Hi. This will be multi chapter, but short. It's my view into characters heads based on episodes I watch. It will be heavy H or E but some days the musings will be from other POV's.
This first set is from the first few episodes. Pilot, Another Benghazi and The Operative
Brenda (who is a huge fan but who owns nothing. These are Barbara Hall's, Morgan Freeman's and Lori McCreary's
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Growing Pains
My wife is overwhelmed and I am worried about her. The problem is that I cannot simply tell her to stop what she's doing; we don't have that kind of a relationship. We are a team. We always have been. In fact nearly 25 years of marriage have taught us that when we don't work together, neither one of us feels good in our own skin. My Elizabeth is the new Secretary of State. I am immeasurably proud of her. I have no problem standing at her side and letting her be the one who shines. She's not mean about it, she doesn't see me as subservient or unmanly. In fact I know she respects me more because of how I treat her. I wasn't always this cool about things. I made some bad calls in the past, and I saw how that hurt her. She tells me I am her touchstone. She sometimes mourns her ability to stay sane and ethical in this job. Hell, the other night when she asked me to give the Russian foreign ministers daughter an A to save a man's life, I tore her head off. She was chastened. I was chastened. We both question our parenting style. We spied on our 15 year old daughter's texts until yesterday. We have a 20 year old who's dropped out of college, a sad teenager who might be getting cozy with the varsity quarterback as I write this, and my son, our son, has anarchist tendencies. Elizabeth and I feel a weight. We have to get these kids on track and work together. I almost let Stevie run a game on me recently and that time it was my wife who detected it. She's not Elizabeth the unethical anymore than I am Henry the holy.
I enjoyed it when she was getting her doctorate and teaching at UVA. I knew where she was everyday. I knew she was safe. We lived on a horse farm and had quite a bucolic existence. We felt it was time. I flew in combat during Desert Storm and she was recruited by the CIA in college. We have both spent a lot of time terrified we would lose one another to chaos in the Middle East. However tonight as I sit here and watch her brow furrow as she works, my own tradecraft- spying on her while I write in my journal- I am aware that everyday now she is at risk in ways I never even thought possible. In academia she had some enemies. Vesuvian contractors for one. She condemned them last year in an article and here she is working with them. The entire world knows who she is, and she is expected to manage problems with a lot of very powerful and corrupt men. Because she's fourth in line for the Presidency. She's savvy, she's strong and she is decent. She works like a bulldozer to get things done, and her doggedness is a craft she honed starting in childhood. She'll take the punches, the embarrassment and the awkwardness of diplomatic relations and she faces it head on, cheeks blazing. She has to convince Washington, and the world that she was the right choice for the job, even when she's too terrified to admit she might not be ready. I love that about her. She is my best friend, my lover and the light of my world. She's patriotic but not nationalistic and she's insanely intelligent. Elizabeth is athletic, joyful and sexy. She's playful and sweet. Her parents died when she was barely 15, and she had a brother to raise when she needed raising herself. My wife figured it out. She doesn't run from a challenge. She'll take a bullet for any underdog and she worries about me and the kids. She was there for me through every challenge I ever faced since we met. I've been smitten since I first met her. I used to tell her, naively, that I would never let anything bad happen to her. She kissed me soundly when I made that proclamation and told me she couldn't abide that notion, sweet as it was. She was just 20 years old when she said that. Her reasoning was that life was full of bad things, and that she had to handle her share - bear her load. I countered by telling her that she had already borne more than most and she shrugged. She asked me to be with her while she lived through life and I was the one who choked. Life? A whole life? I was 25 and I ran away for a few days. She took me back, and it took more than my insane marriage proposal to truly gain her trust again. I am thankful she allowed me to do so. Her reasoning was that she didn't want anyone else and she sensed I would be back. She knew I was afraid. She was too; and we worked it out. I can't see how to live if she is injured, or jailed, or killed. Every morning now she heads off to do a job that threatens these things. She's admitted she talks about things with me too much, and she has to be more secretive about what she is entrusted to know. I know that if she makes a mistake the best outcome will be a reprimand, removal from office comes next and if it's deemed necessary charges so severe she'd be locked in a hole until she died.
Don't even get me started on public opinion. As a woman, her clothes, hair, shoes, mannerisms and voice are all criticized. She has told me that she has to flirt, prostrate herself, wear head coverings and put up with a lot of abuse to get anything accomplished. I remember when she was teaching and she had a stalker. She reported it, and pursued everything by the book. Still, she was followed and teased and bullied until one night I caught her examining bruises on her arm. I was ready to commit murder and she stopped me. Her eyes were wild and she said she simply needed to know she had me and the kids to come home to. Bruises heal, nightmares go away but a husband in jail and fatherless children plus a stalker was not helpful. She wasn't going to let fear rule her life. I cried that day, and my wife comforted me. I know Russell Jackson drives her crazy. I know her staff hasn't quite figured her out. She feels pretty alone right now. Even Conrad doesn't always have her back. Then she comes home to family issues. Her privacy is almost non existent. She misses driving. She misses the horses. She isn't used to wearing all these fancy clothes and heels every single day. Her Chief of Staff actually came to me and asked for my help in curbing my wife's tendencies to kick of her shoes, rumple her hair, get ink on her hands. I told Ms. Tolliver that I valued my life, and that Conrad knew all of this. My wife lives in jeans and untucked t shirts. So more days then she would like, Elizabeth wears a dress, or a jacket, keeps extra clothes at the office and just puts band aids on the blisters. She's got long limbs so America can deal with the fact that her shirt cuffs stick out and she doesn't have time to nurture fake nails or coloured nail polish. She hates having the shorter hair, but apparently ponytails are unprofessional as is long hair. She doesn't complain much at all. A quip, a glare and a lot of finger biting tell me she's coping. She's surprising herself by how well she is doing. We go through a lot of ice cream and popcorn. I hear she's a pastry monster in the mornings. Her assistant seems to have her back for now, and after working all through the long hot summer, Russell paid her a compliment. So tonight she's actually a little proud of herself. She's done a little online shopping and has actually gone to watch TV with the kids. I can hear her laughing- and that makes me very happy. I think I'll go draw her a bath and pour her a glass of wine. Then I'll see how tired she is and maybe we can release some of her stress. Making love to her is a salve for my soul. I support her and I want her to succeed because she will be the one to beat herself up if she can't do this. That makes me feel gutted. She has a conscience. She's still apologizing to me in a lot of little ways for asking me to compromise on the A. She gets a little punchy when she is really tired. I get testy. She's coming to find me. I'll write more soon.
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