The phone call had ended with a pounding on the door to which she crawled from the floor of her bedroom to her living room not really sure of what to expect on the other side. Low and behold it was Abby, telling her how she had ruined David's life and how she was poison and that she poisoned everything she came into contact with, which were her exact thoughts at the time and she was starting to fear even more for the baby growing inside of her. She had not had the energy to respond, to fight. She just did not have anything left at the moment. And even though they were currently at odds, her friend was able to pick up on that.
She had spewed everything to Abby and she had broken down, which she would blame on the hormones from the baby if anyone where to question her. Abby had hugged her while she had cried, and fearing that someone had heard her say something about murder, she had quietly ushered the crying woman into the apartment.
"Oh sweetie, I'm so sorry for yelling at you like that," Abby apologized. "Liv I didn't, I didn't know." Abby was scrambling internally for a way to make this right. She had not seen Olivia break down like this in a while, a long while. After settling her best friend on the sofa, she quickly made her way into the kitchen going straight for the wine stash before returning with two large wine glasses and an open bottle of wine.
She sat the two glasses on the coffee table and began pouring wine into the glass closest to Olivia. "Here, let's have some wine so we can both make it through this conversation."
Olivia, finally having somewhat gathered herself enough to speak in full sentences again, replied, "I can't have wine Abby." Hell, she had told her everything else, might as well just lay it all out there.
"Sure you can," Abby reminded her, "wine always makes things at least a little better. And right now, we need it. You, need it."
"No Abby," Olivia said more firmly. "I can't have wine." She emphasized the word can't so Abby wouldn't get it confused with won't.
Abby just looked at her for a second waiting for her to continue. When she didn't, "Why not?"
Olivia just stared at her, again chickening out on verbally saying it to anyone else. She didn't even think she had said it aloud to herself yet.
Abby, being the smart girl that she was got the picture, and she opened her mouth to reply, but her mouth just ended up hanging open with no words escaping. After a few seconds, she just picked up the glass of wine she had poured for Olivia and downed it. Olivia didn't stop her, in fact she envied her. The woman finished the glass in one long sip and looked back to her friend.
After searching her tear filled eyes, she again turned to the wine bottle bringing it up to her mouth. She knew it wasn't lady like, but that wasn't her goal. Her goal was to get as much alcohol into her body in as little a time frame as possible to override her liver and get as quick an effect on her brain, which included her emotions, as soon as possible. Olivia let her finish, using the time to compose herself a little more. The tears had stopped flowing when Abby finally turned to her declaring that she was ready.
They stayed up the majority of the night talking and going through all of the information Olivia had including all of her suspicions and doubts. Abby literally had not seen or heard anything behind the walls of the white house so she was of little use, but she did intend to find out something on the subject. Which would probably land her back working for Olivia which was fine, because really, she would honestly work for Olivia Pope rather than be her. Being the woman's best friend was hard enough.
It wasn't until the week before her seventeenth birthday that she started actually putting her life into perspective a little more. Traumatizing life events would do that to you, as if she hadn't already been traumatized enough with her mom dying and then her dad sending her away.
It had been their annual fall party where they would sneak into the woods, have a bone fire, listen to music, drink lots of alcohol and have lots of sex. Really people would think they were just horrible spoiled teenagers, but her friends actually weren't all that bad. Severely misguided, yes, also deeply disturbed and hurting looking for a suitable outlet to release their anger and pain without ending up in a mental institution, jail, or a cemetery.
She had been standing near the fire with Angie and Naveen, two of her best friends as Angie was trying to decide which senior boy she was going to lure into one of the many tents they had set up, making him her unsuspecting victim for the night. The party had been just as much fun as they had expected it to be until they heard a scream come from somewhere nearby.
Everyone had stopped to look in the direction of where the scream had come from, but seeing no immediate danger had gone back to their drinking and dancing, thinking it was just some of their classmates goofing around. Then Jess, one of Anna's classmate had broken through the trees and made her way to Olivia begging her to please come quick that Anna and one of their other classmates were in trouble. Her and her friends followed the girl quickly through the woods towards where some of the tents had been set up.
When she had gotten there, she had seen the thirteen year old outside of the tent, sitting in the dirt in her school uniform that had some rips in it. There was also a puddle of vomit sitting right in front of her. At first she thought that the younger girl had just had too much to drink and was in need of a whole lot of water and a good nights and half of tomorrow's rest. She shook her head slightly amused as she walked up the girl and knelt next to her, pushing some of her curls out of her face.
She was about to speak when she heard moaning and panting coming from inside the tent, followed by some soft disorienting pleas to stop. The smile at seeing the intoxicated teen disappeared into a look of horror as she reassessed Anna's condition. The rips in her clothes, they didn't look like the normal rips they would get from their clothes getting snagged on trees as they would get running through the forest.
She heard the soft pleas again, followed by a derogatory term in a vicious tone telling whoever it was making the pleas to shut up. Then there were soft sobs.
"In the tent," Jess cried quietly.
Angie had by this time heard it too, having gotten closer to Olivia and Anna. She pulled back the opening to the tenth and what the girls saw shocked them and made tears come to all of their eyes. There were two sophomore boys on top of one of the freshman girls.
They all stared in horror as the boys quickly gathered their clothes and tried to flee the tent, while the girls were still in shock. Naveen threw a couple of swings their way as the ran by her, but none were as effective as she would have liked them to have been, being as she couldn't see through the tears in her eyes.
"I fought them Liv," Anna cried. "I tried…I fought." Olivia just stared at the younger girl in horror unsure if she had suffered the same attack as the girl in the tent. "I tried to get Lila away from them."
Lila, that was the girl's name. She had seen her with Anna before.
"I couldn't Liv," Anna continued to cry, "I couldn't…focus. Everything was blurry. I couldn't stand. I couldn't get her away from them."
Olivia shushed the girl she was now holding in her arms as her two friends tried to help and redress the girl in the tent. "You're okay. I'm not going to let anything happen to you."
"Liv!," Abby's voice woke her as a hand and something cold pressed against the side of her face. Wait but that wasn't right. She was definitely in her bed. Abby wasn't supposed to be in her bed. Unless she had pulled a Huck and was for some reason staring at her menacingly while she slept just to relay something for which a simple text would have sufficed.
Her eyes fluttered open and before she could become oriented completely, she saw a hand coming towards her face again and managed to dodge it.
"Olivia," Abby fussed sleepily. "Get your phone." Then the prior nights events came rushing back to her, as Abby continued to thrust the phone in her direction.
She and Abby had stayed up talking and had ultimately both retired to her bed after deciding that they were both too exhausted emotionally and physically to get Abby back to her apartment or to sleep on the couch when there was a completely viable bed big enough for the two of them. It had actually helped her to feel better. Like the old days when she and her friends, Abby included for whatever reason would have a wine feast, with or without the crying and crawl into bed with each other to sleep off the effects of the alcohol and pray that they didn't wake up with sore, swollen eyes and a headache that would put them on their asses for most of the next day.
She grabbed the phone from Abby and saw that it had already been answered, Fitz's name on the screen. She grunted into the phone since her eyes were indeed sore and she did have a small headache. That was his cue to start talking.
"Livvie I hope you're not upset with me. I did what I had to do to…" he wasn't allowed to finish.
"No," was her simple response. She could not have this conversation right now. She literally could not.
He seemed to be confused. "No you're not upset?"
"I'm not having this conversation with you right now," she clarified.
"Olivia," he tried.
"Goodbye Fitz," she hung up. She didn't know why she was so severely annoyed. She figured it had something to do with her still being in a sleep induced fog as well as feeling like death warmed over. And she hadn't even drunk anything. She rolled over and fell back asleep.
"Haven't seen you around here much lately," he stated after a few seconds of her quietly going through the papers his secretary had handed her before walking in.
"I've been busy," she stated not looking up at him. She was completely an utterly unamused by him at this point in time. She was stressed, and he was adding to it. She wanted something, and there seemed to be a wall of people actively stopping her from obtaining it, him included. She felt that vindictive little teenager rearing her overly passive aggressive head.
He walked closer to her as she willfully ignored him.
"Olivia," he reached out to caress her face, but she pulled away.
"I'm busy," she replied coldly, finally turning her eyes to him, "unless you have something useful to add to what I'm reading, I'm going to have to ask you to be a little quieter."
He huffed, before retreating to the sofa across from her, studying her silently. "You really do care for him." She ignored him. "That time on the island must have been something special for you to come back willing to shut me out for him."
"Yeah, and a lot must have happened during my time away for you to be willing to execute an innocent man."
"You don't know he's innocent," was his simple reply.
"You don't know he's guilty," was her comeback.
"Olivia, it was a clean confession," he tried.
"My father was there," she half yelled at him, trying to hold back the tears that tried to force themselves out at the mention of her father. "That alone prevents it from being qualified as clean."
"What do you want from me?" he asked her standing up again.
"Let me talk to him," was her immediate reply as she returned her eyes back to him. "Let me find out what really happened. "
He stared at her for a few moments before replying. "I can't let you do that."
This caused her to let out a frustrated laugh, before she began gathering her papers. "I'm going to take these back to my office to look them over. I'll call Cyrus when I've finished."
She stuffed the papers into her bag before standing and heading towards the door. "Olivia, please," he tried, "sit back down. Let's talk about this."
"There's nothing to talk about," she told him as she turned to face him, her hand on the door knob. "You've made that very clear."
A/N: Sorry, not much going on in this chapter to the naked eye anyway. Just trying to set the stage for future chapters. Reviews, thoughtful comments are welcomed.