A/N: Apologies to everyone for the dip in quality and for rushing through the last two chapters. Gratitude to all for the previous positive reviews and feedback. I intend to return with strong chapters after taking a mini-break from writing this week. Thanks for your patience.

To: ChasingPavements, you're right. I haven't written Huck accurately. He's pretty anti-social on the show and I've made him seem more normal and well-adjusted than he is.

Chapter 23: State of the Union

It was the day of the State of the Union address. It had been almost a month since Olivia's kidnapping and the situation was still hanging like a cloud over Fitz's head. But the White House had refused to publicly comment or release a statement about Olivia Pope's kidnapping. Cyrus had given Fitz the speech to review the day before but unbeknownst to Cyrus, Fitz decided to make some last-minute changes to the speech. Fitz called Jackson Harris, his lead speechwriter, to the Oval Office.

"Jackson, please take these notes, rewrite them and insert it in my State of the Union speech," Fitz said, handing the young speechwriter a few sheets of handwritten paper. "Make me sound better than good. This is going to be a historic speech."

"Yes, sir!" said the young, ambitious speechwriter, eagerly taking the papers and putting them in a manila folder. "I'll get right on it!"

The night of the State of the Union, Fitz entered the Capital to the cheers and applause of the bipartisan Congress. Mellie was radiant, standing in the upper balcony. Next to her was a young soldier who was going to be honored for his bravery in battle.

Fitz's State of the Union addressed started off slowly as he hit all the normal talking points about the U.S. economy and his administration's plans to spark job growth, and to work with Congress to get several laws passed. It was all very boring and predictable. And then, somehow, Fitz's speech verged into talking about the war on terror. Cyrus, who was watching the speech from his office, straightened up in his chair. What Fitz was saying wasn't part of the official speech Cyrus had read and approved hours earlier. Fitz was off script. The POTUS had gone rogue.

"…we live in a world of untold horrors. A world where man's inhumanity to man is often on display. It's been said that all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. For too long our country has chosen to not confront oppressive regimes operating openly in several regions of the world. We've allowed them to flourish by doing nothing. Well, no more. Tonight, we draw a line in the sand. If even one American citizen is held captive, harmed and tortured, we will not turn a blind eye to that. We will fight back.

To those who do not share our values and seek to destroy this great country of ours, tonight I am sending them a message, and the message is this: You will fail. You will not succeed because the United States of America will not let tyranny stand. We will do what is required, by any means necessary, to defeat you. To all the tyrants and barbarians out there who wish to destroy and defile all that we hold dear, let me be clear: We will hunt you down, find you and remove you from this planet so that love can flourish and the innocent may live in peace!

Thank you. God bless you, and God bless the United States of America!

The building erupted in applause.

About 8,000 miles away in the hills of Pakistan, Olivia's captors watched the speech on CNN International on their satellite TV. The main captor, who spoke and understood English, grunted at the end of Fitz's speech. Olivia could hear the speech in the room where they were keeping her prisoner. A single tear rolled down her cheek and the slightest glimmer of a smile crossed her lips. The message was clear: Fitz was coming to get her.

A/N: Three chapters in one day. Or maybe I should say 2.5 chapters since Chap 22 (Hot Mess) was very weak. Well, the end of this story is finally in sight. Can't make any promises when I'll post the next chapter because I'm feeling a little burned out after having cranked out six chapters in the past five days. Whew!

As always, thanks for reading and reviewing!

Neo