A/N: Based on the prompt, "When silence is a choice, it is an unnerving presence."

She hasn't spoken to him since he got discharged from the hospital two days ago. By Kurt's count, that makes it a total of fifty-nine hours and eleven minutes she's been silent. Technically, he thinks, he should add forty-eight more hours to that count; she hardly spoke to him when he was in the hospital. But he prefers to keep the tally as low as possible, even if it's only in his mind. The number of hours your wife spends not talking to you is not generally a record about which you'd like to brag.

He watches her, openly, as they taxi home from visiting Sarah across town, but she refuses to look at him. She stares out the window, or she stares at the license of the driver, photocopied and laminated on the back of his seat. Or she stares down at her hands. With her thumb tucked under her first few fingers, she worries at her wedding ring, her engagement ring, turning them both back and forth. In his periphery, he can see the little rainbows cast by the diamond bounce around the interior of the car, bright and jumpy against the black upholstery. He remembers how he used to tease her when she did that, before the baby. She used to worry her ring a lot: when she was working, when she was reading, when she simply felt like doing it. Thinking about serving papers? he'd always tease, and she'd jump, if caught off-guard, or roll her eyes, if he hadn't managed to surprise her. Always, she followed up with the deadpan Har-har response. He thinks briefly of making the joke again, just to try to break the tension, to get her to talk, but he knows that if he said it now, it wouldn't be a joke anymore. It'd be an honest question. And her ever-present silence, he thinks, would be an honest answer.

She hasn't yelled yet, though, not in the two days since he left the hospital, and he tries to take that as a good sign. Then again, he thinks a second later, not-yelling might be a sign, too. A bad one. He looks at her and he wonders how many divorces start with silences that stretch on for fifty-nine hours, and then further, into eternity. He wonders how many marriages are broken up by a third being: not a person, necessarily, but a presence. Or a lack of one. The silence between them feels like a third being: one that's pushing them further and further apart with each minute that goes by, one that's taking more from both of them every second.

He has tried to do away with their voiceless intruder, he has. He has tried to talk to her, tried to explain, tried to apologize. He's been trying to do it for days, and yet she still hasn't said a word.

She pays the cabbie—she speaks to him, of course—and then leads the way up to their building's front door. She bypasses the elevator in favor of the stairs—they're only three floors up, and they usually walk—but he can't help but wonder if she's doing it on purpose, to punish him. Ascending even the short set of stairs that makes up their front stoop makes him feel like he's breaking his cracked ribs all over again, but he shoves aside the pain and forces one foot in front of the other.

He could, of course, take the elevator alone. But that seems like some sort of defeat, and he's had enough of defeat these last few months. When he finally reaches the third-floor landing, she's left the door open for him, and it seems like some sort of invitation. But when he says her name and she doesn't answer, when he touches her shoulder and she doesn't even turn, he finally gives up. He doesn't know what she wants—he never seems to, anymore—and bereft of other options, he finally just admits to it.

"What do you want me to say?" he demands. When she starts to walk away, shaking her head in sullen silence, he follows her into the kitchen. If his ribs weren't so sore, he'd keep up with her, step for step. As it is, he trails a few feet behind, the exact opposite of impressive. "What can I say to get you to speak to me? Do you want me to apologize, Jane? I can do that." He lifts a hand and starts ticking off offenses at her back. "I'm sorry I got hurt. I'm sorry I dragged you out to the hospital. I'm sorry we have all these bills to pay now because the insurance wouldn't cover it. I'm sorry—"

"If those are the things you think I want you to apologize for, I'm taking you back to the hospital, because clearly you need to get your head examined."

"My head?" For a moment, he's so lost in the fact she's speaking to him again that he doesn't know what she's getting at.

"Yes, your head. Your stupid fucking thick head."

He jerks back, stunned at the vitriol. "Jane, what—"

"Don't pretend not to know," she snaps, turning and pushing past him. Her shoulder slams into his, and he just manages to grab her wrist as she rushes by, but she throws him off with an anger that's so acute it borders violence. "You're stupid as hell, yes, but you know what you did!" she yells. "You know what happened on Tuesday!"

"Yeah, I do," he agrees. "I was there. I was ambushed."

A high-pitched sound rips out from her throat, something between a laugh and a shriek. "Oh! Oh, you were ambushed?" She speaks slowly, sweetly, as if to a child. It makes his skin crawl. "Is that what happened, Kurt? Is that the story we're going with? Is that what you're going to say in the report, special agent?"

He swallows, eyeing her nervously. He doesn't like when she does this, when she makes him unsure of himself. He doesn't want to ask, but he can't help it. He can't be on an uneven playing field. He can't not be in control. "What are you talking about?"

"What am I—?" For a second, he thinks she's going to storm off, and leave it there. Because she knows, too, how he craves control—especially now, after the baby. The worst thing she could do right now would be to walk away, leave that question unanswered, the fight unfinished.

But she stays. She speaks.

She is eerily, terrifyingly calm.

"What am I talking about?" she repeats quietly. "I'm talking about Tuesday. I'm talking about the day you decided to go into an unsecured building, alone, with nothing but your sidearm and a flack jacket. I'm talking about the day you decided that just because you call the shots, it also meant you get to take all the risk, too, without consulting or including any of us! I'm talking about you, throwing your life away—"

"I'm not throwing my life away! I'm here, aren't I? I'm alive—"

"You're alive because they allowed you to live, Kurt! Because they wanted to take their goddamn time, that is why you're alive! They could've put a bullet in your head, but no, they wanted to beat the shit out of you first, and now I have to stand here and look at you and be grateful about it, grateful that a group of piece-of-shit thugs wanted to make my husband suffer instead of executing him on the spot! Do you know what I—"

Her voice cracks, shattering through whatever it was she was going to say, and as he listens to her suck in a breath, he feels the sound of it break through him, deeper and more painful than any of his broken ribs, and knows he can't do this much longer. Work, marriage, life—whatever it is with her, he can't do it. He can't listen to her cry like this; he can't listen to her force herself not to cry.

"Do you know what I think?" she whispers finally.

He is frozen, staring. He doesn't know how she's still speaking. Her eyes are getting red again. Or maybe they never stopped being red.

She is waiting, set on pause. She wants an answer. She will not move on until she has one. Somehow, he nods in her direction. Continue.

"I think you never would've acted like that—never would have even thought to do something so reckless—if we'd had the baby."

He tries to breathe, tries to speak, but every part of him is tilting in a different direction, every cell in his body is threatening to implode, and he can't do anything but stare at her.

"It's true, isn't it?" She's openly crying now, chin shaking, tears streaming, but she doesn't make a single move to stop herself, or brush it away. "If there were a baby waiting for you at home, you'd be careful. You'd think twice. You wouldn't run after suspects without me and Tasha and Ed at your side. But there's no baby. There's only me. There's just me, so—so you say, Fuck it. You dive into firefights and you don't wait for backup and you don't care, not at all, that you still have someone who loves you. I love you! Can you even comprehend that, Kurt? Can you recognize that what I feel for you is real, and that it has not and will not be diminished by what happened? Can you—" She reaches out, grabbing onto his shirt. "Jesus Christ, Kurt, can you explain yourself? Please, God, all I want is for you to explain yourself. Tell me it's not about this." Her fingers curl tighter around his collar, pulling him closer. "Please," she whispers, lifting herself up so they're at eye-level. "Please tell me it's not about the baby I lost. Tell me it's not about him. Please..."

Her pleas melt into sobs, her face falling to his chest, and though he tries to do the one thing she's asked, he can't say it. He can't lie to her face like this. All he can do is wrap his arms around her as she cries and whisper that he's sorry. He's so sorry, he will always be sorry, but the more he says it, the less it means anything. What does it matter that he's sorry? It won't bring their baby back. It won't change anything. Sorry means nothing, and he is nothing, worse than nothing, for not being able to think of something better to say.

"Do you promise you'll be careful from here on out?"

Her head lifts from his chest as she speaks, and her hands move from the now wrinkled collar of his shirt to his neck, his cheeks. He closes his eyes at the gentle touch of her hands cupping his face. It feels like a lifetime since she last held him like this, looked up to him like this.

God, he has missed this.

"Promise me," she whispers, and eyes still closed, he bends his head down to hers. Her voice is soft, still, gravelly from tears but not actively weeping, and it draws him in. It reminds him of a time when they could work through any problem ahead of them, when they moved past any obstacle, together. Where did that time go?

"Promise me," she says again, and she is closer now. He can feel the warmth of her breath against his lips now. If he moved forward an inch, an inch and a half, he could taste her. He pictures her lips in the red dark behind his eyelids, and he tries to remember the last time they kissed. How long has it been now? He had to stop counting the hours; there were too many and he lost track.

"Promise me," she whispers once more, and he can hear the tears coming back again. Her hands have grown insistent on his face, her nails digging into the back of his jaw. She is so close he can feel her chest against his, her nose touching his.

And he can imagine what might happen, if he promised. He can picture the short moment of disbelief, followed quickly by an intense wave of relief. He can see how it will consume her—how she will hug him, hold him, maybe even laugh. How she will pull back and look at him, happy for the first time in months. She might kiss him, he thinks, feeling himself grow delirious at the thought. She might not stop kissing him.

If he promises her what she wants to hear, they might be able to find a way to come back together—perhaps only physically, but it would be a step in the right direction nonetheless. It'd be breaking the ice; it'd be superseding the old memories. It'd be a way to recover. It'd be a way to allow her to feel something besides pain, for the first time in months.

But he can't lie to her.

He opens his eyes, and it must be there, written across his face, because her hands drop at once, without him even having to say anything. Her chin starts shaking, her hands, and then she shoves him—hard. He stumbles back, only barely managing to catch himself on the kitchen counter so he doesn't fall to the floor.

"What is wrong with you?" she demands, her voice cracking on every other word, the tears springing into being again.

"I—" He doesn't know what he's saying, only that he needs to speak, but she won't let him.

"I ask you one thing! One goddamn thing!" She moves to shove him again, but somehow, even with his busted ribs, he manages to duck out of the way. For a second, she stares at him in fury, and he thinks she might actually chase after him, but then her face crumples. She starts to sway, and he moves towards her, frightened she might pass out, but she shakes her head, tears flying. "Don't touch me," she cries, and reaches out for the counter instead, to support herself.

He can't look at her, but he can't look away, either.

"You've always been stubborn," she whispers, glaring at him through her tears. "You've always been certain you know best. That's a part of you I can't change, and that's—I understand that, okay? I don't like it, but I can live with it. I know where it comes from. But this—this recklessness—" She shakes her head sharply. "I can't live with this, Kurt. I can't spend every day wondering if this is the day you're going to get yourself killed out there. I can't spend every day..." For a second, her eyes grow so wide, so pained, that he thinks she really is going to fall to the floor in sobs. But she just looks at him. And somehow, her ability to still hold herself in check is worse. "I can't spend every day wondering exactly when it was I stopped being enough for you. I can't do it anymore, Kurt.

"And I get it," she continues in a whisper before he can take a breath, let alone say a word. "I get that you're grieving. I know you want your baby; I do too. It isn't fair what happened to us. But right now..." She shakes her head. "I can't give that to you. I need you to recognize that that is something I cannot do. And I need you to stop blaming me for that."

"Jane, I'm not—"

"But you are!" she cries. "Every time you put yourself in danger like you did on Tuesday, you are blaming me. I don't care if you do it consciously or not, you're still doing it, Kurt. You're deciding that it doesn't matter anymore, what you do with your life. You run into danger and you leave me behind and you don't for a second—not for one single second—think about what that does to me! What it would be like for me, if I lost you. You are my only family—why can't you respect that? You're all I have."

"That isn't true," he protests, but even as he says the words, he knows they're a lie. She may have friends, yes, people that would look after her should he be gone, but she doesn't have family. In all the years since she popped up in Times Square out of nowhere, not one person has come to claim her. No one has matched to her DNA. No one has called and said, "Hey, that lost woman on the news? I recognize her. I know her." No one. Out of seven billion people, not one came forward.

"Tell me what you were thinking," she whispers, pulling him back. "When you ran into that building, tell me what was on your mind. What did you think you were doing?"

"My job," he answers at once, a wave of appreciation for her passing through him: this subject he can tackle, and they both know it. "I was thinking, I know our guys are in there, and I can get to them. I can finish this now. I was thinking I wanted to get the job done."

"You ignored the warnings that the rest of us weren't close enough to help. You ignored the fact that you knew you were outnumbered, that you knew they would disarm you immediately. The best hope you had was of getting one shot off, maybe two. And even if they were perfect, you still had four guys coming at you. You had to have known that. You had to have known—"

"So what if I knew?" he cuts in. He can't listen to her judge him like this anymore; there's a reason he's in charge and she's not. He does not take kindly to her criticism. "Who gives a shit if I knew what was waiting for me?"

"I do! Jesus Christ, Kurt, I do, I care, that's the point! You went in that building, basically unarmed, against six suspects, four at best, and you knew—you knew what would happen. You knew you were probably going to die."

"So what are you saying?"

"I'm saying I want to know why. I want to know what you were thinking that made you believe, for even a second, that sacrificing yourself like you did was a good option."

For a moment, he doesn't speak. He simply stares at her, and she waits.

"You weren't thinking of work," she says quietly, "so we can cut that bullshit right there. And you weren't thinking of me—obviously." He opens his mouth to protest, but she continues: "I don't even think you were thinking of yourself. But I do think you were thinking of something. Something very specific."

She looks up at him and takes one step, two, towards him. She is still feet away, but that look in her eyes, and those words coming out of her mouth, makes him want to run. She's going to trap him. And he can't think fast enough to get out of it. His ribs throb in time with his fear, his heart echoing their thunderous cry.

"Look at me," she commands softly. "Look at me and tell me what you were thinking."

All he can think to do is shake his head. He can't speak. He wants to disappear. He wants to be back in that building; he wants those men to be beating the shit out of him; he wants them to kill him this time. He just wants all of this to be over.

"You want me to tell you what you were thinking? Do you really want to make me say it? Because I know, Kurt. I feel it, too. Trust me when I say I feel it, too."

She's too close again. He shuts his eyes, turning his head away from her, but she refuses to let him hide. She takes ahold of his face again, nowhere near gently like she had before, and forces it forward. He keeps his eyes clamped shut, but it's hardly a foolproof mode of defense: he can still sense her in front of him; when she presses her face against his, he can feel the tears there, cold and wet and sharp. They melt from her skin into his, and fall down his cheeks as if they were his own.

"I know what you were thinking," she whispers. Her hands slide from his cheeks to the back of his neck to the back of his head. She cradles him to her, her elbows digging into his back, but he doesn't so much as attempt to pull away. "I know what you were feeling. I know you wanted to see him. I know you weighed your options. I know you decided it was a fair trade."

"No," he chokes out, somehow finding a voice. "No, that's not it. That isn't it. I didn't think that."

"It's okay." She hugs him harder, her hands atop his head, pulling him down to her level. "It's okay. I get like that sometimes, too. I want to see him, too. I do plenty of things I'm not proud of, just to get a glimpse of him."

"You don't do what I do."

And there it is.

For a moment, he imagines she'll pull back in triumph: Ha! Got you! For a second, he wonders if she'll walk right out the door.

But nothing changes. She keeps hugging him, keeps holding him, and when he finally breaks down and starts crying too, she shushes him gently into silence. She says nothing more, not for what feels like hours, but in the silence, he can feel again her unspoken wants. She wants a promise, a guarantee. She wants to be assured she won't be left alone in this world, not again, not ever.

And he wants to give her all those things, he does. But stronger than his want to please her is his fear of letting her down. Because he knows, if he falls short on any one condition, she might never come back. She might be done; she might throw in the towel, too.

In the end, only one thing is true, will always be true, and so he says it as clearly and calmly as he can. He prays she will believe him, and that it will be enough—at least for now.

"I love you so much," he says.

He doesn't have anything else to give.