would be consequences. That because Bruce had introduced him as his associate, he would become his associate.

He didn't need to.

Michael had learned, long before Sara ever beckoned him into that wild world, that everything came with a price.

Whatever he had to pay for seeing her today, it would be worth it.

Before Bruce could say anything, Michael took the origami flower out of his coat. Bruce furrowed his brows, "What is that?"

"Do you have a pen?"

Bruce handed him one and Michael scribbled a note inside the stem. In his mind's eye, he could still see Sara, but imagination mixed with reality and she appeared as colorless as white paper, and already, he didn't know if she had really looked so faded or if he'd imagined it, imagined her and the fact that he'd seen her in the first place.

When he finished the note, he folded the crease of the rose's stem back into place and handed the origami flower to Bruce. "Will you find a way to give this to her?" He said.

Bruce shook away surprise and nodded his head. "Of course, I'll try."

Maybe the image of Frank taking his daughter's hand flashed into his mind. Michael could see it, too.

"Do you mind my asking what it is?"

"It used to be something else," Michael said, remembering how he had crafted the flower, folding every crease carefully for Sara's birthday gift. It was supposed to be a token of his unfading love, something she could keep in the White House so she would know that he was out there, waiting.

"Now," he said, "it doesn't matter what it is."

And it really didn't.

Michael didn't care what the flower meant anymore, so long as it took her back to him.

End Notes: I know I haven't posted in a while. Honestly, this chapter was ready and I thought it was already online. I'm currently working on an original novel which explains my slipping out of the fandom but I promise I'll soon be back with a vengeance ;). Please share your thoughts on this chapter in the comment section, I'd love to read them.