A/N: This chapter was a chore to write. Edison stresses me out something terrible. But I got it done. We're going to get a look at the dynamic of their relationship. I had to mix in letters from our babies to even be able to write Olivia and Edison (whose names don't combine into a nice ship moniker if that tells you anything about whether or not they should be together). I didn't like them in canon and I can't really stomach them in this story either. But I have to write what needs to be said to keep the story true to my vision. So let's get to it.

Olivia looked around the room that had been her home for six months. All her things were packed, waiting by the door for her journey to the airport the next morning. She and Abby had already said their tearful goodbyes because Abby was working the night shift and wouldn't be home until after Olivia had already left. There was only one more thing she needed to do before she went for her last walk around the city then watched her last sunset. She went to the kitchen and sat down at the table.

Dear Fitz,

I'm flying home in the morning. Planes make me so nervous. I'm excited to go home though. I've missed my parents terribly. But I've changed so much, and Macon is such a small place with such small minds. I feel like I'm a different person now, like I've outgrown everything and everyone. Settling back into that slow pace will be a challenge to say the least.

But you'll be with me soon enough and I suppose that's comfort enough. I just wish things weren't so hard. I miss you so much. And I don't want you worrying about how I'm holding up without you because you've got more important things to be concerned with, but I'm having a hell of a time. I never imagined I would feel so deeply for someone.

I miss your face. I just want to spend a little while staring at you. And maybe a little more time holding you. I miss your scent. I want to make you laugh, and take you out for ice cream. I insist on paying this time. Consider it me being charming and chivalrous. I'm sure you're smiling now. I can picture the goofy grin on your face. You're so ridiculous, in the best way imaginable. I can't wait to show you a Georgia moon, or watch you have your first Georgia peach. I can't wait to show you the lightning bugs making the fields glow at night. I can't believe y'all don't have them in California. Hopefully, you'll get leave before fall so you can see them in all their glory before it gets too cold. It's okay if you don't though. I just want to see you. We could spend your whole leave on my back porch and that's be just fine with me.

Love,

Livvie

P.S. My home address is 920 6th St W, Macon, Georgia 45302

She dropped the letter in the mailbox, hoping it reached him before the day was over.

XXXXX

Olivia stood on her toes to see over the crowd of people all trying to reunite with their loved ones. She wove through hordes of people, wondering where her parents were.

"Liv!" She turned at the sound of her father's booming voice and hurried toward it. Suddenly she was five-year-old bounding off the front porch at the sound of her father's car rumbling down the street. Tears leapt to her eyes and blurred her vision when she finally laid eyes on her parents.

"I missed y'all!" she cried, trying to hug them both at once, something her little arms weren't capable of but were attempting anyway. She hadn't realized just how much she'd missed her parents until she saw them.

"We miss you too Livvie," her mother, Maya, said as she held her daughter at arm's length to look her over. Olivia was a little thinner, her hair was a little longer, and she was a little tanner from the Italian summer, but she still looked like the same Olivia. Because her daughter had somewhat spontaneously decided to enlist in the medical corps, Maya wasn't sure what would come home to them from the war zone. She was relieved that Olivia didn't appear to have changed much. She knew of her daughter's restless soul, and it truly worried her sometimes. Olivia seemed too big for the world and though she had tamed the fire within her as she matured, it still leapt out from time to time. There were times when she wished she'd birthed a child with a gentler spirit.

"I hope some of that love extends my way," Edison said, announcing his presence. Olivia had been so ecstatic to see her parents that she hadn't noticed him. She smiled at him as she moved to hug him. He didn't look any different, but then Edison never changed. He was as routine as sunrise and sunset. He gave her a warm hug, murmuring, "I missed you so much."

He had missed her. Once he got over the shock and dismay at her decision to go to Europe against everyone's wishes, he realized that he cared a good deal more for her than he'd originally intended. Now that he had her back, he would make sure that she never ran off again. Being without her made him unhappy in a way that he didn't care for at all. When she was his wife, she wouldn't do such rash things. The structure of having a husband and becoming a mother would give her the kind of discipline she needed to be the kind of woman he knew she could be. She'd see once he got her to quit nursing. He only wanted what was best for her.

Olivia smiled at him, eyeing him expectantly. After six months, you'd think she was entitled to a little more passion than a hug from someone who wanted to spend the rest of their life with her. Edison understood immediately and planted a kiss on his fiancée's waiting lips. Olivia had expected more than five seconds of contact but she knew Edison well enough to know that he was attempting to portray some sense of decorum in front of her parents. As if Maya and Eli didn't know that the two of them had been intimate. She almost rolled her eyes at him but brushed off the annoyance quickly. She was home. Soon she would be eating her mother's cooking and cracking up at her father's corny jokes. Nothing could spoil her mood.

XXXXX

Olivia opened her valise and took out the ribbon-bound bundle of letters that meant more to her than anything else she'd brought back. She closed the suitcase then placed it in the back of her father's black Ford before getting into the backseat next to Edison. Edison glanced at the stack of envelopes. He didn't realize he'd sent her so many letters. She certainly hadn't sent that many back to him.

"Are all those from me?" he asked.

"Not all of them," Olivia replied, glancing down at the bundle. None in the bundle were from her fiancé but he didn't need to know that. She hadn't technically lied to him. He'd written to her twice a months. Some of the letter could have been from him. That is, if she'd saved them. Nothing in them was worth keeping to remember.

"Who are the other's from?" he inquired innocently.

"A friend," she answered. Again, not technically a lie. She and Fitz were friends…the kind of friends who made love until she was boneless and drunk with love. The bundle of 21 letters were all from him, one for each day they'd been apart. Some of them were long and filled with his rambling thoughts about everything and nothing. Some were stories of his days in Paris. Some were memories of California. A few were just a line or two, when things were bad: "I'm alright, baby. How are you? Tell me everything." She always sent him the longest replies she could write to those letters, pages and pages of anything she could think of to take his mind off the ugliness going on around him. She knew he didn't have much to smile about, so she lent him her happy thoughts. She told him all about Georgia: the beaches, the honeysuckle, the smell of peaches in the summer, the fireflies at night. She would build him a world of dreams to remind him that there were better days ahead.

She held Edison's hand weakly when he reached for hers. It wasn't right, but he deserved at least that after all she'd done.

XXXXX

After much too brief a reunion over dinner, Maya and Eli cleared out of their home, intent on going to a double feature to give their daughter and her fiancé some privacy the Popes assumed the two lovers would be desperate for. Olivia wished they'd stayed. She'd missed them terribly. In some respects, they were her dearest friends.

She stood at the sink washing the dinner dishes her mother had insisted she leave. She heard the sound of jazz fill the house as Edison turned on the radio and was thankful they weren't in the same room. She wasn't sure what had changed for him, but he wouldn't leave her be for more than a few minutes. He'd held her hand all through dinner, chattering incessantly about the wedding even as she gave responses that were noncommittal at best, and wrapped his arm around her as they sat on the couch after having coffee with her parents. He was smothering her with his closeness. She'd never disliked his touch before, but now it seemed there was some neediness to it that turned her off completely. It was like he was determined to never let her be free of him again. She felt like a coyote about to chew off her arm to get free.

Edison walked into the kitchen and smiled at the sight of Olivia at the sink. Her time away had trimmed her figure but the yellow cotton sundress she'd changed into before dinner still hugged her petite frame in the most tantalizing of ways. He wrapped his arms around her waist, his lips close to her ear. Olivia's hands faltered, a sign of her annoyance at his proximity that he mistook for arousal.

"You know, those can wait. We haven't been alone in a long time," he murmured.

"No we haven't," Olivia agreed. She wasn't exactly brimming with excitement for this portion of the reunion. She'd known since early that morning that this was going to happen and had been dreading it since he'd kissed her at the airport. But she owed him. Not just because they'd been apart so long but because of what she'd done with Fitz. If Edison stirred a fraction of the desire within her that Fitz did, she might not have been so reluctant to be with him.

In her bedroom, she slipped off her dress and her plain cotton undergarments under his intense gaze, hoping things didn't take too long. She wanted to sit on the back porch and play her cello. She wouldn't truly at home again until she did. She pulled the covers back on her bed, the sheets loving laundered and sweet-smelling curtesy of her mother in anticipation of her arrival. She didn't watch Edison undress nor did she pay any attention to the crinkling of the condom wrapper or his weight dipping her mattress. She wrapped her arms around his neck, making sounds at all the right times, thinking that this wasn't what she wanted. She couldn't sign up for a life so lacking in passion.

She was dismayed when things seemed to take longer than usual. It might not have been so bad if Edison knew anything other than achieving his own release. A sexual mastermind he was not. But she supposed it was nice enough, especially when she wedged her hand between their bodies and rubbed her firm bundle of nerves the way Fitz had done. She also discovered that Edison took direction well enough to actually get a little fire going in her stomach when she told him to go faster. She found herself deliciously close to reaching her peak, visions of her and Fitz together dancing in her head. It was terrible to be thinking of another man when she was with her fiancé, but she was sure she wasn't the first woman to do so. She could feel her end nearing and had to bite her lip to keep from calling Fitz's name. If she squeezed her eyes shut as tightly as she could and blocked out Edison's panting, she could almost smell Fitz's scent and hear him groaning her name. She was so close that she could feel the electricity stirring up within her. Just as the magic moment threatened to undo her, she felt Edison shudder and her hopes of release were dashed by his own explosion. His weight pressed her into the mattress and she frowned at the ceiling.

"Shit," she hissed, annoyed. Edison looked at her with a goofy grin, having misunderstood the context of her utterance.

"I know. That was better than ever," he replied as he rolled off her. Olivia blinked at him but said nothing. He wouldn't have understood if she'd explained anyway. She slipped out of bed and was pleased to find her robe hanging in its spot on the back of her door. She tied the belt tightly around her waist then went to her purse and retrieved a pack of Marlboro's she'd bought at the airport. She pulled a cigarette from the pack and rummaged around in her purse until she found the box of matches. She went to her window and opened it, letting in the warm night air that smelled of honeysuckle and magnolias. She'd missed that scent. Italy had nothing on it. She lit her cigarette and took a long drag, exhaling a plume of smoke. As she took another, feeling her nerves settle, she was unceremoniously disturbed from reminiscing about her first cigarette by Edison asking, "When did you start smoking?"

"About a month ago," she answered absently. "I don't do it every often, just once in a while."

"You know, those are bad for you," he chided.

Olivia smirked at him as she exhaled smoke. "Really? I had no idea. Being a nurse, I'm not really privy to health-related news."

Edison blinked at her. He had never cared for her sarcasm. It really wasn't charming on a woman. "Not funny."

"I'm not a fucking comedian so I'd imagine it wasn't." Olivia looked back out the window, taking another drag. They had been together less than 12 hours and he was already wearing on her nerves. She wondered why he'd never been taught just how golden silence could be. She guessed it was that his mother was interested in everything he had to say. Trudy Davis had never explained to her son that everything in the world didn't exist in terms of himself. She put out her cigarette on the windowsill, tossing the butt out the window, then stood. "I'm going to take a shower."

Edison watched her stalk into the bathroom, wondering what had gotten into her. He shrugged, assuming it was just a feminine flight of attitude. In the bathroom, Olivia busied herself scrubbing the flight and Edison off her body. She bowed her head under the shower's delightfully warm water and washed her hair, delighting in the fact that her mother had bought her favorite peppermint shampoo. After a few minutes, she felt herself relax.

When she emerged from the shower, she felt a lot better. She chastised herself for letting Edison get her all riled up. She emerged from the bathroom and her eyes nearly bulged out of her head at the sight of Edison standing at her dresser, examining the bundle of letters. Rushing to snatch them away from him, she exclaimed, "Don't touch those!"

Edison looked at her in surprise. "Sorry. Didn't know they were sacred."

Olivia rolled her eyes at his sarcasm. "They're private."

She took them and put them in her nightstand drawer. Edison watched her curiously. "You washed your hair. Isn't that going to reverse the permanent?"

"Yes. I like it better this way." She leveled him with an indignant stare, daring him to question her.

"I suppose it's pretty that way too. I just liked it straightened is all," he replied as he stepped into his pants. He watched as Olivia went to her purse and retrieved another cigarette before resuming her spot on the windowsill. "I don't think I like this new habit of yours."

"Can you get off my back? I'm an adult and I'll smoke if I want. Honestly, you're like a crotchety old woman sometimes…" She was beginning to get a headache from the tension of being around him.

"I just don't like the idea of my wife smoking," he tried to explain. Olivia bristled at him calling her his wife. She wasn't his wife. She didn't belong to him. More importantly, her smoking and being his wife didn't have anything to do with each other.

"I'm not your wife!" she snapped. "And even if I was, I'd still smoke if I wanted to." She glared at him. "You know, sometimes you act like someone died and made you king."

"I think I should go," he said as he buttoned his shirt.

"I think you're right," Olivia agreed. She would normally have apologized at that point, or at least told him that he didn't have to leave just yet, but at that moment she wanted nothing more than to be rid of him. She knew her annoyance with him was due in part to her guilt about Fitz, but mostly he was just pissing her off. He had the worse habit of getting under her skin then acting like the victim when she finally snapped. The old Olivia would have just shrugged it off, but the new one, the one who had seen Abby put any and every one in their place in such a fashion that no one dared treat her like she was some timid little girl, would do nothing of the sort. He would treat her like an adult or he'd have to take himself elsewhere.

She didn't look away from the window until she heard the front door close, announcing his departure. Only then did she get up and retrieve the bundle of letters from her nightstand and slide the top letter from under the blue ribbon. She had received the letter from Fitz just as she was leaving the tenement headed for the airport. She had nearly cried at the luck of the mailman's timing. She had stopped herself from reading the letter until she got home, wanting to have some part of him in her bed when she was all alone with no one inquiring about its contents. She grinned at his slanted handwriting then opened the envelope.

Dear Livvie,

I'm sure everything will be fine at home. The important people will embrace your change. As the saying goes, 'Those who mind won't matter, and those who matter won't mind." As long as you like the new you, nothing else is important. If it means anything, I like the new you. I'd probably have liked the old you too. Granted my opinion is horribly biased because you make me 13 and love-struck again.

I can't wait for my leave either. I want to do everything you want and then some. We should do everything in the world together. I want to take you dancing again, or just do anything that lets me touch you. I want to kiss you, and hold you, smell your hair. I miss the way you smell. I miss your little hands and your big brown eyes and the way you laugh. If I get leave when I requested it, I'd like to take you to the Fourth of July fireworks. But like you said, we could sit on your back porch and I'd be happier than a fat kid in a candy store. I just want to be with you, whatever that means.

If you'd have me, I'd really like to make love to you again. The first time was so sudden—amazing, mind you—but sudden. I'd like to take my time with you if you'd give me another chance. I wouldn't normally bring this sort of thing up in a letter but I can't stop thinking about it. I even dream about it. I just want to feel your skin and be that close to you again. I've never felt anything close to that with a woman.

I should wrap this up. I've said more than I should, but I mean every word. I can't wait to see you Livvie. It's the only thing that keeps me going these days.

Always thinking of you,

Fitz

Olivia finished the letter, blushing deeply at the last part. She'd thought it was just her. She'd felt a little dirty thinking of sex with Fitz all the time. But she couldn't get away from thoughts of his skin rubbing against hers and his hot hands clinging to her wantonly. She put the letter on her bed then put on underwear and a white nightgown before going downstairs and onto the back porch to play her cello. She played "Dream a Little Dream of Me," deciding it would be their song regardless to what happened between them.

A/N: Try as she might, Liv can't get Fitz out of her system. That wouldn't be a problem if Edison didn't exist. But he does and she feels obligated to uphold commitments. Still, Fitz is going to show up soon and throw everything into a tailspin. But will it be enough keep Olivia from "should-ing" all over herself? Pause for my shame at that joke. I'm such a nerd. Next chapter we're going to meet Edison's mother who I'm even less thrilled to write about. Until then, leave your thoughts! XOXO