Inheritance

A/N: Because the bit with Fitz and Olivia in the elevator in "A Criminal, a Whore, an Idiot and a Liar" was bullshit, plain and simple. A pox on the house of whoever is responsible for that character-assassinating tragedy. Here we go.

It is only a matter of time before it happens. Fitz can feel it starting at the dinner, throughout the Nevada story, through four glasses of scotch and Mellie's eyes on his father and Olivia's eyes on him.

Olivia's eyes, watching him throughout his father's little circus act, all those playful words masking contempt that had decades to boil between the both of them. Every time his father speaks to Olivia and calls her 'honey' or 'sweetheart', pointing fingers that had touched the skin of thirty-nine women who were not his wife, Fitz wants to break every single bone in that hand.

And then, all the eyes in the room watching him gather what little dignity he has left as he rises from the table. Like he's the bad guy.

Maybe he is. But he can't bring himself to care as he pours himself another glass, because the scotch and gravity is all that's holding him together at the moment.

Fitz knew it would happen. There was no way to warn anyone else about it, not without sounding petulant and emotional and whiny because they all think that he needs Gerry Grant. Trying to explain this to Cyrus would have been impossible. Mellie would've laughed in his face. And Olivia…he didn't want Olivia to know.

But it's too late for that now, he thinks to himself as he stumbles towards the elevator, head pounding and hands shaking. Olivia is inside and as the doors close them off from the rest of the world, Fitz wishes he could allow himself to feel safe.

The uncomfortable silence that had swept over the dinner table has found its way into the elevator, sapping all energy from the small space and leaving Fitz feeling edgy and tense. The sensation wars with the heady, disconnected wave the liquor has washed over his body. He feels tired. He feels like a child again. He feels absolutely nowhere, pathetic and alone and the weight of Olivia's eyes on him could bring him to his knees.

The elevator dings. He has to say something.

"Just another politician with daddy issues," Fitz murmurs, every syllable a fight to get out.

"Don't," Olivia says simply, finally looking away from him and down to her Blackberry.

"Don't what?"

"Don't act like what happened can be dismissed."

"How would you know?" he tosses at her. Olivia raises her dark head once more and the look she gives him makes Fitz want to melt into the floor.

"There's…a lot I want to say to him," he says carefully, superfluous though it is because Olivia knows him and he's wearing his rage like a medal. Or a scar.

"I have a few choice words for him myself," she responds, slipping her phone into her bag.

"He shouldn't speak to you like that," he mumbles, feeling his insides twist with something deeper than hate. "He…doesn't have the right to talk to you like that."

"I'm more concerned about how he spoke to you," she says, with so little hesitation and Fitz loves her for this reason alone. Aides and campaign strategists and all the employees running his presidential ticket walk on eggshells around him, treat him with too much respect, like he's already the President. They monitor their words and don't look him in the face, but Olivia isn't like that. She's never been afraid to speak plainly in front of him, never afraid of his reaction.

Olivia squares her shoulders. "Do you want to talk about it?" she asks, and Fitz inanely wonders what the hell they've just spent the last two minutes doing. "Let's get a cup of coffee in you and we'll talk."

"Why?"

"You're too drunk to have this conversation."

"I'm not drunk enough to have this conversation." He scrubs a hand over his face. Suddenly every part of his body aches. But after weeks of smiling and of watching his friends and staff be charmed off their feet by his father, the words come tumbling out anyway.

"I haven't seen him since my mother died. He didn't even show up in the hospital. I sat there with her and held her hand and all she wanted was him." His voice cracks and he coughs. He swallows before speaking again. "Do I look like him?"

"What?"

"Dad. Do I look like my dad?"

Fitz can see that she doesn't want to answer him, but he pins her down with his gaze until she does. "Yes," she says, tilting her chin up in that defiant sort of way that makes him believe that Olivia can truly do anything. "You have his eyes."

Fitz nods and closes them. "He and Mom had terrible fights. They'd yell—or rather, she would yell and he would storm out. After, she always had a hard time looking at me. I didn't understand why until I got older."

"How old were you when they divorced?"

Fitz scoffs, because you can't really call what happened between his parents a divorce. "Twelve. He's the one that left. Right before, he told me that I didn't deserve his name. I would never be as great a man as he was. Is." Fitz waves his hand. "What a thing, huh? To tell a twelve-year-old."

Olivia is watching him with a look that says more than words ever could. His head lolls towards her and her face blurs before his eyes. "I told Mellie that story once, when I was running for the governor's seat. Do you know what she said? 'Fuck when you were twelve years old'," he says, barely able to mimic her voice past the lump that has formed in his throat. "'You're a grown man, Fitz. Get over it'." He snorts bitterly. "She's always loved him, though. If it had been within her power, I think she would've rather married him than me."

Olivia nods. After a moment, she licks her lips. "We don't get to choose who we call family. The best we can do is try to survive them."

And there's something about the way that she says it, something that Fitz recognizes from his own past that makes him turn and focus on Olivia, studying her carefully controlled expression. It suddenly strikes him that for all that Olivia knows about him, he knows so little about her. He wants to ask what her own childhood was like, if she had a good life and loving parents but looking at her now, he isn't sure he can handle the answer. The idea of her going through the tiniest drop of what he went through growing up rips him apart inside.

"Liv," he says softly, but the moment is gone and Olivia faces the doors again.

"He's jealous of you."

"You think I don't know that?" The liquor makes him snap at her. "He lives to see me fail. And even if I win, it still won't matter. I still will have lost, because I'm doing things his way."

"We don't have to do anything he says, or use his tactics."

Fitz stumbles, head falling back into the wall with more force than it would have had he not been drunk and tired and pissed off. "You don't get it. I'm not talking about his advice or his quips or his little dirty campaign tactics. I'm talking about you," he snarls, raising his head to glare at her. "You and me. I'm doing things his way."

And Olivia has nothing to say to that, only adding fuel to the fire lashing at Fitz's insides like a whip.

"Looks like I got more than his eyes, though, huh? Worthy of Dad's name after all," he mutters, oblivious to the absolutely wrecked look on Olivia's face. He raises one shaky hand to shield his eyes from her. "I'm tired of this. So tired."

The elevator dings up another floor and the sound is all there is for a long moment.

"We can get rid of him," Olivia says eventually. "I can do it, I can spin it for you. You acknowledge his legacy and what he's done for the state of California but you want to put distance between his achievements and your own, step out of his shadow—"

Fitz barks out a laugh. "There is no stepping out of my father's shadow. It'll smother you before you can escape."

And it doesn't matter anyway. Olivia could send his father to Jupiter and it still wouldn't be far enough. Fitz's father is always, will always be there under his skin, in his eyes and in his head. He's there in the guilt that eats away at him on the days when Olivia's smile isn't enough to make it recede.

"I swore," he says, more to himself than to her, "after Gerry and Karen were born, that I was going to be different. I would be there for them, that no matter how bad things with Mellie got, they would never know it. I wouldn't let it touch my children."

"You haven't," she says softly, and Fitz thinks that even she knows that she's lying.

"I swore," he repeats. His lips curl up in a smile despite the burning behind his eyes. "God, if he ever found out…"

Fitz can imagine it, Gerry Grant discovering all about Olivia. It would make his fucking day, to see his only child who he's called self-righteous and entitled and weak skulking around with another woman. After all those nights of Fitz's mother yelling and Fitz himself yelling when he got old enough to try to stand up to him, Gerry would find it all so hilarious that he'd laugh himself into a heart attack.

And how would Fitz explain that? What would he say? What could he say, after years and years of neglect and watching his father slowly kill his mother's spirit? He would stand there, paralyzed under eyes exactly like his own and try to feebly explain in words that would never be enough all that Olivia meant to him, that he wasn't like his father.

Love. Soul mates. Yin and Yang. Fitz goes over it in his head and it all sounds so ridiculous. Just because it's love this time, with him and this particular woman, doesn't make it any better. Not by a long shot. Fitz knows that one day, his son is going to grow up and read the signs and look at him the same way Fitz looked at his father. A legacy of politics, infidelity and broken hearts. Fitz wakes up in the morning and goes to bed at night thoroughly hating himself.

Olivia says something, but Fitz doesn't hear her over the sound of his father's laughter in his head.

"What?"

"We can stop," Olivia repeats, and Fitz marvels at her. She's so much stronger than he is, just for giving him the option.

Because stopping is not an option, would never be an option, not for Fitz. Take Olivia away from him and you may as well take every breath from his body. The world has no color without her in it with him; Fitz doesn't know how he managed to live before she came into his life. He can count the precious few nights he is able to spend in the comfort of her arms, nights that he spends worrying he'll leave bruises on her skin from holding her so tightly but too scared of what could happen the moment he lets her go to loosen his grip. He couldn't handle losing her, to let her be just one more thing he's lost to his father.

But to have her is to look in the mirror every morning and see his father's face staring back at him and Fitz can't handle that either, not after forty-seven years of hearing his father's voice in his head telling him all the things he can't do because he isn't strong enough or smart enough or good enough. Not after too many nights of hearing his mother crying herself to sleep and knowing that no matter how much Fitz loved her, it would never be enough to put the light back in her eyes. She went to her early grave loving his father still and Fitz will go to his loathing him for it.

No matter how he tries to tell himself that this, this right here with Olivia is different than his father screwing anything in a skirt, casting lecherous eyes on secretaries and campaign aides and hookers, Fitz knows it's never going to be enough. Olivia's eyes, as captivating as they are, are never going to be enough to make true the lies Fitz tells himself to get through another day he has to face knowing that she isn't his and would never truly be. Olivia's hands, delicate and caring and strong, so strong, are never going to be able to reach the invisible scars that are laced beneath his skin, let alone heal them. She'll try and he'll let her because she is a fixer and he needs fixing but it will never, ever be enough to take away the parts of his father that are forever ingrained in his soul.

Fitz stares at Olivia and feels his eyes grow damp. "I can't," he croaks out, hating himself for it all over again. "I can't."

Olivia reaches out a hand to cup his cheek. He may not get to choose who he calls family, but he cannot choose to stop loving her, either. So Fitz kisses Olivia because it's the only thing he can do, and he thinks that this hurts just a little bit more than heartbreak.

END