Aaaand as promised it´s the weekend and here is the next chapter. Thanks again to my dear reviewers and also to the new subscribers and faves. Hope everyone keeps enjoying the story. :)

Justbecauseican: Well then all the more thanks for not being discouraged from reading again and thank you so much. :)

Noro: Thank you :)

Clio1792: This is a huge compliment and it means a lot. I always aspire to make the characters sound and "feel" as true to the show as I can, toying with those different minds is one of my favourite things about writing Scandal fanfic.

IAMASCANDALLOVER: Wow, thank you. :) While I don´t agree with your full frustration regarding the writers of the show I can understand some of it and thanks a lot for the great compliment. :)

Jennkyle: it is indeed. ;) Thank you.

Chapter 32

Partners in crime

It was easy to talk herself into believing that this moment, right now, was just like the old times. Her, stood close to the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, watching him work for a moment while he, the president of the United States, his head bowed, was brooding over some document or other, hair slightly disheveled from how often he had run his hand through it without noticing, tie slightly loose because he disliked wearing one when he didn´t have to. It was easy and for a moment she allowed herself to almost sink back into that old, familiar feeling, almost relaxed completely as she leant against the side of the sofa, arms crossed lightly over her chest. Then he raised his head and the way he looked at her, while not unfriendly or even a scowl, reminded her that right now, he was something else: her client. And she straightened her chin and abandoned her daydreaming and even though that feeling of uneasiness and awkwardness that had been there since she had returned from Vienna had lost its power when she was around him, she had, at least for the time being, given up to look for nothing but warmth in his eyes, because what she saw there whenever he looked at her was such a mix of emotions he attempted to veil that trying to decipher them made her uneasy all over again. A client, she decided with an inward sigh. For now.

"Huck can spring the trap as soon as you want." she told him, her voice calm, noticing that the familiarity of the scene had not quite fled the moment. "He doubts it will take long for it to be discovered, he already has someone that he knows will cath on. She won´t even know. It will be her claim to fame and she´ll never know that she didn´t come across things all her own. She´ll discover the leak, the documents that my father seemingly tried to hide about Jerry and his involvement, have little problems hacking it, she´ll go public with what she finds, no doubt. CNN or any other network around the country and the world will pay her enough not to worry for the next couple of years."

"She?" Fitz´ eyebows traveled up ever so slightly, no full blown surprise, and she noticed he looked tired.

"A hacker from Huck´s network. They never met. She has no crime record yet, nothing that makes her attackable or an unreliable source."

Huck had made sure of that. The young woman was no big fish but there had been an incident about hacking information about a corporation a little more than a year ago. Settled in private with lawyers, in a bit of a hush. These records were now deleted, the girl´s lawyer, a small town father of three with two kids in college, bribed with just the right amount of cash to make sure he would not have to worry about financing his offspring´s college classes. And since the company had offered the girl a job in return for her secrecy about their internal leaks, it was easy to assume that they had no interest in exposing their security issues to the public. They hadn´t then, they wouldn´t now. It was as if the hack had never happened. Nothing for the media to find because there would be nothing they remembered.

He nodded and got up from his desk, one palm placed on the surface. "Good. Let´s do this."

Her smile was slightly nervous and she knew it. Or not so much nervous as much more queasy. Because the professional part of her, while her heart had sometimes been difficult and troublesome around him, cared for the image the president she had helped create, would leave behind.

"If we don´t put Huck to it today my father might find out what we´re doing here. And when he does he´ll be impossible to catch…"

"I know. Which is why we´re getting it started right now."

"I´m just saying you should be aware that once this breaks, it will dominate the news for days. It will be put on an endless loop and leave little space for anything else going on beside it no matter what else is going on."

The way his facial expression changed ever so slightly told her with painful detail how well he still knew her, and how easily he had connected the dots she was merely indicating.

"Then it will." he said.

"This meeting in Brussels is a big thing." she completed. "Neutral ground but even your critics will have to acknowledge that it was your leadership leading up to this meeting with president Masri. A deal is a long way off but this will definitely contribute to your legacy, Fitz…"

"And what you are saying is…" There was that frown, that slightly boyish frown that at times she found adorable and that at other times had frustrated her beyond believe. This time it was a challenge but she did not feel like fighting him. She was so tired of it and all she wanted was not to cross him. Not out of her own interest or shying away from it but because…there had just been so much of it. And, she reminded herself, because he was her client. Simple as that. And what the client said counted as truth. What the client wanted was what she´d achieve.

"What I am saying is you should be aware that the news will be far more interested in the news over the whistleblower releasing details of Jerry´s death than they will be of a historic meeting potentially leading to making the world a far safer place." She got to her feet, not to confront him but because somehow that made her feel more secure. "I am not suggesting anything and I what you tell me you want is what counts for me. I am just saying that if we go after my father right now you should be aware that the meeting in three days might be overshadowed and might not get the coverage it deserves. And you as my client tell me what you want and we´ll get to it."

When she fell silent, her tone not reproachful but bearing a trace of that passion she used to have for her job she noticed, belatedly, and with a pang of sadness the look he gave her for a second, only later realizing that it was because of what she had called him. A client. And for a moment she was aware that the chasm between them was still very real, that even though they had shared an embrace, that even though they slept in adjacent rooms now instead of continents apart, that this was still there, and still hard to bridge, for both of them. And then that second was gone and he broke eye contact and when he looked at her again all she could see there was resolve. "I don´t give a damn about the media." he said, his voice low, the way he would talk when he was adamant on people understanding what he meant. "Call Huck."

There was really no other choice. He couldn´t send the FBI after her father, since officially there was no Command, there was no secret task force. But she had felt obliged to play through the scenario, painful as it was. She looked at him for another second; his brow furrowed slightly, his jaw set, before she reached for her phone.

ooooooooooooooooooooo

Nothing much ever seemed to happen in western Wisconsin. She had spent all her life in Chippowa Falls where the demographics had not matched the land´s origins for a long while which was probably one reason she had begun to feel a secret kind of pride in assigning herself a native name that nobody knew of but that was part of her hidden identity. Probably not a smart move because it was a name that could give her away, but she was fairly proud of her skills in making herself invisible on the web and literally untraceable so who cared if her name gave a little hint at the fact that she was half Native American? And therefore when she was on the web she called herself Kimi, a native name meaning ´secret´. People of that name, she had researched ´have a deep inner desire to servehumanity´. She found that strangely fitting. She certainly liked it more than the boring name that her parents had given her, no doubt giving in to the traditional views of her father´s family who had never really seen mixed heritage as an issue – as long as no one spoke of the ´mixed´ part.

There had been little change in the last couple of years. At some point Middle School had become High School and then High School had ended and while she had a good shot at a scholarship things had somehow not turned out that way yet. There was always something holding her back. The attempt to hold together a family before it drifted apart. An ailing grandmother who had died last winter and then the feeling that she could not quite leave her mother alone on the little salary the woman made to raise her two younger siblings. College seemed far away even though enticing and therefore school desks had traded their place with a cashier´s booth. Wallmart, 6 days a week, early shifts, giving her a little money but plenty of time to do things that were far more important than dragging groceries across a scanner.

There were dreams of course, because didn´t everyone in this country dream? Stupid fantasies about wealth and picked fences and a dog and a family of four? None of that for her, none of that WASP shit, she´d be fine with getting her folks a little more than they had right now and yes, admittedly there was this big dream of hidden, mysterious fame like the men behind masks that dropped infos off wikileaks every now and then. There was this dream that this could be her: the hacker who revealed something that would stun the world. The hacker who everyone knew about yet nobody knew. There had been stories like that before even though these, to her, were examples of male pride running rampart and leading to nothing else than an insane chase across the globe. That wouldn´t be her. No. Her cause would be noble. She´d not risk anything without a backup plan if a big chance ever presented itself. But sometimes, temptations came …

Admittedly, she was a small fish online, ignored by most of the big hacks, lucky if she could find the scraps as they subtly let her know if they ever even felt nice enough to include her. But she didn´t mind. She´d always been better at doing things on her own, she´d always been a lone wolf and she was certain that the day would come where she´d have the last laugh. She had only not expected that day to actually arrive so soon…

It had been cloudy for most of the day but of course the rain had started just when she had gotten off the bus taking her from Eagle Point to Chippowa Falls, dropping her half a mile from the apartment she was sharing with her mother and two younger siblings. By the time she had arrived at her place, cut short a brief exchange with her mother and slammed the door to her room … her room…something like that shouldn´t exist for a 20 year old who had been raised with the false tale of everyone moving out for college right after school … her mood was at the lowest point in days. The blinking of a message on her screen when she activated the computer was the only thing that prevented her from being seriously pissed at the world. She sat down and opened the private chat room she had established in a secret corner of the internet. The name that greeted her before the one line long message was one of the few that were familiar.

Finn: i think i´m onto something big

He called himself Finn but there was no doubt to her that this wasn´t his real name. If the person on the other side was even male.

Kimi: i´m listening…

Finn: someone has made a real effort to hide something. can´t get through their system security but I think it might require just your set of skills ;)

Kimi: right…your charms don´t work on me mister. let´s have a look.

He had clearly worked on it. The lines of code he sent her were good hacker stuff, more complex than most of what she did but she spotted a flaw in the algorithm after a few minutes, something that did look just like something he would do. Finn was a good hacker, but a small fish, just like her. She corrected it. It took her 32 minutes.

Finn: good job kimi-o. i´d never have spotted that :o

The link he sent her looked unofficial. Nothing fancy. No CIA or anything ending with .gov. Just like another little exercise in hacking that the two of them would entertain each other with every now and then, partners in crime without ever having met. No crimes committed other than just having a peek, finding nothing of importance and leaving again, feeling smug about having tricked the system.

She immersed herself in her own world for another 30 or so minutes, trying to circumvent, hack and spot the loopholes.

Finn: this is different, kimi-o.

The interruption was uncalled for and didn´t sound like the other hacker´s typical confident self.

Finn: i´ve got a bad feeling about this…

Kimi: no shit, obi wan. was your idea. I almost got it. my my, look at that firewall… your work?

Finn: you´re welcome, m´lady

Later she´d not be able to tell whether it seemed strange to her that this seemingly tough system was so easy to crack. Later, this afternoon became a blur. Right now, the moment she cracked it, and when she started clicking through the documents that were stored there, all she noticed has the rush of adrenaline.

"Oh my God…"