Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Hey, look-” he says, and scratches above his eyebrow, leaning sideways against the doorframe.

He’s not really sure where to start, or where he’s going with this.

But he has to say something.

This past week’s been a lot for both of them; thwarting a major terror event, a roundtrip to Europe, getting shot at, running into burning buildings, threatening that—

‘I’m glad that didn’t kill you,’ rings in his ears—

He swallows hard, blinking away the images that still threaten to spill over into tears.

There are a lot of things he’ll have to deal with in the coming weeks, things he needed to address with himself, with Nina, maybe with Tiff once he got back to work—

But right now all that mattered was making sure Nina settled in okay.

Settled into his home okay.

Two pairs of her shoes were gathered in the rack by the front door, her coats hung in the foyer.

Whatever food she bought that hadn’t spoiled since leaving for Rome stood in two coolers on the kitchen counter.

Three large suitcases rested at the foot of his bed.

And she hadn’t really said a word to him since closing the door of her apartment behind them.

Sure, walking down three flights of stairs knocked the wind out of her as surely as climbing them had, but still— she felt further away from him again, closed off, like he’d forced her into this situation and not the son of a bitch who’d shot her.

He’d never forget the name.

Anton Averanka.

Thoughts straying, his own words start banging at his skull with the persistence of tinnitus.

‘I want you to know when you’re gonna die, and who did it.’

He finds Nina in the bathroom after carrying the last of her stuff upstairs, tight-lipped, still, moving mechanically from item to item.

‘He shot Nina.’

Like doubt pulled her every which way and her mind couldn’t find focus.

‘He shot my—’

Like maybe tears could overtake her any second too.

The doctors in Italy and New York were very clear.

She shouldn’t be on her own after taking a bullet, going through emergency surgery, and getting med-evaced back to the States. Without assurances that she had help at home the doctors here couldn’t justify releasing her.

So he’d offered, “You could- stay with me- for a while?” as carefully as he could.

“No”—She’d looked at him with equal parts surprise and resentment, because here were other people making decisions for her, and her need for control comprised a lot more than governing her own comings and goings—“I’m good.”

That’d seemed like the start and end of it.

Until the visit to the OBGYN.

“Your baby wasn’t physically harmed,” Dr Chen had said in no uncertain terms, “but he did live through all the trauma with you.”

“What- what does that mean?” Nina asked, panic in her eyes, and she’d reached for his hand, squeezing tight.

If he thought the news of Nina getting shot had low-key sobered him up, the thought of their son experiencing Nina’s distress brought him right back down to earth.

He came so close to losing them both. Too close.

And by the sound of it they weren’t out of the woods yet.

“Baby’s heart rate is slightly elevated. But with rest and close monitoring we’ll get that back under control.” Dr Chen smiled. “Do you have someone helping you at home?”

His words echoed those of the other doctors, and Nina had looked at him the same way she had back at the hospital in Rome, eyes filled with tears, chin trembling. Helpless.

He’d given her hand a short squeeze back, and nodded, just nodded, but Nina understood.

They both agreed that living together would be for the best, for now.

Both Nina and their baby came too close to dying, and the doctors couldn’t rule out any further complications. She needed regular check-ups, to manage her stress levels, and limit physical activity for the foreseeable future.

His place had a single flight of stairs up to the first floor, which she didn’t necessarily have to use. Meanwhile Alex and his mom would be on standby, as well as her Aunt Jo, to pitch in where needed, keep her company, and he could ask his cleaner Leta to come in an extra day to help with laundry, though he did enjoy doing that himself.

Practicalities aside they were having a baby together in as few as three months.

He wanted to make this work.

The three of them.

“Hey, look-” he says, and scratches above his eyebrow. “I know you didn’t really wanna do this.”

For better or worse she’d spent at least a few weeks here, and he’d rather those didn’t pass in complete silence.

“It’s fine.” Nina shakes loose her curls, placing her skincare products in the medicine cabinet one item at a time.

He’d cleared the space for her months ago, long before the baby, when Maggie’s accident drew them back into each other’s orbit and they’d slowly but surely built something steady, something that hadn’t yet needed definition.

He loved her, he knew that, and that was enough.

That was then.

“I- need to take it easy.” Nina sighs, practical as ever. “And- it’s an easier commute for you.”

He nods, biting the inside of his lip.

He’d offered because he knew that another week in the hospital would drive her out of her mind, no matter how often he, the team, or her aunt visited, no matter how much fast food he snuck in for her to eat when the nurses weren’t looking.

The distance didn’t matter to him, nor did commuting halfway across the city. He’d do anything for her if it meant making her life a little easier, better, lightening some of the load she’s always so eager to carry herself. If she’d said she preferred to stay at hers he would’ve made that work too— but she hadn’t said anything.

“It’s just weird, you know?”

Nina stares at him from the corner of her eye, clearly aware she’s upset the peaceful status quo they’d found since Italy; the aftermath of their ‘I love you’s’ and the emotional reunion cushioned some of the real life worries, like the rest of her recovery, the baby, their living situation...

The doctors denying her request to go home alone came as a serious reality check.

“Six months ago we were still”—She shrugs with one shoulder, rifling through her toiletry bag for the toothpaste that goes with the toothbrush—“figuring each other out, and now we’re having a baby.”

She licks her lips, looking anywhere but him, but there’s a breathy smile in there he recognizes.

He gets it, how they’re sort of doing this all in the wrong order, sleeping together before going on a proper date, a baby, now moving in together because she got hurt and needed the extra help. This felt more like a necessity, a way for her to get out of the hospital early, rather than something couples did. Whatever that meant.

It all left him a little breathless too.

“Life’ll do that.”

“Yeah.” Nina smiles, the phrase reminiscent of something in their not so distant past.

It all seemed simpler then, when his ‘I love you’ remained firmly at the tip of his tongue, when their biggest worry was finding time for each other outside of work, where to go on their next date, and keeping everything on the down-low.

Still, Italy’s about the only thing he’d change about the past year.

He pulls away from the doorframe and returns to the bedroom, clearing out an extra drawer for Nina to use. Going by the three suitcases she brought from home, she might need some extra wardrobe space too.

“I do,” comes Nina’s voice moments later, filling the doorway quietly, inconspicuously, like she’s exactly where she belongs.

Or maybe that was his imagination.

“I wanna do this,” she says, hands cupped around her baby bump. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.”

Calm returned to her eyes, though the tightness in her mouth remained, but he decides that whatever anxiety rifled through her came from having some of her agency taken, from getting hurt, from almost dying, from the mad rush the whole past week has been, despite having lived some of it on cloud nine.

In an ideal situation they’d go back to the way it was before Italy, they’d get to decide this in their own time, on their own terms. But life’ll do that, come at you in unexpected ways, and that hasn’t worked out well for them —Doug, her parents, Anton Averanka— except in this one way.

Their son, while unexpected, would give their lives new meaning in the best way possible.

He nods, and she pats his cheek in passing, before moving towards the bed and attempting to lift one of her suitcases onto it.

“Here, let me get that.”

He intervenes quickly, taking the suitcase from her and lifting it onto the bed himself, only to be met with her puzzled gaze, eyes all but shooting lightning at him.

“What?”

“We’re”—She idles a step closer, lips pursing—“going to need some ground rules.”

With her index finger pressed into his sternum, he swallows hard realizing his mistake—he really did know better than literally taking something out of her hands.

“I know you’re only trying to help, but I can carry my own weight, okay?”

Though her words lacked any real heat he refused to be one of the things that made this harder for her.

De-escalation 101. Make her laugh.

His eyes draw down to her belly. “Looks like you’re already-”

Nina raises a finger in warning, but laughs, “Don’t,” before she smooths her hand down to his heart.

Mission accomplished.

“I solemnly swear”—He holds up a hand—“I’ll never do anything like that again.”

“Liar.” Nina’s eyes narrow, and her belly bumps into him. “But I promise I’ll get better at asking for help.”

He smiles, pleased with the compromise.

They both look down, before Nina takes one of his hands and places it gently on her belly.

Their son started kicking again.

And just like last time his heart skips a beat thinking about Nina’s incredible resilience, her strength, her courage in the face of all these terrible things that happened.

She deserved a little extra space.

But he came too close to losing them both; he won’t let another moment go by not letting her know how much he cares, how much he wishes he could carry all the weight himself— the pain of things left unsaid wasn’t one he was interested in ever experiencing again.

But it’s Nina who says it first.

“I really wanna make this work.”

A hint of tears blooms in her blue eyes.

“The three of us.”

It’s all he needs to hear and more. Words never came to Nina quickly, she needed time to process, think, make space for changes in her life, and once she did—

He leans in and pushes his lips to hers, a giddy swoop in his stomach, and not for the first time he thinks that kissing her felt a lot like losing his own agency.

They can make this work, compromise, make space for each other and for their son, carve out a life for themselves with their son.

He rests his forehead against Nina’s.

“You know what you can do for me?” she asks, reaching both arms around his neck.

“Anything.”

Nina pulls back, nose wrinkling in delight. “Find me some gelato.”

He laughs. “Okay.”

Her eyebrows shoot up.

“Oh, you mean right now.”

Reaching back, he pats his back pocket instinctively, even though he leaves his wallet in the same place every day, on the console table by the front door downstairs.

“Okay, like- plain vanilla, or-?”

Nina beams, biting her bottom lip. “Pistachio.”

“Coming right up.”

He turns and heads down the hallway, shooting Jubal a text for a decent gelato recommendation—with any luck one would be closeby.

“And strawberry,” Nina calls from the bedroom.

Smiling, he shakes his head. He had said something about making her life easier, hadn’t he? It’d be a pity to go back on his word now.

He’s halfway down the stairs when he hears, “And chocolate!”

Chapter Text

He’s not surprised to find the bed empty when he pops back into the bedroom for his jacket.

It restarts the worry at the pit of his stomach, one that’d taken root the moment Forrester said those three words on the phone.

Nina got shot.

Even though the doctors recommended she rest, Nina took every opportunity to defy that advice. She got up at the crack of dawn or snuck out of bed in the middle of the night, stealing catnaps on the couch whenever her attention waned.

And when it did nightmares haunted her, every time she closed her eyes, every time she let her guard down.

She hadn’t said anything, but he knew.

However much he tried to stay awake with her, for her, the weeks he spent undercover, constantly on guard, under pressure, finally caught up to him. Added to that jetlag lingered in his body.

He’d slept like the dead most every night.

It’d made him realize that one week off work wasn’t nearly enough to deal with everything that happened, and the empty bed didn’t ease those worries. But he couldn’t take any more time off without losing pay, or without a valid medical reason, and he didn’t want to suffocate Nina by constantly being around.

That didn’t make going back to work any easier.

He wanted to say all the right things, make every day a little better than the last, but if she didn’t talk to him he’d never know how.

He knew, rationally, he had to give her the time and space to come back to herself first, before she could start thinking about coming to him, with her fears, her memories, her anger—

She only got home a week and a half ago, her wounds were still healing, and her stitches had to stay in for at least another week.

Even without all that, no one processed getting shot this quickly.

He hasn’t processed it either, the adrenaline, the fear—

the anger,

it all still simmered in his body, some of it too near the surface of his skin, some of it far deeper, entangled now with his past, his present, and his future.

‘I want you to know when you’re gonna die, and who did it.’

He’d have to deal with the aftermath of what he did, what he almost did, sooner or later, but for now he’d make Nina his priority.

Her voice drifts down the hallway, and he tracks it to the nursery, or what he hoped would become their son’s room in due course.

Up until a few months ago he used the room for storage, his childhood records, the odd Wall Street memorabilia, books and old clothes he hadn’t yet gotten around to donating to Goodwill.

Now its dark floorboards, high ceiling, and dreary walls begged for a transformation.

Which he reckoned had been Alex’s intention when she helped him clear it, and she’d peeled back some of the wallpaper behind his back, leaving not one, but four different color swatches.

Thing is, he and Nina haven’t talked about it.

“Okay. Bye,” he hears the smile in her voice before he fills the doorway, and locates her by the window, sat in the rocking chair Alex brought. The early morning light that comes in through the blinds colors her hair shades of honey and gold, her smile the same hue as she takes note of his presence.

“Couldn’t sleep?” he asks, reckons he can risk this careful first nudge.

Nina hums a noncommittal sound, and shakes her head, rubbing her belly. “Your sister has good taste.”

“Yeah, I was gonna-” He scratches behind his ear. “The girls need more space so she thought we might-”

Hearing the plural pronoun he catches himself.

“That I- might like it.”

But Nina’s clearly unconcerned about that ‘we’, smiling big and bright when she says, “Tell her thanks,” before reaching a hand out for him.

He shoots into the room and closes the distance between them quickly, helping her out of the chair as she covers a hand over the site of her stitches.

His hand drops to his side again, Nina’s fingers interlocked with his.

“Remind me to never sit down in that one when I’m home alone.”

“You could-”

Nina’s eyebrows rise in warning. “No jokes about how round I am.”

He cracks a smile, but keeps the -try rolling out to himself.

Truth is, she’s never looked more beautiful than these past months; pregnancy suited her, her cheeks colored a constant pink, her eyes bluer somehow, and he dare say she’d lost some of her sharper edges. Not that he necessarily disliked those.

Now, however, he can’t help but clock her small pinched eyes.

“You should go back to bed. Tiff’s picking me up in half an hour. I’ll be out of your hair.”

She smiles—“I’m good”—with a hand at her hip, her eyes taking in the rest of the room.

And he really should say something, that she should get as much rest as possible while she still can, that maybe she should consider talking to a professional, but he’d learned to space out those kinds of remarks.

Nina squeezes his hand. “It’s a really great room.”

“Yeah,” he breathes, because it really was; situated right next to the master bedroom, plenty of light coming in through the northeast facing windows. With a little TLC and someone who actually knew how to decorate it could be a whole new space in no time.

“I guess we haven’t really talked about-”

For two people with a baby on the way they hadn’t worked out many of the logistics. They’d settled on co-parenting without any legally binding contract, but other than that... the past few months they spent talking things through, shopping for essentials without giving them a proper space; the crib stood unassembled in Nina’s apartment, along with the mattress covers, swaddles and sheets, while the baby monitor and car seat remained in their boxes downstairs.

It’d taken them so long to get to something more stable that neither of them seemed willing to upset the delicate balance by facing facts. They were a couple, they loved each other, but they didn’t officially live together, and he didn’t want to assume that their new shared living situation was a foregone conclusion.

He wanted to make this, them, work. So did she.

But what did that really mean?

Nina smiles up at him. “It’s probably about time we do, isn’t it?”

He wondered if she could see it, what this room could be with a fresh lick of paint, a nice rug, a wooden crib and maybe a bassinet, a changing table in the corner and a small dresser—he wondered if she saw her own childhood bedroom and if it at all compared. If it was that childhood memory that held her back.

Hands still locked, they exit the room.

“Were you talking to someone?”

“Isobel.”

The name starts a bitter taste behind his molars.

“She wanted to know if I settled in okay.”

He swallows hard, and nods, lending a hand to help her down the stairs, the other at the small of her back.

“You know she was only doing her job,” Nina says, referring not only to the first time she’d seen his mood shift at the mention of Isobel, but to their subsequent conversation about why he couldn’t look his SAC in the eye.

He hadn’t seen or spoken to Isobel since that day in the conference room, in fact he hadn’t spent a whole lot of time thinking about her at all, rather he’d focused on his family, and any anger he felt took a backseat to that.

“Yeah, I do.”

In brief moments like these, when it did hit him, he reasoned it away, how it was Anton Averanka who deserved his hatred, not Isobel, but she’d been the one in his direct line of fire at the time.

And he’d hated how powerless she’d made him feel, her and Jubal, all in some misguided attempt to protect him, and from what? Knowing that the woman he loved might die? That his son might-?

Maybe he resented her station, which required her to make those kinds of decisions regardless of any personal feelings, his or hers.

Maybe he hated knowing that in her shoes he would’ve made the exact same decision.

Because Isobel was right. He’d flown off the handle, threatened suspects, run into a burning building, stepped so far outside the boundaries of his jurisdiction he felt ashamed thinking back on it.

And that anger wouldn’t let him think about it. When he let it touch him, when he let it in, it felt like drowning, like he couldn’t catch his breath, like any moment he’d pull a gun on the next suspect who vaguely resembled Averanka and put a bullet right between his eyes.

He couldn’t afford to feel that way. Not around Nina. Not around the baby.

“It’s just when it comes to you and the baby...”

“Bobby,” Nina says, nudging him with her elbow.

He grimaces. “Bobby?”

“Terrence,” she supplies, and he laughs, “God, no,” as they reach the bottom of the stairs. They had a few names in the running for their son, but Nina liked adding suggestions to drive him a little bit crazy.

Now, at least, it lightened the mood.

She lets go of his hand, but spins on her heel, smiling cutely as she pushes closer. “Sam.”

“Hmm,” he hums, leaning in to press a kiss to her lips, before his eyes narrow in amusement. “I dated a Sam in college.”

At that Nina rolls her eyes and heads for the kitchen, leaving her phone on the kitchen counter.

A smile lingers on his lips, and he watches her move around the kitchen like an adorable bull in a china shop, still opening one too many cabinet doors, huffing when she doesn’t immediately find what she’s looking for.

Still, he loved seeing her in his home, and he hoped she’d start to think of it as hers too, even if it was only for a short time.

At least she’d unpacked all her suitcases, no longer kept her toiletries in an overnight bag, and brought her favorite mug to drink from.

He took it as a good sign.

It’d only been a few days, but they’d made a start of it.

While Nina sets the table, he squeezes a handful of oranges for some juice for her, and makes himself a cappuccino.

Her phone chimes with an incoming email, and normally he would ignore it, give his curiosity leave to glance at the screen for .2 seconds and forget he ever saw anything, but this subject line catches him by surprise.

re: Transfer Request

His stomach drops.

“Transfer?” tumbles from his lips reflexively, fingers frozen around the handle of the portafilter.

When did she have time to put in for that?

Nina turns, following his gaze down to her phone, and draws in a deep breath.

“Are you-” he asks, but can’t think of anything concrete to say. His mind races, tracing, retracing, but he draws a blank. “What is this?”

“Eh.” Nina shrugs, and waves it off while she grabs food from the fridge. “It’s nothing.”

“It isn’t nothing.”

This can’t still be about the Intelligence position in L.A., she turned that down months ago. They decided together that they’d stay in New York, raise their son in the same city.

And he’d never ask her to give up her job.

Had she put in for a transfer before Rome? Or in the two weeks since?

Why hadn’t she said anything?

It could be a good thing. Maybe she did feel the toll of all the recent sleepless nights, the jetlag, the emergency surgery, the ultrasound, and all the doctor’s visits yet to come. Not to mention the emotional and psychological cost.

But that didn’t require a transfer. She could take up to 12 weeks of medical leave if needed.

So if it wasn’t that—

“Nina, would you please talk to me?” he asks softly, abandoning the coffee machine in favor of closing some of the distance between them. His fingers twitch at his side, palms sweaty.

Nina turns to him slowly, uncertainty playing in her eyes, a slight twitch in her lips. “I’m just- going to take a step back.”

He frowns. “From field duty-?”

“Uh, yeah.” She nods, and hums, tucking her hair behind her ear. “Maybe.

“Thinking”—She fiddles with the clasp of her wrist watch—“maybe I’ll put in for a supervisory position, or I could become a training agent.

“They’re looking for UC instructors for a new class, and”—She faces away—“with the baby coming I could use a more stable schedule.”

“Okay, wh-” His head shakes. “Were you going to tell me?”

This time when she meets his eyes, there’s no anxiety, no doubt, rather something harder his accusation gave rise to.

“It’s my decision.”

“No, yeah, I know that, but-”

He sighs. He had no right to tell her what to do with her life, how to live it, how to navigate her career, but he’d like to think he’d at least earned the right of knowing what was going on with her. All this felt too sudden, too unreasoned for someone who usually thought through her every decision down to the smallest detail.

A career change came with its own set of challenges and stress, especially an SSA position, and as for teaching— she’d never shown an interest in it before.

Deciding to co-parent didn’t make them a couple, and maybe ‘I love you’ didn’t either, but—

Was it wrong of him to assume that it did? that they could make big life changing decisions together, after talking about it?

Nina sighs. “I thought you’d understand.”

And it’s the implied accusation behind it that really stings, like she’d suffered these kinds of arguments long enough, and didn’t really expect him to understand at all— as a man for one, as her partner invested in her personal safety.

And he absolutely wanted her safe, he absolutely preferred her out of harm’s way, in the safety of a corner office or a classroom.

But not at the cost of losing a job she loved.

“I do.”

Nina huffs.

“Nina, I do,” he says, managing another step, two. “With everything you’ve been through these past-”

“No.”

Nina freezes, as does his forward momentum.

“This has nothing to do with Rome.”

Her eyebrows rise as if to underline those words.

If the silence didn’t become so deafening he might believe that.

She hasn’t thought this through, not with her usual rigor, the comprehensive research, the list of pros and cons. A supervisory position didn’t guarantee a stable schedule, no matter how much work she delegated; it meant more responsibilities, triple the paperwork, management training, leading a team, making the hard decisions...

“We’re having a baby, Scola,” she says, as if he hadn’t been aware of that every minute of every day since the day she told him. “We can’t both- go out in the field in the middle of the night anymore.”

If he thought that’s all this transfer was about, a more stable schedule, he’d happily support her. But she hadn’t been sleeping, she woke up every night gasping, covered in sweat, sneaking off to watch late night television so she wouldn’t wake him.

“One of us has to be here.”

“Okay.” He nods, idling another step closer. “But- that doesn’t necessarily have to be you.”

“What”—She blinks, taken aback by the quick pivot—“you’re going to quit field duty?”

“Why not?”

A lot had changed for both of them these past six months. Since the day he left the Academy he’d always felt like an agent first, and Nina had too, but lately, especially since Rome, he’d felt those priorities shifted.

Now his family came first, not the job.

If that meant scaling back his hours—

“The Bureau has options for parents.”

Uncertainty touches her eyes again, saturated with a vulnerability he thinks her own parents were responsible for.

“You would do that?” she asks, reaching out a hand for his side, fingers bunching his shirt together.

“It’s like you said.” He smiles. “We’re having a baby.”

She manages a soft wet smile, the plural pronoun appreciated all the more right now, and nods.

“We’re both gonna have to make changes.”

Then, taking one last step forward, she hugs both arms around him.

His eyes close as he breathes her in, even though images of Rome plagued the back of his eyelids all the same, her getting shot in some dark alleyway, her pale skin against the hospital sheets, her pain so clear to read.

Arms winding around her shoulders, his lips press against her hair.

He preferred seeing her with his own two eyes, in the light that filtered in through the nursery window, in the early morning sun those rare mornings he’d woken up next to her in bed, or the soft ambers of the living room lighting.

If it were up to him he’d never take his eyes off her again.

“You think I’m making a mistake?”

“I think you got shot.” He kisses her hair. “And- you’re scared.”

As if in reply, her arms tighten around him, and he knows beyond the shadow of a doubt whenever she closed her eyes flashbacks plagued her too, that she hadn’t shaken off what happened to her in Rome, not even a little bit, and that’s what kept her up at night.

But until she’s ready to face it, to talk about it—

“Scared the hell out of me too, but- I don’t want you to do something you’ll regret.”

Nina pulls back and looks up at him, eyes filled with tears. “There’s-”

—he won’t push her on it.

She sniffles, amending with, “Give me some time, okay?”

He nods.

So it won’t be today, and it probably won’t be tomorrow, but she started communicating, which was a good sign. He highly doubts she’ll head back up to bed, or take a proper nap on the couch, but she’s made a start.

It’s all he can ask for.

When Tiff texts him fifteen minutes later, Nina takes his hand again, and walks him to the door.

“You’ll take it easy?” he asks, jacket slung over one shoulder, his go-bag over the other.

Hand on her belly she smiles cutely, red blooming in her cheeks. “I will definitely try.”

He leans in for a brief kiss but Nina pulls him closer, and one kiss turns into two, three, four, until he’s no longer sure that he should go.

Maybe it’s too soon. Maybe they both need more time.

“Be safe, okay?” she says, her blue eyes pleading, scared, reassuring all at once.

It can’t be easy letting him walk out the door after spending day and night together since Italy.

“I will.” He kisses her one last time. “I promise.”

Chapter Text

“I got ‘em,” he says, microphone pinched between his thumb and index finger, voice lowered so as not to tip the Colimas cartel to his position. “Parking garage. Ninth floor. I see the javelin.”

Three guys set up at the railing; Pasqual Santos, a spotter and a backup, both armed with AK-47 rifles. That’s 60 high velocity rounds against his 15, and they didn’t need to bother reloading. Or aiming, really.

“Wait for backup,” comes OA’s voice, followed closely by Tiff’s, “Copy that.”

And he knows that means his team’s on the way, that all three of them shot into action the moment he pinpointed his location, but he can’t wait. Santos stood ready to fire, and the javelin won’t just take out the armored truck, but the cars around it, the people inside those cars, and God knows what else.

With the element of surprise on his side he could take out the biggest threat, Santos and the javelin.

After that- it’ll be a crapshoot.

But he can’t take the risk of that missile launching.

“There’s no time,” he says. “Engaging.”

It’s a split-second decision, in fact it’s barely a decision but a reflex his training drilled into him.

“FBI, show me your hands!” he yells, sees Santos double down, and takes him out with a single shot.

Half a second later a bullet whizzes past his head, he ducks back behind the wall and a barrage of bullets digs into the other side of it. Will it hold?

He doesn’t stick around to find out— there’s a momentary lull in gunfire and he tracks back toward the second wall; the stairwell wouldn’t give him enough cover should they pursue him, and engaging them from the secondary position might give the rest of the team enough time to get to him.

But he no sooner moves or the other AK-47 comes into play, digging holes the size of his fist into the wall, chipping away at the concrete. One of the shooters shouts orders at the other in Spanish, and his guess is they’re trying to outflank him, which- if he can’t take one of them out seems more than likely.

He could try—

A pause.

It’s only a few seconds but he pivots reflexively, takes one look, takes aim, and takes out one of the gunmen.

He ducks back behind the wall, heart pounding, before the second salvo of bullets starts, only now it comes closer, he can feel each bullet impacting the wall, one after the other.

He’s pinned down without backup—

and he can’t breathe.

He did his job, he saved lives. Why didn’t that feel like enough today?

Maybe he should have taken his chances with the stairwell; it didn’t have any cover but he could’ve made a run for it, bought the team more time. Bought himself more time.

Because once this guy closes the distance—

If he keeps firing—

Vest can’t take that kind of heat.

Even still, if the vest managed to hold his body won’t, not if he took multiple hits. He could take his chances, try his luck and shoot his way out, but if that goes wrong Nina will be—

His son will be—

The thought hits him harder than any bullet ever could.

Doug never said goodbye to his wife and kids either.

It knocks the wind right out of him, and he slips two inches down the wall. He’s going to be a parent, he promised Nina just days ago that he would scale back his hours, and now—

A single shot rings out, and the gunfire dies down.

A breath shudders out of him while he turns, gun raised, until OA enters his field of vision. Then Maggie.

Then Tiff.

His team come to his rescue.

The thought should put him at ease, return some of the calm he usually so easily recaptures, but between OA’s brief nod in his direction and Tiff’s concerned side-eye, he’s lost all composure.

“Jubal,” he hears Maggie say, her voice fading in a maelstrom of distressing thoughts, “the javelins are secure...”

He watches local PD put up yellow tape,

OSI coming in to retrieve the javelins,

the coroner’s office collecting all three of the bodies,

and it’s only then, after, when he can catch a breath, that he realizes how close he came.

He blinks and he sees Nina collapsed on the cobblestones 4000 miles away, bleeding, crying out for help. Fearing for her life. Fearing for their baby’s life.

And deciding to take a step back.

Weak in the knees he leans back against the black Chevy, ears still ringing, breathing shallow, nailed to the ground.

What if the team hadn’t made it in time?

He would’ve left his son without a father.

Just like Doug.

Only he chose to put himself in the line of fire.

That never bothered him before, he’d never questioned it before, not even after Nina told him she’d keep the baby.

But ever since Rome—

the anger, the fear,

he thought it would disappear with Nina safely home, settled in, but he couldn’t look at the scars without seeing Anton Averanka’s face, without seeing the muzzle of his Glock pushed up against that scumbag’s forehead, without wondering if he would’ve pulled the trigger if Remy hadn’t talked him down.

It hadn’t disappeared, not the anger, not the fear, if anything it dug in deeper, a little closer to his heart every day.

He’d come back to work thinking it’d help him shake it, but he’d been running on autopilot all day.

OA told him to go south and he did. His instincts told him to engage, and he did. It could’ve easily been Tiff or Maggie but they would do the same thing, they’d engage. If he hadn’t stepped up that witness would be dead, the US Marshals protecting him would be dead, not to mention the collateral damage.

That was the job. Every day.

So when Tiff asks, “Are you okay?” an ingrained knee-jerk response pushes the words, “Just another day, right?” past his lips.

But even he knows Tiff doesn’t buy that.

The shootout left him unsettled, shaken.

He thought he’d learned by now how trauma sat in his body, in his mind, but this added layer of fear over what might happen—

Nina’s the one who got shot.

Then why did it feel like he had too?

His phone buzzes in his back pocket.

Nina calling.

As if she knew she was on his mind.

He draws in a deep breath, pulls the earpiece out of his right ear, and answers the call.

“Hey,” he says, trying to keep his voice steady. “What’s up?”

“Hey, I-”

Nina stutters to a halt.

“What’s wrong?”

He frowns. “What do you mean?”

“You sound- off.”

“Yeah, uh”—He shuffles back and forth, and scratches at his brow—“case got a little- intense.”

“What- Why were you calling?” he asks, hoping to shift the focus of the conversation before he worried her unnecessarily. No one got hurt, if not a little spooked, and they got weapons of mass destruction off the street. Not bad for a day’s work.

“Oh uh- I was gonna ask if you could pick up some things, but-”

“Yeah, just tell me what you need.”

“No.”

Nina’s voice cuts off abruptly, and he thinks that maybe she could hear it in his voice, how much he wants today over with. It won’t be easy sitting with his own thoughts and feelings, but that’s another part of the job; at the end of the day, everything they saw, the things they went through, it all needed a place.

If they didn’t process at least some of it after every case it could lead to devastating consequences, risk taking, burn out, loss of focus, threatening suspects...

All things none of them could afford.

“No, that’s okay,” Nina says. “It can wait.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah”—a smile sounds over the line—“you just- file your 302s and come home to us, okay?”

And he smiles too at the sound of the word, home, home to Nina and their son, the home he hopes to build with her.

But melancholy takes over the moment he disconnects the call.

His mom said that, after 9/11, you should come home more often, we don’t see enough of you, because Doug never did make it home again.

Would Doug have taken that meeting if he’d known he could die that day?

Could he stay out in the field, kiss his son goodbye every morning, knowing he might not come home?

Because this could happen any time he’s out in the field, a suspect or a witness could pull a knife, a gun, and he’d react because it made the difference between life and death.

That’s also what made it dangerous.

And two months from now he’d be a dad.

But what would that world look like for his son, he wonders, without people like him stepping in front of the bullet, defusing the bomb, willing to risk life and limb to make the world a little safer.

Because what if they hadn’t gotten to the javelins in time?

The potential loss of life would’ve been devastating.

How could he walk away from this, knowing he did make a difference today?

He needed this job.

He needed to know his efforts made a difference in people’s lives, and if not, that justice could be brought to those left voiceless, those left behind, those devastated by the loss of a loved one.

So when he gets the call from White Collar that night, and the SAC tells him the job’s his if he wants it, he turns it down.

Tiff was right. He didn’t get to wave a magic wand and hope that nothing bad ever happened. World didn’t work that way. That’s why he did what he did, why he left Wall Street and chose a career in law enforcement— if he could make the slightest bit of difference, put his foot on the scale, stop anyone else from losing their big brother, he would. He’d make that choice every minute of every day, again and again, regardless of what was happening in his private life.

He owed it to his son to set an example, to Nina to stay true to himself, and to himself to not get caught up in fear and self-doubt.

With that mindset he heads home.

The house is dark and quiet when he gets in.

He hopes that means Nina’s asleep in bed getting some much needed rest.

By the looks of the kitchen, dirty dishes on the kitchen counter, measuring cups on top of the coffee machine, three glasses and two used mugs, she’d at least started finding her way around.

Leftover pancakes in the fridge, the sticky note on the fridge read, and he smiles.

She tried baking.

No wonder the kitchen was in disarray.

With rolled up sleeves he collects the rest of the dishes in the sink and starts cleaning, the repetitive action soothing dark thoughts.

Other lighter things enter his mind, like the color of the nursery— they’d both agreed on the sea green swatch Alex left behind for the walls, and coral curtains, and even bought a rug online. He’d have to find some time, maybe this weekend, to take down the old wallpaper, prime the walls for painting.

Maybe he could convince Alex and his sister-in-law to help him out. They could make a day of it, have dinner, catch up.

He hated thinking of Nina all alone.

A scream cuts through the house, tearing the quiet to pieces.

A plate slips from his grasp and shatters on the floor.

“Nina?!” he calls, frozen in place, still. Listening.

And when another strangled cry sounds from upstairs he springs into action, drops what he’s doing and sprints upstairs.

“Nina!” he shouts and climbs the stairs two steps at a time, running straight for the bedroom.

He finds her sat up straight in bed, one hand pressed to her chest—

unable to catch a breath.

“Baby, what’s wrong?”

Rushing over he flicks on the bedside lamp and sits down next to her, looking her over, for blood, for— but her wound had healed, her stitches came out two days ago.

“Are you in any pain?”

Nina shakes her head, but taps her hand to her chest a few times, the abject panic in her eyes saying she can’t really say what’s wrong, doesn’t really understand what’s happening, and—

He knows what this is.

“Hey, Nina”—He positions himself directly in front of her—“breathe, okay?” pretending that earlier today he hadn’t said the same to an innocent bystander bleeding out on the sidewalk, that her blood hadn’t stained his hands red.

Nina grabs around his shoulder.

He cups her face. “Look at me.”

“In,” he says, and he breathes in showing her exactly what to do, despite his heart racing, despite barely being able to catch a breath himself. “And out.”

But Nina sobs and shakes her head again, the effort too much, too hard, too painful— normally he’d let her ride this out in her own time, sit with her until the panic subsided, but they had the baby’s heart to think about too.

So he takes her hand, pries it gently off her chest and places it on his own.

His heart might be racing, but he knows what to do.

“In.”

He breathes in deep, making sure she can feel the rise of his chest, air filling his lungs.

“And out.”

And Nina breathes more unevenly than he does, but she manages to draw in some oxygen—

“In.”

—a little more every time—

“And out.”

—until the wave of panic breaks and she slumps forward against him, gulping air as she cries.

“It’s okay.”

He winds his arms around her and rubs her back, pushes his lips to her hair, and closes his eyes, where the images from her nightmares plagued him too.

“You’re okay. I got you.”

It isn’t the right time to bring up therapy, but she had to find some way to deal with these dreams that didn’t comprise simply willing them away. He’d give about anything to carry this pain for her, this fear, like he once wished he could carry it for Alex— but the world didn’t work that way either.

He’s not sure how long they sit like that, but the tears dry up eventually, and Nina disappears to the bathroom to clean up.

The water runs for ten minutes, while he sits paralyzed at the foot of the bed.

He wasn’t the one who got shot, but it felt like he had, like he carried this trauma too, and it’d raked up 20 plus years of fruitless therapy and willing it away.

“How did you know what to do?” comes Nina’s voice, filling the doorway in an old sweater far too big on her, even with the baby bump filling out some of it.

He stares down at his hands. “Alex- had panic attacks after 9/11.”

By 2001 he and Alex hadn’t slept in the same bed for over a decade but in the months following the attacks, praying for his brother, taking care of their mom, fielding calls and visits from family, friends, neighbors, Alex took on too much. She woke up every night in agony, screaming, covered in sweat, unable to breathe.

He’d started watching over his sister at night while insomnia prevented him from sleeping, learned the cadence of her breathing, every little sound she made, making sure he was there to help her through the worst of it.

How could he not do the same for Nina?

He’d talk to Isobel about scaling back his hours; they needed to have a conversation about what happened, or didn’t happen, eventually.

Plenty of rookie agents waiting in the wings for their shot at field duty. No doubt in his mind that Tiff would make a great training agent.

Nina sits down facing him, one leg dangling off the bed, fiddling with the too long sleeves of her sweater.

Quiet returns to the house, broken only by the sound of their breathing.

She reaches for his hand and pulls it into her lap, and when he looks at her again there’s defeat in her eyes, or maybe -finally- surrender.

“What if I am scared?”

There’s a subtle rise in her brow, an uncertain twitch in her lips, and he can’t believe, with all the clothes shed between them, having felt the heat of her bare body against his, that he’d never seen her this naked before.

Of course she’s scared, trauma like hers didn’t just disappear because of the distance, because of time, because she settled into a new home.

Trauma like that changed a person’s outlook on life, the course of their future.

“I- could’ve died,” she says, “our baby- could’ve died, and it would’ve been all my fault.”

‘I’m glad that didn’t kill you,’ rings in his ears—

He blinks. “What?”

“No, Nina”—He mirrors her position on the bed, touching a hand to her thigh—“the only person at fault was Anton Averanka.”

A flash of anger crosses her eyes, but it paled in comparison to the fire that still blazed in his chest. Anton Averanka shot the woman he loved, shot his son.

‘I’m glad because I want you to know when you’re gonna die, and who did it.’

Was that the first time she heard his name?

‘He shot Nina.’

“He’s the only one to blame here, you hear me?”

‘He shot my—’

“Nina, please tell me you know that,” he pushes, searching her eyes for any indication that he’s getting through to her. He won’t let her carry this, not now, not ever, because there was exactly one person who took that shot, who hoped she suffered. And that son of a bitch now sat in some cushy jail cell instead of six feet—

Nina nods. “I do.”

He bites his tongue and pulls back his hands, balling them into fists.

After everything she’s been through, he can’t let his anger touch her too.

“I do,” Nina repeats, “It’s not that.”

She bites the inside of her cheek. “This is- really hard to explain.”

So he doesn’t push.

He’d learned the cadence of her breathing too, the ebb and flow of her thinking, and the look of thoughts racing behind her eyes.

“Ever since I decided to have this baby I have felt”—She breathes, and wipes at an errand tear with the sleeve of her sweater—“on top of the world.

“I’ve been- amazed”—She smiles, teeth digging into her bottom lip—“by what my body can do, how it can grow this little person- our little person, and-”

She blinks away tears. “Then I got hurt, and I- I realized how fragile it is too.”

Events of earlier today play in front of his eyes, bullets chipping at the concrete, shooter closing in—

“When I went down, I felt so- powerless,” Nina says, “I couldn’t move, I couldn’t-

“I’d never been so scared in my entire life, and it wasn’t-” She places a hand on her belly. “For the first time I wasn’t just scared for myself.”

That’s what he felt today; his responsibilities as an agent weren’t the same as those he had as a parent. Their son, their little person, who had a name now, deserved to have both his parents choose him.

Their son deserved a father who stayed out of harm’s way.

Yet he also deserved a world that wouldn’t harm him.

“If something happened to our baby, it would’ve been my fault, and-” Nina casts down her eyes, “I wouldn’t blame you if you felt the same way.”

“I don’t,” the words are out without the need to think them over, because he hasn’t, not consciously, not in any way. “You can’t put that on me.”

“I’m not,” Nina’s quick to amend, and touches a hand to his cheek. “Baby, I’m sorry, that’s not what I’m saying.”

No. He knows what she’s saying.

“It’s why I have to step back,” she says. “Right now me being safe means this baby is safe and- and maybe I’ll change my mind in a few months, but- it feels like the right decision right now.”

She’s keeping herself safe from harm.

He doesn’t carry what she carries, literally or figuratively.

He wasn’t the one who got shot.

Lost in his thoughts, Nina takes hold of his hand again. “Can you- understand that?”

“Nina, all I want is for you to be happy,” he says, amending an earlier statement he made to Tiff.

He’d want nothing more than to have her safe and happy once the baby’s born, but Nina loved what she did too— right now all of that was entangled with getting hurt and being pregnant, nearly dying, but at the end of the day, she’d make the same choices he had.

Unless this baby changed her entire philosophy on life, she’d be back in the field too, eventually.

“If this is what you need, I will support you. 100%. Okay?”

Nina nods. “I love you.”

“I love you,” he says, and pushes a kiss to her lips, before touching his forehead to hers. “I almost became an SSA today.”

“You turned it down?”

He shrugs. “Didn’t feel- right, you know?”

Nina pulls back, and touches a hand to his face again, brushing her thumb back and forth against his cheek.

She smiles. “I do.”

Chapter Text

A bullet whizzes past his head—

He ducks behind an actuator, the next two bullets ricocheting off the pipelines, and breathes in deep,

no time to think,

only time to act.

After all he’s alone down here, people are counting on him to get this guy, a man responsible for the death of David Laporta, for shooting Nina, for killing three people down here all so he could help Lankov bring about another 9/11.

Not on his watch.

He reappears from behind the actuator, striding down the walkway before the other man can level his silencer at him, and shoots him in the knee.

Averanka crashes to the floor, dropping his gun, and before he gets the chance to trigger the remote detonator he straddles the man, pins his arms to his side, and looks Nina’s wannabe killer in the eyes for the first time.

If he didn’t know any better he’d think they glowed red.

‘I’m glad that didn’t kill you’— his voice sounds far off, a reverberation in the distance.

He grabs around Averanka’s collar, the jacket that reads Vichy Security, and slams his head back onto the cold concrete.

‘You Americans actually care who they kill?’

‘I’m glad because I want you to know when you’re gonna die ...’

Unthinking, he reaches back for the gun holstered at his hip, takes off the safety, and presses it to Averanka’s forehead.

‘... and who did it.’

Beneath him, Averanka stills, eyes fixed on the muzzle of the gun, now digging hard into his skull.

‘You shot Nina,’ he voices calmly, while his fingers tighten over the man’s chest, as if— if he dug down deep and brutal enough and ripped out his heart with his bare fingers this son of a bitch might feel a fraction of what he’d done to him, to Nina, to—

‘You shot my-’

His future.

Averanka smiles a Chesire grin. ‘I hope she suffered.’

His heart stalls.

All the air filters from his lungs, and in his ears rings another man’s voice—you cross that line you never come back—but that man isn’t here right now, not here to stop him.

A single tear falling down his cheek, he straightens his arm, and pulls the trigger.

He wakes with a gasp.

No, no no, what did he do, what—

He shoots up in bed and touches his face, but even in the dark of the room, in the early morning light seeping in through the blinds, he can tell there’s no blood on his hands.

Yet red still teases at his peripheral vision, blood and brain matter splattered on the ground, some phantom of a dream overstaying its welcome. His breathing comes hard, labored, like there’s a eighty pound weight on his chest he hasn’t breathed around for weeks.

Weeks. It’s been weeks.

And still his skin crawled, his vision tunneled, the storm in his chest broiled every time he thought back on what he did, almost did, might’ve done. Because what if no one had been there to talk him down? Would he have crossed that line?

They’re thoughts akin to the ones he had over twenty years ago. What would he have done if he got his hands on any of the assholes behind 9/11? Would he have killed them with his bare hands? Could he have?

Here he was twenty odd years later asking the same questions.

Only now he had a gun.

Is that why he chased this job? for the gun? to become a killer?

He shot people before. Why was it the one he didn’t shoot that haunted him?

Mind muddled with these thoughts, he glances at the clock.

8am, and Nina’s side of the bed is empty next to him.

At least she got spared his nightmares.

He hops into the shower, though it offers little in the way of relief.

His nightmare haunts him even here.

What had stayed his hand? What stopped him from pulling the trigger? Remy saying ‘son’, conjuring thoughts of his own unborn son? An innate sense of justice born in him the day Douglas died?

Did any of that matter when his intent couldn’t have been more clear?

He wanted to kill Averanka in cold blood.

Maybe, after all was said and done, he wasn’t any better than the criminals he put behind bars.

A bad man.

And bad men didn’t deserve to be happy, to have a best friend for a partner, colleagues he considered close friends, a beautiful girlfriend.

A son.

He heads downstairs still barely breathing.

“Morning, sleepy,” Nina calls from the kitchen, where she sits on a stool at the counter, laptop in front of her, a mess of papers littered in a half moon around it.

The sight of her releases some of the tension in his chest; her hair’s done up in a messy bun, escaped curls fallen to her forehead.

Wearing one of his old Princeton shirts.

Maybe he didn’t deserve it, deserve her.

But good God did he want to.

“You sleep through the night?” he asks, and reaches around to place a hand on her belly, pushing a kiss to her temple.

“I’m six months pregnant.” Nina laughs, resting a hand over his. “I haven’t slept through the night in a while.”

The joyful note in her voice dispels at least some of his worry; her panic attack a week ago scared them both, and they still felt the underlying dread of it happening again—not only to her, but their baby. He’d lain awake for hours every night listening to her breathe, fighting sleep, fending off his own nightmares—to no avail, however, since the effort recalled nights when he lay next to Alex, the reason why he’d kept watch, and how close he came to losing someone he couldn’t bear to again.

“What’s all this?”

He presses up against her back, and cups both hands under her belly.

“Paperwork I’ve been putting off.” She leans back into him with a grateful sigh. “Bills, mostly.”

“If you need any help with those...”

Nina smiles. “I’m good for now, thanks.”

With a kiss to her hair he rounds the kitchen counter and makes a double espresso, in the hopes of expelling the last remnants of sleep still lingering in his body.

He watches Nina pay her bills with the utmost concentration, with the kind of concentrated stare he’s seen her level at suspects, and him, on more than one occasion.

They should probably talk about money too, at some point. Never too early to start a college fund or a 529 plan, and it wouldn’t be a bad idea to open up a custodial brokerage account either—that way he could keep a closer eye and curate the investment portfolio.

“By the way, I’m- making you my health care proxy.”

He frowns, and asks—“Why?”—even though the answer’s clear, the timing of it painfully obvious.

“In case something happens and you-”

“Nothing’s going to happen.”

“You- don’t know that,” Nina says, brow furrowing, eyes haunted by look what happened. “No one can know that. With our jobs-”

His face flushes, the echo of a gunshot, and Nina bleeding out on the ground. If he’d already been assigned as her health care proxy, would Isobel and Jubal still have kept him in the dark? Or would he have been Isobel’s first phone call?

“And I need to know that if I’m ever in trouble you’ll make the best decision for me.”

He nods, fully aware how big a step this is for her, that Rome spun them both a little out of control, that dealing with the aftermath left them struggling for air to breathe.

“Of course. I will. I promise.”

This wasn’t just a big deal for her. It was a big deal for both of them. It showed a level of trust he didn’t know she had in him.

“You’ll need to sign this,” Nina says, holding out a pen for him.

It didn’t get much more real than this.

Up until today Alex served as his proxy, but his sister won’t mind no longer having to worry if or when she’d have to make those kinds of decisions. Nina knew the job as well as he did, perhaps even more now—she’d make the best decisions for him too, should it ever come to it.

He walks over again, and signs the document, eyes glossing over words like permanent coma and artificial nutrition and initiated/continued/removed.

But this isn’t about any of those potential scenarios, rather Nina’s peace of mind.

“Thank you,” he says, and rubs her back, “for trusting me with this.”

Nina smiles, and kisses his cheek.

“And”—Her head tilts playfully—“I’m going to talk to a therapist.”

His eyebrows rise in surprise.

She laughs again, “Yeah,” though nerves saturate her voice now.

“Not to tempt fate here, but- where is all this coming from?”

“I talked to Isobel.”

His eyes fall to the dark of his coffee, concentric rings rippling over the surface.

What power did Isobel hold to affect such a sudden change? What did Isobel say that he hadn’t dozens of times over?

“She recommended someone, and- I’m going to give it a try.”

Nina moves on as if the mention of the name doesn’t set his hair on end, doesn’t press replay on that would-be conversation they’d have if anger didn’t close up his throat every time he so much as looked at her.

Anger? he thinks. Was it anger that stopped him breathing?

Or a thing far deeper, much more insidious?

“I’ve seen firsthand what- unresolved trauma can do to a parent.”

When Nina pauses, he looks at her, and finds her eyes out of focus, drifted to memories of half a lifetime ago, of a father who never dealt with his PTSD and drowned in drink instead, who left behind his wife and two daughters to fend for themselves.

“I don’t want that for our son.”

And when that’s followed by her staring silently at her computer screen for long moments, he bites his tongue. This isn’t about him right now.

“Are you okay?”

“Most of the time?” She nods, biting the inside of her cheek, and smiles sadly. “But- between the nightmares and the panic attacks something’s gotta give, you know?”

His jaw tightens. It shouldn’t matter to him who or what convinces her to go to therapy, just that she did and put her mental health first. Isobel had an outside view that might help Nina put this all in perspective, as SAC, even more so as a woman, and as someone who’d found solace in counseling herself.

Just because he still can’t look Isobel in the eye—

“I keep seeing it, you know,” Nina says, “replaying it in my head, over and over again. If I’d just-”

Tears fill her eyes, stirring memories along with them, of Jubal telling her to stand down, of cold cobblestones beneath her, of that second heartbeat on the hospital monitor, beating just a little faster than hers.

“All I could think about was our baby and that he was gonna die, how it was all my fault and you’d-”

She releases a shuddery breath, the pain in her eyes mirrored sharply in his chest, and his own memory of watching her get shot in the surveillance footage from Rome replays before his eyes—it’d made the wound started by Scott saying Nina got shot just a little bit bigger, a little bit deeper, a little bit more susceptible to his mercurial temperament.

It’d painted a bull’s eye in the dead center of Anton Averanka’s forehead.

“-you’d never be able to look at me again.”

“Hey, no.” He blinks. “That was never going to happen.”

“I know.”

She looks at him with narrowed eyes, head tilted, and touches a hand to his face, thumb brushing across his cheek.

“I think”—Her hand falls away—“that’s part of the problem.”

It takes a while for the words to fully sink in, even longer for any sort of meaning to take shape.

“What- what do you mean?”

Nina gets up and rummages around in the fridge for a while, only to come up empty-handed.

Why would him still looking at her the same way be a problem? He gave her space to recover from her injuries, time for things to get back to normal, for them to figure things out before the baby comes. He didn’t blame her, he—

“Wait.” He frowns. “Are you- upset that I’m not mad at you?”

A hand on her hip, Nina’s eyes fix on him tightly.

“Nina, that’s ridiculous.”

She huffs a laugh. “I’m not being ridiculous.”

“How does that help you?”

“Not everything has to help me, Scola. Maybe your calm doesn’t help me. Maybe I need you to feel like-”

And when he sees his anger mirrored in her eyes in turn, he catches the true meaning of her words, how this consumed her all the same, how him pretending like it didn’t happen fueled both their nightmares—

“This is your son too. And he could’ve-”

—how she recognizes all too well that she’s the one who got shot, but part of him did too, and that shielding her from it, holding back the terrors he experienced, helped no one, not him, not her, not their relationship.

Because that’s what sharing a life with someone meant. You didn’t only share all the good, but the bad too.

“And the thought of losing him...”

He shakes his head, palms gone sweaty.

‘I’m glad that didn’t kill you’—rings in his ears, but in the distance he hears his own voice, even, steady, and the click of his holster as he grabs his gun.

“... the thought of losing you...”

‘He shot Nina!’

“... nearly killed me, Nina. I-”

‘He shot my-!’—in his mind’s eye his nightmare plays over and over again, he and Averanka alone in that tunnel, no one to talk him down, no one to talk sense into him.

Just him and that gun, and the man who thought to kill Nina and his son.

His finger pressed against the trigger.

Averanka’s blood on his hands.

Hesitation weighs down his tongue.

How can he tell her that he didn’t cross the line professionally, but he crossed a line within himself? That for twenty plus years the past had chased him like a shadow, waiting to trip him up? That while he didn’t pull the trigger he violated multiple suspects’ rights?

Was knowing that it weighed heavily on him not enough for her?

“I don’t know what you want me to say.” He shrugs. “I don’t blame you.”

No. He’s done that. He blamed Doug for taking that meeting rather than staying home with his family, he’d blamed his dead brother, the terrorists, the government, the whole entire world before he blamed himself, and it’d sent him into a tailspin of self-hatred and guilt and—

He won’t do this. He won’t blame her like she blamed herself.

“So you just”—Nina crosses her arms over her chest—“moved on.”

His heart hammers in his chest.

It’s too strong a statement to make in the wake of everything he still carried, and besides he didn’t carry Rome the way she did, rather he shouldered JFK, Anton Averanka, Remy’s complicity which he actually felt grateful for, the overwhelmingly unbearable anger— no, shame, that followed in its wake.

It was shame.

Shame that crippled him.

Shame that stopped him from talking to Isobel.

Shame that now stuns him into silence.

They stare at each other for what feels like a small eternity, her eyes hard and unforgiving, his firm in his refusal to burden her with this too. What good would come of it?

It’s Nina who breaks eye contact, who sighs and shakes her head, heading upstairs to busy herself there.

“Shit,” he curses under his breath, disappointment settling over him.

He realizes all too well the hypocrisy of the situation, how he asked her to open up, talk to him, time and again, and she’d allowed herself to be vulnerable around him.

Why couldn’t he give her the same, be naked around her, stripped of all his defenses.

Only he knows why—what if he tells her what he did and she decides he’s not worth it, that he’s a bad man, any other man ill equipped to deal with his emotions or his trauma. What if she peers right through him, all the bad and all the ugly, and sees only her father staring back?

What if telling her the truth has the same net result as him staying quiet?

He sits down sideways in the stool at the kitchen counter, weak in the knees, when his eyes fall to a piece of paper front and center, simply waiting for her signature.

Lease Termination Letter.

Tears shoot into his eyes.

He swallows hard.

With trembling fingers he slides the paper closer, eyes drawn to her name in the top right corner of the page, his address directly below it. Their address.

Nina’s staying.

Disappointment sets deeper beneath his skin.

What’s he playing at?

If he keeps doubling down on this decision he’ll definitely lose her, and he’ll only have himself to blame.

For so long he lived half a life, going through the motions, never getting close to anyone so he never had to feel the sting of loss again. It left him jaded, disconnected from his family and himself, not to mention Tiff.

Who would he be if Tiff hadn’t talked some sense into him?

Would Nina have even given him a second chance?

All she asked from him now was honesty, the truth.

And she’s right.

Maybe it doesn’t have to help her.

Maybe it’s meant to help him.

He could talk to Tiff, but Remy kept his conduct out of the official reports, and he didn’t want to put her in the difficult position of knowing what he did.

He didn't want her to know he’d put hands on not one but three suspects.

He knew how she felt about things like that.

But Nina, his Nina, his storm in a shot glass, she would understand.

She got shot too, after all.

He finds her in the bedroom, angrily folding laundry.

He leans up against the doorframe, searching for the right words, wondering if there really are any. Tough to sugarcoat this.

“I didn’t just- move on.”

If Nina hears him, she refuses to acknowledge his presence; she folds a large towel in half, then twice into three equal parts.

“The thought of you... of our son... 4000 miles away, knowing there was nothing I could do to help ...”

All against the backdrop of a terror event unfolding, one that would shake New York the same way 9/11 had, and he’d felt so utterly and completely powerless. He couldn’t help her like he couldn’t help Doug, but he had a gun now, a badge, so if he stopped this, maybe he’d save Nina too.

Maybe he could save their son.

“And- another 9/11...”

He draws in a shaky breath, biting his teeth together.

Nina stills, and turns to face him.

He wonders what she sees, besides the slump in his shoulders, his downcast eyes. Did she see the shame weighing him down? Did she see half a man?

“Nina,” he says softly, tongue heavy, “I lost it, okay?”

“What are you talking about?”

He shrugs, hands slipping into his pockets.

“Stuart.”

Nina settles on the bed, the bitterness in her eyes made way for compassion.

“Baby, will you- talk to me?” She pats the empty spot next to her. “Please?”

Not all that long ago he asked her to do the same, for much the same reasons. He can’t keep carrying this all on his own. He did that before, and it took him twenty years to dig himself out of that hole.

“Did some things I’m not- proud of,” he says as he sits down next to her. “Remy was there to talk me down, but-”

Four weeks ago a shadow closed in on him, a ghost from the past threatening his future.

Nina reaches a hand toward the nape of his neck, twisting her fingers in his hair.

“I- threatened a suspect.”

He nods, blinking at tears, bracing for the impact his confession will bring, and sees himself slam Viktor Karcuk’s head against the interrogation table, his hand around his throat—

“Physically assaulted a suspect.”

—he shoots Nico in the leg, pressing down on his wound to get him to talk and—

“I put a gun to a man’s head, without-”

Without cause. He’d disarmed Averanka, the remote detonator well out of his reach—all he had to do was read him his rights, cuff him, and be rid of him.

“Averanka,” Nina supplies.

His eyes find hers, and she nods.

Her fingers tighten in his hair.

Anton Averanka. The man who shot her.

“I wanted him to see my face when I-”

His voice trembles, unable to say the words out loud again.

A tear slips down his cheek, and Nina pushes in closer, processing his meaning, the implication. There’s no blood on his hands but there’s an intimation of it—what might he have done without another agent by his side?

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because... that anger?” He licks his lips. “I’m afraid that’s still inside me. And you don’t deserve that. You don’t need that from me.”

They were building a life together, a home. It had no room for her father’s anger.

“That doesn’t mean you can just ignore it.”

No, he tried that. Look where it got him.

“Trust me, I get the reflex, okay? But feelings like this don’t go away by themselves.”

Why did they always have to learn that the hard way?

“You think I’m not angry?” Nina asks. “In all this I’ve been- so hard on myself.”

“It’s not”—His voice cracks—“the same thing though.”

“I know.”

In so many ways her anger often outclassed his own, hers a sharper, more consistent overall anger, his a simmering boil, a pressure cooker, not all too often expressed.

“And- I’m not trying to draw comparisons or make it about me.

“You’re angry,” Nina says, as if it were that simple, as if decades-old grief and regret, as if fear didn’t underlie it all. Fear of losing her, of losing what they have.

“You’re allowed to be angry.”

For so long he’d lived half a life—too long, he realizes now, because falling back into the habit of locking everything up proved too easy. He couldn’t afford to do that anymore, not with Nina, not with a baby on the way. Not if he wanted them in his life.

“And you’re also allowed to forgive yourself.”

His eyes close.

A tear runs down his cheek, and everything he’s kept bottle up for weeks reaches up his throat, wraps around his windpipe—

How can he forgive himself when he’s barely accepted what he did, that it was him and him alone who grabbed that gun, put it to Averanka’s head, meant to pull the trigger. It didn’t matter that Remy shot a civilian five minutes later in their run to reach the bomb, he was the bad guy, he’s the one who crossed a line he might never come back from.

Nina pushes her lips to his temple. “Because I do.”

A sob rakes through him, and it’s all he can do before he crumbles beneath the strain of it all, of twenty years worth of unresolved anger, of coming too close again to losing what he couldn’t bear, of grief and fear and a trigger almost pulled.

“It’s okay, baby.” Nina pulls him closer, arms folding around him. “I’m here.”

She kisses his cheek, his neck, his shoulder, and he curls into her, holding on for dear life.

“Look, we all- get lost, okay? Especially when the people we love are threatened, but-

“You’re- a good man, Stuart Scola. I’ve always known that.”

Would Doug say the same, he wonders, would Tiff, if they knew what he’d done?

“I know how-”

Nina draws in a shaky breath.

“I’ve seen what anger and violence can do to a person. But you- you took your anger and your fear, your grief, and you became someone who saves people. Okay?”

He breathes in big gulps of air, but he can’t stop the tears, not when her words reach deep as if—if they dug down deep enough and cradled around his heart he might start believing them.

“That’s the man I fell in love with.”

He did a bad thing, a terrible thing, there was no getting around that, but did it have to define him for the rest of his days?

“That’s the man I love.”

And as he cries he cries for Nina too, who bottled up all her pain for so long, all her grief, and chose him of all people to open up to.

He cries for Doug, who never asked to die, never put himself in harm’s way, and still got caught in the machinations of a cruel world.

He cries for her father, who never had the tools to deal with his mental illness, and ended up hurting all those around him.

And he cries for himself, for all the would-be men he could’ve been but chose not to be, for the man he faced in his darkest hour. Forgiving himself was yet a long way off, but now at least he could imagine that one day he would.

Nina kisses his hair. “That’s the kind of dad you’re going to be to our boy.”