I shouldn't be having this drink. It won't help me sleep, and it won't get me drunk. You know I shouldn't, but I'm gonna drink it anyway.

I'm telling you this because I know you won't talk. You never talk, just smile back at me from inside that picture frame. Because you've known me longer than anybody, even longer than Saul, and you somehow managed…well, you didn't exactly like me after the divorce, but you were still civil. For the kids' sake.

I wish you were here. You could talk sense into me, even when I hated you for it. Maybe that's how we managed to hang on for so long, even after we both knew whatever we'd had between us was dead. You and I were good for each other, at least in that way.

She makes me crazy, Caroline. She stares at me from behind those glasses, with her conservative suits and her sincere eyes and she drives me absolutely crazy.

You would have loved her. She was just your type—calm, sensible, compassionate. You would have talked forever with her at parent-teacher conferences, sharing stories about the boys and recipes for homemade cakes. You would have trusted her, Car, with our boys and our future, with our deepest family secrets.

I want to trust her. I want to trust her too much, and that scares me. In another time, another place, I would have given her that trust freely. Because she looks like a schoolteacher, like someone who'd love my kids almost as much as I do, and still understand how nobody can love their children the way a parent can. I want to trust her, and I would, if it were another time or another place.

But the place is her and the time is now, and the very fact that I want to trust her so fiercely keeps me from trusting her completely.

She keeps secrets, Caroline. I know she does, and not just the kind that politicians keep. Of course, she makes deals. She has to. Nothing would get done if she didn't deal in favors to some degree.

But the secrets she keeps are deeper than politics, and I fear them. They are the kind of secrets that destroy you in the end, and I can't trust that in the person responsible for our survival.

Lee trusts her, more than he trusts me. Saul hates her, which makes me want to like her even more.

Oh, hell, Caroline. Of course I like her. In another time, another place, I might've even asked her out to dinner, traded funny stories with her about life and family and jobs. Taken her out dancing, like we danced tonight. Only in another time, another place, there wouldn't have been so many eyes watching us, and it wouldn't have been just one dance.

And that scares me, too, Car. I didn't want it to be just one dance. I didn't want all those eyes watching me while I held her, with her schoolteacher eyes and her conservative clothes and her gentle, compassionate smile.

I wanted another dance, but she's the president and I'm commander and this is not another time, nor is it another place.

She looks like a schoolteacher, Caroline, but looks can be deceiving. There's a mask in place, a smile she wears too consistently. And where there is something hidden, even behind the most innocent mask, there is always danger.

Caroline, are you listening to me? Hell, I don't even know if you're among the survivors. Horrible of me, isn't it? I guess Lee must have checked the rosters. I didn't even think to do it. I just assumed you were gone, with the rest of them. With all of them, billions of them.

Gods, I hate insomnia. Caroline, give me a sign. Tell me what to do.

Just let me sleep, just once, through the night. Without dreams. Without nightmares, without sitting bolt upright in bed because I thought I heard screaming.

Let me close my eyes and see something besides my fear behind them.

Let me dance, Caroline, just one more time. Even if it's only in my sleep.

End