CHAPTER 5
"Sir?"
Fitz tore himself from his thought and focused back on his chief of staff. Cyrus had an open file on the table in front of him and his eyes were on him, clearly waiting for an answer. Seeing his expression, Cyrus sighed, closed the file and sat back in his chair.
"Sir, we need to talk about Olivia Pope."
Fitz flinched. As the years had gone by, everyone around him had learned not to talk about Olivia or say her name but now that she was back, she was everywhere.
Faced with Fitz's lack of answer, Cyrus kept on going.
"Mr President, we need this situation fixed as soon as possible so we can go back to business as usual and actually run the country instead of being in constant damage control."
"This situation is my wife being back from the dead, Cyrus."
"No, your wife is in the East Wing doing whatever it is First Ladies do over there. Olivia Pope is not your wife anymore. Hasn't been for a few years now, remember?"
Fitz cradled his head in his hands and sighed. The pulsing in his temples was driving him crazy. He hadn't been able to sleep for the past two nights - truth be told, he hadn't been able to sleep for the past five years but the past two nights had reached new levels of insomnia.
He had lain in bed beside a woman who had been his wife for over three years now, yet his thoughts had been entirely focused on another woman. His whole body yearned for her and every time he closed his eyes, she was all he could see. Guilt invaded his body at the mere thought of touching her and kissing her - this wasn't the kind of man he had wanted to be but his marriage with Mellie had left him yearning for human touch and intimacy.
His marriage with Olivia hadn't been perfect, far from it, but she had never deprived him of her touch. But the fact was, the woman lying beside him was his wife. He had made her promises he had to keep. He had responsibilities he needed to face. He had to be the kind of man he had promised himself he would be. He didn't want to be his father.
So he got up each morning and went to work, trying to forget that the love of his life was alive and well, living in the same city, yet as unreachable as ever. There was no easy way to fix the situation, only more suffering.
God did he want her.
A knock on the door interrupted his trail of thoughts. Lauren, his assistant, opened the door.
"Mr President, Mrs Wiley is here for your daily appointment. Should I let her in?"
As Fitz nodded, he felt the weight on his shoulder ease a little bit. This was why he was going through all of this pain.
Mrs Wiley came into the room and Fitz met her halfway. He bent down and lifted his son from her arms into his own.
"Hey Teddy Bear!" he cooed. "How's your day going sweet boy?"
His two years old boy starting babbling about different toys and flowers he'd played with during his morning walk in the garden. After a few minutes of listening to his son, Fitz turned to Cyrus and nodded.
"Send the papers."
That morning, Stephen drove Harrison and Olivia to the offices. There was once more a crowd of reporters waiting down the building. They immediately noticed the car and took photo after photo of them getting through the crowd and into the parking lot. Once they were inside, Olivia and Harrison got out of the car and Stephen drove off to work.
Huck was waiting for them at the door of the offices. They all got in together and found Quinn in her office in the middle of a call. She raised one finger, telling them she would be with them in a minute.
"Let's get some more coffee, I'm going to need it to stay awake throughout the day," Olivia said.
The coffee pot was already full so Harrison got three cups out and started pouring them a generous portion each. They leaned against the counter and drank in silence.
Olivia turned around and looked at Quinn in her office. She looked so mature, so responsible and powerful. She wasn't the young woman she had been when she had first started at OPA. No matter what she said, she wasn't ready to give up that power and independence to go back to the way things were. Olivia had to find a solution to make sure she didn't lose her and her abilities while still making OPA run.
As she was pondering on that, Olivia suddenly got a strong sense of urgency running through her. She turned around and caught the milk bottle Harrison had just knocked off the counter.
"Wow, good catch Liv!"
Olivia barely registered Harrison's comment as she stared at the milk bottle in her hand. How had she known?
Feeling Harrison and Huck's eyes on her, she put the bottle back on the counter and pushed it out of the way.
She thought back to the voice she had heard at the bus stop. She hadn't heard the voice again but she couldn't convince herself that it was only a product of her imagination. It had felt too real, it had sounded so clearly in her head. And now this. It wasn't the only things either - ever since they'd been back, she'd had these weird feelings and awareness of her surroundings.
It would be so easy to dismiss it all and put it all on exhaustion but if time-travel was possible, maybe this was too. Maybe she wasn't losing her mind. And if it was indeed real, it couldn't be only her, maybe Harrison and Huck felt it too.
"I need to ask you something," she said.
"Anything," Huck answered.
Harrison looked at her and nodded, inviting her to keep going.
"For the past couple of days I have been... hearing things."
"What kind of things?" Harrison asked. "Voices?"
"Not really voices, more like my own voice but telling me things. Has either of you felt the same thing?"
"No," Huck said.
Harrison didn't answer.
"I know it sounds weird," Olivia told them, disappointed they didn't know what she was talking about. Maybe it was just her. "It's not just voices but a feeling I get, things I know that I can't possibly know."
"Do you want to know what it sounds like?" Harrison said. "It sounds like you're losing your mind, that's what it sounds like."
"Thanks," Olivia said dryly. "I feel so much better."
"I'm not saying this to be mean, but we have to be realistic here. What do you think? You think the NSA sent us back home and just forgot about us? Of course not! Especially not you."
"He's right," Huck said "you have to be careful about what you say."
"I mean, you could not be more the centre of attention here. The government and literally everyone else in this country is watching your every move so you can't just walk around claiming to be hearing voices." Harrison paused, looking at her in the eyes. "Please, be careful. I don't want anything to happen to you."
Before Olivia could answer anything, Quinn came in the kitchen, effectively cutting the conversation short.
"So," Olivia said, faking enthusiasm "shall we get started?"
The others followed her to the conference room where they started planning how to bring OPA back to business.
Quinn got out all the files from OPA she had kept in Olivia's former office.
"I've never really used it," she said, referring to the room "I just put the client files and all OPA paperwork in there just in case we ever needed it some day."
"Good thing you did, otherwise, we wouldn't have much to go on," Olivia told her.
They divided the client files into four piles and each took a sit around the table - Olivia and Queen at each end and Harrison and Huck on each side. They each had a pile and started putting them into different categories: clients files which weren't useful anymore, clients who would support them, those they had dirt on, and those who owed them a favor.
After several hours of working through the piles of files, Harrison got up and sighed.
"This is useless, everything dates from over five years ago, it's not useful to us for anything."
"We could call in some favors," Olivia said.
"But nothing guarantees anyone would agree to do us a favor now! I mean, you're the President's ex-wife, no one knows how the both of you stand and I'm pretty sure, most of them wouldn't take the risk of going against the White House by associating with us until the subject of your return is dropped and not at the top of the hour of every news channel. We were doing good before the plane thing but we weren't important enough for people to disregard something as important as going against the President himself."
"Then, you look for a new client," Quinn said. "You go to someone who is in need, with a scandal coming out or that has just come out and you offer your services pro-bono so that you can work on that and rebuild OPA's reputation while buying your time while the news of the plane's return dies down.
"That would usually work but there are no scandals. Like Harrison said, we're the story, there's literally nothing that is going to get on top of that right now. It might be the best time for everyone's dirty little secrets to come out, no one is paying attention to anything but the plane and me and the President," Olivia answered.
"So what do we do?" Harrison asked.
"I don't know," Olivia sighed. "We should probably call it quit for the day and maybe we could help you out on one of your cases, Quinn?"
A knock on the door cut off the conversation and they all turned towards the hall. When a second knock came through, they all turned to Quinn.
"Were you waiting for someone?" Huck asked.
"Hum, no. Beside you, no one was supposed to come here today."
"Olivia, stay here, I'll check it out." He got up and got out of the room. A second later his voice carried through to the conference room. "Olivia, you should come here."
She got up and went to him. At the door was a man in business attire.
"Ms Olivia Pope?"
"Yes?"
"My name is Raymond Jenkins, I'm representing the Grant family. I have some papers here for you."
Everything stopped for a beat.
"Please, come in." Olivia took a step back and gestured for Jenkins to step in.
She walked towards one of the offices, hoping she didn't look as rattled as she felt, and closed the door once they were both in. She could see the concerned looks on her colleagues' faces from the corner of her eyes but couldn't bring herself to meet their eyes and reassure them.
She took a breath and turned to face the lawyer waiting for her.
"Please sit down," she told him before sitting behind the desk.
"As I said, Ms Pope, I have some papers that belong to you as well as some papers for you to sign. We can take a look at them now or we could wait for your lawyer to join us...?"
"I'll be fine, thank you."
He nodded and got a file out of his briefcase. He opened it, took the piece of paper on top and placed it in front of her.
"As you can see, here is a copy of the certificate of annulment for your and Mr Fitzgerald Thomas Grant III's marriage, dating from three years ago."
During the next fifteen minutes, Olivia was presented with document upon document stating the end of her marriage to Fitz. When she finally walked the lawyer out of the offices, she was hanging on by a thread.
She clasped her trembling hands together and walked back to the conference room.
"So," she said as she sat down "where were we?"
She grabbed a file at random and started flicking through it, not seeing a single word.
"Olivia..."
She looked up at Harrison. "I'm fine. We need to keep on working."
"You're not fine. What did he want?"
Olivia reported her attention to the file in front of her.
"He gave me the marriage annulment certificate as well as copies from my bank statement before our disappearance and a copy of our prenup. He then gave me a stack of papers for me to sign that stated I agreed to the annulment, I agreed not to sue the President, I agreed not to talk about the President or his family to the press, I agreed not to contact the First Lady, I agreed to renounce to our house, I agreed not to publicly talk about my marriage to the President and in exchange, I was granted with a reasonable sum of money and assets including the money from my apartment, the money that was in my account before my disappearance and a generous compensation for the annulment." Her voice was robotic, devoid of tone and emotions.
"Tell me you didn't sign," Harrison said, his tone curt, knowing full well she had, having seen her sign papers through the glass doors.
"I have."
"We could have fought the annulment or at least get you more money!"
Olivia dropped the file on the table and glared at Harrison.
"Fight for what exactly? Tell me, what is there to fight? He is the President of the United States of America, he has an army of lawyer and a house full of staff behind him. I make one move against him and they'll destroy me. There's no chance we'll ever be in business again, I'll lose everything and I won't be able to help you either."
"That's not true, there's always something to do and you know it."
"Not this time."
They dropped the subject after that and helped Quinn on one of her cases. When Stephen got there at the end of the day, they were looking through surveillance tapes. Olivia got up to go to the bathroom before leaving and when she got back, everyone looked at her in a tense silence and she knew they had told Stephen about the annulment papers.
Fortunately, Stephen didn't say anything. They got into the car and made their way back to the apartment in silence. Olivia was grateful for that silence, she wasn't going to be able to handle much more coming at her right now.
They stopped at a light a couple of streets away from Stephen's apartment and through the passenger window, Olivia saw a blue car parked a few yards away.
Open it.
The voice was back and so was the headache.
Open it.
Olivia squeezed her eyes shut and swallowed back a moan. She breathed deeply and forced herself not to move from her seat. Harrison and Huck were right, she couldn't allow herself to be caught hearing voices when she was in such a precarious position.
As Stephen drove away, the headache augmented and Olivia could feel something inside her pull her towards that blue car. The further away they went, the more painful the pull became.
She powered through the pain and kept on breathing to calm herself as discretely as possible. She was used to dealing with pain, this was just one more thing to deal with.
After their take-out dinner, Harrison went for a run and Stephen and Olivia sat down to watch the news.
"How are you feeling?"
"I'm fine."
"Olivia," he sighed. "It can't have been easy to sit there and learn that your husband had gone through the process of annulling your marriage while you were missing."
"It makes sense," she said, her eyes focused on the TV. "He was about to run for President and didn't want anyone questioning the validity of his marriage to Mellie. I would have advised a client to do the same thing."
"Except he's not your client. He's the man you promised to spend the rest of your life with. And now, for reasons that are completely outside of your control, you find yourself having to accept that you're not married anymore and that he's married to someone else and is in a position of power, making it impossible for you to do anything about it."
Olivia didn't answer.
"We're just worried, Liv," Stephen said. "It's a lot coming at you all at once and you look like... Like you're not fighting anymore."
"You don't understand," she said in a pained whisper.
"Then tell me."
"I know it looks like I'm giving up. Like I'm letting him have it all. Because he's the President or because he's married. But..." She gulped down some of her wine and finally turned to him. "I just can't do it anymore. I can't do this anymore. I can't keep on hurting him, it's too painful. We haven't been working for a long time and if he's finally found someone who's making him happy, someone who gives him what he needs, then... I'm not going to fight it. I want to let go of all this pain we've created together."
"And if I thought this was the answer, I would let it go, but Olivia, I can see how painful this is for you."
Stephen's phone rang and saved Olivia from having to answer. A couple of minutes later, after making sure she'd be fine, he was going out the door on his way to a precinct to get out one of his client's son from spending the night in jail.
After Stephen's departure, Olivia tried to keep on watching the news but her headache got worse and worse. Her ears started ringing and finally, she couldn't push the voice out anymore. Open it, open it, open it, open it, open it, open it, open it, open it, open it.
She got up from the couch, threw her shoes on, grabbed the keys and went out the door. She half walked half ran down the few streets separating the apartment from the intersection where she'd seen the car.
The closer she got to the car, the better she felt. She was only a short distance away when the ringing in her ears stopped and the pressure in her head finally eased. Olivia sighed in relief, then she raised her head and stopped abruptly.
Harrison was standing just a few feet away looking entranced by the blue car.
I hope you are still doing well and that the lock-down is not too hard on you!
Here's a little something to distract you and give you a dose of Olitz (even though, they don't interact in this chapter but I hope I delivered the angst).
Tell me what you thought xx