Hey, fellow MSec fans! I'm still supposed to be writing prompt fics, but somehow this fic happened instead.

I never noticed before that at the end of the season one episode in Iran (still not over it) when Elizabeth is in the car on her way home, you can see hanging bodies reflected in the car window. Can't believe it took me like eighteen months to notice; clearly I'd be a terrible spy. Anyway, that inspired this, which was supposed to be a couple of thousand words of hurt/comfort and hugs but which has somehow grown into several chapters, because brevity is not one of my strong points.

Also there are a lot of missing scenes towards the end of that episode that I would've loved to see, so here they are in fanfic form instead. Enjoy!

P.S. I have to say thanks to thepuppiesinpink for reading through a draft of this and providing me with some much-needed reassurance :)

Chapter One

The car made its way through the streets of Tehran, at first making good time as they left the secure bunker before becoming snarled up in traffic on one of the main roads out of the city, thousands of the city's residents obviously having had the same idea that now might be the time to flee.

Elizabeth sat in the back seat of the black SUV, feeling strangely detached from herself thanks to the combination of the shock of what had happened and the drugs that had been pumped into her system by an Iranian medical officer, and tried to force her mind to focus on the present.

It was almost over. That was what she told herself as she prepared to leave behind a country in turmoil and a family – more than one family – without a father.

She looked at the empty space to the left of her where Fred should be sitting but wasn't, and felt the pressure of tears building behind her eyes. She looked away, out of the window, hoping for a distraction.

Hanging bodies lined the streets.

God.

There were so many of them, strung up on display like an exhibit or a warning, or macabre flags lining the route of a bizarre victory march. Elizabeth couldn't look away from them, could feel her stomach lurching in horror as the car crawled along the road towards safety, the location of which she didn't know. She wanted to look away from the hanging people. Couldn't. It would be a disservice to her friend Javani and his family to look away. She already knew she'd never be able to forget the sight, that it would haunt her at night in the dark as would the terrorised face of little Abdol as he watched his father murdered right in front of him.

Screaming… so much screaming and blood and fire and dust. And the child. Don't think about it. Stop. If she closed her eyes she would live it again. She couldn't afford to do that yet, not when she was still in Iran – still in danger – and not when her emotions were balancing on a knife edge in danger of slipping and drawing fresh blood. She hated herself for actually preferring the view from her window to the flashes of memory inside her head.

Bodies hanging at the end of coarse rope like low hanging fruit from a tree, swinging slightly in the breeze. Was it a breeze or was it the energy of the people storming the streets that was making them move? She didn't know, and nor would she, because the car picked up speed then, swerving to take a corner faster than seemed wise as her driver put his foot down on the accelerator.

The wheels of the car bumped roughly against the pavement to avoid a group with protest banners who had taken up residence in the middle of the road, a few harsh blares of the horn doing nothing to dispel them. It was then that Elizabeth noticed the fractious nature of the crowd starting to line the streets, some of them holding flares as they looked up at the men swinging from lampposts and other makeshift gallows, a shared energy seeming to thrum through them as their numbers swelled, restless. Below the dead the living made their stand, although what they stood for she couldn't immediately name. Elizabeth held herself still and quiet in her seat – as though that might make her invisible.

"Hold on, Madam Secretary. It's not too far now." Her driver sounded tense, his words simultaneously bitten out and rushed in a single breath as he struggled to navigate the unfamiliar territory without the usual contingent of DS agents to help back him up.

Elizabeth didn't know the driver very well; he hadn't been on her detail very long. One thing she did know, though.

It was not Fred's voice, providing her with updates.

Never again Fred's voice.

She blinked.

The car hit a pothole, jolting her and making the wound on her back burn, the skin no doubt splitting open again and her head pounding painfully, forcing her gaze away from the window and breaking her silent communion with the dead.

Home soon.

Back to the living.

Elizabeth is OK. They found her. She's coming home.

Ever since Henry McCord had received the call to tell him that his wife was alive and on her way back to him, he had been repeating that fact to himself on a loop so it couldn't slip his mind even for a second. He'd do anything to forget those awful hours when he hadn't known where she was and anything could have happened, and his mind had done its best to make him think of all the horrible situations and worst case scenarios it could come up with.

Despite his best efforts to relax into his relief, he still couldn't shake the unease, which he knew wouldn't disappear until he saw Elizabeth walk through the door. Somehow when he had received the good news phone call, he had forgotten that DC from Tehran was at best the better part of a day's travel, and probably more given the somewhat fluid circumstances on the ground in Iran. To begin with no one had known when Elizabeth would be able to leave the country or how she'd be getting to the plane with half her detail dead or wounded; even after they had located her, information on the situation had remained patchy, which hadn't done anything for Henry's stress levels. It had taken him three calls to Nadine at the State Department to finally get an answer of when he could expect Elizabeth back, and he found himself wishing the time away because as far as he could see there was no point in these next hours before she arrived home.

There was nothing to be gained from the hours of waiting. He just wanted his wife back.

At least he was currently watching the version of Conrad Dalton's national address where Elizabeth had lived, and not the one Henry had for a time worried he'd have to give to announce her death on live television.

Henry sat slumped on one end of the sofa with his children next to him, Stevie's side pressed against his before Alison and then Jason at the other end of the seat, all of them lined up neatly in age order as they watched the President admit to the unauthorised involvement of US officials in the failed coup – and it was only then that Henry realised the problem that was about to detonate.

One of the problems, to be more precise. The problem that was not the coup or the betrayal or his wife missing while shots were being fired and she made the perfect target. No. This particular problem was more immediate and very close to home.

Henry sat up quickly in his seat when he realised what was coming – what he should have seen coming from the start of the address – but it was too late.

President Dalton paid tribute to the work of Secretary McCord behind the scenes in Tehran, and Stevie tensed up beside Henry as she realised the issue. Henry turned to look at his youngest child at the other end of the sofa, who was just hearing for the first time that his mother had been present during the coup, and who he really should have told before they sat down to watch this broadcast.

He took a shaky breath and prepared himself for the reaction from his sometimes wayward and volatile son.

When it came, it was uncharacteristically muted.

"Mom was in Iran?" Jason asked the question without looking away from the television screen, his eyes fixed to the President giving his national address.

Henry couldn't read his son's tone, and so he kept his own voice neutral when he answered, "Yeah."

He was aware of Stevie and Alison sitting still and tense next to Jason, both of them no doubt biting their tongues so they didn't admit that they knew where their mother had been and open themselves up to indignant anger from their brother.

Although maybe it would do him good to be angry, because right now he was just… quiet. It was unnerving, and impossible to read.

Henry could only let the silence go on for so long. "She's OK, buddy," he told his son with as much optimism as he could muster. "She's fine, she's on her way home. She'll be here in the morning."

He was aware he wasn't entirely convincing as he told Jason that Elizabeth was OK; while he had it on Nadine's reliable authority that his wife was indeed intact and on a plane on her way back to him, he hadn't actually spoken to her himself. And until he did, the fear would linger within him. Jason was old enough and smart enough to see it in him, too. Henry had no intention of telling his youngest about those awful hours when Elizabeth was missing, but he was obviously aware that something was wrong.

That didn't mean the kid would vocalise it though. "Good," Jason said, his expression neutral as he nodded once and stood abruptly. "Good night."

He left the room without looking at his father or his sisters, heading up the stairs to his bedroom.

Henry should have gone after him, on almost any other day would have gone after him. But not tonight. His head was still spinning with words and phrases like coup and Elizabeth is missing and her detail may have been overrun and his veins were still humming with adrenaline. He wouldn't do Jason any good like this and, selfishly, he didn't want to have to be the steadfast dad, reassuring his child when he was hardly reassured himself. Not when he knew that Minister Javani was dead, and Elizabeth had been there when it happened, and the time between the minister being murdered and word getting through that Elizabeth was alive was mysteriously lacking in detail and there were still several hours unaccounted for.

Henry couldn't stop thinking about those hours.

He thought that Jason had the right idea, shutting himself away in his room to fall apart. Henry thought that sounded quite good right now. With any luck he'd be able to pull himself back together for when Elizabeth got home. He glanced over at his daughters, arm in arm and pressed close together, using each other for support as they watched the tail end of Conrad's speech. They'd be OK without him for a little while. Henry left the room without saying anything to them, and almost made it all the way to the bedroom before the first tear fell down his face.

Elizabeth was unsure how long she had been out of it when the voice of the captain came over the tannoy to tell his passengers that they were starting their decent into Andrews airbase. She had been sat stiff and still in her seat since they left the stopover at the medical base in Landstuhl, her mind in turn showing her a strangely detached replay of the terrible events of the past couple of days and spacing out completely. She felt numb.

She needed to snap back into it and tried to force herself to focus.

Flight time from Tehran to DC is at least thirteen hours with no stops. Add on the detour to Germany… how long were we there? She had felt every second of the first flight from Tehran to Landstuhl, the painkillers from the Iranian medical officer having long worn off and leaving her unable to focus on anything other than the persistent, sticky discomfort in her back. Her head had felt thick and heavy from the stress of it; she was aware that the wound on her back was bleeding through the bandage hastily applied in Iran and seeping out onto the seat. The wound felt hot and gritty…

… and so minor compared to what had happened to Fred and Javani, and she had to stop thinking about it, stop feeling it. It didn't matter.

The local anaesthetic the army doctor had given her at Landstuhl had helped to stop her feeling it, mostly by making the area feel absent, curiously missing for a time. It had also made Elizabeth drowsy and her brain unwilling to cooperate, but she could still clearly smell the cleaning products that had been used to get rid of the blood when she finally got back to her plane seat.

Events were blurring into each other. She thought a crew member had brought her food – or had that been on the first flight? Either way, it had remained untouched and the next time she looked back down at the table by her seat, it had vanished without her realising. She remembered Frank from her detail coming to talk to her at one point, and she was aware of him sitting next to her for a while before he disappeared off to another part of the plane, but if she responded to him and what she might have said, she had no idea.

"Not long now, Madam Secretary."

It was almost like he knew she was thinking about him. The DS agent appeared in front of her and then slid into the seat to her right, buckling his seatbelt in preparation for landing. There was a cut on his hand and a small bandage at his throat, neither of which had been there on their outward journey to Iran.

Elizabeth turned to him with a sudden urgent thought on her mind and he looked at her expectantly, waiting. "Ma'am?" he prompted when she failed to voice her question.

She shook her head to clear it. The action didn't help but the dull throb of pain it inspired at her temple brought her a strange if welcome momentary clarity. Fred's body. She needed to know what had happened to the body, had to make sure he hadn't been left behind in Iran. If only she could find a way to get the question out. "Did I – Fred, I mean. Where is -?"

"We took care of Fred, Ma'am," Frank told her, quietly, sadly. "You called the embassy, remember?"

Yes, she remembered now. Remembered placing the call to the United States' embassy in Turkey, Iran's next door neighbour, once she had been able to finally – finally - get hold of a phone in the bunker in Tehran, telling the shocked woman who picked up the call that it was Secretary McCord speaking and she needed assistance, needed to get word to the President of the situation, needed to find the rest of her security detail to make sure they were OK, and needed safe passage out of the country for one patriotic security agent killed in the line of duty.

"And you, Ma'am?" the woman at the embassy had asked.

"Hmm?" Her mind replaying the sensation of Fred's dead body pressing her into the ground as gunfire rang out and the smell of something burning filled the room, Elizabeth hadn't quite registered the question.

"And you need to get out, too?"

Static filled the line for a long moment.

"Oh… yes. Thank you." It had felt almost like an afterthought. Almost… undeserved, given that the last time she had seen Fred she was leaving his dead body behind in a burning building after he had given his life to save hers.

But she was out, and she was almost home.

The plane landed back on US soil with only the smallest of bumps. Elizabeth sat quietly in her seat as they taxied to a gradual stop, her ears blocked from the change in pressure, muffling the sounds of her security detail and cabin crew around her as they prepared to disembark. She stood as soon as the plane came to a stop, feeling the stab of pain in her back where the army doctor in Germany had given her a local anaesthetic and then carefully stitched her up, the numbing effects of the drug still in her system but their potency lessening. She hissed at the discomfort of it, making Frank turn around to look at her in concern. Her ears both popped at the same time when the cabin door opened and the noise of the cooling plane engine and the conversations around her kicked back in, and she was able to gather herself together enough to follow Frank down the steps and into the waiting car, where she sank back against the comfortable leather seat and for the first time allowed herself to think on the prospect of being reunited with her husband and children.

She thought about the night she had spent with Henry before she had left for Iran, how safe and loved and unbroken she had felt, and concentrating hard on the memories was just enough to get her through the car journey back to her house without thinking about what had happened after that night. That was good. She didn't want the children to read what had happened on her face, although she wasn't foolish enough to think that they wouldn't already know.

Still. She could still be a good mother and pretend for them.

Stepping through the door of her house felt momentarily like the ordinary end of an ordinary long day. But then she saw Henry coming towards her with an urgency that was reserved only for emergencies and acute distress, and the brief illusion shattered and she was back in the current awful reality, and the feel of her husband's arms around her was the only thing helping her keep it together.

Her children hugged her next.

They were warm and brilliant and alive and when she closed her eyes and pressed her face into Jason's neck all she could see was the face of little Abdol as he watched his father die of a bullet wound and she was in two places at once and so glad that she was back and her children wouldn't have to know that pain of losing her and so guilty at the same time that someone else's child already did.