Due to my desire to procrastinate writing a motion, you get two chapters in one day. Reviews are really appreciated.
OPA (November 16, 2016 at 1 AM)
"This doesn't make any sense," Olivia says, pacing back and forth as she struggles to contain her emotions. "It would have made sense for him to say this a year ago, when I left, but why now?"
"Liv, I said the same thing, but right now, we can't focus on the why. We have to focus on how we are going to respond, because you will not get back into the Oval if you become a political liability for Mellie."
"I know that!" Liv snaps.
"Do you want to prepare to fire back? Do you want to fire pre-emptively? Do you want to try to prevent the article from coming out by digging up dirt? How do you want to handle this?"
"I don't know...I'm thinking...prepare to strike back but hold your fire. See if you can hack into the New Yorker website and get the audio of the interview. And see what you can dig up on Abby."
"Why are we digging up dirt on Abby? She's the one who gave you a heads up on this."
"Because the president's not behind this, she is. She's the one telling him I can't be trusted."
"Okay, Liv, are you sure you're not just believing what you want to believe?"
"Just do what I said!" she snaps.
Quinn and Huck go back to the conference room, and Liv closes the door to her office. She stands against the wall for a minute, struggling not to cry. Then she whips out her phone and calls Abby.
"Nice work. You finally succeeded at getting him to throw me under the bus. How'd you do it?" she snarls.
"I didn't do anything," Abby says smugly. "I was actually surprised. But I guess he's tired of your games. He's been out with Angela Webster several times now, and I guess that's helped free him from this spell you had him under and enabled him to see you for who you really are, who you've become."
"And who have I become, Abby?"
"A manipulative bitch who's trying to claw back into power and doesn't care who she hurts along the way."
Olivia looks shell-shocked, but quickly fires back. "Well, you tell him that if this interview gets published, don't count on me falling on my sword to protect his legacy. That's what the person he thought I was would have done. But apparently I'm not that person."
"You're not, Liv, not anymore," Abby insists, her voice showing less anger and more sadness. "You're lost, and you don't see it. You are not the same person who picked me up when Charles broke my nose and fractured my ribs. You're so desperate to get back into the Oval that you don't care about justice or the truth, or even whether one of your oldest friends might actually be innocent. I saw you on election night. You were scheming about how to get the electors to vote for Mellie within 5 minutes of Frankie Vargas being shot. I don't know when you took off your white hat exactly, but it's gone. The Olivia I knew is gone. And the irony is, if you were still the person you used to be, if you still trusted your gut instead of ignoring it when it suits your ambitions, you probably would have won the election and wouldn't be in this position."
"I am so sick of you getting on your high horse and judging me like I'm the only one who's changed."
"I don't deny it. I've changed too. I fell on my sword out of blind loyalty to you one too many times, and I'm done. I'm not doing it anymore. So go ahead and hit back. I don't know what you'll hit back with, because all of his skeletons involve doing favors for you. But trust me, this interview is only the beginning if you don't drop this witchhunt. Otherwise, the White House communications staff won't hesitate to go after you with everything they've got, because what you're doing is dangerous for the country."
"And what exactly have they 'got'?" Olivia demands. "If you're talking about the abortion, I told you, I'm not ashamed."
"Oh, that's the tip of the iceberg. How do you think people will react if they knew you slept with your candidate's VP choice the night before his wedding? That's enough to prove that you really are just a trashy homewrecker who seduces powerful men, and good luck selling a love story twice. Americans may fall for that crap once, but I don't think you'll be able to do it this time. Hey, it's understandable. Fitz only had a year left in office when you left him. Jake's an up and coming politician, so it makes sense you'd want to switch horses. You never loved Fitz. You were always in it for the power. Whether or not that's true, you can bet that's how we'll portray it if you hit back, and destroy what's left of your reputation. You might succeed at getting Mellie in the Oval, but you'll be so toxic that she'll drop you like a hot potato. And I doubt you'll have too many other clients knocking on the door, especially since you lost the election and in fact have never actually won a presidential election on the merits. Give up this crusade, and I'll see what I can do to kill the New Yorker piece. You have 12 hours to decide," Abby says before hanging up.
Olivia just stands there, shell-shocked, unable to contain her tears anymore.
OPA (November 16, 2016 at 1:15 AM)
"I'm in!" Quinn says proudly as she hacks away. "Now I just have to find the audio file of the interview."
OPA (November 16, 2016 at 1:20 AM)
Olivia tries to pull herself together when Huck comes into her office.
"We got the audio of the interview," he says gently. "It matches the transcript. Do you want to hear it for yourself?" he asks gently.
"No," she says, wiping away tears as she leads Huck back to the conference room. "You guys can go home. You should all go home. You've been working around the clock for days."
"Go home? We can't go home," Quinn says. "We need to handle this."
"No, we don't," Olivia says, her spirits thoroughly deflated. "It's my problem. I'll handle it. Please, go home. I'd like to be alone right now."
Quinn and Charlie eventually agree. Huck goes with them but then turns around and walks back into Olivia's office, where she is sitting on the floor crying, much like Huck did in 7:52.
"I said go home," she says, not looking up.
"I'm not just going to leave you here like this," Huck insists. "When I was crouched in this corner you didn't leave me, so I'm not going to leave you."
Olivia nods and continues crying with her head buried in her hands, then eventually looks up at Huck. "When did I become such a monster?" she asks. "Was it when I agreed to Defiance? Was it when I let my father out of jail? Was it when I walked away from Fitz? Was it when I killed Andrew? Was it when I forced Jake onto the stage at the convention? Or have I always been a monster and just didn't know it?"
"You're not a monster," Huck insists. "I'm a monster. I enjoy killing. You're not a monster."
"Abby's right. Within 5 minutes of Vargas being shot, I was thinking about whether there was an opportunity for Mellie."
"What were you thinking about for the first 4 minutes?" Huck asks, catching Olivia off guard. She looks at him curiously.
"Why does that matter?"
"Because whenever I think about my family, it makes me want to go out and kill, because thinking about them hurts," Huck says. "That's when my guy comes out, because I don't want to hurt. I think your guy is out right now because you don't want to hurt either. I think you started thinking about how to get Mellie in the Oval within 5 minutes of Vargas' assassination because the first four minutes you were thinking about something that really hurt."
"You mean when Fitz was shot?" Olivia asks, realization hitting her.
"Yeah."
"I honestly don't remember. I remember sitting in the bathroom with Mellie when people started shouting, and then I don't remember what I was thinking about for the few minutes after that. I don't understand why Abby's so mad at me, but she's right. I'm not the same person I used to be. I don't know if I would give stop to give you change in the Metro today. I don't know if I would risk outing Defiance to save Quinn. I don't know if I would be able to sabotage my own client by taking away his wife mid-campaign after he broke her..." Olivia pauses, then jerks her head up like a lightbulb went off.
"Do we have pictures of Abby from when I took her to the hospital, after her husband beat her half to death?"
"Yeah, why? You want me to leak them?"
"No, I just want to see them."
Huck digs into the files and finds the pictures and brings them to Olivia.
"That's what I thought. She had a broken jaw, not a broken nose."
"Why does that matter?"
"Because on the phone, she said that her husband broke her nose."
"Maybe she forgot."
"I don't think she would forget something like that!" Olivia says. "She has a pin in her jaw and two of her teeth are fake."
"Are you sure she said nose when you talked to her tonight?"
"Yes, I'm sure."
"You think she's trying to send you a coded message?" Huck asks.
"It's the only thing that makes sense," she insists. "Somebody got to her. Someone's either threatening her or using her. They may have gotten to Fitz too. But I don't know who, or how."
"What else did she say? Maybe that will help."
"She said that if I don't stop investigating she'll tell the world that I sle...wait, how would she know that?"
"Know what?"
"Can you see if you can find any calls or communications between Abby and Jake, or my father?" she asks, ignoring the question.
"Abby uses a secure White House phone now, and Jake's the head of the NSA. I don't think I can get in."
"Those calls are recorded and archived. They wouldn't use those. Check Jake's campaign phone and Abby's personal cell. And see if they had any meetings, on or off the book. Get Quinn and Charlie back here and tell them I'm sorry. In the meantime, can you bring me a laptop so I can go through more campaign videos while you hack?"
"Yeah. But what about stopping the article? Isn't that more urgent?"
"I think they're related," Olivia says. "I think the article is designed to be a distraction. Get me back in the media spotlight so it's harder for us to keep investigating the assassination. I think someone doesn't want us to find something and we need to figure out what it is."
-
NSA DIRECTOR'S OFFICE (November 16, 2016 at 1:30 AM)
Jake is sitting at his desk when an aide comes in.
"You wanted me to let you know if there were any attempts to infiltrate any media outlets, sir, in case our enemies try to use the power vacuum to spread misinformation."
"Yes. Did something happen?"
"It looks like someone infiltrated the New Yorker's servers about half an hour ago. Here's the activity log, if you want to see it."
Jake takes the file and scans it, then picks up his phone and calls Abby. "Good job. They took the bait," he tells her.
Abby hangs up looking worried and conflicted, like she is in over her head.
-
I hope you liked this chapter and are enjoying the mystery. I apologize for the lack of Olitz scenes but I want this to read like a real episode of Scandal. The next chapter will show some events that happened the same day as this chapter from different characters' perspectives and fill in some of the gaps that this one left, including whether and why Fitz really threw Olivia under the bus during the interview.