AN: Hey everyone! I hope you're all well. It's been a minute, but i'm feeling better and still kicking. I actually just spent a few weeks in the UK. Finding writing time has been a little bit harder. As some of you know, I studied film/TV. I just got my first industry job as a researcher and it is kicking my ass a little bit. If/when the show is picked up I might be able to say a teensy bit more, but for now my lips must remain sealed.

Enjoy this short update and the next chapter will be the confrontation we've all been waiting for.

-M

One thing Olivia Pope was not prepared for with her pregnancy was the ups and downs of morning sickness. One minute she was fine, the next she was neck deep in the toilet. She had weeks left of feeling like this. If she threw up much more, she was going to end up back in the hospital with another IV in her arm. The only saving grace to her head being in the toilet is Fitz not standing over her. Thankfully he is across town, at the archdiocese, formally withdrawing from the cloth. She'd wanted to go with him but he had been insistent she stay home and rest.

Despite her name being semi-cleared, Olivia's still jobless. Right now she isn't completely worried about not having a job. Hell, she's been staring at her law degree tacked above the mantle in her father's – well her – living room for the last two weeks; she always has other options. None she wants to consider right now, though; none she has the headspace to pursue. With Edison's hospital announcement and her ER detour, the only thing she can muster the headspace to think about is the thing growing in her stomach.

She pushes herself up onto her elbows and hangs her head in her hands. Breakfast is going to consist of tea with smashed ginger root. After several long seconds Olivia stands. The bathroom materializes around her and she starts her morning routine for the second time. She's mid mouthwash when the doorbell rings.

A yawn escapes her lips as she closes the tube of toothpaste and turns off the facet. Her eyes glimpse over her face and prods at puffy cheeks. Once more the doorbell rings, drawing her from her reflection, and then makes her way to the stairs. Finally she reaches the door. She stretches up on her bare tiptoes to look through the peephole. The face on the opposite side of the door is not one she expects.

Olivia glances down at her ratty pajamas – old sweat shorts and a Georgetown T-shirt – and contemplates whether or not she has a minute to change. It only takes seconds to realize she doesn't. Her hands shake as she opens the door and comes face to face with Marianne Davis who looks, quite frankly, like shit. Olivia suddenly feels like a twenty-year-old girl all over again and not a twenty-five-soon-to-be-mother. Maybe it's the hormones or maybe it's the past starring her in the face but she wants to cry. The last person she's ever expected to end up on her doorstep is Marianne Davis, especially when Edison is in a hospital bed miles away.

"Mari - Mrs. Davis…" Olivia's voice is high, pained. "I…" The last time she found herself face to face with the woman in front of her was nearly five years ago. Even seeing Marianne now solicits a suffocating feeling in Olivia.

"Don't say anything. There is a photographer across the street. The quicker you let me in, the less photos he takes," Marianne says. The older woman looks worse for wear; rumpled clothes, unruly hair. Olivia remembers her as put together and perfectly polished; a true first lady. Even the name Marianne used to send Olivia running in the opposite direction.

Olivia weighs her options. Her eyes move past Marianne and to a beat up Toyota across the street. Sure enough, there's a telephoto lens pointed directly at them. Olivia's eyes drift back to Marianne. There's something severe – desperate almost – in Marianne's soft, round face that prompts Olivia to step aside and usher her in.

The door shuts behind them with a resounding click. Olivia's arms immediately fold across her chest. She hugs herself tightly, suddenly cold despite moments ago feeling as if her skin was on fire.

"Uhm, can I get you something to drink?" Olivia asks. "If I had known…"

"That your married ex-boyfriend's wife was going to show up on your doorstep…" Marianne's tone is finite, harsh.

Olivia bristles. She feels like the twenty-year-old girl waking up from her hospital bed all over again. Her words still cut like cat scratches over rug burn. A single tear rolls down Olivia's right cheek. Shaky fingers wipe it away. "If you came to 'beat me down' for something that happened half a decade ago, I'm not a child any more and I'm not –"

"You were a child, though…" The harshness in Marianne's voice dissipates. She walks over to the fireplace mantle and brushes a finger over a silver frame that holds a photo of a then sixteen-year-old Olivia.

Confusion clouds Olivia's dark eyes. "What?"

"I blamed you for seducing my husband. I called you everything but a child of God. I thought you were some little slut who saw a man with a future, a man with money, and wanted him for herself…"

Marianne's words sting. Of all things she's been accused of being over the years, a gold-digger was not one. Her parents were well off, there was no hiding that, and they'd used that money to raise her with the best. Money is never something that draws her eye. Actually, it is the opposite. Usually once a prospective partner starts to throw around money, Olivia finds herself uninterested.

"I know you don't want to hear this, Marianne, but I did love…" Olivia's words taper off. She can sit with them. They fell wrong and dirty, even more than the things Edison had convinced her to do. "And I thought he loved me."

"I know." Marianne's bottom lip trembles slightly.

"Mrs. Davis, I…"

"I found one of his tapes of you two."

Olivia's stomach rocks and she tightens her arms around her chest. The humiliation is instant and the fear is second. All she wants is to claw her way out of her skin and into someone so dark the sun can't reach it. She's afraid of what Marianne's seen."I'm not sure why you're here, but I think it's time you go…"

"He looked at you the way he used to look at me and I couldn't take it," Marianne hisses, "it's why I showed up at the hospital. I wanted you to stay away from him. I didn't know what he'd done…" She stares at the photo for a moment longer before pivoting to face Olivia head on. "Coercion and consent might start with the same letter, but they aren't the same thing."

"I really can't–"

"That little girl – the one from the press conference? I introduced her to Edison. I got her, her job and what he did to her…"

"You believe her?"

"She's my goddaughter…"

Olivia can't hold in her shock. She studies Marianne Davis once more for any sign of doubt; there is none.

"I confronted him about it – that's how he ended up at Sibley."

Olivia's eyes widened in horror. Surely Marianne Davis isn't confessing to attempted murder?

"He was lying to my face and he kept lying. I left. I couldn't stand being in the same room as him. I didn't know he was following me until I heard the brakes and screeching tires…" Several stray tears roll down Marianne's cheeks. "All I can remember thinking is I hope he's dead…"

A long pause fills the room. Marianne looks in need of a hug but Olivia doesn't move. Despite everything that has transpired in the last several minutes Olivia's still having a hard time rectifying the woman in front of her with the woman who stood over her hospital bed.

"Why are you telling me all of this?" she asks.

"Because I'm sorry. I'm sorry he used your love for him against you even more, I'm sorry I used your love for him against you. Instead of asking why my husband was pursuing a child."

"With all due respect, Mrs. Da–"

"I think we're way past formalities, Olivia."

"Marianne, I wasn't a child. I was –" Her words are cut short.

"Nineteen is far from a grown woman and twenty is but a centimeter in that direction. As I've already said, coercion isn't consent." A beat. "I want you to know that if Edison survives, Rachel – my goddaughter – is moving forward with pressing charges. I'm standing behind her and it isn't too late for me to stand behind you. I did the wrong thing four and a half years ago. I'm not doing that again. My son isn't going to grow up thinking he can do whatever he wants to a woman. That's not the world we want to raise our children in." Marianne gestures to Olivia's stomach.

Instinct takes over and Olivia's hands drop to her stomach. "I'm not –"

"You've always been a bad liar. Your eyes; they're your tell. They were your tell when I found you in my soon-to-be-ex-husband's office searching your earring and they're your tell now. Anyone with half a brain can tell what you and that handsome priest have been up to."

Olivia shudders at the memory Marianne recalls; one that had started with her on her knees in front of Edison and ended with her running head first into Marianne while searching for a missing earring the next day.

"He isn't a priest anymore." Olivia offers, uncertain of what else to say. She and Marianne aren't friends and they likely never will be; but they aren't standing on opposite sides of the same train tracks, preparing for a head on collision, either. Still, the life inside of Olivia isn't one she's willing to share yet with anyone besides family and friends who are family.

"You deserve something good. Someone good. I hope that's him."

For the thousandth time since Olivia opened the front door she's caught off guard by Marianne. It's the sincerity that does it this time. There isn't a hint of malice or ill-will present in the older woman's tone and for the first time she truly sees Marianne Davis. "Thank you. Uhm, do you want something to drink?"

Marianne shakes her head no. "I do need to use your bathroom, though."

Fitz sits shoulder to shoulder with Eli, across from them sits a kid, no older than eighteen. He's blonde and looks like he's just hopped off of an American Eagle advertisement. They're in Ben's Chili Bowl.

"So, tell us about Cyrus Beene," Eli demands. "Everything."