All in Love is Fair

Part I of VI

'It's Oh So Quiet'

Christmas Eve

It is quiet. Oh so quiet. A silent night. Olivia inhaled the aroma of her DuBellay, raptured in solitude, after one hundred years, it seemed, of constant company. She had not truly been alone since he moved her into the White House. Someone was always just feet away, outside a door, waiting for her to need them or, more often than not, intruding with their own needs for her to fulfill. Never of the sort intriguing enough to give her reason to breathe. No, needs that involved patterns and placements; furniture and food. Ornaments that became the nucleus of her dysfunction. But this oh-so-quietness was blissfully welcomed. That Bjork song that began similarly came to mind. The one where the music explodes into sonorous bacchanal to signal falling in love. Zing! Boom! Sometimes there's a boom at the end, too. An explosion of all the things you never said to each other. And then it is quiet. Oh so quiet. She likes this part. For now.

Gold metal clinks against her glass of red wine, and the tinkling noise triggers something familiar. She thinks of Maxwell, the black and white Maltese-Poodle mix that ostensibly belonged to the White House but was owned by one of the long-time secretaries in the East Wing, Gayle. The one Olivia used as a prop for a magazine cover. Because dogs made people seem more approachable, more human. Especially if those people were Black. Did it work like a charm! America loves dogs more than they love Black people. The initial hatred for her as 'America's mistress' all but abated, and that magazine cover serviced her agenda. The plan she made—the one she remembered staying up all night to concoct at Fitz's behest three years ago, that plan, with Abby's expert coordination had worked. She did the impossible—win America's heart. From Mistress to First Girlfriend. Her relationship with Maxwell, or Maxie, as she began calling him, wasn't simply transactional. He became a sort of friend to her, or at least a familiar comfort who didn't ask her any questions.

Sometimes she would hear Maxwell wandering down the hallway. The tinkling sound of his tags alerted her to his impending arrival. One day this sound became a Pavlovian trigger for her, manifesting as an unbridled need to pick him up and hold him against her bosom. The warm, soft, furry weight of him so comforting and calming in the middle of the day, or early evening when Gayle was still there. When Fitz was still working away from the House or in The Oval, no longer wanting her there with him. And during the times when they could not have dinner together, as they had early on—mere weeks ago. Maxwell comforted her during those times. Something she lacked right now. The makeshift tree she had erected twinkled softly in the corner. Her new charcoal colored couch, beautiful and elegant, needed to be lived in. She pictured Maxwell jumping up on the couch, as he so often did in the East Wing, cuddling by her side, or putting his two front paws together, earnestly making a begging gesture. "Oh, fine" she would relent, rolling her eyes and smirking because she loved it, really. Picking him up, giving into his demand to be cuddled. He'd put his head on her chest and squirm until he was settled. He started to remind her of the baby boy she knew she would never hold; the little girl whose bonnie head she would never smell as she simultaneously felt the ache of her mammary glands longing for relief.

When she felt that, she would put Maxwell down, ignoring his whimpers. Maxwell was a furry bundle of flesh and bone, not a baby. He was not growing inside her, attached to her. A thing needing her resources, her organs, her life to make itself before she had had the chance to do so for herself. An interloper in her life at the wrong time. She could not say it was with the wrong person. Their circumstances may have never seemed right, but him? The feeling he gave her was never wrong. But somehow things always went left for them. So far from right. Like allowing herself to have a baby with him. Unmarried, living in the White House whilst he still had two years left of his presidency. Ridiculous. Her words from earlier that night came back to her then.

There is no us! There is no this! There is no Vermont. There is no jam! There is no future! Not anymore.

Olivia frowned at the memory, at its finality shooting out of her mouth. At the almost-tears that were mixed in with the words. They were part of the torrent of emotional vomit she spewed, but for which she was largely unapologetic now. She lost count of how many nights she and Fitz indulged in their Vermont fantasy over the years. Like world-building in a video game that you could turn off when reality needed you. He had abandoned the fancy of a soccer team's worth of children and came down to a respectable two. Two babies. Now there were none. There would probably never be one, let alone two. A small personal sacrifice to do what needed to be done. Her father's words rang in her head.

Precise, quiet, calculating, you will wait for the right time. You will look at all the possible outcomes. You'll understand what needs to be done. You will pick a side and then you will handle this situation in the manner we both know it needs to be handled. You will burn it down and never look back.

A chill ran up her spine. "I am nothing like him," she whispered to herself. She did not want to go down this baby—this fetus—road again. It was finished. It was done. It had been scraped clean from her body. She was still wearing the pad now and would be until her body forgot it was ever pregnant. She did what Fitz had failed to do after she told him she worked with Mellie to free her father from prison. The prison in which she placed him. The one which allowed her the courage to go to Fitz in the first place, to be with him. Was that the freedom, going to him? Or was it freedom to leave? One thing she knew for certain: she and her father had both flown the coup. Olivia let out a wry laugh over the rim of her glass as she stared out her window, thankful that her view was not of the White House. The gilded prison she just left.

Her father was right, which is why she had to free him. And she was right, too. Right to leave. To leave Him. To leave the White House. There's rarely an occasion for which she hated being right, but this was one of them. She knew it, and at least she got him to acknowledge it too. That she was right; and playing house in that big, white building was wrong. It was too much, too soon, all at once. Wasn't she sparing him? Sparing them both from the impending complications that they foolishly created together, and that he made worse. Once that bubble was pierced, the rest of it had no chance.

Olivia turned up the temperature on her Nest and tightened the cashmere throw over her shoulders. She needed more wine. More sustenance to block out these unwanted thoughts. Olivia grabbed another bottle of DuBellay. There was that clink against the bottle again. Like a bell tolling. She threw the bottle sideways and caught it by the neck with her right hand, the fingers of which were unadorned. Olivia ambled towards her bedroom, eager for night to become day, not because she had anywhere to be, or anyone to see (thankfully). But because so much had happened in this one night. Aiding Mellie's filibuster. Her abortion. Their argument. Their breakup. Her moving out. It was a whiplash of an evening. She wasn't tired, but she didn't want to think anymore. Or process anything. Numbness was calling her. Downing Mellie's hooch wasn't enough to make that happen. Her argument with Fitz ruined all of that. She didn't want to feel anymore. Midnight was long gone, and the creeping morning of Christmas was nigh.

/

He couldn't be in that room. The bedroom that became theirs. The bedroom he began sleeping in again after Mellie finally left. It was the only place to which he and Olivia could retreat and be themselves, after reuniting. With her, quiet was good. Her absence boomed in his ears. Now that they were apart, that room was a source of pain, exposure, regret. The precipice of their destruction, where sky caved in as he watched his staff follow behind her, wheeling out her things. Out of that room, that house. Only after he arrived at the conclusion she had already been holding: it was over. There was no them, no future. No Vermont, or its jam. He wasn't sure what the last part meant except to say that everything about them was decimated. Every dream he had for them, gone in an evening.

Fitz sighed over the rim of his crystal tumbler, amber waves of a grey, grey, grey feeling rippled down his esophagus, settling warmly into his stomach. Warm as the fire that flickered in the darkness of the Oval. At least in here he was still somebody. In here, his life had a tomorrow, even if he and Olivia no longer did. Had he always wanted this more than she did? Loved her more than she did…him?

Drink.

He could not entertain the thought. Did not want to. Instead, he thought about the first time she said his name. How special the sound of it was. How he had wanted to swallow the very air carrying its sound from her mouth, instead of letting the particles dissipate into the atmosphere. He had no right at all to feel that way about her. There he was, married and aware of himself irrevocably falling down the rabbit hole into Olivia's wonderland. In love with his campaign manager. Fitz rubbed his face with both hands, trying to rid himself of the thought. A rueful chuckle rumbled softly in his chest, and he could not stop himself. Soon it became a sarcastic cackle, deep and sinister. "My campaign manager who never stopped managing me. Right up until the end." Managed him right into seeing an inconvenient truth—she would always love the game more than she loved him. That she could not be committed to anyone other than herself and her work. Work from which he benefitted, regardless of the headaches along the way. Work he never wanted to completely stop or deny, let alone imprison her. Now it was all gone. Death by suffocation. He considered how one act could be interpreted with such wild polarity, as his moving her into the White House became How did her safety become her imprisonment?

How many times had he done this with her, his vanishing half? Three? Four? Five times? Counting their break-ups seemed more feasible than trying to quantify all that they had created together. That's what he gets for developing juvenile feelings as a middle-aged man. What is the use of falling in love? Of nursing an ache that sometimes kept him awake with worry. A flame so intense it that would sacrifice three hundred and thirty million people for the sake of one. It was too much. That's what he should have told Mellie when she asked what it felt like to love someone the way he does Olivia. Maybe there's a reason they say true love is for the young. Because now he was tired. So truly tired. He had tried everything to keep them together, even attempting to give up this house and everything it means. He was always pushing. Had this been one-sided the whole time? The setting was never right for them. Or maybe he was never right? Too much in some ways, and not enough in others.

So you're bitter. Is that it? After realizing how ineffectual you actually are.

Maybe that's what she discovered once she no longer had to share him, force herself to stay away, or take breaks from him with shiny new or loyal boy toys. Once she had an unobscured view of him, her fantasies and yearning vanquished by day-to-day mundanities. He was just a man.

One thing was certain. He would never beg Olivia Pope to be with him again. In fact, he would never beg her for anything.

/

One week later…

Olivia could feel Fitz's body next to hers, warm, solid, comforting. She had quickly grown used to the safety of sleeping next to him every night. Except this night she was uncomfortable. It began as a tickle in her throat. When she tried to cough, her breath humbled into hiding, refusing to make a sound. Her eyes bulged in fear. In fact she could not open her mouth at all. And that's when she felt it, like indelicate fingers encircling her delicate neck, the circumference narrowing until they were imprinting on the column of flesh. Quickly she grabbed at the hands? Wait, they weren't hands at all. It was metallic, solid, smothering. Olivia felt all over both sides of her neck, trying to decipher the device pinning her down. She could not scream, her voice broken. The curve of the metal lines—two horizontal ones and a diagonal one intersecting their parallel. A ring! This is a ring, she figure out. A ring that would never fit over her head, or slip down her shoulders. She had to cut it off. Cut it off. How else could she breathe, trapped as she was. How could Fitz be laying next to her and not feel her distress. Not sense that she was flailing right under his nose. Help! She screamed impotently, the sound never manifesting, locked inside her. She wanted to cry. Crying…maybe if she cried, he'd hear her. Know that she needed help. Olivia tried one last time to inhale as much air as she could, attempting to force a distressing sound.

Did he disappoint you? Not live up to your very, very high standards? Fail to meet your expectation of perfection? Did you learn he's only human after all? That all men, in fact, are just like your father?

Olivia woke up gasping, clawing at her naked neck. Panting, panting. Her eyes wide and adjusting to the darkness. The familiarity of her dusky pink walls, bathed in moonlight hit her. The sound of her own voice hit her. She wasn't in Fitz's bedroom, next to him. She was at home, safe in her bed. The back of her hand wiped away beads of perspiration from her forehead. All around her neck felt hot, too. She clasped her neck, never more grateful for its nakedness. The single spot of cool against her neck, lent by the gold band that was so familiar to her, so much a part of her that it ceased to be jewelry. Suddenly, she was keenly away of it. A lingering symbol of him. She looked down at it in the shadowy night, its tiny diamonds glinting in the darkness.

"But if you could wear this…If I could know that you were wearing this, then even if you hate me, I'll know we'll be OK."

Olivia looked at the ring, remembering the day Fitz gave it to her. She smiled, small and sad. "It's true, I could never hate you," her voice croaked out. Swinging her legs from underneath her stark white duvet, she padded into the living room, slow and sure, now holding the ring by its base. She removed a metal vase from its shelf, dropping the ring down the neck of its dark abyss. The metal rocked back and forth before finally settling, silently at the base of its new home.

She could start again.

/

February

Olivia crumpled up the now damp square of fabric and held it like a basketball, poised in front of her like a game-winning shot. She shoots. She scores. "Swish!" she said under her breath, as the balled-up cotton polyester blend enters the laundry basket of Montmartre's newly renovated bathrooms. Such a silly thing to feel a burst of pleasure from the simplest win, she thought as she turned in the mirror to smooth the gabardine-silk blend dress she wore. Olivia scrunched up her forehead as she looked in the mirror. In this stark lighting, the dress looked more tangerine than it had under the moodier lighting of her bedroom, also recently renovated. Garish. The color looked garish in this lighting. Had it looked like this, on the rack Lucy wheeled in, the dress would have gone in the reject pile.

"Humph," she said, still staring in the mirror. Whatever version she saw in the glass, the reality was she loved this dress. Power red. She turned sideways in the mirror just to make sure the back of the dress was in good standing. How many years had it been since she'd dared to cloak herself in vibrant color?

Three weeks ago…

"Quinn, I thought I told you I am not to be disturbed!" Olivia snapped without bothering to lift her head from the document she was perusing. When she heard the clicking of heels interspersed with wheels rolling against a wooden floor, that's when she lifted her head. Quinn doesn't wear heels. Not since she became Quinn 2.0. Or was this the third version of Quinn?

"I'm so sorry, Olivia. I know our appointment was at the end of the day, but I had to bring these now— "

Lucy's words brought her back to reality. "Lucy! I, umm," Olivia looked at her watch as her personal stylist brought in a single rack of garments, all hanging at various lengths, and covered by sleek, protective bags.

"My daughter's school called. Her class is going to be back two hours early from their trip to Monticello, and I've got to be there for pick up. It's my turn. So, I came early to drop these off rather than reschedule. I hope that's OK?" Lucy smiled awkwardly, her thin lips spread so far to capacity, they disappeared against her cartoonishly pink gums.

Olivia barely nodded her assent before Lucy was unzipping bags and launching into a diatribe about how this rack was just representative to gauge her sartorial directions for the new year. Her usual tastes were present, but some other options, too. Though Olivia wasn't one whose style fluctuated wildly each season, Lucy took the liberty of including some bold color this time. Every-day dresses and skirts, too, not just gala gowns. That she had closely watched Olivia's brief time in the White House was something the stylist mentioned more than once.

"I didn't think I'd get the chance again, but here we are! These are just first options." This time Lucy's smile was small and impatient as she resisted the urge to check her watch under Olivia's stare. "It's up to you, of course."

Olivia leaned back in her chair for a moment, her eyes lingering over the rack in the corner of the room. She let her gut speak to her, and she heard it clearly. Olivia instructed Lucy thusly: "No thigh on show. No skirt sets. Less homemaker, more structure. Same solid, clean lines. As always, no cleavage."

Olivia pressed her uncovered arm against the door, pushing her way out of the restroom. Some things she had forgotten, pushed out of the way. Other things were harder to forget and required practice. Squaring her shoulders, she pushed back memories of the White House and who she was then. New year, new goals. With that and a well practices strut, at the memory as she marched down the corridor, back to her table.

#

Rowan eyed Olivia's return, giving her a once over as she sat down. She was already seated by the he had reached Monmartre for their weekly dinners. He did not have to prod her much to get her to revive their tradition. Incapable of a smile without smugness, Rowan chuckled, gesturing his nearly empty glass of cabernet sauvignon toward Olivia's standing form. "This," he said of her tomato red dress "This…this is new."

She sighed as she sat down. "What? I'm making some changes. No time like the present."

"Mmmn" he grunted in that way of his. "More? Do you want more?"

"You could say that." She looked up from resettling her napkin on her lap to see him holding the bottle angled in her direction. She extended her glass.

"I'm not surprised, dear daughter of mine. You were running the White House right under his nose. The poor sod was none the wiser. Your palette has been whetted, knowing now where you belong. The pinnacle of what you have always deserved. The— "

Rowan stopped short of saying The Oval, with her installed as Chief of Staff. The true power behind the throne. Olivia, much like himself, retained more than a streak of arrogance. But in ways she had yet to figure out and own. Ways that he knew because she was flesh of his flesh, blood of his blood. Closed, though she may appear, or think to herself, to him his daughter was an open book he could read and edit, where necessary. Especially now that she was overcompensating after leaving the White House. He knew her vulnerabilities; the specific ways she could be…guided towards what was best for her. Things she would at first not understand, but ultimately come to acknowledge were right. Because daddy knows best. She was a grown woman—he was well aware. But in so many ways she was still pushing against his will as if she were that same teenage girl. The one that needed him to set order to chaos, after her mother left them. No matter who caused that chaos. And despite her protestations, she very much cared about his impression of her. Because here she was lying to him. Refusing to come by the house because Jake is there. Her strident refusal was all he needed to confirm that Jake, the only son he would ever know, was back in her bed. The lady doth protest too much.

"What? What do I deserve"

Rowan swallowed the last of the masticated venison. "You know exactly what, Olivia."

"Dad," she rolled her eyes. "Please don't start with this again. I'm not interested in the White House. Not interested in any campaigns. I'm done."

"Ohhh? Did playtime in the East Wing put a pallor on the West?"

Olivia stopped slicing through the last of the haricot vert on her plate and set the cutlery neatly to the side. Crossing her arms, she leaned in over the table as if to make a confession.

"You know, he tried to cage me. Like some housewife." She went on in this way towards the end of their dinner, past cups of coffee, regaling her father with the story she had told herself so many times it was now calcified as unimpeachable fact.

"I felt like some… prisoner of his. I had to get out."

With dinner now over, and the two making moves to leave, Rowan pushed in his chair, his eyebrows in mock surprise as Olivia adjusted her mulberry and vermilion color block coat. "Is that so?" He asked into the air as he fastened the buttons on his suit jacket, not bothering to look in Olivia's direction, who awaited him with her handbag hanging from one leather gloved wrist.

"Go ahead. Say it." she said. Her father could not resist an 'I told you so.' He always needed to be right. She hated that about him. When he did not bite, Olivia began delivering what she knew he would say. Had said, in the past.

"No one can cage me unless I let them! Freedom is in myyyyy haaaaands," Olivia pantomimed his actions and cadence.

"You know me so well," Rowan humored.

He walked over and began guiding her out by the shoulders. "One day may you be so well-informed." He had raised her to know that she could do anything. That the world was hers for the taking. Instead, she had cast herself as hero focused on fighting against him, the villain. Losing sight of what mattered until she had ended foolishly ended up putting all her eggs into the love basket when there was so much of the world to grab.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Olivia enquired.

"I'm sure you'll figure it out. You always do." He would make sure she did not waste her life now that she had finally exorcised that senator's boy from her system. The devil cuts loose, but he was very precise this time, and it meant Rowan would be met with less resistance. What Olivia needed to see and accept, Rowan thought, was that the villain was always a reflection of the hero. Always.

TBC...

A/N: Patience. Don't freak out. Trust me.

Thank for reading part 1 of 4 of my attempt to help me through this devastating breakup. I hope it helps anyone out there that never felt satisfied with the lack of answers. I hope I can put together a cohesive narrative in these 4 parts. lt's been cathartic to write.

What part did you like? What did you hate? What has you scared? What do you hope to get our of this series. I'm still editing the last 3 parts so you may be helping me.

For As Always folks, yes, I've been working on that update, too. But this one is in the forefront of my mind. Maybe it's the time of year coinciding with the breakup.

-IP