His time alone was sacred. When he was alone, he tried not to feel much.

He covered his grief over the loss of his son and the loss of Olivia in glasses of scotch, in late nights with dimmed lights, and in quiet moments with his conscious. He thought himself into sadness one hundred times since she left, but never once out of it.

He slept most nights on the couch in the Oval Office with his suit jacket draped over his torso. Mellie never came looking for him, and he didn't go looking for her; everyone had their own way of grieving.

"Look what you did to me, Liv," he whispered one night into the darkness of the Oval. "Look what you did to me."

The missing he felt became an unmoving figure and he was the painter behind the easel trying to make it into something he could see. Rationalizing became an art. She left because a client needed her abroad. She left because a family member needed to be cared for. She left because… When he couldn't fill in the blank, he poured another scotch.

Sometimes, he would absentmindedly write her name in the margins of tax documents or dockets about an upcoming meeting with a prime minister or UN official.

Everyday he felt less. Like the walls of a seaside cave, he disintegrated inside. He had nowhere to put his heart, no one to confess to, and no place to go where he wouldn't feel her pull on him.

One of the nights after she left him, he decided he needed to see it for himself. Hearing that Olivia was gone was one thing, but seeing it would solidify it for him, and he needed that, now especially.

He arranged for Tom to take him to her apartment. Tom was able to acquire the key to her door from her landlord, and Fitz entered the darkness of her apartment as Tom and two other agents stood in the hall.

Fitz stood in the darkness.

Everything was in its proper place aside from an empty wine glass on the end table beside the couch. He put his hands on his hips and stood in the center of the living room. His eyes welled with tears as he noticed the way she draped the cable-knit blanket over the couch, and how the clock they used to count down the end of his marriage so long ago was making a dull ticking sound. The moon cast light on the floor and for a moment Fitz thought everything was going to end, right there in her living room – that all would fade to black and he wouldn't have to wake up to face any of this again.

A sound escaped his throat, uncontrolled and without hesitation. Without any resistance from his body, he fell to his knees and pressed the palms of both hands against the hardwood floors. The sound he made was unfamiliar to him. It was a wail, a sob – the sound of something breaking.

Had she left him a note? Maybe on the kitchen counter there was a sheet of paper with her handwriting centered in the middle of it, explaining everything to him, making sense of what felt like the epitome of devastation. Maybe there was a post-it note stuck to the middle of the headboard in her bedroom that read, "Meet me here, I'll come back to you." Or maybe there wasn't anything in the apartment waiting for him to find it; maybe she left without thinking what his missing her would cost.

The darkness of the room enveloped him as the silence split open. His wails were heavy and coming from the very middle of him. He grew dizzy and thought he might throw up because how could she do this, how could she go, how could she leave him here to face everything that had happened alone, how could she–

Tom grasped his shoulders and lifted him from the floor. The room spun as Fitz tried to blink away the blurring tears.

"Sir?" Tom whispered.

"Take me back," Fitz managed to get out before Tom led him by the arm out of the apartment, down the elevator and out the back exit into the chilly, Washington night.

The nights following his visit to Olivia's apartment were drowned in scotch. During the day, he poured every ounce of attention into the politics at hand and devoted himself to repairing the country and its international relations, because if there was one thing he could repair, it was that.

Cyrus didn't confront him about Olivia's absence and Fitz assumed he didn't want to know. It came as a surprise when Cyrus asked him how he was doing six days after Olivia left.

"You're the president I didn't think you would be," Cyrus said one night, joining Fitz in the Oval Office.

"What do you mean by that?"

"All of this control – these drastic actions of power. Don't get me wrong; I like the clenched fists and angry looks, and I think the public likes them too. People like to see someone take charge."

"It's time for me to show my worth as the leader of the free world."

"I just don't think this presidency is what you're trying to take charge of…" Cyrus trailed off.

"Of course it is," Fitz replied, taking a long drink of his Scotch.

"To be frank, Mr. President, I think what you're trying to take control of is Olivia. Not physically of course, because she's vanished into the proverbial "thin air." But you're trying to take control of something because maybe for the first time during your ever-climbing-rollercoaster-with-no-drop relationship with Olivia, she's out of your reach. You can't have Tom and Hal take you to her or summon her to join you in a restaurant after I have it cleared. There's no sight of a Camp David getaway or a private encounter on the outskirts of this room where the cameras can't see. She's not yours to have, Mr. President, so I see this power-surge and sudden enthusiasm for nearly every political bullet-point as your way to make the rollercoaster finally drop so it can finish its ride and return to its station where you hope she'll be waiting," Cyrus paused for a moment before finishing, "But we both know she's not going to be at that station."

Fitz looked at Cyrus with a furrowed brow and decided to be honest, not for Cyrus' sake, but for his own sanity. He stood up and paced toward the windows behind his desk.

"I fell in love with her. I believed she could save me. And then she left. Like you said, she left the ride and isn't waiting in the station. She packed her things and moved to God knows where and all I can do is wish myself away with her. I'm allowing my spirit to follow behind her and I'm letting her take the best of me. And what do I have to show for it? A broken marriage, a dead son?"

He swirled the scotch around in his glass. He looked at his desk and was flooded with memories of bending her over its edge so he could kiss her neck, of pulling her dress off her shoulders, telling her she was his, he loved her more than she could know.

"Apparently, the relationship we had was–" Fitz stopped and sighed. "I don't know what it was. But she left."

He paused and his expression fell apart. Cyrus sat quietly.

"She left me, Cy. And when someone leaves you behind, you leave yourself behind, too."

Cyrus sat quietly for a moment before responding. "It's against my better judgment, but…"

"What?"

"Sir, I can find her," Cyrus stated.

Fitz turned around sharply. His eyebrows rose and his mouth fell open.

"I can bring her back."