A/N: Back with another! I will have to take hiatus soon because school is ramping up, but just know that I'm not quite finished with this yet.
Hope you enjoy!
Henry | Before Extraction | 18 Years
The late afternoon sunlight slanted through the trees and cast a glow on the playground, and eight-year-old Henry had to squint his eyes to keep from being blinded while he attempted to hold a little boy about his size up in the air.
He'd wanted to do the rings like Henry had just done, but Henry was a little taller and could jump higher. "Here," Henry said, putting his toy car in his pocket, "I got you."
He wrapped his arms around the younger boy's waist, grunting as he tried to pick him up and stumbling forward. "You gotta stop squirming," Henry griped in the boy's ear.
"I'm not," the boy said, kicking his legs.
Henry sighed and put the kid down, regripping his arms around the boy's waist and, with a renewed strength, hoisted him up again. This time, the kid reached the rings and was hanging there safely before Henry let him go, and he stood on the ground and shielded the sun from his eyes as he watched this kid go from ring to ring.
"Maureen!" he heard, whipping around quickly to where his dad's voice was coming from. He looked up at the sun and knew it wasn't time for them to come home yet, but he still panicked.
He saw Patrick McCord tromping through the playground, across to where Maureen was swinging with one of her friends. Henry watched from afar as he told Maureen something and she stopped swinging—he knew something must be going on. "Where's your brother?" Henry heard him say.
Maureen started looking around, but Henry stepped over to them. "I'm right here," he said, his little eight-year-old legs walking as fast as they could. "Do we have to leave?"
"We've gotta leave," Patrick concluded. "Stop picking kids up, Henry," he almost barked, "Can't you just play and have fun?"
Henry knew better than to whine, but he was having fun. He liked helping. He also saw the panic in his dad's face, and he looked at Maureen who shrugged at him. Henry looked back at his father again and swallowed thick, "Why?" he asked, cautious to not sound like an argument.
Patrick glared at him, "Because I said so."
Henry took a shaky breath, "Is everything okay?"
Finally, Patrick sighed and broke the hard look on his face, looking down, "Part of a mill collapsed," he said, not allowing anymore information, clearly. Henry just swallowed his tongue and nodded, following Patrick and Maureen now toward Patrick's car.
Henry didn't understand why this meant that he and Maureen had to go home, but he didn't want to ask, fearful of it sounding like an argument. So he just followed dutifully to the backseat of Patrick's car while Mo sat up front, watching his dad drive them home with his hands gripping the steering wheel tighter than Henry's ever seen.
Once Patrick dropped them off at home, Henry ran in to his mom and gave her a hug, laying his head down on her belly quickly and looking up at her. "Why'd we have to come home, Mom?" he asked, "I was helping a kid on the playground."
She sighed and swallowed hard, looking at Maureen who had come in and sat down to do her homework. Henry still just felt confused. "Well," she said, Henry picking up immediately on the reluctance in her voice as she rubbed his shoulder and laid her other hand on her stomach, "Your father had to go to work," she said, taking a deep breath, "There's been some fatal injuries at one of the mills today."
Henry heard the word fatal and knew what it meant, but he still repeated it out loud. "Fatal?"
She nodded, "Fatal, honey. Two people died because of the conditions at the mills, and your father has to go help."
Henry's eyes fixated on her fingers for a moment, just lost in his thoughts. Fatal, he thought. Though he was eight and knew what death was, he'd never considered how final it sounded. He'd also never considered that you could die from your job. He looked up at his mom again and blinked at her, trying to wrap his head around it all, "Why'd Dad come get us?"
Helen shrugged and walked them over to the living room, sitting down with Henry on the couch. He noticed that she seemed out of breath, and she seemed like she was uncomfortable. He was about to interrupt his own question and ask if she was okay until she started talking, "It rattled him," she said softly.
Henry furrowed his brows at her, wondering how it could've rattled his father that two men had died.
"One of them was his friend," she continued.
Oh, Henry thought, swallowing hard. He looked down at his leg and nodded a little, "That's why he was mad," he said.
"He wasn't mad, honey," Helen said softly, running her fingers along his shoulder.
"He looked mad."
She didn't say anything for a few moments, and Henry looked up at her. He felt her fingers running gently down his spine and back up, "Sometimes your dad doesn't know how to show something—when he's sad or scared—he just…" her voice trailed into a sigh as she gave his hand a little squeeze. "It comes out looking like anger, but he wasn't mad at you, or even Maureen. He just needed to make sure you and Maureen were home safe before he had to go deal with what he had to."
Henry let that sit for a moment, his fingers picking at the hem of his shirt and the little hole he'd just discovered in it. It still didn't make sense to him though. If his dad was upset about his friend, why didn't he just say so? Why did he have to bark orders and make everything sound so urgent, like he was just dragging them home just because he could?
His mother's hand was still rubbing soft circles along his upper back, and he stared at the dull glow of the television, not really watching what the news report was. The mill was on the screen now—men standing in clusters, some covered in soot, some pacing. He didn't see his dad, but he knew he was there, probably talking to someone while gripping his hands into fists like he had on the way home.
Helen shifted beside him again, getting more comfortable, and Henry blinked at her belly again, at the swell that meant his new brother or sister would be coming soon.
"Mom?" he asked, his voice small.
"Mm?"
His thoughts swirled, but the one that finally made it out was: "Why didn't Dad want me to help?"
She tilted her head at him, moving her eyes from the TV down to his face again, "What do you mean, honey?"
"I was helping at the playground," Henry explained, suddenly aware of the toy car still in his pocket. He rolled it between his fingers as he spoke. "I was helping this kid get to the rings, 'cause he couldn't reach them. But Dad just came and got us and told me I needed to stop that and have fun at the playground, and now he's going to help people. Why's his helping more important?"
"Oh sweetheart," she said. Henry watched something in her face shift, something even softer than before. "His helping isn't more important, it's just different."
He stared at her, not really understanding, but not arguing either. He thought about the men at the mill, the ones who had died, and the ones his dad was with now. He thought about the kid at the playground, about the way he had beamed once he made it to the rings.
Helen smiled at him, tucking a stray piece of hair behind his ear. "You've got a good heart, Henry," she said softly. "And you help in the way you know how."
Henry swallowed, feeling something heavy in his chest that he couldn't seem to conjure the words for. He looked back at the television, watching the scene unfold at the mill, and for the first time, he wondered if maybe his dad felt that same heaviness too.
Henry | Post-Extraction – Day 40
The apartment was completely quiet except the hums of the refrigerator and of the traffic outside. Henry set his keys on the counter, the metal clinking too loud in the silence. Even Elizabeth's boot had stopped making noise, and he looked back to see her just standing with her arms crossed and looking out the window at the almost-night sky.
She'd barely said a word at all since they left Walter Reed, since Jordan confirmed the shock that Elizabeth had dropped on him earlier.
Pregnant.
He shouldn't have been surprised. He should've been more prepared, really, to expect this to have happened. And he kept telling himself that something was off about her, something seemed different about her even in the short time he knew her, but he couldn't ever place what was going on. He had been kicking himself the entire drive back from Walter Reed, thinking about how he should've noticed the signs and put it all together. He could've braced her for that shock.
He looked over at her to see her arms wrapped tightly around her body, staring at some fixed point outside. He watched her for a moment, noting the tension in her shoulders and the way her fingers were digging into her arms. She looked like she was trying to hold her body together, and he felt a pang in his chest.
I did this to her, he suddenly thought, the guilt moving from his chest to his stomach.
"Hey," he said gently, walking toward her.
She didn't look back.
He swallowed, searching for the right thing to say—really just searching for anything to say at all. Something that wouldn't feel too heavy or wouldn't put a larger crack in whatever fragile thing she was holding inside of those tightly wound arms. But he didn't know what that was yet. Instead, he just closed the space between them and reached for her hand.
She didn't resist, but she didn't exactly react, either. He wriggled his fingers between hers and her arm, gently peeling it off her skin and squeezing her fingers.
"Come sit with me," he murmured, squeezing once more.
She let him lead her to the couch, but he felt like he was leading a beaten dog to its death. He wanted, more than anything, to just take her aches away, take all her pain and her heartache and bury them in himself. He knew she was strong, he knew she was never a damsel in distress, but he also knew that a person can only take so much.
Even Elizabeth Adams McCord.
When they sat down on the couch, he kept hold of her hand as her gaze drifted back toward the window. The light had shifted away completely, leaving a dark blue, almost black sky outside and no light filtering in through the curtains. Only the glow of the lamps were illuminating the floors, her face.
Henry exhaled slowly. He recognized this feeling—a feeling he's had multiple times in his life, but a particular memory came to mind that night. It was a silence, a weight, one that he'd seen years before in his mother's quiet sighs. He'd seen it in the way she let him curl into her side when words wouldn't come. He'd felt confused then, the day he'd been told his dad just didn't show things in the same way his mom did, but his mom had held him anyway. Nothing could actually be fixed in the way she'd held him, but sometimes it still felt like her arms made all the difference.
And now, Elizabeth sat beside him, wrapped up in a familiar quietness, the heavy kind that he didn't always know how to address in his own life, let alone in someone else's. He shifted and turned toward her just enough so that his knee pressed against hers, his other knee bending between them. "Elizabeth," he whispered.
There was no reply. Not even a movement.
He let the silence sit for a moment longer, but then he reached out and smoothed a hand over her back, tracing his fingers in circles between her shoulder blades and being careful to avoid the tender spot there where she'd been whipped only weeks before. The thought of that scar made him cringe—her body had been through so much already and was about to go through a lot again.
"We've got time," he whispered to her, trying to comfort her in some way. "We don't have to figure everything out tonight."
Her breath hitched just slightly, the most sign of life he'd seen from her all evening. She looked like she wanted to say something but just couldn't, so he waited, tracing circles and stripes over her spine.
Finally, she exhaled, "I don't know how to do this," she admitted, her voice so quiet that he easily could've missed it had it not been for the utter silence in the room.
Henry swallowed, his throat tight. He thought about his mother's words all those years ago and the way she had reassured him that his father was just different from him, though they often had the same desires. He thought, too, about Patrick on the way home from the park and the clear image he had from eighteen years before when his hands had gripped the wheel so tightly. He thought about the way that grief and fear had turned into something sharp and unspoken.
He wasn't going to let that happen here.
He wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her body into him. She put up no fight, and she felt limp against his chest as he leaned back and halfway laid down on the arm of the couch. "We'll figure it out," he reassured.
She finally turned her head, looking at him for the first time since they'd been at Walter Reed. Her eyes were searching his, looking for something that maybe she didn't even know what it was. Her eyes were wide and uncertain, and Henry held her gaze, just letting her see everything he wasn't saying—everything there wasn't words for.
She laid her head back down on his chest after a few more moments, nodding against his shirt and sniffling.
After a stretch of silence, more than ten minutes or so, he felt her shift and get more comfortable against him. He had been running his fingers down her back, up and down, and now she was more solidly in his arms again and lying against his chest. Her breathing was steady now, but still much too tense to be anywhere near sleep. Her hair brushed up against his cheek, and he moved his head so that his lips were resting on the top of her head.
He took a deep breath in, smelling the still-lingering scent of her shampoo and appreciating the way it lit something up inside of his brain. He shifted a little so that his other hand found hers, and he gave her fingers a little squeeze.
He stared at the ceiling while his fingers still traced lazily over her shirt.
How the hell did I let this happen? I should've known better. I do know better. We were reckless—I was reckless. I should've stopped us from barreling headfirst into all of this. Or at least paused, at least thought of…God, I don't know, pulling out.
He shut his eyes at the crassness of that thought, wondering again how he could've been so dumb, so taken by her that his brain hadn't even considered the possible outcomes.
I don't know that I regret it, he thought suddenly, startling himself. I regret not being careful, though, and not thinking through the precautions that should've been taken. But I don't think I regret giving in or any of the times we made love. How could I regret it? It brought me here with this beautiful woman lying on my chest, this woman who I'd give anything to be able to take her pain away. It made her Mrs. McCord, and I quite like her being Mrs. McCord. He paused and opened his eyes again, looking at the ceiling. But this? A baby? A whole person that would be entirely dependent on us, on her—on her body to be strong enough to get through this when she's still recovering from everything she'd been through?
His jaw tightened and he let a steady stream of air out through his nose, slowly and angrily. He wasn't mad at her—not even close. He was mad at himself.
How could I have been so damn stupid? How did I not think—not even once—about what it could do to her?
He glanced down at her, the top of her head tucked into his neck. He felt the weight of it all settle a little deeper into his gut then. She was strong, she was tougher than anyone he knew—Marines included—but a person could only withstand so much. She'd pushed through everything—the kidnapping, the torture, the PTSD and the subsequent injuries.
And now there's this.
He swallowed the guilt down that was gnawing its way up his throat, settling it like a rock in his stomach again.
He'd do whatever she needed him to do, whatever would make this easier for her. But what if she resented him? What if, weeks or months or even days from now, she looks at him and all she can see is the mistake they made?
His chest tightened again underneath her body. Elizabeth shifted again, pulling herself a little closer into him, and he didn't move before letting her adjust. She stilled, and he wrapped his arm back around her tightly, trying to reassure that he wasn't going anywhere.
Because that was the one thing he knew with all uncertainty—mistake or not, fear or not—he wasn't going anywhere.
He knew, too, that when the time came, he would mention other options to her. He worried for her, worried for her body and her mind too. He worried that he would be pushing her into something she wasn't ready for, that he wasn't even sure he was ready for. He worried that this would drown out their relationship, the one fueled by fire, the one he was burning next to her in. Overall, he worried.
He pressed his lips to her head again and made a quiet kissing noise, and she looked up at him finally. He briefly wondered how he'd missed that she had been crying, looking at the puffiness of her eyes and the stains running down her cheeks, now dried.
"I didn't want this," she whispered.
Henry froze. His fingers stopped tracing on her back, and his breath caught in his throat.
She stared past his shoulder, some point on the couch probably. "I never…I never saw myself as…" when her voice trailed off, her eyes looked at him with panic radiating from them.
He just nodded, resuming his tracing, but he wasn't able to say anything yet. He understood what she was trying to say—she'd never seen herself as a mother.
"I'm not…I'm not soft in the way that mothers are…" she whispered.
He frowned, looking at her seriously, "That's not true," he said.
"You can't say that for sure," she countered.
He took a beat to think, but then he shook his head, "I've seen the ways you are soft, Elizabeth. I've seen you with my mom, for one, and with Mrs. Judy. You have a big heart."
She looked down and he felt her fingers on his shirt now, tracing her own little circles absentmindedly as she watched them, "I liked the idea of…" she trailed off again, her eyes fixed down on her fingers. He didn't know, this time, what she was trying to say though. So he waited until she finally continued, "I liked the idea of having your baby," she whispered, sounding like the words seared her tongue as they rolled off. "Before I knew, of course. I…liked thinking about it. It almost…" her breath hitched, and he rubbed his hand along her back a little sturdier, "It almost turned me on in some way."
He watched her as she worked through these emotions aloud, wondering if this is what had been in her head the entire time she'd been silent. But something in him stirred, too—maybe the idea of that turning her on turned him on a little. He was just a man, after all.
She shook her head bitterly, "But now that it's real? It feels…it feels different. Like it was something I never should've wanted in the first place."
He swallowed thick and felt an ache in his stomach again, something residing beside the guilt that was already there. He brought his hand up to her hair and rubbed it down the back of her head gently, twirling his fingers in the ends of her blonde locks.
"I mean," she said, sniffling, "What the hell do I know about being a mother?" She shook her head again, and Henry watched as her eyes filled up with tears that she blinked away. "I know how to fight, I know how to—"
"You know how to love," Henry interrupted.
She looked at him, staring for a moment before sniffling again.
"You don't have to be perfect, babe," he whispered, shaking his head, "You just have to be you." He swallowed hard and took a shaky breath, "You love harder than anyone I know. You fight for people you care about, and you fight for your entire country—that has to count for something. You protect them, even if it means putting yourself in harm's way."
He watched as she just stared down at him, wild-eyed and snotty-nosed. He still found her incredibly cute, and that was when he knew he was so in love with this woman that it couldn't be helped. "You don't take bullshit. Sure," he added, "And maybe you're not someone to sing lullabies and—"
"I can't sing," she interrupted.
He raised his brow, letting out a little laugh when he realized she was serious. "You can't?"
She shook her head, "Have you ever heard me even humming?"
He thought for a moment, "No," he concluded. He sighed a little and got them back on track, "That's not my point. My point is that singing lullabies and baking cookies isn't what makes up being a good parent, babe," he whispered.
She swallowed hard and looked back down at her fingers, still tracing them over the fabric of his shirt. Henry could see the way she had her jaw locked, the way she was holding onto herself so tightly that if she let go she would maybe just explode.
"My dad," Henry started, taking a shaky breath. "My dad wasn't easy or gentle. Most of the time, he was really hard to be around, actually. He had a temper, and he scared the hell out of me until I got old enough to realize I could fight back. And for a long time?" he looked at her because now she was watching him carefully, "I thought that made him a bad father. And in some ways, yeah, maybe he was." Henry swallowed hard, his mouth becoming so dry suddenly. "He hurt my mom. He hurt us. Not physically, but…he left scars that shouldn't have been on us as kids, you know?"
Elizabeth nodded slightly, not saying anything but instead pressing her fingers gently into his chest as though she were tethering him to her.
"I know that he loved us. Even if it was in his own way," he said, swallowing hard and thinking about his father's face. "I remember this one time—I was maybe ten or so. I'd gotten in a fight at school because some kid had been messing with Maureen. And I just…" he shrugged a little, pursing his lips. "I lost it."
Elizabeth's head tilted slightly, watching his eyes as they shifted to and from her.
"I came home from school and just knew my dad was going to lose it." He paused, thinking for a moment and then looking at her, "But he didn't. He sat me down and cleaned my knuckles up, and he told me that taking care of your own is the most important thing a man can do."
Elizabeth's fingers traced little circles on his chest again, "That's what you do," she whispered.
He nodded just slightly, afraid to agree. Maybe he did, maybe sometimes he hurt the people he loved even worse—like now, being stupid and bringing a baby into this world. "He wasn't perfect," Henry added, trying to get his mind off the nagging thoughts, "But he did show up."
He thought about that night Henry had the big blow up fight with him about the Marines, and about the way his father looked so sad. He'd known that Patrick had been drinking, but it wasn't his place as Patrick's son to take that into account. That night in particular, he'd only seen him as a drunk and an excuse for a father. Now, lying on this couch, he thought of Patrick as a drunk and a father who didn't know how to be a father.
He looked at her in the eyes, "I know he loved me," he whispered, "I think he still does. I haven't talked to him since before I left for deployment."
Elizabeth swallowed hard and watched him for a moment longer before finally giving in to what looked like her tired neck, resting her cheek down on his chest again. She went completely silent, and even her breaths reached a steady, slow rhythm eventually. When he craned his head around to look at her face, he saw her eyes were closed, and she was snoring just barely out of her mouth.