Author´s note: And here we go with another update. The number of reviews has been really overhwhelming, thanks a lot, guys. :)

Noro: Thanks a lot, hope you keep enjoyin the story. :)

Jennkyle: That´s nice of you, thanks. :)

Kz4valentine: On top of what I already answered via pm, I am really overwhelmed with all the nice reviews I got from you, it´s always a big pleasure to be able to interest a new reader. Thanks a lot for all your lovely support.

Clio1792: Heh, I think with Maya you should never be too sure of anything ;) Also, thanks for the compliment on my portrayal of Huck. Between the crazy Popes and emotionally damaged Olitz I was hoping i´d be convincing in giving him a belivable edge. :)

: Wow, thank you, always awesome to see when people binge-read. :) I hope you´ll keep enjoying this story. Well as for who stabbed David…I thought that was implied, but if not, this chapter will clear this up, plus give you the reasons behind it, too.

Chapter 27

Personal fears

Hospitals had never really been her favourite place even though of course when you were the Attorney General of the United States, people took care you had all the comfort. The corridors had the typical faint yet edgy smell of disinfectants and medicine coupled with that strange, ever present hard-to-define air of sickness. The room she stepped into, however, was a bright single with a rather large window. David Rosen was awake, the head side of his bed propped up a bit so he was half sitting in a position not too straining for his injured ribcage. When Olivia stepped in, he gave no smile but met her gaze, his eyes following her when she stepped over to the bed. "How are you doing David?"

"I guess what you want to hear is better," he replied, watching her with his gaze slightly lowered. She felt relief at that, because his tone, even though he did sound somewhat shaken and was probably also affected by pain killers, did sound a lot like the David Rosen she knew, the man who so easily claimed the White Hat for himself and stuck to it – not always to his benefit. The man who could really be a pain, but in the end had proven a loyal friend more than once.

"Listen, David, I am sorry you had to go through this." she said, resting her hand on the frame at the end of the bed. "You´re safe now and there is nothing you need to worry about."

"Well, honestly, Liv, that´s not a very easy thing to do when you were attacked and it´s not like this was the first time. Life pretty much feels like there is a lot of stuff going wrong right now and for all the wrong reasons I am at the shorter end of it." She could tell he was aggravated, but scared as well. She knew him well enough to be able to tell.

"Nobody here is going to ask any questions, David." She said. "and there is Secret Service detail here making sure that you´re no longer in danger."

He gave a joyless laugh. It was barely one and she could see him wince, probably because the small chuckle brought back the pain. "She didn´t really look like a few Secret Service agents could intimidate her, Liv."

Olivia suppressed a sigh. She needed to reconstruct what had been going on in David´s office, what her mother had told David, if she had made any demands. It was always difficult to figure out what she was up to, but Olivia was sure she could do it. Her parents had underestimated her more than once. She had been through everything, considered every angle. When she had rushed into the office, finding David on the floor that had been her first concern, but when she found the boxes with the files, she had noticed belatedly that this didn´t make much sense. She understood all of a sudden that it was strange that Maya had left the boxes. Back in Vienna, Jake had confided to her one night that he had given all relevant information concerning B316 to the attorney general and while Olivia doubted that even a Jake who had turned his back on this kind of past would leave without a little bit of a security backup, it would at least have made sense for her mother to break into David´s office for these folders. It would also have identified her, clearly, as someone working for her father, because it was more than obvious that Eli had no interest at all in these files being used against him. But when she found the boxes, Olivia had had to admit reluctantly that once more Maya Pope had done something unpredictable. The note she had left only left one possible interpretation for Olivia. Yes, Maya had been sent by Eli, who had lied to Fitz about her death. Eli would have sent Maya to retrieve the folders, and for some reason her father had made an error in judgment and naively believed that he could keep Maya on a short leash like that. But instead of being a good pet and getting the folders to deliver them to Command, her mother had decided to leave them to her daughter instead. Leave them to Olivia and present them to her on a silver platter. Olivia had no doubt what this was: revenge. And just as certainly, Maya was probably half a world away by now, having ripped her leash and turned against her master.

All those thoughts were running through her mind again, pieces put together earlier and reviewed in no more than three, four seconds. "What did she want?" But didn´t she know the answer already?

David didn´t even attempt a shrug. "She asked me where the folders were." he said.

"You told her?"

"I didn´t really thing contradicting someone with a gun would be a good idea." It was almost reassuring to see that even after this scare he hadn´t lost his trademark snide.

A gun? But David had clearly had a stab wound.

"David," she said. "as soon as you are out of here, I would like you to have a look at the boxes, see if she took anything Because I don´t think she did." Even though, she didn´t believe her mother had taken anything.

The man´s eyes widened a bit. "She didn´t...?"

Olivia shook her head. "I can´t really tell you much here, David, but when you´re out here we need to meet and go through these folders." Her mother had had a gun but she had not used it on David Rosen. Instead, she had stabbed him. Not fatally and Olivia was certain that Maya knew the difference all too well. No. This was a different thing. It was revenge entirely. All of this, breaking into David´s office, leaving the note, all this had been a mere demonstration of power. She could have just left the note. She could have talked to David and threatened him into releasing the files. She could have been sure even that her daughter would connected the dots eventually and seen that the Attorney General had the evidence she needed. But no, being who she was she had needed the big entrance back onto the stage. She had stabbed David for the mere fun of it, to leave her creative version of a road sign. Little drops of blood leading to just what her daughter needed to advance her personal vendetta against her own father. A threat could not be more vile, random and serious.

"I already had a look at them." he interrupted her. "some of them. The things that Jake left on top for me to read. He put together a nice couple of things he obviously wanted me to notice first. I know who my attacker was, Olivia. And you know what? On top of all these things that make your blood freeze and make yourself doubt how anyone can ever have the power that Command has behind the scenes, there is one other thing I know for sure: I know that I don´t want to be a pawn in any family drama."

"That´s not what this is about David, this is about justice and these folders are important."

"Oh I know they are, but the funny thing is that I have never felt so helpless. I am the Attorney General of the United States and just had the lackey of the most powerful man in this country which ironically is nobody that anyone can even elect, walk into my office and threaten my life and I couldn´t do anything."

She listened even though she was impatient herself and leaned forward a bit, keeping her voice low but urgent. "And this is why we need you on board with this David. Because you already have an insight into these files and we will need you and your office to finally tumble my father."

"You can bet I want my government to be a government that I can see and not some puppeteer´s show behind the scenes, Liv, but you and your friends cannot protect me from this. Nobody can and you know what? You are feeling far too safe."

"The White House is on board with this, David. We need to do this together."

He blinked. "The White House?" The doubt in his voice was a painful reminder that he, too, was all too aware that she had been AWOL for a time and that her sudden return and all too sudden mention of "The White House" must have sounded like something else entirely. "The White House or the president, Liv?"

"It doesn´t matter, David. You and I both know that this is a web that goes far further than we are both willing to admit. But with these files we have something against him. With this information we can bring him down."

"The problem in this, however, is that the truth would be a shock. The truth, Liv, would mean ruining the people´s trust not only in government but in this very nation. If you want to spread the entirety of B316 out to them it means that every single little nutjob conspiracist in this country is going to have a field day on this. You cannot expose that because at some point I didn´t read any further, because I was scared what else I´d find. And you know what else? I am not going to sacrifice the integrity of this office invested in me to drag this country down into the biggest interior crisis it has ever faced because I am absolutely not sure if there would ever be a light at the end of the tunnel."

She had been through this all herself. Had often wondered how to stop the things that were happening behind the scene but this time, her father had told her herself. "We will not tell the public about B316. We will charge and prove that he is responsible for the murder of Jerry Grant."

It had been a rough couple of days. As Fitz sat down on one of the sofas decorating the west sitting hall in the Residence, he couldn´t help but let out a deep sigh. He had left the lights off, the lights from outside, moon and street lamps alike, filtering through the large half-circular window, giving off enough light to find his way around and little enough to just have his peace for a moment. When thinking about everything that had happened these last few days, it was hard to believe how quickly everything had tumbled, one thing on top of the next. Liv´s return to DC, Mellie leaving and taking the kids with him, Liv arriving at the Oval and revealing to him that the man he had reinstituted to Command was the very man who was responsible for the cold blooded murder of his son. On top of that he had done some good work, finally, freeing himself from being bossed around by his wife and his Chief of…no, former Chief of Staff. He had a feeling his opinion was finally getting the respect his office demanded when he was in the Situation Room and his advisors were probably still busy right now, working like busy little bees to write history and prepare a meeting between himself and President Masri of Iraq. Despite all the personal drama, politics needed to be made after all. History books didn´t write themselves. And what he had achieved so far was something he could be proud of. Well placed leaks of a possible high security meetings of the two presidents on neutral soil were already circulated by the big media outlets, generating positive feedback from his supporters and quite some reluctant goodwill from his opposition. Enough to be proud of, and still, it was moments like these when he became all too keenly aware of how lonely he had been these last weeks and months.

He brushed a hand through his hair and reached out to the phone he had placed on the small sofa table when he had arrived minutes earlier, hesitated, then leaned back again, looking at the device with a small frown. He needed time, he told himself. She had hurt him, left him alone and just left him like that. She had climbed on that plane, with him of all people and had not looked back. Yet what he had seen in her eyes back at the hotel, pleadingly, and veiled behind more professional mannerisms when she had come to him in the Oval Office had told him that she had missed him. That she wanted to be with him. Still did. Whatever strange reasons she had told him, blaming herself unreasonable for all that had happened, running from disaster to protect him and others, made little sense to his stubborn self. But that, he thought, wasn´t that just another proof of how alike they were? They could be like dogs and cats from one minute to the next, but wasn´t that just because she was just like him that way? Proud and strong. He smiled faintly to himself. No, she was probably stronger than he could ever be.

He shook off those depressing thoughts, reached out again and this time grabbed the phone with determination. All personal matters aside, because he didn´t know how much time he would need until he could embrace her without it hurting, or if he could ever feel that trust again without the pang of betrayal, all these things aside, she had put herself in danger by coming to him. Exposing Eli Pope put her on the man´s most wanted list. And Fitz highly doubted that family ties would keep the other man from harming his daughter to keep her from exposing him. Once he got a whiff of what they were up to, she would be in grave danger, no doubt. And no matter where the two of them stood at personally, where him and her were, what mattered beyond all that was keeping her safe.

He dialed her number before he could think otherwise and it took a fearful five rings on the other end until she answered. Long seconds in which he imagined terrible things, in which he imagined that her father had already somehow been informed that she had found David Rosen as she had told him earlier this day. Olivia had called him on their secure line after returning from the hospital to tell him that her suspicions had been confirmed: not only was Eli Pope about to realize that his own daughter had turned against him and had hard evidence for murder, but there was also Maya Pope who had decided that rather than retrieve the files for Eli, she would leave a trail of blood drops to the files and hand them over to her daughter so she could help topple Eli. It also meant that one of the most dangerous terrorists there were was back at large and nobody could probably even guess what Maya would be up to now that she was free and up to her own agenda…

Finally there was a click on the other end of the line.

"Liv?"

It had been easy talking to her on the phone earlier, when their matter of discussion had been "professional", talking about evidence and the Attorney General, about meeting at the White House the next day when Rosen would be out of hospital to join them so they could go through legal matters of filing a charge for murder and treason. But when he heard her first word, he could already feel his heart pounding against his chest like he was a school boy. Old habits died hard. Luckily some never did.

"Fitz, what is it?" her voice sounded generally inquisitive, not reproachful, maybe mildly concerned. He paused. "How are you?"

"I´m good." Another pause.

"Liv … I think it would be a good idea to come to the White House."

"It´s late, Fitz." There was a small sigh. He could tell she wasn´t keen on reproaching him, but she was weary, and not just from what had happened since the other night, since she had dashed from the White House to Rosen´s office. More likely she was tired from so much more. Exhausted emotionally. He knew the feeling well.

"I know. I don´t mean to work."

Now it was her time to pause and he could almost see her frown of bewilderment.

"Fitz, I…" Belatedly he realized that he must have sounded like this was a booty call and continued, sounding hurried. "I…no, I just mean…I will sleep better if I know you´re safe." Not much better that. What was going on with him sounding like a nervous teenager all over again?"

"I don´t know if this is a good idea. We should both keep it slow, isn´t that what you wanted?" Her voice was soft almost, he could tell she was alert, but a little worried, too. Her voice had always told him so much about her current mood.

"Yes, it is." he admitted. "and that stays. But he probably knows already what we´re up to. How about you pack a few things and I send someone over? Tom maybe. The place has plenty of beds." Focusing on keeping his nervousness in check he could tell his voice was getting a little more smooth. The way it did when he was just borderline flirty, that same baritone he would use with her when holding her in his arms or soothing her, or both.

"He´s my father, Fitz." Her voice was as calm, as low as his.

"Can you assure me that means you are safe?"

She didn´t reply to that. Then there was another sigh. "This is not permanent. This is…not anywhere near permanent."

"I know."

"I take my own car."

"Liv…" That last sentence didn´t sit well with him, but he could tell she would not be willing to debate that. It was a small compromise. One that he hoped wouldn´t cost her.

"Fitz…we´ll get this done. I promise you that." She was referring to his son, to taking down her own father. But right now, part of him wished that at least to some extent she was also referring to them. At the same time he knew she was giving him some space and that her hesitation was just that. He could tell she was feeling guilty about leaving him when he had most needed her and she didn´t take the blame for something easily. She usually worked things out. Everything. Just not them. Not right now. Them needed more time. And she was willing to accept that and his request to come over so he could feel positive about her safety was putting her between a rock and a hard place, because usually he knew Liv would reject what she would see as being overprotective. The fact that she was not protesting meant she was granting him a favour. That she was compromising. It told him that from her side, there was hope.

"All right."

"I´ll be over soon."

She had hung up. Fitz placed the phone back on the table and allowed himself another few moments of silence and thoughts and moonlight. He just hoped that he himself still held some hope for them, too.