AN: Thank you so much for your reviews on the last chapter! It's so encouraging when people seem to like your work, and I hope you guys like this one too.
After Liv leaves, Fitz tries to go back to sleep. He tosses and turns, wrapped in sheets that smell like her, and them, but his brain is worrying; loudly.
Nobody calls a crisis manager in the middle of the night for legal advice. Something bad has happened, and where most people run in the opposite direction when that happens, Liv's job (and his, too, occasionally-slash-often) requires that she do the exact opposite of that. This isn't the first time that this has happened, far from it in fact, and he knows that it almost certainly won't be the last, but he can't just stop himself from worrying about her. He understands that it's her job to hear her clients say jump and respond how high, and he knows that her job and her business are incredibly important to her, and he knows that he would never, ever ask her to give that up just because it's keeping him up at night. But sometimes… sometimes he really wants to. Times like, for instance, tonight.
Although, he has to admit, he probably only feels this way because he'd gotten used to her working less – she's only just now getting back into working the kind of schedule she used to have. She'd slowed things down, using Abby as a proxy multiple times so that she could focus on things a little closer to home.
When he and Mellie had finally officially separated for good a little less than six months ago, Liv had been right there with him. He knows that she and Karen talk on the phone all the time, sometimes daily, and Karen now comes home from school for at least two weekends a month, more if her homework schedule allows – something she hasn't done since they were living in California. He's watched her earn Teddy's trust and slowly coax him out of his shell, happy to spend time with him when Fitz knows he's not going to be out of the office in time to put him to bed, and he's reasonably sure that Liv is Teddy's favorite person on the planet after his sister, given how happy he always seems to see her. Truth be told, he's been amazed at how, in such a relatively short space of time, they've become this steady little family unit – something that neither Fitz nor Olivia had at his children's age or have had since then, either.
He sometimes wonders if they are, at least in part, living a little vicariously through the lives they're trying to give Karen and Teddy now. Sensing that sleep is going to remain elusive for the immediate future, he gets out of bed and pulls on the sweatpants he'd left on the chair in the corner of her room. Whilst he wanders through her apartment, he wonders – not for the first time – if giving his children the childhood he and Liv had dreamed of at their age is really such a sensible (and realistic) goal. The world is a different place today than it was when they were growing up, and Karen and Teddy are not them.
But life is a complicated thing. So are love affairs and families and friendships and partnerships and all relationships – and nothing proves that more than Fitz and Olivia. Fitz, who doesn't even know how to untangle his relationship with his late Father, and who will never understand how his parents relationship began never mind how it lasted as long as it did, and Olivia who… well. Olivia who's past is like something out of the darkest Jerry Springer episode ever made. One of the only souvenirs that she has from her childhood is a VHS tape that lives on her bookshelf between Pride and Prejudice and 1984 – a video of her and her parents sat around a dining room table with a birthday cake in front of her covered with eight candles, happy and laughing and painfully normal.
He found her watching it one night a few months ago, sat on the edge of her seat on the couch, crying her eyes out. He can't imagine what this has been like for her – he always knew that his Father was evil, perhaps not to the degree to which he turned out to be, but evil nonetheless. Olivia knew only that her Father was distant; neglectful and unkind, perhaps, but the true depths of his cruelty were hidden from her, only to be exposed years later all at once and in the most unfathomably terrible fashion.
His chest clenches at the thought of what Rowan had done to prove it to her, at the thought of running backstage with his son's lifeless body in his arms… he drops the tape onto her coffee table and walks away from it; down the hall back to her bedroom. He leaves his clothes in a pile on the end of the bed and heads into her en suite, hoping that a hot shower might help him to get some sleep.
He steps out of the shower twenty minutes later and immediately checks his phone to make sure that he hasn't missed a call from her, but sighs with frustration when he realizes that he hasn't. She hasn't tried to call him, or even text him, not once. His gaze flicks to the clock on her nightstand – it's going on four AM – how could he still not have heard from her?
She has a detail, he reminds himself, they will cut down anything that so much as looks like a threat before it gets close enough to share air with her. She's okay, she's going to be okay, stop it.
He grabs his phone and dials her number, unsure why tonight feels different – it feels like there's a reason to be worried, though he couldn't tell you what it is if you asked – and the line rings and rings and rings with no answer. When the line cuts itself off because it's been ringing too long, he drops the phone to the bed beside him. You're being paranoid. She has a detail. Calm. Down.
His eyes go to his phone again, still and silent on the bed beside him, and then to the clock, again. 04:05. He sighs deeply and falls back against her bed, running one hand over his face. Easier said than done.
The clock hits five thirty in the morning, and the phone rings again, the one containing only one number, and Liv watches it ring and ring and ring without answering it. She hates to do it, really she does, but she also really, really doesn't want to lie to Fitz about something so huge. If she answers the phone to him, he will hear in her voice that something is going on, and this isn't the kind of conversation that you can have over the phone.
"You might need to answer that." Huck says, and Liv turns quickly to look at him. "We tested the boy's blood and he's AB Negative. Unless you know Ge- his blood type, you're going to have to ask his Father." He corrects himself at the last second so as not to risk having any of the few people milling around in the same corridor overhear their conversation.
"How did you do it so fast?" Liv asks in lieu of answering his earlier question. She can't think of any way she could ask Fitz something like that without letting him know that something is definitely going on.
"Quinn did it the high school way. Pricked his finger, broke into one of the labs while I kept watch."
Liv nods, barely paying attention. "Can you hack it?" She asks.
"The President's son's medical file?" Huck asks her skeptically, his voice dropping until it's barely audible.
"You've hacked worse." Liv points out, dropping her own voice to match his, "I really don't want to ask him if I don't have to, not yet, not when we're not sure."
Huck looks at her searchingly, not understanding. "You know it's him." He says, "I saw it on your face the second you saw him."
"He died." Liv whispers harshly, "He was buried, there was a funeral. It's just- it's not possible."
"Then how do you explain what's going on?" Huck asks, "I'll find a way do the DNA test for you, Liv, but I'm telling you, we need to start working on a plan to get him out of here. It won't be long before someone recognizes him, and if his Father finds out about this on TMZ instead of from you…" He trails off, and Liv has to acknowledge there's definitely some truth to that. Genuinely Gerry or not, the boy in the examination room across the hall from where they're sitting right now bares an uncanny resemblance to Fitz' Gerry, and it wouldn't be impossible for someone to get suspicious.
"Get me his blood type. ABNeg is rare, if it's a match, I'll call him." Liv bargains, and Huck nods, standing up. "He still hasn't said anything?"
"As far as I know he hasn't said a word." Huck confirms, and Liv sighs, leaning back in her seat as Huck heads off to go in search of an unoccupied computer.
It feels like hours before Huck returns, and she spends the whole time while she waits watching through the glass window in the door as the boy who is maybe not, but in truth almost certainly is, Gerry Grant lies motionless on the bed. He's hooked up to all the same machines Fitz' was after he was shot and he's so pale he's almost grey with it. How could this be possible? She wonders to herself, Gerry died. He was buried. He was gone. When Huck does return perhaps fifteen minutes later, he doesn't say anything. He just nods his head, and Liv feels all the air spill out of her lungs in one go.
The blood type is a match. It's not DNA confirmation, but given that he's a visual match to the boy she remembers and only 1% of white males in the United States have the blood type AB Negative… a DNA test is only going to tell her for sure what all the evidence is piling up to say on it's own. Gerry Grant is alive, and has spent the last eight months at the bottom of The Hole beneath B6-13. She's half convinced this has to be some kind of dream as she dials the phone linked only to Fitz.
"Go and brief Daniel and Martha on his imminent arrival." Liv tells Huck, standing up and glancing up and down the corridor as he nods and goes. The two agents who make up her secret service detail are standing on sentry duty at the end of the corridor and just outside the double doors separating it from the rest of the hospital respectively, and there's only three or four other people down here. She walks to the door behind which Gerry lies, and the phone rings only twice before he answers it.
"Livvie? Are you alright?"
"I- I don't know how to answer that." She tells him honestly, her forehead tipping to rest against the cold glass.
"Why, what's going on?" He asks, audibly concerned.
She takes a deep breath, "I need you to do something for me."
"Name it." He answers immediately, just wanting to know what's going on.
"First I need you to promise me that you won't ask me any questions yet." She tells him, "I don't have answers for you right now."
"Liv- no deal." He says, somewhere between exasperated and stern. She doesn't say anything, just waits silently to figure out what she's supposed to say, do- God, how is she going to do this?
"I will explain everything." She tells him, "I promise you that, but right now I just- I just need you to say, Yes, Olivia, I'm on my way, Olivia, without asking any questions at all, or jumping to conclusions, okay, can you do that?"
She hears him sigh in frustration on the other end of the line. "Yes, Olivia, I'm on my way, Olivia." He echoes back to her, emphasizing her full name to show his complete disagreement with this plan.
"Thank you." She tells him, breathing an internal sigh of relief, "I'm at James Madison."
"What, why?" He asks immediately, "What happened, are you okay?"
"Fitz…" She sighs, squeezing her eyes shut, "You promised."
"Just-" He stops, and she can imagine him gritting his teeth in frustration, "Just tell me you're okay."
"I'm okay." She promises him, "I just need you to get here as fast as you can without tipping anyone off. Daniel and Martha are handling things with the hospital so that everything is ready for you to arrive."
"I'm still at your apartment so I can be with you in ten minutes." He tells her, voice made short out of stress and sheer frustration at being in the dark with her once again – an echo of the way they used to handle everything in the name of plausible deniability.
Liv looks up when she hears fast walking footsteps on the floor. Fitz is striding towards her flanked by an agent on either side, striding towards her with purpose; his don't fuck with me walk and a displeased set to his face. She stands up and walks towards him far enough that he's not accidentally going to see into the hospital room where almost-certainly Gerry lies, still conscious but still mute before she can read him in first.
"I'm sorry." She tells him as he pulls her into his arms the second they're close enough.
"What on Earth is going on, Liv?" He asks her, "Talk to me."
"The call I received earlier was from Quinn." She begins, reminding herself not to hold her breath, "She asked me to go to Wonderland to meet her and Huck." She starts, and she can see in his face that he's one hundred per cent not happy about her having gone there, and she sets her hands on his chest almost as if to placate him preemptively. "When I got there she told me that they'd found someone, a boy; a live boy being kept prisoner in The Hole, only he'd been left with supplies – food, water, a blanket. They took me down there and-" She pauses, her heart pounding in her chest as she tries to force her voice not to shake, "Fitz… it was Gerry."
He stares at her without saying a word, shock and disbelief and grief warring on his face. "That's not… It- no." He shakes his head jerkily, before forcing out, "That's not possible."
"I didn't believe it at first, even though I- I recognized him the second I saw him." She can feel her eyes filling with tears and she blinks them furiously away.
"That's not possible." He breathes, repeating himself and struggling to get oxygen into his lungs.
"We don't have DNA confirmation back yet, but his blood type is a match." Liv tells him gently, glancing briefly towards his room, "He's in there."
"He's alive?" Fitz asks, his voice barely making a sound.
"It looks that way." She answers, deliberately keeping her voice soft – out of concern for Fitz rather than who might hear them. Other than possibly his agents, no one will, the whole floor has been shut down to civilians by now. She takes a step backwards, expecting him to follow her but he doesn't move, like he's rooted to the ground. "Come on." She tells him gently, holding out her hand for him to take.
He's looking at her the way he only ever does when he's heartbroken; the same way he'd looked at her when he'd left her apartment for the first time, the same way he'd looked at her when, during his second election, she'd told him there is no clean, just like there is no Vermont. She steps up towards him slowly, gently fitting her palm over his cheek. "I wanted to wait until we had the DNA confirmation but I realized I was going to have to ask you for something of his to do that, and I didn't want to keep you in the dark any longer."
"What if it's not him?" He whispers through a clenched jaw, staring over her head and feeling his eyes burn with tears he's determined not to let fall, "What if- what if I get my hopes up and this is just one of Rowan's cruel tricks?" She doesn't have an answer for that. She wraps her arms around his shoulders and he moves, finally, to wrap his arms around her waist in return. "I'm going to die." He tells her, voice made meek out of sheer terror, "If it turns out not to be him- I can't lose him again, I won't survive it, Liv."
She can't tell whether he means figuratively or… otherwise, and she turns her head to the side to kiss his jaw. She wants to tell him we're going to get through this but she's not sure she's got it in her to tell him that when she really has no idea what's going to happen at all. She reaches behind her back and takes one of his hands in hers, twining their fingers together.
He lets her lead him back down the corridor a little ways, and she opens the door and steps inside. He stops in the doorway with his eyes closed, and he takes a deep breath before he opens them to look straight at her; tunnel vision. She leads him forwards again, and he never takes his eyes off her as she closes the door.
She glances away from him to her left, looking at the boy lying in the bed, and finds her eyes fill with tears she can't force back this time. She looks back at Fitz and tells him quietly, "Look."
With his lips pressed into a thin line, he slowly, stopping and starting after each movement, turns his head. He sucks in a deep breath, fast, and lets it out just as quickly.
"Oh- God-" He stammers, momentarily not convinced his legs will hold him up, "That's my boy, that's my little boy-" he chokes out, his grip on her hand becoming near painful, and he doesn't let go when he moves to stand beside the bed. That's when his legs give out; when he reaches down to brush a hand over Gerry's freshly washed now-shoulder length hair.
He can't believe this is really happening – because things like this simply don't happen. Nobody gets this kind of respite from their grief, it just doesn't happen, it doesn't fucking happen. It's been eight months since a doctor in this very same hospital had declared him dead, since they'd buried him, and that means that for Gerry, it's been those same eight months that he's spent in a hole in the ground beneath B6-13.
Eight Months.
"Who did this?" He forces out between struggled breaths and gritted teeth, "Who did this to him, why would someone do this?"
"It had to have been Rowan," Liv tells him helplessly as she kneels down beside him with her arm wrapped around his back, "But as for how and why…" She trails off, "We're looking into it." She promises him, refusing to say the words I don't know out loud in this context, "Huck is tracking him down and Quinn is going through all of his most trusted former agents and trying to figure out who else was involved. No matter how powerful he was, he couldn't pull off something like this without help."
"I want them dead, Liv." He tells her, his furious anger broken up by his broken heart, "I want them found, beaten within an inch of their lives and then I want them dead."
"Hey." She says, turning his head to make him look at her, "We'll get them." She swears to him, "They will not get away with this." He turns his body into her; needing the comfort her contact gives him that no one else can. "He's safe." She whispers, "And he's checked in as a John Doe so even if someone comes looking for him they won't find him here, he's safe."
He looks back up at Gerry over the top of Liv's head as is promptly gripped with further shock when he realizes that his son's eyes are open, his gaze set firmly on the two of them and a tear rolling down the side of his face. "Gerry?" He says, standing so quickly he almost loses his balance, "Gerry, can you hear me?"
"We think so." Liv answers for him since she knows he won't answer for himself, "He's been conscious since we found him and the hospital have been running tests since we got him here. So far they haven't found anything other than dehydration and a few healing wounds, he just… won't speak."
"Did they hurt you?" Fitz asks him, "Is that why you don't want to talk? You're safe now, son, we won't let anything happen to you."
Gerry just looks up at him, and without saying a word he reaches shakily for Fitz' hand. He catches it, wishing with a marbled mix of frustration and desperation that he could force his hands to stop shaking. He wants, more than anything, to be strong for his son but truth be told he feels nothing close to strong right now; the farthest thing from it, in fact.
Liv's phone buzzes in her pocket and she turns away from Fitz and Gerry, wiping her cheeks to clear away the tears that have fallen.
Quinn:
Do you have a minute? We need to talk.
"Quinn needs me." Liv says, locking her phone and dropping it back into her pocket as she heads for the door, "I'll be back as soon as I can." Gerry shifts restlessly on the bed and Fitz squeezes his hand reassuringly when he notices.
"Livvie." Fitz says, and she stops and turns back around to face him. He seems to struggle with what exactly he wants to say to her for a minute before finally he manages, "Just- thank you."
"Of course." She whispers back, offering him a soft smile. "I'll be right back but call me if you need anything."
Fitz nods and as Liv reaches for the door handle she says, almost without meaning to actually say it out loud, "You need to call Mellie." They look at one another in silence, and it's a long time before he nods.
"I know. I- I'm going to wait." He tells her, "I'm going to need to give her solid proof to get her to believe this, and I think DNA might be about the only thing that'll cut it in this instance."
"We'll need something of his." Liv says, nodding, "And from there it'll be about twenty four hours before we get the results." She can understand his line of thinking though it sounds cruel to make Mellie wait. The truth is that for all her faults, Mellie had completely fallen apart when Gerry had died. It had been the guilt that got to her in the end – the final straw being the night three months after he'd died when she'd realized that she couldn't actually remember the last time she'd told her eldest son (or any of her children for that matter) that she loved him. Distraught and inconsolable, she'd thrown some things into a bag, called her lawyer and instructed him to file for a divorce with Fitz, and moved out that night. She wouldn't answer her phone, her email… nothing. They'd quickly tracked her down to her family's estate in Nashville but her step-father had insisted that they stay away and leave her alone. She'd been through enough, he said, and they'd been inclined to agree.
"We'll do it for her but I don't need the test. I know it's him." Fitz tells her, turning back to look at Gerry, who's eyes are huge and staring, full of tears as his free hand shifts on the bed like he's reaching out for something. "Gerry?" He says, voice full of concern, "What is it, what's wrong?" Gerry makes a noise of distress, his reaching becoming more desperate, and Fitz follows his eye line. He could be wrong, but it looks like his son is reaching out for Liv. "I think he wants you," He says, and Liv takes a handful of quasi-tentative steps towards him.
He stretches his hand towards her and she takes it automatically as soon as she's close enough. "He got scared when you said you were leaving." Fitz says quietly, looking up at Liv who's looking down at Gerry, "Do you have to talk to Quinn right now?"
Gerry's making pre-crying sniffling noises, his fingers opening and closing around her hand, and Liv doesn't answer Fitz, just takes in the sight of his son clutching at her hand with tears in her eyes.
"Liv?" Fitz whispers, the lump in his throat returning with full force.
"Um," She takes a deep breath to steady herself and takes her phone back out of her pocket, dialing Quinn's number, "Hold on, I'll- Hold on."
"What happened?" Quinn asks, answering almost immediately and guessing that Liv's calling to tell her she can't make it to meet with her as planned.
"It's not a good time." Liv says, forcibly steadying her voice, "Can we talk about this on the phone?"
"Definitely not." Quinn answers, "Hold on, I'll come to you."
"No," Liv says immediately, "We're not discussing this in front of him, he's been through enough."
"We don't exactly need to talk. I just need to show you something – actually, it might help if you could show it to the President, too." Quinn tells her, and Liv glances between Fitz and Gerry.
"What?" Fitz asks her.
"Quinn wants to come down here and show me- well, us, something. She says we don't need to talk, he won't hear anything."
Fitz looks down at Gerry, who's watching them talk to each other with his eyes flicking back and forth between them like he's watching a tennis match, "Would you be okay with that?" Fitz asks him, hoping that he'll finally open his mouth and answer, but Gerry just looks at him before briefly squeezing his hand. Fitz looks back up at Liv. "Alright." He nods, "But we stop immediately if it looks like it's getting to him."
Liv relays the answer to Quinn before they end the call, and she sets her phone down on the bedside cabinet, hoping that whatever information Quinn brings them, it will finally offer some answers, as opposed to just more questions.