When Michael went home, Nika wasn't at the apartment. Thank God. He didn't know what he could have said to her to explain the state he was in. In an automatic state, he took off his clothes and stepped into the tiny shower cabin, his skin coming alive under the hot spray of water. The rose tattoo was still fresh; he remembered he wasn't supposed to wash it. Michael usually took short showers; he was an environment-minded man. More generally, it was rare that he ever did anything without considering every aspect. When he shopped, he thought of the hothouses where tomatoes were grown in the winter. He thought of all the fuel hiding behind imported foods. He patched up old clothes rather than buying new because he couldn't see the hands that had gone into its making, didn't know how well the workers were paid if at all.

But that day, Michael stayed in the shower until the water turned cold. There was so much steam when he stepped out of the cabin he had to fumble for a towel. The air felt cold on his skin when he walked into the living room, but he didn't get dressed, the towel wrapped around his waist.

He felt incapable of thought.

That wasn't quite true. He was trying, sending his mind to important things, like his appointment with Bruce later today. But every time, he returned to the single image of Sara lying comatose in her hospital bed. After a while, he stopped fighting it. The apartment was so silent, he could hear the beating of his heart, and with each pump he was aware that at any second, the phone might ring and it would be Bruce telling him Sara had died.

The black screen of the television sat in front of the couch, staring at him, but he didn't switch it on. There was no point in reliving the shooting. Michael's brain was already too occupied following a hundred different threads in which he had stopped it, some way or another, and Sara was sitting with him in a secret room in the White House discussing how important it was they keep their relationship secret from the press for another six years.

Then, the phone did ring, and Michael's arms broke into gooseflesh.

One glance at the caller ID was enough to reassure him the worst hadn't happened. At least, not yet.

"Linc," he said when he picked up.

Over the course of the afternoon, he'd missed about a dozen of calls from his brother. Now was as good a moment to answer him as any.

"Oh, Jesus fuck," Lincoln said. "Sorry. I mean, of course I know you had other things to do than answer my calls, I just –"

"You worried. It's okay."

After two years, Lincoln still needed reassurance, and Michael no longer minded giving it.

Yes, Lincoln was allowed to love his little brother even after what had happened that Halloween night during the presidential race.

He was even allowed to feel outrage and sadness that his president had been shot in the heart, when he had once followed her to a motel and filmed her while she was having sex with his brother.

Silence lingered for a few seconds.

Probably, Lincoln was considering one sentence after another and finding them unsuitable for the circumstances.

How are you holding up?

What happened?

Are you okay?

"Where are you?" He asked finally.

"Home," Michael said. "I just got back."

"Back from where?"

The brothers were only talking around what really mattered, the way they usually did. Just as Lincoln couldn't ask about what it felt like, to have the woman you loved shot on every television screen in the country, Michael couldn't talk about it.

All he could volunteer was, "I was there, Linc."

Silence.

Michael could imagine his brother pacing his apartment and stopping dead in his tracks.

"In the cathedral," he said. "When she gave the speech."

"You –" Silence stammered back in. "Mike," Lincoln said, and Michael could tell he was weighing each word. "You couldn't have stopped it."

"I didn't stop it. That's the only thing that matters."

A deep breath over the phone. "Mike, I'm coming to you. To Washington."

Michael said nothing.

"Did you hear me?"

"Yes."

"Oh." Lincoln was expecting Michael to fight him on this a little.

"Let me know when your flight gets here," Michael said. "I don't know if I'll be able to pick you up. I'm seeing someone this afternoon."

That was good, wasn't it? It at least meant Michael was capable of functioning.

"You mean a business meeting?" Lincoln checked the time. It was already past six in the afternoon.

"Something like that. I got to go," he added, though that wasn't true.

What good was it, talking to his brother, with all the things they couldn't say to each other standing between them like blocks of ice? Michael had never been one who knew how to talk about his feelings, and if anything, Lincoln was worse. But this was different. To try to express the maddening precision with which his mind always returned to Sara's pale face on the hospital pillow would be like trying to run the marathon with cannonballs chained to each foot.

"Sure," Lincoln said. "Listen, Mike…"

Michael's knuckles dug into his forehead. He wished Linc wouldn't feel compelled to address it, it only made the cannonballs heavier, and he was so tired, who knew what would happen. If he heard Sara's name right now he might break down and cry, and that just wasn't an option. It would be like admitting that she would die.

But in the end, Lincoln only said, "Is there anything I can do?"

"No," Michael said. Something tried to climb out of his throat and he fought it until he saw it was only laughter. "That's the worst thing about it. There's nothing we can do. The past two years have been an illusion."

"Don't say that. What we did mattered."

"Really?" He shrugged. "We gave Sara information about the people in Washington. Maybe it allowed her to look at the pieces on her chess game with a little more clarity. But that only made her more dangerous. The problem with all the big players, the corporations, was they wanted her to be the king. That's what the president is usually like, right? The most important piece in the game. Every other piece dies to protect it. But it doesn't do anything."

"Mike –"

"But Sara was never going to be a king. She was a queen. The piece that can do anything."

Michael interrupted himself. Horror filled his mouth like tar. He'd said was.

"Michael?"

Michael didn't know how long he'd been silent.

For the first time since the gunshot this afternoon, Michael really thought about what would happen if Sara died.

What could he do?

The solitary knight, wandering across the chessboard from white square to black and again, and again, when there was no one else left trying to fight the good fight?

He felt suddenly that Sara's death would send him flying into space and he would simply float for the rest of his life, an aster fallen from its orbit.

"Michael?" Lincoln said.

"I'm sorry. I have to go."

"You aren't alone," Lincoln said.

"Thanks," he answered, but in his mind, he knew that he was. Completely alone. Drifting into the sky.

Lincoln hung up the phone, his arm falling along his side. After a while, he heard Veronica move in the next room until she'd joined him. A small comfort in this terrible day was that they hadn't left each other, after he'd told her the truth about Michael. She'd given him some privacy while he called his brother, but the knowledge of her presence in the bedroom made everything more tolerable.

Except for the guilt, which was drilling steadily into his brain.

Guilt that Lincoln was standing here, with the woman he loved. That his body relaxed despite himself when she locked her arms around his torso. That he could touch her. That she was alive. That he loved her.

Yes. That was already betrayal, probably. Lincoln knew suddenly that if Sara died, Lincoln could never bear to be happy, that he must instead dedicate his life to help his brother carry the burden of his terrible grief.

Veronica didn't talk. For maybe half an hour, she only held him, and he let her, because this embrace was the only communication he was capable of at the moment. The silence in the room wasn't a layer of ice that needed breaking; it was flowing like the ocean, the ocean that seemed to pierce his soul from Veronica's eyes.

And what about my duty to her? He thought. What happens to her if I flock to Michael and help him carry the giant rock he'll have to bear for the rest of his life?

Part of him knew Veronica would get over him. Her independence was one of the things he admired most in her. There would be no breakdown, no tissues-strewn floors or throwing boxes of chocolate at the TV screen when a romcom was on.

But just because he could never repay his debt to Michael didn't mean he didn't owe Veronica better.

Only the most despicable being on earth would leave her. Without mentioning, a more selfish voice added, that I would have to be a complete idiot.

"I have to go to Washington," he said.

"I know," she brought her face level with his but didn't break their embrace, her front pressed to his back. "I'd like to come with you."

"What?"

"I can work on my cases in the plane. I don't have to be in Chicago until the end of next week, and by then –"

"Wait," he turned around, reluctantly entangling from her arms. There are some moments that demand strict eye-contact, and this was one of them. "It's not just about whether you could come, Vee."

A small shift in her eyes. Damn, she was always so hard to read. Where someone else would have teared up, Vee only hardened. Where someone else would have shouted in anger, she only hardened. Lincoln was sure dating her had made him expert at reading everyone else – just as it had made everyone else into a bland and boring mix compared to her.

"It's about whether you want me there," she said.

"No." She was going to say, Don't lie, so he added, "All right, yes, but not for the reasons you think. I'd be thrilled to be with you. There isn't enough life for me to have my fill of you even if we live to a hundred years." He didn't pause to wonder whether that had been a step too far. In moments of crisis, only honesty makes sense, and Lincoln didn't have the energy for finesse. "But I haven't told my brother about you."

Vee sounded amused. "Your brother has been the president's lover, and I'm a secret?"

"Not a secret. It's just – things are complicated between Michael and I."

Black bile swam to his throat. There it was. The last unspoken truth. The "secret lover" video. The betrayal from last year's Halloween. Guilt swelled into his mind until he couldn't think. He could not say that to Veronica. There was no reason for her to know – it'd be dangerous, really. Betraying Michael once more. The fewer people knew that video existed, the safer Michael was. And Sara.

But really he couldn't tell her because she would leave him, and he couldn't see the point of life without her. And she wouldn't just leave him. What Lincoln couldn't bear was what would happen before – the moment when he would speak the words and the look in her eyes would show him that he was unlovable. Unforgivable.

"I understand that," Veronica put her hand on his wrist. "It's taken you all this time just to tell me you had a brother – Linc, I don't expect to meet him right away. I imagine he has other things to think about. But the next few weeks are going to be hell. The whole country is in crisis. I think we need to be together in a time like this. Besides, whatever's going to happen in Washington, I want to be there. She's my president, too."

Lincoln brought her hand to his mouth. "I love you, Vee. You know that?"

"Yes."

"You're right. Let's do this together."

End Notes: I know it's been a while. I've been working on a novel for the past couple of months but now it's done and I'm back to fanfiction writing, so I promise there'll be more frequent updates for all my stories ;-). Now that that's said, I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Please share your thoughts in the comment section. Hope you all had a merry Christmas, and I wish you a happy new year.

PS: The title is a quotation borrowed from Second Coming by W. B. Yeats. Beautiful poem. If you haven't read it, I'd check it out.