The wind visibly disturbed the stillness of the trees, audibly rustling leaves as she tried to focus on the noise of it, but all she could feel was the pounding of something inside of her, something she'd dedicated herself to hiding, slowly surging out from the shadows. Long-suppressed, sprouting from only a few roots that she'd tried to snuff out with reminders of hotel rooms and shame, but it had begun to bloom from the moment he had shown up at her apartment a few hours earlier. He was here, she tried to remind herself, having to close her eyes against the keen blade of his presence. He had chosen her, boundlessly, consciously, actively. For a moment, she was a child, pressed up with her nose against the cold pane of glass, coveting joy, on the outside looking in, only she wasn't. This was her life and if she could be simple enough, naive? brave? enough, to believe in them, then she could have it.

The first breath she'd taken that morning had been filled with him, the scent of his skin, hidden in the crook of his collarbone. They had collapsed into an exhausted heap after passionately christening the numerous flat surfaces of her apartment and the memory had a smile tinged with smugness playing over her lips. Sex didn't hurt. Sex was easy. But the relaxed beating of his heart under her palm, the angle of her hips against the toned muscle of his thighs, the possessive arm around her waist that clung... these weren't simple. She supposed the normal word was "complicated" but that couldn't contain all their accumulated baggage.

She had untangled herself from the wanton mess of sheets, needing air, deep, cleansing gulps, too-cold and harsh. Something inside of her chest burned at the inhale and exhale and she couldn't decide if it was her lungs or her heart. She had thought she knew all the shades, the corners and planes and rough edges of sorrow, but she realized that pain was far more versatile than that. It could manifest in endless forms, each one more poignantly beautiful than the last. Now, as she felt the hard metal of the balcony railing digging mercilessly into the thin skin of her palm, she realized that hope was another kind of pain.

/

She slipped back underneath the covers of the bed, sliding until she met the solid surface of his chest, felt him stir slowly into waking. The first seconds of consciousness told everything, she knew. Here was the unadulterated truth. His lips curved sweetly upward, thoughtlessly, the pleasure moving over his face as he reached for her again. His fingers were gentle as they skimmed up along her spine, but the touch wounded her more deeply than the needy grasp of the night before. Her mind instantly leapt on each sensation, trying to capture every bit like a starving man greedy for each scrap. It was an active process to remind herself that more was a viable option now, to allow herself to lean back and look up at his face.

"Morning," he mumbled, his voice heavy with sleep, and she ran her fingertips along the swell of his bottom lip, indulging her desire to touch. The movement had him exhaling slowly, his eyes latching onto hers, the glow of lust appearing in them. The air suddenly felt thick with promises, their personal desires, and she extricated herself from his grasp, the room too full with the things she feared as she inched out of her bed.

"Morning," she replied over her back, moving easily to the hook where her forgotten bathrobe hung, the heat of his gaze making her feel far more exposed than her nudity at the moment. Slipping into it easily, she turned for a moment to meet his eyes before cocking her head toward her kitchen.

The quiet padding of her feet was a welcome break from the stillness, feeling separated from the rest of the world, the protective cocoon of her apartment. She knew she should have relished it, put worries aside like a normal human and focused on the significance of last night, but she couldn't. Her kitchen clock blared at her that it was nearly morning, and even while her hands busied themselves with the task of making coffee, her mind wandered back toward reality.

She was familiar with consequences, of the cold calculation of costs required to make correct choices. Sometimes she wondered if her gut was an instinctual response to a situation or just her mind's logical processing on hyperdrive. This wasn't who she was, all single-minded desire and selfish simplicity, bold and fearless. She felt familiar hands finding their way around her waist, dragging her back against his body as she felt her entire form stiffen in response. He registered it instantly and let his hands be gentle and light on her body.

"I don't know how to do this," she told him, nearly a whisper.

"Make coffee?" he asked teasingly, his attempt at humor falling flat as she stood completely still, poised on the edge of immense vulnerability. She wasn't used to this much honesty, but part of her felt that he had earned it. Perhaps she owed it to herself as well.

"Be unquestioningly happy." She closed her eyes for a moment, felt the gentle easing of his hands turning her to face him, moving herself back just enough so that she could breathe without the pressure of his body against hers.

"It's pretty easy," he retorted, his hands caught in mid-air before falling to his sides as he acknowledged her movement reluctantly. "It mostly involves more of us being together."

"Fitz," she softly chided him, crossing her arms over her chest as she leaned back against the hard surface of her countertop. "It's not that simple, and you know it. It's easy to believe that this is the happy ending when we're living in radio silence, but..."

"This isn't the happy ending," he interrupted. She raised an eyebrow as he stepped forward, crowding her space until he was close enough to touch, though he didn't. "I'm not a child, Olivia. I'm not here for the happy ending, I'm here for the start of it. For the beginning of mundane fights over our busy schedules, for heated arguments when one of your clients ends up presenting a conflict of interest, for the hundreds of daily difficulties that I know we'll have to face. I'm here because I've pressed pause on living my life, the life I want, for long enough. I'm here for us. Be here with me."

"That sounds like an exhausting way to live, Fitz," she responded, brutally honest for a moment.

"There are battles worth fighting. Aren't you a gladiator, Livvie?"

She meant to glare at him, but behind the challenge in his eyes was the reflection of her own uncomfortable vulnerability, the request for her to give something back to him, to choose him. Though she wasn't a hopeless romantic by any stretch of the imagination, she knew she had chosen him a long time ago, in an abandoned hallway where only the two of them existed. But she hadn't earned him. In another narrow hallway, she had chosen to give up the future she had imagined for them, allowing it to be wiped away with a single pained "yes." She had known then even as her mouth had opened, even as the word had spilled from her lips, that a betrayal so deep would leave indelible marks.

/

The water poured over them, hot enough to loosen her limbs, steaming up the sliver of space between their bodies. His hands were on either side of her head as her back pressed up against the slippery tiles of her shower wall, her back arching wantonly as his mouth lingered on hers, sampling. One leg was wrapped around his waist, and despite the water dripping from her forehead onto her face, their eyes were wide open, locked in passion as he drove her closer and closer until the pleasure ripped through her, clawing its way out from inside with a broken moan. Their gazing held, tying them together as his hands moved to frame her face in his hands, the intensity falling away as he smiled at her.

"Hi."

A beat, a slow inhale of courage, a moment of pure clarity.

"Hi."

He ran the towel slowly over her shoulders, wiping away the tiny droplets that tenuously clung to her skin, distracting her with his wandering hands. She couldn't stop the quiet laugh, running her fingers through his curls, making them even messier with the affectionate touch. He dried off her breasts now, the purposeful touch more arousing than effective in drying her off. He slid the towel around her back stroking down her spine as he dotted kisses along the flat surface of her stomach before standing up again.

His hand slid down her arm to slide her hand into his.

"Be here, with me."

"I'm here," she answered, basking in the warmth of their intimacy. Words had always been a barrier between them, too logical, too rooted in the cruelty of labels and rigid relationships, but silences had held them through. More than the shower, the gentleness of his touch, the unspoken connection as they watched one another yearning toward a future together, made her felt as though she'd shed the tough skin she wore in protection. She was transformed, soft and new, pink-skinned and clean.

Worthy of a happy ending.

/

"I love him," she whispered, her voice nearly cracking under the strain of wishing for something that seemed to move further and further out of her grasp with every measured breath, every rhythmic heartbeat.

But the world gave her words, cruel ones, devastating ones, crushing ones, honest ones, until they trapped her inside of their walls, until she couldn't see out from inside the prison of their past crimes.

"You are standing in the eye of the hurricane...the eye will pass, and the winds will kick up, and you, you are not tethered to anything."

"The love of your life is a red-handed, cold-blooded killer."

But most of all,

"She destroyed your life, and yeah yeah she'll end up fixing it for you, she'll break out the crazy glue, but only because she's the one who broke it in the first place!"

/

As she sat alone in her office, she peered down at the white hat inside of the cardboard box David had given to her, feeling her temple begin to ache from the force of her emotional exhaustion. Here, now, she could be weak for a moment, as she let her head rest against the high back of her swivel chair, glad for the silence. Fitz had tried to brush away the mistakes they'd made behind the label of the past, buried their terrible secrets and shortcomings and planted optimism in the space, waited for their life together to blossom from this tainted earth. For a blissfully ignorant moment, she had allowed herself to believe with him, that their choices were enough, that what they had between them, what they felt for one another was enough to guarantee them the chance for a lifetime.

The words of the past few days played over and over again in her mind, a sadistic loop of her failures. Her entire body felt heavy, bones aching, skin dragging her down, the soles of her feet rooting her firmly to the earth. Her gut had known all along, had tried to warn her that treason so grand would leave a scattered trail of wreckage. Now, she saw. Verna's blood was as much on her hands as it was on Fitz's. She had tried to scrub away the past, to free them from their sins by undoing the consequences, by bringing Billy to justice, but the damage was insidious. It had crawled inside of her, skin and bones and blood, until she hadn't even been able to recognize how far she'd strayed.

The white hat inside the box belonged to someone else, someone she had been in a past life, someone good and just and worthy. The stain of Defiance had rippled out from inside of her, warping everything into something ugly, beyond recognition, delusions and fiction.

Harrison had asked her, "What do you want?"

The answer swept through her, making her straighten her spine and lift her head, facing forward. Somewhere inside of her, the embers of her gut began to awaken and kept her eyes open, though she knew that the emotion roiling through her would be easily visible in them. She didn't care. She knew now. More than a happy ending, more than a future with Fitz, she wanted to feel clean again.

A/N: I seem to have an endless well of feels when it comes to the Scandal season 2 finale, so in my never-ending quest to process what happened, I ended up writing this. It's a break-up I could've handled. As always, my dear readers, comments are welcome (and appreciate and adored!)