would you take care of a broken soul?

She stands in the room, but her mind is elsewhere. Fitz is yelling at her – painful words, full of anger and hate and hurt. He's telling her that it's her fault that their marriage fell apart; that it's her fault he looked elsewhere.

Her mind feels strangely blank. She can't form the words she wants to say – the words she's bottled up for so long now, the words that would explain to him why she wouldn't let him touch her for ten years, save for the time they conceived Karen and that doesn't count, for it was so devoid of emotion, of feeling.

Her mind falls on Andrew for a moment. She knows she doesn't love him yet he loves her, knows she is using him.

Knows that whatever it was, it's over now.

Words burn her tongue but arguments years in making appear in her mind again, just like they always do.

Fitz yells again and the words rise in her throat for the thousandth time, but then he speaks again, and his words compound what she already knows – it is her fault her marriage was destroyed; she is to blame, it's her fault – and her words die before they can be realised.

She tells him she gave up pieces of herself for him, for this dream and yet when he presses her for details, the words clam up again.

She wants to scream and yell and tell him she gave up everything for him. Tell him that the person she was, back when they met and then when they were happy, is gone and dead and buried. That she can never be that woman again.

That what his father did to her-

But the thoughts of what happened to her, of how she was stripped back to nothing but a victim cause her to feel sick and she stops them in their tracks.

She isn't a victim no matter what happened. She isn't. She never was.

And yet she can't find the words and then Olivia's there and she's fleeing – her nerve gone again, just like so many times before when she'd steeled herself to tell him.

…

When she discovered she was pregnant – fifteen years ago now - the overwhelming emotion she felt was an all consuming numbness. Sure, she put on a front and when she told Fitz that she was happy it seemed she was, but inside she felt cold and numb and so terribly ashamed of her dirty little secret.

She remembers the guilt, the anguish, the disgust that built on her day on day as her baby bump grew and she knew that she didn't know who the father of her child was.

Remembers that the joy she felt the first moment she held her baby son faded far too quickly to worry and shame and all too painful reminders.

She can recall, down to the smallest detail, how Fitz reacted the moment she told him she couldn't have sex with him anymore. How confused he looked, how bereft and lost he looked – like a little boy left alone. She'd wanted to tell him then, but the usual disgust and fear had crept up on her like a shadow.

…

Standing in that room, with Fitz the hypocrite screaming at her for screwing Andrew, she wants to tell him the truth.

When he asks her – no, demands her - to tell him what she gave up for him, she wants to tell him how it felt to feel so guilty for not loving her son like she should and so full of disgust at herself that she cannot let her husband – her wonderful husband whom she loved more than world - so much as touch her, and so ashamed of herself that she wanted to die rather than face another day.

But she doesn't. Because she's not a victim.

And anyway, Olivia gets there first, opening the door and giving her an exit – an easy route out.

…

She can remember when her mother hinted to her and Fitz that one child was not enough.

Fitz had asked her, after that, if another child was a possibility. Jerry was still young, and the guilt was still killing her – but she saw a way back into her marriage, into Fitz's life again because they were beginning to spiral apart – a spiral that would lead to presidency and infidelity and so many, too many, lies.

So she said yes, and she let him touch her for the first time in two years. The first time they tried, she froze up and Fitz let it go. The second time she had six glasses of scotch in her and she still was barely responsive, but despite this, nine months later, Fitz was cradling his darling daughter and they were as far apart as ever.

…

She told Andrew, she thinks, because she wanted to know what it felt like – to say those words, to put them out into the world. A test run, she concedes, to see if she would ever have the nerve to tell her husband. That and he was owed an explanation because he saved her life.

When she told Andrew, she saw a look in his eyes. A flicker of pity.

And Mellie Grant is no victim.

And maybe that's why she can never tell Fitz. She doesn't want to tell him because she couldn't bare to see that flicker in his eyes. To see him pity her.

She is novictim.

Or maybe she expects the worst to happen. As time goes on, she knows that likelihood of her speaking dwindles as does the likelihood that even if she does, Fitz will not believe her.

It's a vicious cycle. She is scared that he will chose not to believe her, so she doesn't tell him, but the longer she leaves it, the more likely it is that he won't believe her.

…

She's glad that Andrew clearly isn't listening to their conversation. She knows he is clever enough to put two and two together and to get to the truth.

He probably would have stormed in and told Fitz himself or forced her hand and made her tell him somehow.

And she knows, deep inside, that if her husband ever does discover the truth, it has to come from her.

It has to.

…

All she's ever done is to protect him.

He might not see it like that and to most people to would seem like she hates him, but the truth is so much more complicated.

She loves him, has done for what feels like a lifetime. But the people they've become are strangers and sometimes she hates him so terribly she does stupid things like going on national TV and telling the world her husband was unfaithful.

…

She nearly tells him, but then Olivia's in the room, and the moment's gone.

…

A/N I recently started watching Scandal and having just watched Season 3 ep 15, I had to write this.