So this is the last chapter. It leaves things kinda deliberately unresolved, but I hope is still satisfying enough of a conclusion for everyone who has stuck with me through this whole crazy fic. Thank you so, so much to everyone who has read this story and left comments and given me pep talks when I've been having a crisis over the plot, you've all made this so fun and you're all absolutely lovely and brilliant. I think I'm gonna do some cheesy smut next to counteract the brainpower this story has taken haha. Hope you enjoy this chapter x

Chapter Twenty

Gleb Kodalov was aware that he wasn't the smartest man to ever hold high office, but he was smart enough to know how to bide his time and to hire smart people to do the more complicated thinking for him, and he was smart enough and familiar enough with power plays to join the dots together when all of a sudden the lights went out in the presidential palace for the second time in less than twelve hours.

The first time at the reception for the Americans had been, technically, his doing, although he had been acting on advisement from some of his backers that the darkness would create both the panic and the cover he was looking for. And then he could step forth and quell the panic once the lights came back on.

Task duly completed, power restored to the palace generators that had been temporarily cut off, and a satisfactory yet somewhat troubling phone call with the American President concluded, Kodalov had just been contemplating the prospect of a few hours' sleep when the lights went out again. This time not his doing.

He sat in the dark, listening to the sounds of the heating system ticking as it cooled and the panic of the security staff and aides left in the palace as they were plunged once more into darkness. The noises of distress coming from outside the President's suite of offices reminded him of the screams in the ballroom earlier that night.

He had only heard them for a minute, and only from a distance, having made himself scarce before the first shots were fired, but he still remembered the sound of other people's terror.

Remembered the brief look of terror on the face of Emilia Zembrovko before he had shot it off her, and the look of horror and despair on Artur's face as he realised what Gleb had done – what he was about to do. Remembered the blood that remained as a stain on the carpet and walls and would likely never wash clean. He used the cover of new darkness to take the opportunity to close his eyes against the memories, but it did nothing to dispel them. Those memories – actions – were there to stay.

Still, he got to call himself President now, so he figured he just about came out on top.

"Minister Kodalov." The voice came from the doorway, and belonged to a shadowy figure clad all in black.

Kodalov could just about make out the shape from across the room, but he didn't need to see the man to know who it was. The man in the doorway was a former general in the Russian military, a man who had been cast out from his role when the new Russian president came to power following the death of Maria Ostrov and decided that many of the old generals were too imperialistic for the new order. He had found a way to continue his task by the roundabout method of making Gleb Kodalov President of Petria, knowing that Kodalov was friendly towards Russia and favoured an alliance with his close neighbours over allowing the imperialism of the West to take over. He was softening the ground for the future while seizing an opportunity to retaliate against the capitalist power plant and piss off the Americans generally, and Secretary McCord in particular, whom he loathed.

And the general had succeeded in his career by always being the smartest man in the room.

But the smartest man in the room had forgotten that power could trump brains. And now Kodalov, after biding his time at the beck and call at the general, had power – and the old Russian did not.

"Yes," Kodalov replied, staring straight in the direction of the doorway.

"You know the power cut must be the work of Secretary McCord."

"Yes."

There was a pause. "What are you going to do?"

Kodalov knew what the old general expected the answer to be, that he expected the response to be brash and abrupt and violent, but his task was done now. The new president's attention was turning to the long game, the game of keeping his power. Kodalov thought about his meetings with Elizabeth McCord; she always drove him crazy. So arrogant and moral and so damn smart. Sure, she could be rattled, and he had found ways over their acquaintance to unsettle her – leaning in too close while wearing too much cologne and bringing up the topic of Maria Ostrov being two unfailing ways, along with taking away her diplomatic status and shooting guns near her and her husband, of course – but she was always without doubt the smartest person in any room she was in. He hated that about her, but part of him admired it too.

Now she had turned out his lights. Infuriating – but brilliant. He'd remember that one for his playbook.

Gleb Kodalov laughed. "I think, my friend, I am going to make a call to Elizabeth McCord. Assuming of course she hasn't also turned off our phones."

"But Kodalov –"

"Mr President," he corrected the old general, who balked at the order from the man who had been so compliant while he was waiting to ascend to the highest office in the land. Kodalov thought he could get used to the position. "You call me Mr President now. Place the call."

It had gone past the official end of the work day some time ago, but the State Department was still full of staff placing urgent phone calls to contacts wherever they had them, and others who were simply waiting on some news.

Nadine Tolliver sat in her office, trying to distract herself from the lack of news by reviewing a backlog of reports on worthy but non-priority causes, figuring that she might as well do something with her time; after all, the Secretary would want to know that work still carried on no matter what might be going on elsewhere.

She had just started in on a report about the decline of worldwide bee populations when she was interrupted by the head of the Bureau of Diplomatic Security. A man usually given to good manners, Nadine knew it was urgent when he failed to knock before entering.

"What do you have?" she asked in lieu of a greeting, standing up and gripping onto the edge of her desk – just in case it should turn out she needed the support.

There was a smile on the man's face that had been absent over the past few hours; the expression looked almost foreign after so many sombre expressions and a general air of stress that had hung over the department since they heard the first reports of trouble in Petria. "They're on the plane, Ms Tolliver. The Secretary has made it to the plane, along with her husband and a skeleton security detail." He added as an afterthought: "And the prisoner."

"Prisoner?" Nadine hadn't heard anything about a prisoner; she supposed there was quite a lot she hadn't heard about over the past few hours of intermittent communications and bombastic news reports that may or may not have been true.

"Yes, Ma'am." The Diplomatic Security man seemed like he might be about to elaborate, but Nadine cut him off when she realised he had failed to address something important.

"What about Jay and Daisy, and the others who were missing in the palace?"

The man's face looked slightly troubled again. "A detail has gone to retrieve them. Ideally we'd get the Secretary airborne in the meantime, but she said no. Quite vehemently, from what I understand. She ordered the plane stationary until she knows her staff are safe and on board." It was clear the security man did not approve of this plan, but he was no doubt familiar enough with Elizabeth McCord to know when a fight wasn't going to be won.

For the first time, a small smile crossed Nadine's face. "Of course she did," she murmured.

He shrugged. "We're hoping for wheels up within the hour, assuming nothing else explodes before then."

"Very optimistic of you."

Nadine waited until the man had left her office before she picked up the phone. She should probably wait until the plane took off before she made the call. In fact, she should definitely wait before she made the call. If she made the call and got people's hopes up and then something unexpectedly awful happened in the intervening hour before the Secretary's plane took off, she'd have a whole barrage of extra hell to deal with.

She placed the call anyway. "Blake?" she said, when the phone was answered at the other end. "Are you still with the McCord children? Good news, of sorts. I think they'll want to hear this."

The plane sat on the tarmac outside a hangar at Rusapol International Airport, watched by armed guards from both Petria and the US, who eyed each other warily.

That mutual wariness bolstered Elizabeth's confidence a little; surely no guns would go off when they all had reasons to be unsure. No one would want to take the chance of mutually assured destruction.

She settled back into the wide plane seat, wincing as a dart of pain spread from her ribs and travelled through her body. Her head was pounding from a combination of stress, exhaustion, and several collisions with hard surfaces. Her eyelids felt heavy, drawn together like magnets. She forced herself to stay awake, shifting in her seat and almost welcoming the discomfort it brought; at least she wouldn't fall asleep while she was reliving the sensation of a shoe colliding with her ribcage.

Next to her sat Henry, who looked like he could fall asleep at any moment but was gamely sticking by her side to the bitter end. Her husband was incredible. A wave of guilt washed over her at what he had just gone through because of her – not your fault, she knew he'd say, but she couldn't believe it – and she told herself that as soon as they were home, she was going to make sure he knew exactly just how much she appreciated him.

He had backed her up over her order to keep the plane on the ground until they were joined by the rest of their party, and for that she was infinitely grateful. He had been a Marine; he didn't like to leave anyone behind, either.

God, she loved him. "Hey, Henry," she said softly to get his attention, even though it was already on her.

His answering smile was soft and slightly sleepy. "Hmm?"

She was just about to thank him for standing with her throughout the whole awful visit to Petria when -

"Phone call, Madam Secretary." Matt entered through the door that separated the cockpit from the front seating area of the plane, a brick-like phone in his hand. One of the portable secure lines into the plane.

"Who?" she asked, although from the look on the DS agent's face, she thought that maybe she could guess.

"Gleb Kodalov, Ma'am."

Crap. Elizabeth exchanged a look with Henry as she reached out to take the phone from Matt, who then stepped back towards the wall of the plane but elected to stay close by, as if she might need defending from the President of Petria from the other end of a phone line. She chose to think it sweet under the circumstances.

Feeling her husband watching her and taking comfort from his presence, Elizabeth held the phone up to her ear. "Good morning, Gleb." Because somehow it was morning, despite it still being dark outside thanks to a combination of lingering night and an absence of manmade lights across large stretches of Rusapol.

And whose fault is that? At least once they got on the plane she had finally been able to reach Mark Strong to ask him to set about the process of turning the switch back to on, a piece of information she decided to withhold from Kodalov unless it became necessary to placate him in a hurry.

"Good morning," Kodalov replied in his accented English. "I thought, Elizabeth, that we should maybe speak before you leave my country."

She tried to get a read on his tone, but couldn't quite pin it down. She had never been able to properly pin him down. "About what?" she said, careful not to give anything away in her own voice. He didn't need to know that she was nervous of his response to her actions.

It sounded like he was smiling when he answered. "About your joke, switching off our power plant."

"I thought it was our power plant, Gleb. You never wanted it."

He laughed out loud then. "I take it you were proving a point?"

She couldn't work out if he was angry or not. Couldn't tell if there was a hidden agenda behind his words. It didn't sound like there was… she guessed he didn't really need a hidden agenda anymore. He had what he wanted, and he was going to keep what he wanted in part thanks to silence on her part and Conrad's. She didn't answer his question; chose to let him think that he was right, and not confess to the fact that although she had indeed been proving a point, she had also been working on a little bit of survival instinct. Instead she said, "Who helped you pull this off? Which Russian generals?"

"That is unimportant."

"Actually, I think it's very important." She was certain that someone else had been the brains behind the coup; if Gleb Kodalov was being controlled by someone else behind the scenes, she wanted to know who the kingmaker was.

There was a pause. "No, Elizabeth. It isn't." The words were outwardly directed to her, but they sounded like maybe they were meant for someone else.

Oh. So Kodalov had discovered how to use his power. Elizabeth guessed that whoever his kingmakers were, they were going to be in for a shock when it turned out their boy wanted to rule on his own. For the sake of the people of Petria, she hoped that Kodalov knew what he was doing and who he was potentially up against. She hoped the generals did, too. "Was there anything else, Gleb? Because if not, I have some other things to do. Like leaving."

"I wanted to tell you that I look forward to working with you in my new role. I trust that our… relationship… will continue."

She could imagine his smirk and his swagger. Her skin felt like it was crawling as her brain supplied her with a memory of Kodalov in full-on slime mode to match the tone of his voice over the phone. Her jaw tightened and her grip tightened on the phone. In the seat beside her, Henry frowned and leaned forward in his seat. "Babe?" he murmured, low enough that it wouldn't carry down the phone line.

Elizabeth swallowed, put her game face back on. "I'm sure it will. We'll be watching your upcoming elections very closely."

"Then you will see when I win my personal mandate."

Yes, she probably would. Getting rid of Kodalov was likely to be a very long game indeed, but that was where democracy could come in handy. The Petrian constitution limited him to two terms as President unless he was booted out by the voters beforehand. Assuming, of course, he didn't rip up the constitution and put it in the bin. Somehow Elizabeth thought that he wouldn't; she didn't think he'd have the nerve or the brains to pull it off. "And I look forward to working with you on future trade deals to benefit both our nations." There was the hint of a tease in her voice, even as she was aware she was potentially antagonising him.

"Petria is an outward-looking country, Madam Secretary. There are many countries for us to do trade deals with, should we have the need." What he didn't say was what they both knew; that the number of countries currently willing to invest in Petria was likely to be quite small, but that they would badly need the investment in order to maintain credibility on the world stage under the nation's new leadership.

"Oh, I'm pretty sure you need to keep the lights on, Gleb."

As if on cue, one of the security team popped her head out of the cockpit and handed a piece of paper to Matt, who passed it to Elizabeth. She read it. Mark Strong says the power plant is back on. Lights up in fifteen minutes. And apparently their communication abilities were on the up. That was good.

"You're lucky I have a sense of humour," said Kodalov. "And that I'm a very generous man."

She had to bite her tongue in order to stop herself from contradicting him – the man who had actively murdered people and caused the deaths of God knew how many others, and who had all too deliberately stuck her into hell, and Henry right along with her. "Oh, really?" She kept the enquiry casual.

"Yes. I've sent you a present. It should be arriving with you any moment now."

"What is it?"

"Have a safe flight, Elizabeth. You'll understand, won't you, when you see the news report that I have run you out of my country to save Petria from the meddling, imperialist menace? Don't take it personally."

Elizabeth bristled. "Oh, I'm afraid that I might."

Kodalov laughed again. The line went dead.

She took a deep breath, let it out slowly, hoping to calm her blood pressure and her nerves, which had been set on edge by the conversation with the slimiest bastard in world politics. Henry's hand touched her knee gently, smoothing over the bone calmingly. "Elizabeth? What did he say to you?"

She was just about to reply when movement outside the plane window caught her attention. She stood abruptly – too abruptly, her ribs and head reminded her, causing her to sway backwards slightly into Henry, who had stood up behind her. She paused a moment, Henry's hands on her hips to steady her. "He said he was sending me a present," she said.

It looked like it had arrived.

Outside the plane window, she saw a car driving towards them across the tarmac. It glinted under the lights of the airport that still shone thanks to its private power supply. It was hard to see until the car came close but then – yes, she was sure.

Elizabeth was unable to keep the grin from her face as the car came to a stop and out stepped her missing security team, followed a minute later by Daisy and Jay. Still dressed in their formalwear, they looked a little shell-shocked and dusty and just about ready to drop - but also so wonderfully, brilliantly, absolutely alive.

How to fix a nation? That was the question she asked herself as the plane's velocity increased and the wheels lifted from the ground and her fingers dug into the back of Henry's hand in response to the sudden take off.

How to fix a nation, and how to take down Kodalov. She mulled it over as the plane climbed higher into the sky and then banked sharply to the left to take them away from the airport and start the flight path towards home. Elizabeth was sure that the power game with Gleb Kodalov was going to go on for a while, but ultimately it was in their best interests to work together.

After all, Kodalov wouldn't want it to get out how he really came to power, would want the people of his nation to carry on thinking he had simply stepped up to serve at a time of unexpected crisis when President Zembrovko was killed in an attack orchestrated by forces nefarious. Elizabeth wondered what story he would try to peddle to the Petrian people once the dust had settled.

No, he wouldn't want the truth to get out. And neither did she, because if the truth came out, everyone would find out that the US had known how he came to power and yet did nothing, in fact had deliberately let him keep his presidency in exchange for some small concessions. That was her fault, she thought. Conrad had done that deal for her.

Something else to add to her list of things to feel guilty about.

So they all held each other to ransom with the tape of a recorded phone call, and Elizabeth had to find a way to make things right. There had to be something she could do, a way to expose Kodalov without landing Conrad in the mess with him, a way of fixing it so that –

"Elizabeth." Henry's voice cut through her thoughts and the back of his hand brushed against her cheek, turning her to face to his as he sat beside her in the aisle seat. He blinked drowsily, clearly fighting sleep. He had been fighting it ever since they made a quick call to their kids on the plane's satellite phone in the minutes before take-off; the children's obvious joy and relief at hearing their parents' voices had soothed Henry and helped him let go of a large part of his tension, sending him spiralling towards sleep.

Talking to the kids had only made Elizabeth more adamant that she had to do something to fix the mess to make the world safer for her children. She couldn't let them live with the uncertainty that she had in part helped to cause.

She gave her husband a soft smile. "Hey," she said, leaning into his touch and enjoying the soft sweep of his thumb along her cheekbone, giving herself a moment – just a moment – to relax into him.

"Stop thinking now," he said - ordered. "You're hurt and exhausted. Go to sleep."

Her sweet, incredible husband. She knew he meant well. She even knew that he was right. And yet. She shook her head. "Henry, there's work to do."

He swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down in his throat as he let out a slow, sleepy breath. "Yeah," he agreed. "There's work to do. But not now, OK? It can wait until we get home."

Elizabeth watched him watching her, a smile creeping onto her face as she watched him blinking drowsily and then his eyes slipped closed and his breathing evened out and his hand dropped from her face to rest comfortably across her torso as he fell into an exhausted sleep beside her. She pressed a kiss to his forehead as his head came to rest against her shoulder and he unconsciously curled himself more fully around her, both protective of and seeking comfort in her.

Then she turned to look out of the window as the plane banked again and gave her a brief, sweeping view of the city below.

The power plant back up and running, the remaining electric lights of the night glinted like beacons in the distance and, over on the far horizon, there was the first glint of sunlight as dawn began to break over Rusapol.