A/N: I couldn't stop obsessing over the next chapter so you got a quick update ;-) (now I need to do school work...sad)
This was...ugh. Heartbreaking.
Also, side note, I often write while listening to classical music. I was finishing some of the hardest parts in this chapter while listening to "Williams: Main Theme (from 'Schindler's List')" and, let me tell you, I think that made it even worse. So if anyone wants to subject themselves to further deep feelings...
But...I hope you enjoy(?)
Elizabeth | Post-Extraction – Day 9 (220 Hours)
They had been at it for hours.
Exhausted, desperate, unable to stop even when their bodies were begging them to rest. It had started when they went in the house, stretching over the remainder of the morning and into noontime. They'd been frantic at first, desperate to forget the conversation they'd just had out on the dock, desperate to find a connection. The frustration had built between them on the dock and had spilled over into the house, too.
Elizabeth groaned and ran a hand through her hair, "This is getting us nowhere."
Henry exhaled sharply and leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms. Papers were strewn across the table as he ran his own hands through his hair now, too, and looked at the clock. "We need food," he said, and Elizabeth's stomach woke up as if on command.
He was right—they did need food. She hadn't eaten since their hot dogs yesterday at lunch, and she knew that if he'd eaten he would've made her eat too. So neither one of them had eaten in over twenty-four hours—it was no wonder she wasn't getting anywhere with this damned intel.
After Henry made them more hot dogs—a staple at that point—they'd eaten and gotten right back into the intel. Elizabeth called Conrad at one point for a check in, hoping that he'd gotten somewhere with the President's chief of staff, but Conrad was coming up short.
Finally around seven that night, she swallowed thick and looked at the phone. "Who's going to keep me safe when you leave?" she asked, thinking back to yesterday and all the gunfire, Freeman's dead body laying on the floor in a puddle of his own blood. That could've been Henry, she thought again, the thought that wouldn't leave her alone. He could've—he was supposed to be the one dead.
Henry looked up from the couch. He'd been sitting over there while Elizabeth sat in the little makeshift desk Henry had concocted out of a hall table that he scooted up to a chair in the living room. "I'll get Conrad to send security over." The strain is his voice was evident, and it was obviously not just from the fact that they're both exhausted from re-reading over financial reports and phone records and so on.
She looked down at the desk and piled all the papers up in one big stack, neatly lining the edges up and knocking them on the table before plopping them down on the floor and pushing the table away so she could get up.
"Your crutches," Henry reminded, scrambling to get them for her.
She picked her leg up and hobbled across the living room to the dining room table where they'd been sitting, grabbing the phone and dialing Conrad's number. She could feel Henry's eyes piercing into her from behind, but he was silent. He was probably confused, too, but Elizabeth couldn't bring herself to look and find out.
"Conrad," she answered, taking a shaky breath, "Tell the chief of staff that I want to speak with the President."
Henry was protesting behind her while Conrad protested in her ear, "Bess, that's just simply not safe," he said, a fatherly tone coming out. She shut her eyes and pushed her front teeth together, thinking about how she would be damned if she had someone acting like her father now after all these years.
"Either you tell him or I will," Elizabeth said, "I know Isabelle can get me the number."
"You don't need to—" she felt a hand on her arm as Conrad was protesting, but she interrupted him.
"I know what I don't need to be doing, and I know what's best for me, sir. And what's best for me is not to have security that I don't trust trying to keep me safe. If I go myself, I'm not likely to be hurt." Her voice shook a little at the end and she stopped herself to keep it from sounding too scared, but she gripped the phone so tight it popped, and she wondered if she'd cracked the plastic.
"Elizabeth," Henry was begging beside her, and he finally stepped in front of her where she couldn't help but see him. She'd been avoiding him at her side so far, even though his hand felt heavy on her arm. "You don't know how deep this runs. None of us do."
"And your life is more disposable than mine?" she asked Henry, looking at him with needles pricking her eyes. She tore her gaze away and cleared her throat, "Director Dalton," she said, becoming formal and stern once more, "I need you to tell the chief of staff that I want to meet with President Westfield. An emergency meeting." She gripped the phone again and shut her eyes as she took a deep breath in through her nose.
There was a silence from both men, and she could hear herself breathing. She shot her eyes open and looked at Henry, swallowing hard.
He shook his head at her, "You…" he whispered, but he couldn't finish the sentence. She knew he couldn't because of the way his throat tightened up, the muscles around his neck contracting. She looked away from him again.
"You did your job, Henry," she assured quietly, pulling the phone away from her mouth slightly, "Now it's time for me to finish this whole thing and time to let me keep you safe." She put the phone back to her mouth, "I need this from you, sir."
There was a stretch of silence again, and she wondered for a moment if Conrad hung up. Finally, he breathed out, and she could hear the crackles in the phone. She wondered if he was smoking—something Lydia had told him to stop when they started dating, but something he never could quite shake in times like these. "Alright," he breathed out, "But I'm coming with you and Henry is bringing you to me, no argument there." His voice was firm again, and Elizabeth knew she wasn't to argue with him now. She didn't want Henry to take her, not really, because she knew she'd be a wreck the entire car ride. But she also knew there was no other real option.
"Yes sir," she exhaled, closing her eyes. "We'll drive back up tomorrow morning and he can drop me off to you."
"That's if the chief of staff says yes," he said.
She swallowed thick, "Either make him, or I will come there anyway and make myself known."
Conrad breathed out loudly again and she could imagine him pacing the floor at Langley, Isabelle somewhere nearby and wondering what was going on. He would've straightened his back again because he slouched when he worried. He would've been glancing at Isabelle for some sort of help, though she couldn't provide it, because that's what he did with Elizabeth in hard situations too.
"Alright," Conrad finally said, "Be safe, Elizabeth."
She nodded, "Yes sir," she whispered, pressing the end call button and laying the phone down gingerly on the table. She noted that she had, indeed, cracked the back of the phone when she'd gripped it so tight.
Henry was standing there, baffled, and he'd crossed his arms at some point. Her arm felt cold just in the spot where his hand had been resting, and she looked down at it as though it were still there. "You know that's what had to be done," she whispered.
But he didn't say anything. It was his turn to be silent, she supposed, and he walked off toward the kitchen. She picked her head up and watched him after he was a few steps away, and he leaned against the counter and looked out the window. It was sunset again—and she knew he was watching the way it sparkled across the water. How could he not be?
She looked over at the crutches Henry had brought to her, and she hobbled over to him in the kitchen on them. She tried to be quiet, but the clanging of the metal and rubber gave her away. He still didn't look over at her, though, even as she stood right beside him and looked out the window, too.
"You're doing exactly what you begged me not to do," he whispered.
She looked down at his fingers gripped the edge of the sink, and she shut her eyes as her neck tightened. "I know," she whispered back. "It's the only way—I'm more likely to get to President Westfield and you know that. They're less likely to kill me because it's going to be harder to cover it up in the CIA than it would be in the Marines."
He still stared out the window as she watched his jaw tighten and release a couple times. She saw his fingers turning white on the sink, and she wanted to reach for them and put her hand over them like he would do for her, but she couldn't bring herself to do it. Not now.
Because, after all, this is no novel.
This is her life, the one that she must spend dancing alone in her kitchen to Peter Frampton and wishing for someone to come along and ground her. The life she chose, the one that causes her to be put in harm's way every so often, just like he's put in harm's way, too. They do it for the good of their country.
I do, right?
She looked away and set her chin on her shoulder, trying to keep the tears from forming. She took a deep breath and gathered herself a little more, blinking that burning sensation away.
Beside her, she felt him move, and he was turning away from her entirely, turning from the window, and walking off toward the bathroom. She heard the door shut and she closed her eyes, the pain in her chest overwhelming her entire body.
She moved over to the table again and sat down, the clock's ticking deafening her as it seemed to get louder and louder. The sun was setting now, and the windows were letting in a deep, rich, orange glow that covered the dining room and kitchen and living room area. But none of it felt beautiful. It all felt sickly, somehow.
After a couple minutes, Henry comes back into the kitchen and starts rifling through cabinets, but Elizabeth doesn't ask what he's doing. He looks angry, and the way he's slamming cabinet doors shut wasn't like him. So she just sat and picked at the crack in the phone, the one she'd caused, and watched as he worked to boil pasta on the stove—finally.
She watched him the entire time move throughout the kitchen, and none of his movements became any less choppy. He found a package of frozen hamburger meat in the freezer and after slamming the freezer door shut, he ran the package under hot water and beat on it until it thawed out. She wondered if his hand would be bruised tomorrow. I won't know, because I won't let myself look at him tomorrow.
She really hadn't been hungry until she started smelling the hamburger cook, but she never said anything still. This, somehow, was his way of working through it all. For her, this would be the last thing she'd want to do when angered. She's already dangerous enough in the kitchen.
When he plated the food, he brought it over without a word. "There's parmesan in the fridge," he announced, and she took it as a question.
"Sure," she whispered, watching as he refused to make eye contact with her while he slid the plate across the table. He moved his plate to a new spot—one that was sitting across from her with the entire table between them. He'd been sitting at the end, right next to her, and now she felt like she was going to sink into the floor.
He brought the parmesan over and she sprinkled it onto her spaghetti as he was sitting down, "Drinks," he mumbled. She looked at him as he stood up in frustration and walked to the fridge, grabbing the two bottles of water that were left. She knew, watching him, that his mind must be garbled.
He stood at the head of the table where he normally would've sat, and he handed her the bottle of water. She grabbed for it and their fingers touched, and she looked at his wrapped around the bottle and froze. Swallowing hard, she realized the brevity of the fact that neither of them pulled away, and finally she met eyes with Henry. He looked away and pushed the bottle into her hand, not harshly, but firmly to tell her to take it.
He sat back down across from her and she quietly picked her fork up, trying to spin some spaghetti onto it as she watched it spinning and spinning and spinning and spinning. His fork was clanking against his plate, but she didn't look up. She just watched as she spun her pasta around and around.
After a few bites, she finally set her fork down, the silence eating her alive. "I don't want to spend our last night together fighting," she said sternly, looking at him.
He didn't pick his head up, though, and now he was also spinning his pasta on his fork. He kept on until she pushed her plate away, scraping it across the table.
"Henry," she snapped.
"What?" he asked, looking up at her.
She locked eyes with him and felt her chest heat up, then cool down almost immediately. "I don't want to spend our last night together fighting," she said again, her voice still steady but a little more calm this time.
His jaw tightened as he kept his gaze on her, and he set his fork down finally. "How else do you want to spend it then?" he asked.
Elizabeth swallowed hard and felt her pulse jumping at the challenge in his tone. She tried to think of a way to say it—"ravish me" didn't feel right, not anymore. It felt right the first night. It felt right because that's what she'd wanted most from him. But now, she just wants to be held, she wants to feel that connection that their souls shared once more because, after tonight, there's no way she'll ever feel that again.
So she pushed her chair out slowly without saying anything else, finally dropping her eyes from his gaze and foregoing the crutches as she stood. She knew, if anything, that not using her crutches was going to get him out of his chair. And it worked, too, because she heard his chair scooting out as she took one little hop away from the table and rested her toes down on the floor, ignoring the pain shooting through her leg.
She felt his arm wrap around her waist and then the other scoop behind her legs, and she was up in the air in just a second. She looked over at him and immediately the tears rushed to her eyes, but she blinked them away. She was in his arms once more.
He carried her to the bedroom and laid her down carefully on the unmade bed—neither of them had even thought about it that morning. Making the bed was simply not on the agenda while also running from the government.
When she was set into the bed, she watched as he took his shirt off over his head and stepped out of his shorts. She did the same, but her shorts got caught on her cast, and while she was fumbling with it she hadn't noticed that he was moving to help her. His fingers brushed hers as if telling her to stop, and he slowly slid them off and helped her with the rest of her clothes.
She already felt the tears wanting to form, but she tried to hold strong. She tried to ignore the aching in her chest that had been there all day but now was only magnified as he stood next to her in his boxers and his dog tags, sliding her underwear down her legs and gently tossing them down at the side of the bed with the rest of their clothes piled up.
When he was standing beside her naked, she felt less naked somehow. She wanted him to see her, and she wanted to watch him. Everything about her made her feel like butter, and she reached out for his hand and took it, beckoning him in silence into the bed.
He looked at her and swallowed hard, crawling over her body and into the bed. He laid down beside her and she rolled over to face him, her shoulders already tense to keep from crying. Her mouth opened to say something, anything, but nothing came out.
She finally shut her eyes as she felt his fingers toying in her hair, his palm resting on her ear, and he closed the gap that she'd been too frozen to close, kissing her on the lips slowly.
Her shoulders wracked uncontrollably as she tangled her leg in between his, her casted foot resting against the mattress. Her hips were already touching his, and their thighs were locked together with her foot resting somewhere along his calf.
She gripped onto his shoulders, her sternum feeling like it was breaking into two as she opened her mouth, silently inviting him in.
No words, no cues, he just followed the subtle directions. She got chills down her arms and legs as the realization hit her that they feel well-practiced, that this feels natural. There was never any awkwardness about this at all, and tonight is no different, even as the two of them can't bring themselves to speak.
She presses her hip tighter against his and slides to roll over onto him, reaching down and sliding him between her legs. She sinks down and shuts her eyes, letting out a whimper as she felt her entire body be covered in goosebumps, a feeling that made her want to fall forward onto him. But she didn't, she sat tall and felt his hands come to rest on her hips as she stayed still.
"Elizabeth…" he whispered, and she opened her eyes to look at him. As she did, though, she felt a tear race down her cheek and drip onto her breast, and she watched as it ran off and fell onto his chest.
She pulled both lips into her mouth and sniffled, leaning down and kissing him passionately before slowly rolling her hips.
Her fingers on one hand tangle in his hair, the other tracing the beaded metal of the necklace that keeps his dog tags around his neck. He'd taken it off the other night, but tonight, it stayed on. Tonight I have the Marine, she realized, rolling her hips and stifling a moan.
His hands were slowly rubbing down her sides, and it felt as though he were counting each rib, memorizing where they ended and where her spine began. He found the map of her hips, he found the map of her thighs from behind as his fingers kneaded into the soft tissue there, kneading upward and upward until his hands were helping her hips slide up and down on him.
Her mouth was busy on his, gently pulling at his lip and dancing with his tongue. He slowly moves them, rolling them over to where they were both lying on their sides, but he never left her body. She opened her eyes to see him watching her, and she kept her eyes open, too, moving her mouth off his when she felt him moving. His hips were meeting hers, burying himself into her as deep as he could go, and she couldn't help the sob that escaped her lips as he held her thigh in his hand.
Immediately, his movements stopped, and she looked at him desperately. "Don't," she whispered, shaking her head, "Please don't stop."
And when she felt him moving again, she looked into his eyes once more and saw his own tears lingering at the rim, waiting to fall. She clutched her fingers around his shoulders more tightly, pulling her body into his as he kept their rhythm moving. She hadn't been able to keep a rhythm at all, she realized now.
Her eyes dropped down to his lips and she considered briefly kissing them again, something to stifle the cry that was bound to come out of her body soon. But then she flicked her eyes back up to his and shook her head, drawing him closer by spurring her heel into the back of his thigh. "I love you," she whispered.
"I know," he replied, his voice cracking before he whispered, "I love you too."
She shut her eyes then and let the sob come out of her body because those three words, for the both of them, felt more like a confession and a goodbye than a start of anything new.
Henry | Post-Extraction – Day 10 (228 Hours)
Neither of them had slept. Neither of them could stop watching each other long enough, both seemingly afraid the other would leave like a thief in the night.
When the sun started peaking through the curtains behind him and casting shadows onto the wall behind her, a backdrop that looked ominous, he leaned in and kissed her lips one last time. "We should get going," he whispered.
She curled up tighter in a ball before he felt her fingers dig into his arms harder. Though she didn't say anything, the way she buried her face in his chest said everything. She doesn't want to leave. I don't want her to either.
He closed his eyes and rested there for a moment longer, breathing her into him and holding on to every last piece of her that he could. He thought back to when he first saw her in the infirmary, the way her hair had been cleaned had made it look so shiny. And now, ten days after she'd been in there, it still shined. He still thought it looked prettier than any sunset with its golden glow.
He felt fingers on his chest, and she had been gently scraping her nails up and down his peck for the last hour, but now she was toying with his dog tags. He looked down between them, pulling away slightly to see around her head, and he reached around with his other hand that wasn't resting on her waist to pull the necklace over his head. He balled the chain up in his hand and looked at it for a moment, thinking back to the day he got it and how proud he'd been.
When he had arrived at Quantico that first time after graduation, he had been handed all his new uniforms and everything, including his tags. He'd held them in the palm of his hands and stared at them for a moment, feeling the weight of them, though they were not that heavy. He'd known, even as a gung-ho Marine, that this meant he was the property of the United States. "Lieutenant McCord," he'd heard a barking to his right, and he looked up to see Major Rawlins staring at him. Rawlins had nodded down toward Henry's hand at the tags, "You know why we wear two, right?" he'd asked.
Henry had looked down at the tags in his hand that suddenly felt astronomically heavy, "Yes sir."
"It's your identity, of course. That one on the short chain stays with you—they leave it on the bodies," Major Rawlins said anyway, "And the other, the longer one, well…" he raised his brow and cleared his throat, "Hope you never need them," Rawlins said, "Especially since you're a damn good pilot."
Rawlins had seen Henry train a few times during ROTC missions, and he'd always had the feeling that Rawlins was impressed with him, too. He showed special interest, and it made Henry feel even more indestructible. When he'd participated a little later in the Crucible, about thirty hours in, he felt his dog tags cold and heavy on his chest, and he knew that it was way heavier than it had been in his palm that first day at Quantico.
And now, he's watching her closely as he wriggles his chain between his fingers. He felt her leg bend a little more between his legs, and his breath hitched as he looked at her. He gently slid his hand off her waist and down her arm, wrapping his fingers around her wrist and turning it over.
He took the short chain off his longer one, the one that would typically be saved to put on his body when he was dead. He laid it in her hand and she looked up at him while she held her breath, her lips parted just slightly, "It's not just a piece of metal," he said, his voice low and husky from a lack of sleep, "It's who I am—a Marine, a soldier. It's everything they've built me to be." He stopped to think about Lacey and leaving him behind. It's everything they've built me to be, even when I don't know if it's good things. "I'm…this is more than just my identity, Elizabeth," he whispered, wrapping her hand in his and folding her fingers around the tag.
"This is the part that they leave on the body," he explained, looking down at her closed hand. "It's the first thing they'd look for after not finding my pulse," he said.
She shook her head, about to protest the conversation of death.
But he stopped her by squeezing her hand gently, "You keep this, and I stay alive forever in your eyes, and that's all that matters." His voice broke again and he shut his eyes as he watched the tears fall over her cheeks, "I know I told you that you wouldn't just have the Marine, but it's all I can give to you."
She leaned in and kissed his lips, and he knew that it would be the last one. He could feel it in the way she gripped onto his arms, the dog tag smushed between her palm and his skin.
She'd gotten out of bed first and changed, and then he followed suit not long after. Neither of them said anything—there was nothing left to say that would feel remotely productive. When he came out of the bathroom, she was already out of the bedroom, but he went ahead and packed his things since she'd packed her duffle and left it on the bed neatly. She also had made the bed, and it looked so pristine that he didn't want to lay his bag on it and wrinkle anything.
When he came out of the room with both of their bags, he didn't see her anywhere. "Elibet," he called out nervously, the name tumbling from his mouth too quickly and coming out all wrong. He shook his head and felt a rush of anxiety surge through him, thinking how close that bullet was to his face that, instead, hit Freeman. He blinked and looked around, about to call out her name again when he finally caught a glimpse of her outside.
He walked to the side door, the one they'd used to go outside to the dock yesterday and the day before that, and she was standing on the edge where they'd sat. She was leaning on her crutches so heavily that she looked like she was about to fall over, but he saw her, and he knew she was safe right there.
I wish you could stay there forever, he thought, where you're safe.
He swallowed hard and took a deep, painful breath when he saw the way the sunlight glimmered on her hair, and he ripped his eyes away from her, knowing that if he stared too long he would just march out, take her, and hide her away forever.
But she was dutybound. And so was he.
So he opened the door with his toe where it hadn't been latched, "Elizabeth?" he called out softly, and she looked back over her shoulder. She looked back to the bay and then turned around slowly, hobbling back up to the house.
He put the bags in the car and opened the garage door, and he saw her coming inside just as he was about to go check on her. She locked the door behind her and silently made her way to the garage, walking past him without looking at him and got in the car.
She put her crutches in the back as he was shutting the house's door, and then he climbed into the 4Runner's driver seat.
When he turned the car on, it sounded like it was roaring in the confines of the garage, but his thoughts were much louder and consumed by Conrad's voice: Don't let her get hurt. He'd known what Conrad meant—physically or otherwise.
He backed out slowly, his focus on the rearview mirror, on the space, on everything except her. But in the haze of his thoughts, in the thickness of the silence, he misjudged the space just enough. A small, but unmistakable scrape—metal on metal—shattered the quiet.
He froze, his breath catching in his throat, his hand still gripping the wheel. The sharp, biting sound of the scratch felt like it resonated through his entire body.
Elizabeth flinched beside him, though she didn't speak. She didn't even look at him.
He knew. She knew.
He had hurt her. Not just her heart, but the promise he'd made—without words, without ever truly saying it aloud—that he would protect her, just as Conrad had asked.
His eyes flicked to the side mirror, and he saw the deep gash in the paint. It wasn't just a car. It was a symbol. A promise broken. He hadn't meant it, but in some way, he had just done the very thing Conrad had warned him about.
The 4Runner had been as much of a symbol as Elizabeth herself—a reminder of the bond, the promises, the responsibility. And now, just like the scratch on the car, he'd left a mark on her heart too.
Henry's voice was almost a whisper, barely audible, even in the quiet of the car. "I'm sorry."
But there was nothing more to say. Not now. Not when the silence between them was already more than either of them could bear. They both just stared ahead, neither daring to meet the other's eyes, both feeling the weight of everything they had lost in that one, terrible moment.
The car pulled slowly out of the driveway, into the morning, as if the world itself had quieted along with them.