Author's Note: This was inspired by two posts on Tumblr. The first was by an Olaker that wanted the series to end with Olivia and Jake at a coffee shop. The second was also by an Olaker, but it stated that Olivia and Jake needed to deal with their own problems before they dealt with each other's. Since I agreed with both of them, this happened. I hope you enjoy!
Disclaimer: Neither Scandal nor the posts that inspired this work belong to me. I own nothing.
Olivia Pope was exhausted. Sometimes, it seemed as if that were her only state of being. She had been doing this job for all this time, had been defending the innocent and the guilty with the same attitude for all these years, and yet every time she walked into her office, there was a part of her that wanted to turn around and walk right back out, to just leave the politicians to their own devices and hope that they developed a conscience of their own in their spare time, to let them deal with the problems that they created without her aid, to leave all of it behind for an island and a rare bottle of wine shared with the man that she loved. That dream wasn't achievable, though. Not anymore.
It had been six weeks since Jake had walked out of her life and told her to go to Fitz. She hadn't done as he had instructed, not because she was scared but because she finally saw things clearly. She saw things the way that they were supposed to be, and she had never been meant to be with Fitz. It wasn't until Jake was out of her life that she realized just how much she needed him in it. That seemed to be her luck in most aspects of her life.
Fitz was happy. She was thankful for that. As a woman who had loved him and as someone who still considered him to be a friend, she was relieved to see a smile on his face. There was also a small part of her that was overjoyed that that smile wasn't caused by her. After Jake had left, she had taken some time before traveling to the White House, but she hadn't gone to profess her love to the President of the United States. She had gone to say goodbye, to tell him that it was okay to move on, that they had been what they needed to for one another at a certain point in their lives but they weren't meant to be those people to one another for the rest of their lives. She had gone to tell him to be happy without worrying about what the world thought. There had been tears, of course; no matter how they felt, there had been something beautiful about the fantasy of a forever in Vermont. It hadn't been realistic, though, and lives weren't built from fantasies. As she watched him announce his divorce and begin to court his longtime friend Naomi Scott on the national stage, she didn't feel jealous of his happiness. After all the pain that they had caused one another, she was glad to see him healing. That didn't make her own situation any easier.
Jake wasn't answering her phone calls, which she deserved. He had probably seen the news, but that didn't mean anything to him. After all, in his mind, she and Fitz always found a way. She would have loved to tell him differently, but that would require her knowledge of just where in the world he had found himself, and since the man had as many aliases as he did safehouses, that was not an easy achievement. Huck and Quinn had turned OPA and Jake's vacated apartment upside down looking for clues as to where he had disappeared while she buried herself in their cases, but they had had little luck. That was why she had called it. That was also why she was in the office so early looking over cases that she wasn't likely to take on to stay out of the apartment full of memories of dancing and laughing with a man that had left town the moment that he had the chance without allowing her to give him a reason to stay. As she stared down at the screen of her phone, she wondered if the reasons she had to stay would have been good ones after all she had put him through. Considering that she was as available as she had ever been and her phone remained silent, she was becoming aware that they might not have worked after all. That was probably the hardest thing that she had ever had to accept. In fact, she still hadn't accepted it. She wasn't sure that she ever would.
A hesitant knock on the glass pane of her door pulled Olivia from her thoughts, and she mustered up a weak smile for Quinn as the younger woman entered her office and plopped down on the sofa with an exhausted sigh. "Jake's back in the States," she informed Olivia casually, causing the other woman to glance at her in confusion. "He was in Tahiti for a while, then went to Germany. Huck and I couldn't find him, but you have good connections at the White House. The President's apparently been aiding us in our search. Abby just called. He touched down at JFK two hours ago."
Olivia nodded slightly. "Well, it's nice to know that he's alive." She returned her attention to her work even though she could feel Quinn's eyes on her. Eventually, though, the scrutiny became too much, and she looked up from the files in front of her with an exasperated sigh. "Yes, Quinn? Was there anything else you needed?" she questioned with fake patience, raising an eyebrow at the junior member of her team with a polite smile on her face.
"Okay, I know that you're Olivia Pope and you prefer to hide your emotions in insanely expensive wine and equally bland popcorn, but this is big news. Jake is back in the States. You do know which Jake I'm talking about, right? It's the same one we've spent the last six weeks looking for." Quinn raised her hands in the air when Olivia failed to reply. "Olivia, this is Jake! He's one of your favorite people in the world, he's been your best friend since long before Abby started working for the White House. This is Jake. Why are you acting like you don't care?"
Olivia finally placed her pen on the table, closing the file in front of her with more force than was strictly necessary. "Because he left, Quinn. And he did that for a reason."
"Yes, his reason was because he was in love with you and thought that you were in love with another man. I'm not saying that he's not a complete moron, I'm just saying that maybe he deserves a chance to make up for his utter stupidity." Quinn plopped back down on the sofa after realizing that she had stood halfway through her rant. "He's back, Liv. That has to mean something."
"Quinn, he went to Tahiti. He was standing in the sun." Olivia shot her coworker an unimpressed look. "That was his way of letting go of what we had. Standing in the sun was always something we talked about doing together, and he did it alone. That means something more than him coming back ever could."
"You're both morons." Quinn waved a hand in the air when Olivia glared at her. "No, you know what, I'm not taking that back. I love you both dearly, you're my family, but you're so stupid when it comes to each other that it makes me want to tear my hair out. Did you even consider that maybe he needed to stand in the sun for himself before he could stand there with you? Jake is the definition of screwed-up, Liv. Your dad screwed him up and he screwed him over, and Jake, for all intents and purposes, is broken. He's shattered. He's the pile of ashes that was left behind when the man he was before he met your father was burned alive and shaped into something more capable of being understood. The only time that changes is when he's around you. And he hurt you, Liv. He loves you, and he hurt you, and there was something inside of him that made him do that. You are the most important person on this earth in the mind of Jake Ballard. He'd never risk that part of himself coming out again when it came to you; he loves you too much. Now that your father's behind bars, he has no one to fight against. He has nowhere to rid himself of that anger. Jake needed to stand in the sun. He needed to stand in his truth. And now he's come back. Maybe that means something more than where he went when he left." She stood from the sofa. "He doesn't have a place to stay here. If he rents one out, I'll tell you where to find him. Until then, Liv, stop being all dark and twisty and accept that he's back. The man that you're in love with, he's back. Celebrate that instead of burying your head in the sand and pretending that you're being logical." With that, the young woman walked out of Olivia's office, leaving her to think about all that was said and to overanalyze every word.
It was nearly ten in the evening by the time she walked out of OPA and locked the door behind her. The temperatures had been slowly warming and the humidity had been getting worse, which meant that her clothes were sticking to her by the time that she made her way to her vehicle. Fully aware that she likely wasn't going to get any rest that evening, she headed to the nearest coffee shop for an iced beverage. It didn't cross her mind until she was pulling into the parking lot that it just so happened to be the same coffee shop where she had met Jake for the first time several years before.
The place was nearly empty, and it didn't take long for her to place and receive her order. As she was making her way back to her car, she heard a familiar voice behind her call out, "You didn't order one of their doughnuts this time either, did you?"
She spun on her heel, staring in shock at the man in front of her. He smiled charmingly as he approached. "No, I didn't," she responded unevenly, her eyes never leaving his.
"That's too bad. They're the unsung heroes of the pastry case, you know."
"I think I've heard that before," Olivia responded with a small smile that quickly faded away once the man was directly in front of her. "Jake, what are you doing here?"
Jake shrugged. "I just got back. Something told me to come here." He stepped closer, so close that there were only inches between them. "I didn't know why until I saw you. It's like old times, isn't it?" he questioned, gesturing to the coffee shop behind them. "You and me and this place?"
"Yes, except that it's nothing like old times," Olivia replied dryly. "Because now I know who you are and you know who I am and we've both seen the best and the worst parts of one another. Now all our cards are on the table. That makes this chance meeting a lot scarier than our first." She switched her coffee to her other hand and pushed a strand of her hair behind her ear. "You went to Tahiti."
"I did," Jake agreed evenly. "It was beautiful there. Not as beautiful as that uninhabited island off the coast of Zanzibar, but still beautiful. I can't really blame Tahiti; after all, I didn't have you with me this time around." He tried to smile, but it wavered when he caught sight of the pain in Olivia's eyes. "I had to leave, Liv. You know that I had to leave."
"I know that you chose to leave," Olivia fired back angrily. "You didn't even stick around long enough to see what would happen, Jake. You just disappeared without considering how that would impact me or Huck or Quinn or anyone else that cares about you. You just left. I don't know how to trust a person that can just leave." She shook her head slightly. "And I know that's hypocritical of me, I know that I'm being unfair, but you told me that you loved me and then you left without letting me respond, so that seems a little hypocritical and unfair to me, too. In fact, I might even call it selfish."
"I told you to be with the man that you love, Olivia. I wasn't being selfish. For one of the first times in my life, I was being selfless. I just couldn't watch you be with him. And maybe you're right, maybe that makes me selfish, but I don't know how to deal with you being with him. I still don't. I came back thinking that I could learn, but now, standing here in front of you…" Jake trailed off. "It's like I enjoy torturing myself, because I love you and I want you to be happy, but I also love you enough to know that I might not be the one to make you happy. I just don't know if I've figured out how to deal with that yet. That's why I stayed away. But I'm back now, Liv. And I'm still your friend."
Olivia laughed without humor. "I didn't go to Fitz that night to pledge my undying love, Jake. I went to tell him that I was thankful for what he had been to me in the past and I would be thankful for his friendship in the future, but he and I were never going to have a house in Vermont with a jam-making kit and 2.5 kids running around in the lawn. He agreed. He's still in the process of getting divorced, but he and Naomi have begun seeing each other. She's beautiful and delightful; I can see why you're friends with her. She's also well on her way to thinking that I'm either depressed or crazy, which isn't the best thing considering that she's a shrink that just so happens to be extremely invested in your love life." She smiled slightly when he looked towards her in confusion. "I may have been a bit of a mess during those first few weeks after you left. Not a crying mess, but a workaholic mess. She and Fitz invited me over for dinner every night the moment that they started spending more time together, which was nice. I'm pretty sure they were doing it to make sure I was eating at least one meal per day, because there were a lot of calories in those dishes for evening meals, especially when Naomi looks like she does."
"Olivia, I left so that you could be with Fitz," Jake murmured. "You had your chance to take what was yours."
"See, that's the thing. The moment I saw them together, I realized that he was never mine. I also realized that I was never his." She smiled gently. "We were what we needed to be for one another at a time in our lives when we needed one another, but we were never going to last, Jake. Not with people like you and Naomi in our lives, not with people who, as hard as it is to admit, see the darkest parts of us and still accept and love us. Fitz and I weren't meant to last, and because I know that, I'm happy that he's happy." Olivia sighed, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. "Are you happy, Jake?" she questioned softly, causing his eyes to fly towards hers. "Because if you're happy, then I can let go. If you're happy, then I can be happy, too."
"I'm happier than I have been in a long time," he responded evenly. "I don't think that I'm happy in the traditional sense of the word, though. I don't know if I ever will be. I might be a little too damaged for that kind of feeling."
"Nobody is too damaged for happiness, Jake. Quinn and Naomi have been yelling that at me for weeks." She smiled gently. "Are you happy?"
"No," he replied honestly. "Not as happy as I could be."
"Then we should try to fix that." Olivia extended her hand in his direction. "Would you like to buy me a doughnut?" she questioned playfully as she pulled him back towards the bakery.
He chuckled as he allowed himself to be dragged behind her. "I would love to."
And thus began their new chapter. This time, though, they were both aware as they turned the page that it belonged in a love story. And while they were both still broken, acknowledging that allowed them both to take a small step towards putting themselves-and each other-back together.