It took longer than Fitz thought it would to get himself moving. To simply put on some shoes and throw on a jacket. In the beginning he was always ready. He knew how long it would take him to get from wherever he was to the hospital at any given time. He memorized traffic patterns, back roads, roads that he was less likely to get a ticket for speeding on. You name it.

Two years later it was like he had never even heard of such things. His phone went to voicemail twice before he picked up, not sensing the urgency of the situation. There was a time when he nearly had panic attacks if he had accidentally left his phone in the other room and now he was barely interested in answering it at all.

"You can go in, President Grant."

The nurse reminded him. She seemed impatient almost, as if he was supposed to slam the door open and run into the room as if nothing had changed. Two years ago he might have. Not today. Not after all of the warnings that he had just received. Not after the deluge of thoughts plaguing his mind about her memory and her strength and her personality. He didn't think he could handle opening the door to find a woman that wasn't his wife.

Fitz nods at the woman anyway and goes over his mental pep talk once more before turning the handle and entering the room. He keeps his eyes glued to the floor and his back practically plastered to the, now closed, door while his head hangs between his shoulders, afraid of what he would find if he looked up.

"Hi." Olivia says softly, her voice raspy and low.

It reminds Fitz of the way that she sounded when he would wake her for work in the mornings and it was enough to open the floodgate of tears and send them streaming down his face rapidly. It seemed like a different time when they shared a bed and a room and a living space. A time where he knew exactly what she sounded like when she woke up. He felt like he didn't know this Olivia. Not that she had done anything in two years that he didn't know about but still, things were different.

For a second he is ashamed at his display of emotions and thoughts so he keeps his head down but for the first time in two years he was hearing her voice from something that wasn't a recording or a machine. She was speaking to him. She was awake. It was more overwhelming than he could have ever imagined.

She was still as thin as she was a few days ago when he'd come with Lola but now her hair fell down around her shoulders, longer than he'd ever seen it, instead of being pulled back into a braid. The biggest difference was that her eyes were open. He couldn't fathom the fact that as he looked at her, she could see him.

"Hi." Fitz chokes out, his voice wavering under the onslaught of emotions.

Olivia holds out her hand, her arm outstretched to urge him to come closer. He looked like the same man. His hair was still curly and styled in a way that made her eyes droop in lust. He still preferred to wear a simple sweater during his down time. His eyebrows were still so light that the only people that knew they existed were people that cared to look closely or, in her case, spend as much time as possible becoming familiar with every centimeter of his face. He was still quintessentially Fitz. There were smaller things that bothered her about him, that she would have to familiarize herself with. As he moved to sit at her side on the hospital bed, Olivia began inspecting every new line that etched its way onto his face, tracing her fingers along every single one. He had more gray hair than he'd had the last time she had seen him and although she tried to fight it, she could feel a wave of sadness wash over her.

A man that she once knew in and out had lived a lifetime in her absence. Every difference that she could find on his face was a story that she had not been around to experience. She begins to rub the new scar near his hairline; she'd saved it for last. Scars were permanent stories and lessons. Scars shape a person. It was something so simple but it just reminded her of the daughter that she'd left as a toddler and would meet again as a child. How many scars did she have? How many lessons had she learned from someone that was filling in her mother's place?

Fitz laughs, catching her off guard. One moment he was in tears and the next he was chuckling at an untold joke. Where at one point she was confident that she knew every thought that passed through his mind, she was now stuck in an unfamiliar place that was bolstering with uncertainty. He quells her active mind by bringing his hand up to meet hers, rubbing the scar along with her before bringing their hands to his lap.

"That's thanks to Lola." Fitz answers the unspoken question. "Last summer, I had just transitioned her into a booster seat and there was this record breaking heat wave. The seat was still new and she was still excited about it so she jumps into the back of the car, waits for me to get in the back with her to make sure that her seatbelt is on right and when she touched it, it was too hot. But of course, she's your daughter and has flair for dramatics so instead of just dropping it, she throws it over her shoulder and it hit dear old dad right in the face."

"The metal part?"

"The metal part." Fitz laughs, shaking his head wistfully. "Lola heard Daddy say some very not nice words that day."

Olivia chuckles along with him, trying to imagine their little girl. What would she have been wearing? How did her voice sound when she was excited about something? Did Fitz do her hair or did he have someone to do that for him? There were so many things that she didn't know. It frustrated her and created a painful aching in her chest.

"Can I see her?" Her voice comes out in a whisper, willing herself not to cry. "Can I see Lola?"

All that the nurses were allowed to tell her was what the date was along with a few current events but a nurse did let it slip that while Fitz came to see her almost twice a week that Lola was rarely ever in accompaniment. There had to be a reason and she was worried that he would say no. She wouldn't blame him if he had decided that her inactive presence might have been too confusing for their little girl but she couldn't help but hope that the opposite was true.

He gave her a sad sort of smile so she immediately steeled herself to his negative answer and closed her eyes, hoping to pacify her burning disappointment.

"Here." He said, bumping her hand with his phone.

She opened her eyes unprepared for the picture open on it but her eyes filled with tears anyway. The baby girl that she had left had indeed turned into a beautiful little girl and she had missed all of it.

"That was yesterday morning, getting ready for school. She calls that her 'Mommy look'."

Olivia couldn't help but chuckle looking at her daughter in a knee length trench coat and boots. Still, it was Lola's face that had most of her attention. When she was a baby Olivia had spent hours staring at her, finally understanding what people meant when they said that they could watch someone sleep forever. That was when her face changed every day and Olivia didn't ever want to miss a new freckle or the darkening of her skin or the changing color of her eyes. She wouldn't miss a thing if she never stopped looking but now it was like she had missed her entire life. She zoomed in on the picture and unknowingly traced the contours of her daughter's face the exact same way that her daughter did hers in every new picture that she discovered of her mother.

"She looks like you." Olivia observes aloud causing Fitz to snort in disagreement.

"No, she looks like you." He argues playfully.

Olivia shakes her head, her eyes still glued to the picture.

"The majority of her, yes but the smaller things are all you. The curve of her chin, the sparkle in her eyes…her eyebrows." She finishes with a smirk

He ignores her jab with a roll of his eyes, moving his hand up to caress her wrist. He had noticed those things about her a time or two as well but…

"All I see when I look at her is you."

And for the first time since he's handed her his phone, Olivia looks up at Fitz, her eyes filled with sympathy.

"That must be hard for you with me…" She lets the sentence hang in the open air.

There was no need to finish. They both knew what she was referring to. Their location wouldn't let them forget and drift off into a world where they were by themselves and nothing was unusual.

"In the beginning it was but now…now it's the greatest blessing being able to see you through her." Fitz shakes his head thoughtfully as he speaks. "Plus, she thinks that in a past life you must have been a queen somewhere. She says that you're too beautiful to be anything else. If she looks like you then that must mean that she's beautiful too."

Olivia smiles at that, taking one last look at the phone before handing it back to him.

"The doctor ran a few tests before you got here, you know, trying to assess the functionality of my brain and my body and my memory. Anyway, he said that I'll have to walk with assistance for a while and that I'll have to follow a strict diet as well but that I should be able to go ho-" Olivia stops her rambling at once too afraid to say the word home only to be told that she no longer had one with him. "He said that I should be able to leave by the end of the week and so I was wondering since that's a few days from now if maybe you could bring Lola here. If I could see her before I leave the hospital. If you don't mind."

She could see the confusion written on his face and couldn't place it. It was just another reminder that they'd become strangers in a sense.

"It's just that one of the nurses said that you don't usually bring Lola with you when you come and so I didn't know what you told her. I completely understand if you decided that this was too much or too confusing or whatever. I just…I-I wanted to see her." She continued on trying to clarify for him but she could see the worry in his eyes and it disheartened her.

It wasn't that Fitz didn't want Lola to see her mother awake. It was what he dreamt of every night but that was part of the problem. What if he left her side to get Lola and came back to find that he had imagined it all. His heart couldn't take seeing her again to find that this was all a part of his vivid imagination. The warmth of her skin, the tenor of her voice, the gentleness of her hands were things that his brain had tried to recreate so many times in her absence so he knew that it was real. However, lately life had not been kind to him and it would be his luck that it was, in fact, just a dream. So he shakes his head slowly and tilts her face so that he could look directly into her eyes, not wanting any part of what he was about to say get lost in translation.

"I want you to see your daughter every single day for the rest of your life. Okay?" He waits for her nod before continuing. "I am just so afraid of leaving you here because I don't know what I'll come back to."

"So you didn't leave her at home so that she wouldn't see me?" Her voice is filled with tears and her eyes with doubt.

"She's actually in a kindergarten class at that huge school that you stalked before she was even born." Fitz brags to see her eyes light up at the mention of the ridiculously priced school.

"She got in?" Olivia practically shouts, referring to the rigorous process that was in place.

"Of course she did. You're her mother. She's as brilliant as you are."

And for a moment they're both silent, taking each other in once more. The room felt lighter in a way. Comfortable.

"I can have the agents bring her as soon as school is over. How about in the meantime I catch you up on the last two years?"

"Can I ask questions?"

"As many as you want." Fitz assures, situating himself in the bed so that they could lay side by side, although Olivia ended up sitting half way in his lap.

"I just want to know who does her hair because…well, she's black, Fitz."

The question causes him to throw his head back in laughter and pull her closer into his side as he chuckles his through the answer. It was comforting for the two of them to be able to sit and laugh together. It reminded Olivia of the lazy Sunday mornings that they spent in bed laughing and joking and making love to each other. She felt safe and whole in Fitz' arms. So they sat that way for a good two and a half hours before Lola began making her way to the hospital. Fitz couldn't help but almost bubble over in excitement at the notion of seeing them together again, of seeing them interact.

Fitz suddenly grips Olivia's face with both of his hands, startling her a bit before caressing the tops of her cheeks with his thumbs and then leaning in to kiss her. She expected short and brief but with the way that his tongue caressed hers she could feel every emotion coursing through his body. He couldn't help but want to kiss her until he could no longer breathe but she broke away from him before he could, looking up at him with a smile on her face.

"I love you." Fitz states as if there wasn't a more factual statement on the planet. "I have loved you every single moment since I laid eyes on you and I will love you every single moment until I die."

At the absolute contentment on her face, Fitz could almost physically feel the metaphorical clouds that were constant above him, part. He was holding his future in his hands and it donned on him that he could actually look forward to tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that and it was all just because she was with him.

Reviews are appreciated :-)