"Mommaaaa! Me needs help." Teddy ran into Mellie's room, where she was sitting on the floor nursing Danika. Mellie glanced up at her son, smiling when he walked into the room.
"Hi baby. What do you need help with?" She asked, holding out her free arm. Teddy ran toward her and hugged her, careful not to touch Danika while she was eating.
Teddy laid his head on Mellie's shoulder, yawning and closing his eyes. "Mes need help packin'." He mumbled, his southern accent poking through. Teddy had gained a slight bit of southern drawl when he spoke, due to hearing Mellie's parents speak when they were in North Carolina. Mellie tended to regain hers, the one that she had beaten out of her on the road to the White House, when she was in North Carolina. And since Teddy liked imitating his mother, he had started to speak with a southern accent as well.
"Okay, honey. Let me finish feeding Dani and then I'll go help you pack, okay?" She ruffled her son's hair, kissing the top of his head before finishing up with Dani. The little girl fell asleep in her arms and Mellie fixed her shirt before standing up and picking up Teddy. She carried Danika to her room and laid her down in her crib, carrying Teddy back to his room. His room was a mess. Toys were strung out everywhere, all of his clothes were pulled out of his dresser. There was stuff everywhere.
Mellie set Teddy down on the ground, laughing to herself as she dropped to her knees and started to pick things up. "Teddy Bear, your room is a mess." She had told him to wait to start packing, but as always, Teddy had wanted to impress Mellie, and had started on his own. He didn't want to admit defeat, he didn't want to admit that he needed help, but he knew that if Mellie or Fitz had walked in and seen the mess that he had made, he would get yelled at. So, he figured that he would get Mellie's help.
She helped pack Teddy's things into boxes while Teddy slowly helped her. He wasn't that much of a help, and truthfully, he was making things a little more difficult than they needed to be, but Mellie really appreciated his help. It was better to have a child that wanted to help you and wanted to make things easier on you than a child who was destructive and had no intentions of helping clean up his mess. Besides, she really enjoyed having Teddy around. It kept things from getting profoundly boring and from her being absolutely bored out of her mind.
"Momma, me do good?" Teddy asked as he balled up one of his t-shirts and threw it into a box. Mellie chuckled to herself, and nodded as she pulled her son into her lap, kissing his cheek. She tickled Teddy's stomach, and the little boy giggled, trying to squirm away from his mother. But Mellie kept a hold on him and wouldn't let him go no matter what. After a few seconds and what she deemed was enough torture for the four year old, she let him go. Instead of walking away like Mellie had expected him to, Teddy jumped back into Mellie's lap and pushed her down, starting to tickle her as revenge.
Mellie laughed, pretending to fight Teddy and try to push him off of her. Of course, she was just pretending and she didn't actually need to try to get him off of her, but he was enjoying it. He was having fun. So Mellie was going to let him have his fun. It was rare that Teddy got to spend time with his mother alone, so Mellie was going to let him have his time with her. It was only fair.
Fitz walked into Teddy's room, smiling when he saw Mellie and Teddy playing on the floor. However, his smile faltered when he saw that Teddy's room was almost all completely packed up. It was a bittersweet feeling. He wasn't sure how he felt about leaving the White House. Of course, it had been a long 8 years. It had been an 8 year long roller coaster of ups and downs, in his marriage, in his life, in his political career. He had had a great relationship with Olivia Pope while he was here, but that wasn't realistic. He had lost his son while he was here. But he had had four more children while he was here, four children that he loved with all of his heart. He loved his babies to his detriment. He had also repaired him and Mellie's marriage while he was here. But he had faced an assassination attempt and almost died. Being in the White House was bittersweet, and so was leaving.
"Are you two having fun?" Fitz asked as he picked up Teddy, who giggled and kissed his father's cheek. Mellie nodded as she sat up, smiling and watching her husband and her son. She stood up and kissed Fitz's cheek, wrapping her arms around her husband. "One more week." Fitz whispered.
"One more week..." Mellie repeated, frowning slightly as she looked at Teddy. The little boy sensed his mother's sadness and leaned over, kissing her cheek and running his hand through her hair. Mellie just smiled.
Fitz looked over at her and kissed his wife's head. "I have the twins' room packed. Dani's room and our room are the only ones that haven't been touched yet."
Mellie looked down at her feet and sighed. "Not the only ones..."
"Yeah...I know. I just didn't want to say it."
Packing up Jerry's room was most likely going to be the absolute hardest thing that either of them ever had to do. It was hard enough to pack up Karen's room and she was just in California avoiding them. Jerry, on the other hand, that was different.
"I don't want to do it, Fitz..." Mellie whispered as she laid her head against her husband's shoulder. "Fitz, I can't do it...I can't pack up our dead son's room. I can't go through all of his things and put them into boxes and act like he's still here, like everything's okay. I can't do it."
Fitz held Mellie close, as best as he could with Teddy still in his arms. "Then we won't do it. We'll have someone else do it for us. We'll let them pack it up and then we'll figure out what to do from there."
She shook her head. "No...We have to do it. There's no avoiding it. We have to do it. We can't pawn it off on someone else. He's our son and that's his room...We have to pack up his room."
"I know." He sighed to himself. "We'll just put it off as long as we can, okay?"
Mellie nodded, closing her eyes, trying to fight the tears that were threatening to fall. "Sounds like a plan."
That was going to be hell. That was something that they had both thought of, but refused to bring up to the other. Now it was something that was unavoidable and that they had to do, and it killed Mellie to have to come to terms with the fact that it was inevitable that they would have to pack up their dead son's room within the next week. As if this next week wasn't already going to be difficult, that would just be the icing on the cake.