They had been laying in bed for hours, talking, thinking, loving, everything but sleeping since Marine One had dropped them off six hours ago. Olivia had declined Mellie's offer for her old job. She wanted the white hat and standing in the sun with Fitz, and she knew that she would never have if she stayed at the White House. So Fitz brought her to Vermont. They both knew it wasn't going to be making jam and being mayor; too much had happened for that to happen, but Fitz had his foundation to run. And Olivia had plenty of experience to fall back on.
So here they were, in the house that Fitz had built for her.The house where they would raise a family. She was surprised that he had kept it. After the failed intervention he and OPA had attempted, she thought that he would have sold it to the first person to come along. Instead, he had moved in and turned it into a home. It's like a part of him knew that she would come back to him.
"Did you always know?" she asked him, her previous thought falling from her lips.
"Did I always know what?" he returned, shifting to wrap his arm around her torso.
"That this is where we would end up? That we would actually end up here, in this house the way that you planned?" she responded as her fingers softly played with the curls that covered his chest.
"There were moments where I wondered if I had been wrong, but then I would see you and remember that there is always hope." He paused for a moment, kissing the side of her head before continuing. "The first time I saw you, I knew that there was no one else I wanted more. It's like you had this magnet and it kept pulling me to you again and again."
Blushing at the memory of their first meeting, Olivia buried her head in the curve of Fitz's shoulder. She couldn't deny what he said was true. From the moment that she started on his campaign, she had fallen in love with him. The more she had learned of the man she was trying to make president, the more she tried not to love him, and the stronger that love had grown.
"I knew even when you didn't. I knew through it all. Through your father, Jerry, Jake, B613. Everything. Even when you couldn't love yourself, I knew and I loved you through it all." he continued. He was on a roll, and he couldn't stop now. "That night in your apartment before Mellie's interview with the Deputy Attorney General, you asked me how I thought this would end and I said with us. This is what I meant. I truly believed that we went through it all so we could end up here. Together like we always planned. Not the most conventional love story but one heck of a story nonetheless."
Olivia snorted, "It only took adultery, lying, theft, treason, blackmail, kidnapping, and murder to get us here. Some love story to tell our grandkids."
Realizing Olivia's last sentence, Fitz shifted so that he was looking the woman sharing his bed and his heart in the eye. "Grandkids? So you're finally ready to settle down and start a family with me?
"Do you really think that I'm ever going to settle down?" she laughed in reply. Continuing before he had a chance to interrupt, "But yes, I am finally ready to start a family with you. I am not afraid anymore."
Kissing her swiftly on the lips, Fitz rolled over. She heard the sound of a drawer open and shut, and then Fitz rolled to face her again, a big lopsided grin painted across his face.
"I've been holding on to this since the team and I brought you here for that "intervention." I wasn't sure if I would ever get the chance to give it to you after that, but a part of me knew I had to keep it. A part of me knew that I couldn't give up hope. I couldn't give up on you." he softly murmured as he sat up in bed to face her.
"You asked me earlier if I always knew we would end up here and I said I always had hope. I had that hope because you taught me how. You taught me how to believe in more than the simple things and how that anything worth having is worth earning. I once told you that I belong to you, and that is truer today than it was back then. No matter what life may throw at me, I know I want to go though it with you by my side." His voice cracked, coming out in a whisper as he slowly asked her, "Olivia Carolyn Pope, will you do me the honor of finally becoming my wife?"
Fitz slowly opened the ring box that she hadn't even noticed he was holding. Inside lay a simple silver band with a round diamond surrounded by small sapphires. Olivia knew that he had designed the ring himself from the things she had described to him about the ring her mother had worn when she was a little girl. Looking up from the ring, tears streaming down her face, she could only hiccup his name before completely dissolving into hysterical sobs.
"Well this is definitely not the reaction I was expecting." Fitz said, a nervous chuckle in his voice.
Shaking her head, trying her best to calm down, Olivia drew a slow, deep breath. Her voice came out in a slow rasp as she began to speak. "I never thought we would end up here. Not after everything. I have done so many unforgivable things. I became a person I didn't even recognize when I looked in the mirror." Hiccuping again as she wiped tears from her face, "Before B613 and Command, I had hope. I always held on to hope because it was the rope that tethered me to you. But after, when you could barely stand the sight of me, that hope began to fray until I was only hanging on by a thread. I just didn't know how to find the light anymore. But you, somehow you always knew it was there. Even when I was completely lost, you saw the real me and pushed me back to the light."
Olivia shifted on the bed to sit cross-legged in front of Fitz. If she was going to do this, she was going to, in the words of Abby Wheelan, go head first over a cliff. "I remember the night that you told me you belonged to me. Every single word because I said the same things. So much time has passed since that night, but it's still as true now as it was then. I belong to you. Maybe in different ways, but I do. Every part of me. Even the parts that I'm not so proud of and I wish you had never seen. Through all the lies, betrayal, pain, and hurt, you still take my breath away when you walk into a room. After a long day, the only place I want to be is in your arms. My father has always told me that love is weakness, and once upon a time, I believed him. That belief, however brief it was, almost made me lose you. Now I know better. I've learned the truth. Loving you has taught me that I am stronger. It has pushed me past limits I didn't know I had. Loving you is everything and more, so yes Thomas Fitzgerald Grant III, I will marry you."
Fitz didn't move. He had this awestruck look on his face, just staring at the woman in front of him.
"Well are you gonna put that ring on my finger or do I have to do it myself?" Olivia giggled, poking Fitz in the chest.
Jolted from his daze, Fitz slowly lifted Olivia's hand and slipped the ring on her finger. Then he slowly kissed each finger tip before placing her hand over his heart. Wrapping his arms around her, Fitz kissed Olivia as if he had never kissed her before. Olivia felt the emotions in the kiss and returned them in kind. They had been through hell, high water, and hell again to get where they were, and she planned on spending the rest of their lives making up for lost time.