A/N: I may or may not have teared up while writing some of this.
So...yeah. Hope you enjoy!
Henry | Post-Extraction – Day 10 (238 Hours)
The clock ticked on the wall and sounded as though it were getting louder every three tocks. If the rest of the room weren't so quiet, maybe the clock wouldn't have been getting louder, but Henry had no way to break the silence other than scream. He assumed Rawlins' neighbors wouldn't appreciate that much.
"Chuck and I are going to Hannah's recital," Mrs. Rawlins said about thirty minutes ago, "You're welcome to come," she had added, but Henry politely declined, citing that he was much too tired to think about a recital.
"Judy," Rawlins said, tucking his shirt in as he was walking through the house, "Hank doesn't want to go see no recital anyway. He needs to rest."
Henry thought about the idea of a recital for a moment, and he considered that it actually might be a nice change of pace. Something that wasn't war. Something that wasn't gunshots and something that wasn't Elizabeth. But he nodded, ultimately, "I really am tired," he added, smiling softly at Mrs. Rawlins to reassure her that he appreciated the offer.
"Well," she said, grabbing her purse from the hall table, "Make yourself at home, of course, and I laid out towels for you upstairs."
Henry thanked her and watched as the two of them left through the front door, and then he sat there staring at the door for the next half hour while gripping onto the cup of coffee in his hands.
Judy had brought him the coffee before she went to put some finishing touches on her already larger-than-life hair. He had quickly been reminded just how "Texas" Rawlins was, and ultimately his wife too, when he walked into their home—lots of lone stars around the house, and even his bedspread had a big lone star covering it. Regardless of their affinity toward Texas, he was grateful that Rawlins had brought him in once more.
He had realized on the way from dropping Elizabeth off that he had nowhere to go, though it had already been planned that he was going to stay with Rawlins. He couldn't go home to his parents. He simply couldn't. He refused to be in a house with Patrick McCord while he couldn't even control his emotions without Patrick McCord in his vicinity. He also knew his mother would have a hundred-thousand questions for him just in the first night of being there. And he couldn't live at home anymore—he was getting too old for it, yes, but he also just didn't have the patience for it anymore.
When he was active duty, he didn't mind not having a "home." Sometimes his buddies would rag on him for not having a home base, or not having a wife to go back to, but he always shook them off and told them that the Marines was where he'd belonged. He sometimes would throw in a wisecrack about them not belonging because they're too caught up in their girlfriends and wives back at home, though he never believed in the jokes he cracked like that. He envied them more than he ever would begin to let on.
After he'd stared at the door for a while, he moved, turning toward the dining room table and leaning against it, slumping over his coffee cup on the varnished, highly polished wood. He looked up and saw out the window, his eyes studying the way the sun was turning everything gold again—the trees, the grass, the vegetable garden in the back. It was a beautiful sunset, yet he found himself thinking, it's not as golden as her hair. It doesn't shine as bright.
He looked down into his coffee cup and sighed, wondering where she was now. He knew she'd already talked to POTUS—Conrad had called Rawlins not long after he'd gotten here and went upstairs to take his bag up and let him know that Henry was officially pardoned by the President of the United States.
Henry should have felt more grateful, but he could only muster up a halfhearted, "That's great news."
As he watched the sunsetting, his fingers wandered up the front of his tee and fumbled around until they found the chain of his dog tag—the one left around his neck. He pulled it out from underneath the neck of his shirt and ran his thumb over the raised metal.
MCCORD
H.J.
His blood type. His social security number. USMC. Gas mask size.
ROMAN CATHOLIC
He swallowed thick and squeezed the tag in his palm, wrapping it up in his hand completely and closing his eyes. It felt even heavier than the day he'd arrived for training, the day it was laid in his hand with the rest of his uniform. And somehow, though some of his most personal information was engraved in that metal and he had worn it around his neck for four years, it felt foreign. It felt heavy and not like his own.
He thought about the amount of trouble he may be in when he reports and tells his new major, whoever that may be, that he lost his other tag. He'd have to lie—he certainly couldn't tell the person that he gave it away to a CIA spy.
Ultimately, this tag in his hand brought him to think about her again. He wondered what she was doing again. He wondered if she still had his tag or if she'd tossed it in the river or some ditch somewhere. (He couldn't blame her if she did. He may do the same.) He wondered if she would be alright tonight, sleeping alone for the first night since her kidnapping. She'd been so scared that first night when he tried to give her the bed on her own.
He pressed his fist to his chest to try and stop the ache he felt there.
Opening his eyes, he saw the sun had finally settled behind the trees and dusk was starting to fill the sky. In a way, it felt right. The world shouldn't shine so bright if it couldn't at least match the brightness of Elizabeth Adams.
After a while longer, he left the cold cup of coffee on the table and scooted his chair out loudly, unconcerned with anyone being annoyed by the sound since there was no one around to hear it. He went upstairs and to the bathroom, turning the shower on and stripping down. When he caught a glimpse of his tag in the mirror, he cringed. I'm going to be in trouble, he thought as he gripped the counter.
He sighed and reached for the towel Judy had laid out for him, and he hung it on the hook by the shower. But when he did, he thought of that day Elizabeth brought him a towel, and his hand hovered there above the terrycloth for a moment.
His eyes were fixed on his fingers, thinking of the way they'd curled around the shower curtain to see her standing in the bathroom doorway and balancing on one leg. Her hand was resting on the folded-up towel on the vanity as she said, "I brought you a towel," with the most deer-in-headlights look on her face. He couldn't help but let a smile come across his face when he thought of her expression then and then contrasted it to her expression in bed when she'd asked him to ravish her.
They both knew that she hadn't just brought him a towel. And when he'd kissed her in the shower after, he knew that his world was crumbling.
And now thinking back to that moment, it did crumble, and now it's just in shambles.
Once he finished with his shower, he looked in the mirror with the towel wrapped around his waist. His dog tag still hung there around his neck, draping over his sternum like her hand used to do.
It was only ten days, Henry. You only knew her for ten days, he told himself, leaning over slightly on the vanity. You're not in love with her. You can't be.
He straightened up after a few more moments of staring himself down, his eyes once more falling down to the metal. Reaching up slowly, he grabbed the chain with both hands and slipped it up and over his head, holding the necklace in his palm again and shutting his hand. He looked in the mirror again and took a deep breath.
His body looked the same. He was never a large guy, but after he started ROTC in college, he built some muscles. Workouts kept him toned, too. But he looked a bit more chiseled than normal—he assumed it was because of the lack of meals he'd eaten over the past few days. He swallowed hard and felt the coolness of the metal start to disappear, warming up in his hand, and he clenched his jaw. His hair was a little too long for what the Marines would consider proper, and he ran his hand through it and scruffed the wet strands up a little.
He turned the tag over in his calloused fingers and looked down at it. He'd believed in this piece of metal once. He believed in the uniform, in the way it all meant he was part of something bigger than himself. He believed in what it all stood for and believed that he was contributing to the "greater good," whatever that may be, while fulfilling his sense of duty to his nation. Most of all, he'd trusted it, he'd trusted that the institution he protected would protect him and its people in the same way.
And yet, Lacey and Smith were left behind. Elizabeth was tortured and almost killed. They'd tried to murder Henry and say he went AWOL.
His grip on the tag tightened again as his stomach turned, the few drips of coffee mixing unsettlingly with the dinner Mrs. Rawlins had cooked for them all earlier.
The United States Marine Corps had trained him, shaped him, given him a purpose. But now all he could see were the cracks and the people who fell through them, much like Freeman. He had sworn an oath to something he believed was greater than himself, but what was it worth if the people who gave him orders could decide that their own people—Lacey, Smith, Freeman—were disposable?
He had to take a deep breath to keep the bile from rising up in his throat.
The Marines had made him into the man he was today. But had they also made him blind? Had he ignored all the hard truths because it was easier to believe in the clean-cut honor of it all?
He turned out the light angrily and walked out to his bedroom, looking at the lone star bedspread for a moment with his fists clenching. His bag was laying up by the pillows, and one of the points on the star was partially covered.
Mrs. Rawlins had told him he could borrow any of the books on the shelves around his room. It doubled as their home library, which is why the bed had to come down from the wall Murphy-style. He threw some clothes on and tossed his wet towel on the bed, walking over and scanning the titles.
Many, he could tell, were Mrs. Judy's books—they were cheesy romance novels that he'd seen his mother reading. He supposed they could be Rawlins', but Rawlins didn't strike him as the shirtless-man-on-the-cover type. He kept walking down the shelves and found a section of military history, then a section on Catholicism. He stopped, raising a brow and wondering which of them were Catholic, or both, and wondered how that had never come up in conversation before.
He reached for a book about Augustus. He'd read a lot on him during undergrad when he took some classes on religion, and had even written his final research paper on him during senior year. As he flipped through the pages, though, it became more and more halfhearted until finally he gave up and put the book back on the shelf with a frustrated sigh.
Nothing matters.
He swallowed thick, realizing the spiral he was about to have, and he turned away from the shelf and grabbed his dog tag off the bed before marching outside of the house. From the back deck, he looked out at the night sky for a moment, admiring the stars and the moon that were trying to shine as bright as Elizabeth. But not the sun, not the moon, and not the stars could begin to match her.
He balled up the chain in his right hand around the tag and tossed it as far as he could, his shoulder popping from the sudden movement. In reality, he was still recovering from his own injuries, and everything on his body suddenly hurt much more than it did when he had Elizabeth to distract him.
He couldn't hear the chain land anywhere, but he assumed it landed somewhere out in the grass. He never played baseball for his school, but he did get picked to be the pitcher whenever he and his friends would play with other neighborhood kids in Pittsburgh. He assumed it went pretty far.
Stealing one more glance at the moon and stars, he breathed out heavily like a huff, and shook his head. "Wherever you are," he whispered to the sky, "I hope you know that this sky isn't even as beautiful as you are."
He sat down and watched the stars twinkle for a while, his hands clasped over his stomach, and then later he heard the car pull back into the driveway and heard their voices inside. He sighed and got up, walking back in. "There you are," Judy said, taking her purse and setting it back on the table. "I see you showered alright."
"Yes ma'am," he said, standing awkwardly by the door. He felt a bit like when he would sleep over at a friend's house and the friend would leave them with their parent. "And I looked through the books and found one to borrow, too," he added to make it known that he appreciated her hospitality. He'd kept the Augustus one in the back of his mind, though he knew he wouldn't be focused enough to read it.
"Oh, good!" she said, getting herself a cup of water as Rawlins was getting in the fridge for a beer. "I'm going to head on to bed now, but if you need anything, Chuck will get it for you."
Henry smirked as Rawlins was rolling his eyes behind his wife, "Yes ma'am," he said, "Thank you, and goodnight."
Judy walked down the hall to the bedroom before Rawlins handed him a beer, "She's always volun-telling me," he said in a low tone, walking past Henry and to the couch. He kicked up the footstool and reclined the seat back a bit, looking over at Henry after a moment. "Come on, Hank. You look like hell. Sit a while."
"Yeah, well…" he mumbled. Henry looked down at the beer and took a sip from it, sighing and walking over to the other end of the couch as Rawlins turned the TV on. Immediately, the screen showed the news talking about this entire conspiracy—how President Westfield's election is probably tanked now, how Davison was tangled up in all of it, and how an unnamed CIA agent had been the one to blow the whistle.
For a moment, they both just watched, and Henry finally shook his head. "They make it all sound so easy," he breathed, "Like there weren't lives—good lives—that got tangled up in it and were killed or now have to live with the memory of torture." His fist balled up in his lap while the other hand gripped the beer.
Rawlins was staring at him, and though he could feel his eyes in his direction, he couldn't make himself look away from the television as they talked about the crates in Kuwait and the mission to get all the weapons back. "I know that look," he finally heard, and he tore his gaze away from the screen and clenched his jaw.
"What look?" Henry asked him.
"The one that keeps good men up at night," Rawlins said, turning his gaze back to the TV and taking another sip of his beer. "We all walk away with ghosts, Hank. That's the job."
Henry swallowed hard, but his throat felt tight. He tried to take a deep breath and tried to make himself feel…better. But he just couldn't. Everything felt like it was buzzing inside of him.
After a few moments of silence, Rawlins cleared his throat, "I walked away, you know," he said.
Henry looked back again, "What?"
"Walked away. Off the job. Retired early," Rawlins replied, shrugging a little as though it was well-known. He was looking down at his beer bottle and his fingers were tapping the neck, "Not 'cause I wanted to," he continued, "But…'cause one day, I woke up and realized I didn't believe in the mission anymore."
Henry stayed quiet and dropped his eyes down to the beer bottle in Rawlins' lap, watching as his fingers tapped.
"The problem with this job," Rawlins continued, "is that when you start, it's real clear. Us and them. Good guys and bad guys. Right and wrong." He exhaled through his nose. "Then you get enough dirt on your boots, and it ain't so clear anymore." He looked over at Henry and raised a brow, "I don't know all the details of this mission, Hank, and I don't wanna know. But I do know that you gotta live with whatever's eating at you." He shook his head and turned back to the TV that was now playing a commercial, "You're young, you got time to figure out what kinda man you want to be. But Hank, you don't have all the time in the world either."
Henry looked up at Rawlins' face now, and Rawlins shook his head a little.
"And from where I'm sittin'," he said, gesturing dramatically to show he was on one side of the couch and Henry was on the other, "It ain't just war that's got you twisted up."
Henry swallowed hard and looked down at his own beer, realizing how guilty that made him look. He shrugged, "I don't know that you can keep yourself from caring about someone who you saved," he admitted.
Rawlins sighed loudly, "Hank," he huffed, chuckling as though this were funny, "You and that woman are like two hound dogs barkin' up the same tree," he said. Henry almost rolled his eyes at yet another hunting reference. It wasn't funny, yet he still felt the need to huff a laugh.
He'd spent the last few days—the last ten, really—trying to convince himself that what happened with Elizabeth was circumstantial. They were thrown together in a moment of crisis. So once the dust settled, so would whatever this was burning his chest from the inside out.
"Listen," Rawlins said, tapping his bottle against the table, "I don't claim to be an expert on women, but I do know this—when you find someone who looks at you like she did, you don't just walk away from that." He leveled Henry with a look. "Not if you got any damn sense."
Rawlins took a swig of his beer while Henry clenched his jaw in the older man's direction.
"And don't give me that look, neither," he said, shaking his head as he set his beer on the side table. "I'm not sayin' it to get under your skin, I'm just callin' it like I see it."
Henry shook his head and ran his thumb up and down the neck of the beer bottle, "It doesn't matter," he breathed.
Rawlins looked at him again and raised his brows comically, "Yeah?" he asked, "That what you're tellin' yourself?"
Henry's jaw clenched so hard that it shot a pain through his ear. He's had to tell himself a lot of things—a lot of hard truths, a lot of hard lies. He's had to even tell Elizabeth some lies. Anything to make the walking away a little easier, if there was any such thing as "easier."
But it had only been ten days of knowing her. He wasn't in love with her. He wasn't. It would never work anyway—their jobs and the risks.
They weren't meant to be together.
But none of it seemed to make his chest feel any better.
Rawlins hummed knowingly and turned back to the TV. "Jobs like yours, like mine… they take a hell of a lot. Some things, you give up willingly. Others, they take from you whether you're ready or not." He sighed, shaking his head. "Just make damn sure you ain't givin' up something you don't have to."
Henry's fingers tightened around the bottle and he took a big swig, chugging it down until about half the bottle was gone. He thought of that dog tag he had chucked out into the backyard, but he didn't wish for it back. He took the beer bottle off his lips and looked down at it, taking a shaky breath, "I don't know if I want to be a Marine anymore," he murmured, afraid to say it aloud once he'd started.
Rawlins didn't even move, "Yeah," he said, "I figured."
Henry looked over at him, furrowing his brows, "You're not surprised?"
Rawlins let out a chuckle again and looked at him, "Hank," he said, sitting up in the reclined couch more. Henry planted his feet on the ground more firmly, feeling like he was spinning. "You wouldn't be sittin' here talkin' to me like this if you weren't already halfway out the door. You got a good head on you, son, and I don't know what happened over there in Kuwait," he said, shaking his head, "But I know you're not just one to take blind orders and be alright with 'em." Rawlins put the footstool down and grabbed his empty beer bottle, rocking onto his feet with a disgruntled groan, "Question is—you ready to walk all the way out?" he asked, but he didn't look back at Henry, he just kept walking into the kitchen and tossed the beer bottle in the can before patting the corner of the hall as if saying goodnight.
Henry watched him walk away until he couldn't him any longer, and he just stared down at his beer and drank the rest of it down.
Elizabeth | Post-Extraction – Day 10 (240 Hours)
She looked across the bed at the clock again, the bright red glowing numbers signifying that it was 3:12am. The exhaustion weighed heavy in her body—it pressed on every single bone, and especially the bones in her ankle. She was the kind of tired that should have pushed her to go to sleep as soon as her head hit the pillow, but sleep wouldn't come.
She tugged at the blanket and rolled over away from the clock. The bed felt uncomfortable, the pain was starting to come back after taking her pain medication a few hours ago, and the cast was outright bothering her.
And the silence. The silence caused her ears to ring so loudly that it hurt sometimes, and she would have to clench her jaw and cringe at the sound.
Since before the kidnapping, this was the first time she'd been in complete silence like this. The first few nights she was conscious again, the beeping in the infirmary and constant shuffling around of doctors and nurses kept her attention most of the time. And then, of course, there had been Henry too—he had kept sneaking in when he wasn't supposed to and keeping her company whenever she was awake. And most of the time, even when she was asleep.
Here, there was nothing but the distant hum of the fridge, the occasional creak of the old house, and the echo of her own breathing. It was maddening.
She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to breathe in and out slowly. In. Out. In. Out. You're safe, Elizabeth. The door is locked and the deadbolt is locked. There's security outside, there's no one else coming for you.
And somehow, those words to herself made her chest ache even more. There's no one coming for you at all.
She felt a tear escape the corner of her eye and run down her nose, zigzagging down to her other cheek and dripping on her pillow. The sound of the drip made her open her eyes as she felt her heart pounding hard anyway.
Finally, she sat up and wiped her eyes, looking defeatedly at the clock—3:26am.
She turned forward and hung her legs over the edge of the bed, releasing a sigh and closing her eyes. You're not being hunted anymore, she tried to tell herself, but the place on her back started burning again where they'd whipped her. She arched as if someone was trying to touch it, and she opened her eyes and tried to snap out.
A sharp breath sucked into her lungs and she stood up, her foot down on the ground as she grimaced from the pain. She grabbed for her crutches that were leaning against the nightstand, but she knocked them over and they clambered to the ground loudly. She groaned in frustration before gritting her teeth.
As she stared at the crutches there on the floor, she felt a wet anger bubble up inside of her. Henry would've gotten those for me, she thought, then she looked away as though someone had slapped her. Her legs bent slightly, just enough for her to rest on the edge of the bed, and she just brought her hand up to her face and covered it while she let out a cry.
How will I ever go back to a normal life? She finally reached down and grabbed her crutches, scooping them up awkwardly before standing and heading to the living room to watch the TV.