A/N: Hello! Nothing much to say haha hope you have a good week and enjoy this chapter :) it's Henry's POV from the last chapter, which is something I rarely do (write the chapters from two different povs)

Henry | Post-Extraction – 63 Hours

He sat across from Major Grayson and stared at him, "I'm not saying anything else on the subject, sir," he said defiantly, his hands folded in his lap underneath the table. He'd just finished giving him a lecture about leaving Lacey, about being the one he'd brought in because he was trustworthy, and that he ultimately let a member of his platoon down because of him leaving.

As if Henry needed more guilt—it was already keeping him awake each night as he laid alone in his hospital bed.

"I did what I did, and I retrieved the package, and that's what I was supposed to do," Henry added.

Major Grayson shook his head and mumbled something else about Lacey, but then Henry scooted his chair away loudly from the table and stormed out of the room. When he got outside, his head was so dizzy that he took a few turns to get away from Grayson and stopped, catching his breath and his balance, too.

After he felt less swimmy, he continued walking to his room, passing by Elizabeth's first. When he saw her door was cracked open, he pushed it the rest of the way and saw Jordan in there. He walked in carefully as always, "How is she?" He asked, his voice quiet to not wake her, then he looked at her face and realized that she was already awake. "Oh," he murmured, straightening his back a bit and letting his eyes fall away from her.

He didn't know why, but every time he saw her looking at him, he grew a bit flustered. He blamed it on the fact that he'd seen her at her absolute worst, almost dead on that stretcher.

Suddenly, the conversation with Grayson seemed distant and unimportant when he saw her looking at him as he walked over to the chair. He hated shuffling his feet, but he hated falling more—and falling is what he would've done with his dizziness if he didn't shuffle like an old man. He sat down and looked up to see her still watching him, "I was in debrief," he said as though she'd asked where he went.

The way she was staring at him made him feel like he needed to check his shirt—did he have something on it? Was his face…was there a new bruise somewhere? Had he lost an eyebrow on the way here? She was studying him, and he'd never felt so under a microscope like that before. The way she looked at him made her look like she had a new discovery, and he's not even sure she realized she was doing it.

"Why are you here?" She suddenly asked.

It caught him off guard and he swallowed thick, glancing over at Sarah. He watched as Elizabeth shifted her gaze, too, to Sarah. "Don't look at me," she said to Elizabeth, then moved her eyes to Henry, "I've been trying to kick him out since he found out he could shuffle his ass down the hall and into your room," she added, putting the lid back on whatever she was doing and turning quickly, leaving from the room.

With just the two of them in there, the room suddenly felt huge. He felt like he wanted to move closer to her, but he also didn't want to scare her, so he stayed still.

He was lost in his thoughts about the largeness, vastness of this once-tiny room when he saw her squirming underneath her blanket. Her toes were sticking out from under the one side—the toes with the cast—and she was pushing her head into the pillow like she was trying to disappear into it. He watched as her hands squirmed, too, underneath the blanket, and he saw the sheet come up off the bed a little. She's in pain.

He swallowed hard and looked at her IV drip to ensure it was working, and it was. But of course she's in this much pain, just look at her.

He was just about to ask if he could do anything to help when she looked over at him, "Where am I?"

Her head fell over a little and he saw the tears in her eyes. He lowered his brows and tried to ignore the tears, tried to look past them, at least. "The Marine Corps Infirmary," he said, his voice questioning his own sanity. She already knew this, didn't she?

"No," she said quickly, her face contorting with the pain and what looked to be her holding back tears. "I don't know what country I'm in…I suspect I'm not in England anymore."

England. She was in England? How the hell did she end up in Kuwait? He swallowed hard and thought about it for a moment, "Oh," he mumbled, thinking again about what he should say and what he shouldn't. He didn't know what he could and couldn't tell her—he already knew he was breaking rules by knowing her name. Part of him wished Sarah hadn't told him, but he also wasn't sure he would've made it through that first night not knowing, either. "Maybe I should go get Sarah to explain—"

She interrupted him, "I don't—"

Her voice cracked and he looked up at her. It was clear she was trying to keep it together—her face looked strained more than it did even before with just the pain. "I don't want to hear about the mission right now," she finally said. If he hadn't been looking at her, he wasn't sure he'd be able to hear her. "I know as soon as I start asking they'll start telling me, and I don't want to know yet."

God, he so desperately wanted to reach out and hold her hand, and tell her how horrible and unjust it was for anything to have happened to her like it did. He didn't know the full story, obviously, and probably never would—the CIA would never tell him. He's sure she would get in a lot of trouble if she told him, and why would she, anyway? He was just the guy who extracted her.

To keep his fingers from reaching out for her like he so badly wanted to do, he pinched at the material on his sweatpants, not letting his eyes come off her. When her head fell into the pillow more, staring up at the ceiling, her breath hitched again and he thought for sure this time she was crying.

Without thinking, he stood to his feet too fast, the dizziness almost causing him to sit right back down. He grabbed onto her bedrail, "Are you okay?" He asked, startling even himself with how nervous he sounded. She looked so frail, so fragile, like if she experienced one more ache or pain she'd simply combust.

She nodded, her throat tightening again. He twisted his lips and swallowed hard, and he could tell again that she was struggling to keep it all in. He briefly thought about leaving. Maybe if I weren't here, she'd let it all out—start getting some of this out. It's gotta be hurting her mentally, too.

But he couldn't bear the thought of leaving her all alone in this hospital bed, in this huge room that was just the two of them in this now tight-space they shared once he'd gotten up. Again, without thinking, he reached out for her hand—he wasn't able to stop himself this time. For the first time, she didn't jump.

She just looked down at their hands touching, and he thought his heart might burst from his chest. He squeezed her hand gently, and she didn't even move it away.

This is because I literally held her life in my hands. He was trying to convince himself that it's all it was, but when he looked at her, he felt like he was going to melt. Even with her eyes closed and her face all bruised up, he was almost certain he'd never seen someone so beautiful as her.

He almost jumped when her shoulders started to shake, and he thought he was hurting her somehow. His hand started to pull away until he realized she was holding back a sob.

Swallowing hard, he tilted his head just slightly, "You can cry," he whispered.

Her good eye popped open and looked at him, and he tried to give her a little smile to assure her that he meant those three words. It must've done the trick because seconds later, she let out this heart wrenching sob from somewhere deep in her body.

His chest didn't ache in his ribs, but it ached all over. The air felt like it had been sucked from his lungs, and he held tighter to the bedrail as she sobbed.

If I ever get ahold of those guys who did this to you…he thought, then he hoped they were already dead.

All he could do now was just stand there, holding her hand and rubbing his thumb over her knuckles. Even with all the scrapes and bruises—the ones he hoped he was not hurting—her hands felt so soft. He wasn't sure how that could be possible.

After a while and once her sobs got quieter, he reached back for the chair and scooted it toward them, never letting her hand go. He looked at her face again and smiled a little, thinking how golden her hair was now that they'd cleaned all the blood out of it. That had to feel good, he thought. He blinked a couple times, thinking about how the shine of her hair made him think of something else—something he couldn't quite remember. It was like having a word on the tip of your tongue.

Finally, he remembered that first tour of duty when he was about to get to go home, finally. He felt the words bubbling up out of him, and he just hoped that his story would be enough to get her mind off the bad for a moment.

He told it as well as he could, trying to give her the grand picture of just how beautiful the golden sky and ocean was. He wasn't sure he was selling it, though, while looking at her hair again. He wasn't sure he could even begin to describe that beauty.

His head hurt as he told her the story, his eyes feeling like they had weights on them from the concussion and not enough sleep. But he told it, and she was listening to him the entire time. He watched as her sobs eased, as her shoulders relaxed, and as only tears strolled down her face by the end of the story.

When he told her about wanting a McDonald's cheeseburger and she smiled, he felt like he could've done fifty pushups right there on the hospital floor. If someone asked him to run through a wall, he could've, because Elizabeth—he didn't even know her last name—was smiling at him. Because of him.

He continued his story, telling her about how small he felt compared to everything he was seeing. For once, her hand didn't feel so tense underneath his, and he could almost feel her starting to relax. And then he made her smile again when he said the words "yadda yadda," something his mother often said and his grandmother when she was alive, too. He'd picked it up from spending so much time with them over the summers while his mother and grandmother quilted on the front porch of his grandparents' house out in the country part of Pennsylvania.

He looked at her hair again after telling the rest of his story, adding: "It doesn't make you weak. It just makes you human."

The tears dripped down her cheeks and onto her pillow, and she started to squirm again. He watched her try to dry her face off, but every time she'd touch anywhere, she'd touch a scratch or a bruise and he winced along with her.

He didn't want to let her hand go, so he reached up with his other arm and ignored the shooting pain in his ribs. With his thumb, he dabbed carefully at all the wet streaks, then his index finger, and dried his fingers by rubbing them together and then repeated the process until she was mostly dry.

He hated the feeling of salt drying on his face.

Once she'd relaxed a little more, he felt the need to fill the silence with the most awkward statement ever: "The color of your hair reminds me of that sunset," he blurted. He continued to dab the wet spots nervously, adding in, "I think that's why I thought of that moment, maybe." His heart was pounding again and he felt like he could crawl underneath her bed.

But then he felt her turn her hand over and squeeze his fingers, and he was glad that he, indeed, was not underneath her bed but rather right beside it.

She stayed quiet for a few more minutes and he'd stopped drying her face, afraid mostly that he'd hurt it if he messed with it much more.

"What country am I in?" She asked, and he remembered that he'd never addressed that earlier.

His lips twisted to the side again and he looked over at the door, afraid someone would be coming in right as he said it. He was already in enough trouble with Grayson for leaving Lacey to go off on his own, he'd have been in big trouble if someone found out he was telling her information he wasn't sure if she was supposed to know.

But she looked so curious, so nervous, he couldn't keep it from her this time. "Kuwait," he said, his voice barely coming out. He looked up at her eyes, "But don't tell anyone I told you that." He felt like he was in kindergarten telling secrets, but these secrets could've been detrimental to national security, he supposed.

He thought, though, that she deserved something—she obviously put her life on the line for her country, her country owed something to her. If this was all she was paid back, then he was glad to be able to give it to her.

"I won't," she murmured. He noticed her trying to sit up, so he reached for the remote and handed it to her.

"Here," he said as she took it from his hand shakily, "This is the up and this is the down," he showed her the buttons as she held it, and then pushed the up button until she was situated.

She laid the remote down and looked at him after a couple moments of silence, "You knew my name," she said, almost accusing him of something. He furrowed his brow, wondering why the accusatory tone. But then again—she's obviously a spy for the CIA, so of course she would be suspicious of someone knowing her real name.

He looked down at the bedrail and then realized only after he did it that it made him look more guilty. His hands were holding onto it and he wished he wouldn't have let go of her hand to grab the remote, but now he felt like he couldn't reach back for her. Not with her wondering if he's who he really said he was.

He couldn't tell her how he knew—he couldn't tell her that Sarah had heard Conrad let it slip, and that Sarah had told him in a desperate moment of her own sobbing. He couldn't tell her that saying her name over and over all night that first night here saved him from thinking of Lacey all night, thinking of the boy he killed. He couldn't tell her any of that.

So he settled with, "I'm not supposed to know it."

"No," she said, "You're not."

He looked up, swallowing hard. She looked at him like she were interrogating him, though she weren't saying much else. Her eyes—eye—though, said that she was studying him and picking him apart. He felt naked underneath that gaze.

"How do I know you're not with them?" She asked.

The question caught him off guard again, somehow, even though she'd been studying him and obviously coming up with hard questions. "With…" he murmured, realizing she meant the guys who beat her up.

"With the guy who took me," she said.

Not for the first time during this visit to her room, he felt like his heart had been shattered. "Oh," he mumbled, "I—I'm not…"

He had no idea how to make this better, how to make her believe that he wasn't one of them. Because really, if he were in her shoes, how could he trust anyone, even someone who was in the Marine infirmary?

"I'm just a captain in the Marines," it sounded just as stupid as he anticipated it to, but he knew he had to say something to her. He could see the panic starting to build in her eyes before he'd answered. "I'm actually a fighter pilot," he added, hoping that would save him from sounding less than bright, "And I got grounded on this mission because my major wanted two guys who could safely be the flank." He thought about Lacey again, the pictures he'd shown Henry, and he felt his chest tightening. He deserved to live.

"And the other guy?" She asked, and it made him feel even worse.

How could he possibly tell her he was dead? She'd either blame him or blame herself, and he didn't particularly like either of those options. So he just shook his head and looked down at the bedrail where his hands still rested.

After the silence passed over them and settled in, she spoke up again, "How did you know where to find me?"

It sounded stupid, too, the way he tried to describe to her that he felt like he just had this…compass. He didn't use that exact analogy, though, because it really sounded stupid in his head. Everything he said, he was finding, sounded stupid. He told her that he was glad it happened, though, that he had felt pulled in that direction because of the bomb.

"Right…" she murmured, and the room went silent again.

He wondered if he should leave, but she seemed like the type of woman to tell him to leave if she wanted him to, so he stayed put in the chair even though he was becoming uneasy. The silence was uncomfortable because it was obvious how much there was to talk about, yet neither of them probably knew if they could talk about it.

And besides, he didn't even know her last name. How do you ask someone anything else when you don't even know them?

"Do you think you could hand me that water?" She asked, and she seemed way more awake now all of a sudden. Her cheeks were red when he looked up at her, and he handed her the cup off her table.

She took a swig and swished it in her mouth, he could hear her doing it, and he just watched as she did so. I wonder if she knows how beautiful she is.

He shut his eyes for a moment, don't start telling her she's beautiful right now, Henry. You're not in your right mind. You're concussed.

When she set the cup down, he asked, "Do you need some more?"

"I'm okay," she said, and then she brought that beautiful blue eye his way, and he resisted a smile that he's sure would've come off as creepy, "Thank you though."

"Of course," he answered immediately, way too happy to help her any time she would've asked.

And then she suddenly asked him about his injuries, and though he felt a bit wary telling her—she knew these injuries were because he saved her—he told her anyway. After he told her about the boy hitting him, she went silent, and so did he. Then her shoulders slumped suddenly, and he thought she was passing out again. "Are you alright?" He asked nervously, about to stand to his feet before she nodded.

"Sorry," she mumbled, and he relaxed again in his chair but was fixated on her. He watched her carefully for a few moments and then wondered if she'd eaten anything—she certainly looked like she could use some food.

"Are you hungry or anything?" He asked.

She shook her head, but then she stopped and he could see her thinking. He thought it was amazing how it was almost like he could see her wheels turning inside her head. "Actually, yeah," she said.

He looked at her and smiled a little, happy she felt good enough to eat. "I can get you some pudding?" He asked, standing up to his feet more slowly this time, being careful to not get too dizzy.

She nodded, and before he even thought to ask what flavor, he was off on a mission to find this beautiful woman named Elizabeth some pudding. When he stood in front of the flavors, he felt his body deflate a little and he almost whined aloud. Which should I get her?

He started to reach for the vanilla and then decided she really seemed more like a chocolate woman, so he grabbed the chocolate and walked it back to her room. "I didn't know if you wanted vanilla or chocolate, so I just went with my gut," he said, hoping that it was the right decision to make. He handed it to her and she took it with a little smile, thanking him.

The way she dug into it told him two things:

1. She was definitely hungry.

2. She really liked chocolate.

Now he knew more about her—this beautiful woman with the golden hair whose name is Elizabeth and who is a spy for the CIA who likes chocolate.

By the time she'd finished the pudding cup and he was off to get her another, he'd already forgotten about his debrief with Major Grayson.