LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT THIS ONE - I ACTUALLY ENJOYED THIS PERSPECTIVE - ALLOWED ME TO ADD SOME BACKSTORY A BIT!

He would never admit it to his big sister, but she was one of the strongest people he knew. She embodied her tenacity and perseverance better than a boxer, and Will had witnessed first-hand the frustration of being her opponent in the ring countless times throughout their lives. Many times when they were younger, his own delusion clouded his objectivity, and he'd convinced himself that he, the little brother, won in some verbal sparring fight they were having. But eventually, whether that was hours, days, weeks later, Lizzie would throw a verbal jab full of logic and reasonable thinking that sent Will proverbially reeling from the blow.

When they were children, Will attributed it to Lizzie's big sister complex, always wanting to best him and show him his place as her little brother. But the older they got, he began to see it differently. Once he understood the way that they looked at the world from two different perspectives, that perhaps her stubbornness covered for her fear of loss.

As he looked into the hospital room of the man he classified as his brother, Will thought back to being the one in the hospital bed, a scared thirteen-year-old all alone - deep in the throes of the shock from the accident. He'd seen them outside the room, watched as the officers told Lizzie that their parents hadn't survived. But Will had turned away that day, unable to watch his sister's world shatter like his already had.

Thinking back to his college days, Will could still feel the smack on the back of his head when Lizzie found out he'd been in a car accident and hadn't told her. He'd tried to explain that literally the accident had been a fender bender at one of the stop signs on campus, that she needed to calm down. And she had calmed down, giving Will the impression that he'd won, except for the next morning when he couldn't find his keys that had mysteriously disappeared. He could hear her, her face in a math book as she casually said. I think you left them at the remedial driving class that starts tonight. And, somehow, just as fast as they'd disappeared, his keys magically reappeared once he'd finished the class. To this day, Will kept his keys close whenever Lizzie was around.

"Any change?" His niece's whispering pulled him away from where he was staring into the hospital room. Stevie sleepily stepped outside of the room the kids had set up as their holding room, carefully closing the door behind her.

Will shook his head, and soon they were both standing shoulder to shoulder, staring at the unchanging scene before them.

A few moments of silence, and he could see Stevie grimace as she turned her neck to the side.

"Should've taken me up on that offer." Will said, "Doesn't take a doctor to know that sleeping on hospital chairs can be painful." He'd peeked in on the kids a few times that night, covering Allison and Jason with some warm blankets while they slept stretched between two chairs, and handing Dmitiri an extra pillow to prop under Stevie's head,

"Ugh, you always want to be right." Stevie joked, "Mom says that you'd do anything to have the last word, even if it was your last."

Will chuckled. "Well, I got the last word with her a few hours ago." He surveyed his handiwork through the glass window, watching his sister sleep on a cot next to Henry's bed.

"No kidding." Stevie said, amazement in her voice, "How'd you do that?"

"Swift kick to the head." Stevie's playful punch on his shoulder made him turn to her and admit, "Naw, just a threat and an ambien." He said quietly.

"And she agreed?" Stevie's eyebrows were raised in disbelief.

"Took some convincing." Will tried to brush it off, but there had been a moment in there where he wondered if his sister might just best him like she had countless times before. "Turns out there's still a bit of logic in her exhausted and muddled brain." She'd protested long and hard, but she'd blinked first. He'd threatened to enforce the hospital visiting hours if she didn't agree to take something to sleep. She'd tried to use her leader of the free world voice on him, saying there was no way that they could make her leave the hospital and go home, but Will refused to back down, saying the only way he'd let her stay in Henry's room is if she laid down that minute on the cot and swallowed the pill. He didn't know whether it was the long hours day in and day out for years that Will had existed in hospitals, but he knew the quick snippets of sleep anyone got at their loved ones' bedside between nurses and aids doing their regular checks were unsustainable options for sleep.

And he knew Lizzie. He knew she would push herself as far as possible, even to the point past her own safety.

"Did your mom ever tell you about being hospitalized in college?"

"No."

And Will told his niece the story, glad to give her a brief reprieve from the reality staring them in the face at the moment. He told her about how Lizzie's junior year of college, she'd decided to take twenty-two credits, and one of those classes was her unpaid internship. Lizzie had been interning at nights during the week at a data analysis company, and, the usual overachiever, was doing much more than any other intern. Will remembered trying to schedule time for the two of them to have dinner so he could tell her that he wouldn't be going to UVA like they'd planned. He could still feel the pit in his stomach he'd felt about telling her that, because it had been before their parent's died that they'd even attended a school in the same district. Dinner plans kept getting pushed off and pushed off, that finally, one weekend, he'd borrowed a friend's car and driven up to see her.

"I walked into your mom's dorm room, and thought I'd entered another dimension. Papers with equations and formulas were taped to the walls, scribblings on the windows, and on the floor, surrounded by stacks of books. I found your mom," He could still remember how she'd looked up at him, eyes unblinking and unable to focus. "The room smelled awful, and it looked like it had been a long time since she'd taken a shower." After fact finding with her, Lizzie couldn't remember the last time she'd eaten, had anything to drink, and that she hadn't slept in almost five days. "I took her to the Emergency Room, where they admitted her for exhaustion. And when I asked your mom what she had been thinking, she just said, 'I told myself that I could sleep when I finished the projects, but my brain just wouldn't work so I kept going.'"

"Sounds like Mom."

"Funny thing is," Will said, "After catching up on her sleep, she finished the projects in hours."

"All she needed was sleep." Stevie concluded. "Thus the ambien, huh?"

"Yup."

It was quiet for a second.

"So is that an Adams thing, because…" Stevie said knowingly, "... you've been up all day yesterday and you've been standing here for how long?"

He nodded. "All night." All night because he'd made his sister a promise. Had been part of the sleeping negotiations. He hated showing that he had a soft spot anywhere. That's what Lizzie and him fought the most about when they were younger, over the fact that he tried not to care. And he hated for people to see he cared, sometimes. Easier to just act tough, then no one could see when things he cared about weren't around anymore. "She made me promise that I'd watch Henry and wake her up if anything changed."

So here he'd stood, and sometimes sat in the chair next to him. And he'd watched his sister fight the medicine, her brow furrowed every once in a while when she'd meet his eyes, and she'd even flipped him off once. He'd watched her eyelids become too heavy for her anger at him, and she'd turned over on her side, tucking the flimsy hospital blankets under her chin. And Will watched as she tucked her hand into her husband's limp hand, tenderly running her fingers back and forth over his gold wedding band as she drifted off into sleep.

Will blinked his eyes a few times, and he told himself it wasn't to keep any emotions at bay, but he'd learned over the years that he lied to himself more often than he liked to admit.

Needing to change the subject, he turned to Stevie and said, "And, besides, don't judge me for still being here when, um, how long have you been here?"

He'd wanted that to elicit something of a smile, a distraction for his niece, but instead, she just stared into the room in front of them, her eyes glazing over just a bit as his question hung in the air. She'd pulled the oversized sweater tight around her small frame, as if desperately trying to hold something close. Something that longed to be spoken out into the world.

When Stevie finally spoke, he could hear the lump in her throat disguised by the edge in her words.

"I'm trying very hard to understand Mom right now."

"Been there."

"Well," Stevie scoffed, "I think this might be a bit different than a brother and sister fight." And almost immediately, she turned towards him, and softened her tone, "Sorry, I didn't mean to snap, Uncle Will. I'm not angry at you, I'm… angry at Mom."

While Will wanted to repeat his earlier statement, he instead said, "About Emma?" When Stevie's eyes met his in surprise, he explained, "Dmitri had you on speakerphone when he was over checking on the kids. And Sophie heard."

"You'd think a former spy would be more covert." She said, with a small smile on her face, then added, "By the way, thanks again for letting the kids stay with…"

"Don't mention it," Will said, "I mean, I've been here so it's not a problem for me." Then, more seriously, "It's good for Sophie, she goes into mothering mode during crises, so I can guarantee you the twins are having the best time and eating more food than they ever have before."

"You should see the amount of food she's brought for the four of us." But when Stevie's eyes turned towards her parents in the room, she quieted down, her tone bearing the weight of the world, "How does a mother do that to her daughter? How could she just…" And, like a tidal wave finally breaking through a dam, the words came spewing out, "... know Emma needed her, and completely ignore her? How could she say the things she did, about the Emma dealing with the consequences of her actions, with no feeling for what Emma needs? How…" Stevie began to pace, frustration working itself out, "when she knows everything Emma's been through? She knows and doesn't care!" And, like her mother, Stevie's voice raised as her voice simultaneously broke, "What kind of mother does that to her child?"

And it was quiet. But Will knew better than to say anything.

"Why does it seem like I am more worried about Emma than her own mother is?" And when Stevie turned around, Will could see the tears in her eyes. Quieter, she said, "If Mom can do that, that means her love is…" Stevie swallowed, pulling her sweater tighter with one hand and brushing tears away from her cheeks with the other, "As a mother, I can't imagine a world in which Luka had more love for his sister than his mother does.. There's nothing Luka or Lilly could do that could make me … do what Mom's done to Emma." And Stevie hung her head, shoulders shaking.

And in seconds, Will wrapped his arms around her, holding her close. Wishing he could fix this. Hand him a scalpel - he could stop the bleeding, there were steps for that. He'd been trained for that. He knew what to do when a lung collapsed, how to find and stop the bleeding.

But as he held his niece, he glanced over into the room, the room where both of her parent's existence in Stevie's life were in question. And all he could do was offer the little comfort his presence might give to this fragile young woman.