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Olivia Pope came from a home where she was a princess, the one and only innocent in a family of liars. Before she was sharp, unyielding and beautiful, she was open, shy and cute.
Jake treated her bedroom like a puzzle. Her bed was carved with hearts and flowers, her stuffed animals named and displayed in special shelves above a desk where her tiny intellect grew to be the diamond of her father’s collection of jewels. She sat on the bench next to her window to read the books about female heroines who did extraordinary things. She learned to swim in the backyard pool. She whiled away her breaks from boarding school with classes on science and history. She was squired to every museum and gallery.
Her mother’s death was marked with mourning and therapy, but even that was done in understated privilege. Everything was done well, leaving no outward appearance she was deprived of care.
Her tastes as a child had been casual clothes, but they were good quality. She had new glasses every year until she wanted contact lenses instead. She had an appreciation for good food, and a knowledge of culture. Style became an interest, and her allowance grew to accommodate a wardrobe that presented her like the cherished, polished young woman Eli Pope loved.
After he’d been taken in as one of Eli’s kids, her ad hoc brother, he sometimes left the guest room to lie down in Olivia’s old room. It had a lingering sweetness of being truly ignorant the world took things away. It was the only evidence Eli Pope’s brutal philosophy couldn’t defeat sentiment. Olivia might be the solution to the debate between nature and nurture, but she said ‘Dad’ and Eli would hesitate.
Jake had been paid to know everything about her; past, present and as much of the future as he could predict. He knew she would order food, but only if there were guests with her. She would work despite leaving her office. She would keep her phone on. She lived comfortably with her secrets and her insider knowledge always ready to be used. She missed nothing, and never presumed face value. She was more B613 than any of the pale imitations created in her image from adulthood.
There was some magic about little Olivia Pope. Jake knew she’d received some special training that made her superior. He could go back to the beginning and do all his training over, and his mastery would be less than hers. She hadn’t been tortured and distorted like the ex military recruits her father snatched from their human lives. She’d been upheld as deserving of all the benefits of the wealthiest, most aristocratic heirs of her time.
Perhaps it was simply a blind spot. Jake couldn’t remember ever having enough money at home when he was a child. There was a house and furniture, meals and cable television. But he had crammed his growing feet into the same sneakers until the seams gave out. His sister’s teddy bear was lucky to be off the floor. His mother knew they were in the tax bracket where calling the police when her drunk husband beat her would bring police, but those police officers would try to avoid making an arrest. They had the image of an average family, but things were lacking.
For good or ill, Olivia had been kept safe in her childhood home. The lies that made that happen were legion, and there had certainly been security in place. She’d been watched since the day she’d left the hospital as an infant. She’d been guarded, with some file tracking her every move. Her lack of fear was as much programming as her French lessons or her confidence in rarified company.
There were protected locations in the United States, sacred spaces where history and posterity met the potential of the future. Some were spectacular buildings but some were simply homes holding someone special. Olivia’s neighbours didn’t need their doorman. They were listed first in evacuation orders. They were on the list. As someone who barely made the list, Jake could only speculate the effect of belonging there forever.
He slept better in Olivia’s bedroom. It didn’t even have to be about the sex. The floor was good enough, and the steady ebb and flow of her breathing was soothing. She existed in a bubble of her own cultivated elegance, taught by her father and continued as a way of life. Olivia Pope was dignity and know-how fearlessly meeting the eyes of the world and having her say. She carried the atmosphere of a beautiful art exhibit in her poise.
Standing next to her gave a shivering awareness of it, but she’d been showered in it for decades. It had to be intoxicating to be so sure. It had to twist things inside all the pretty, capable presentation for her clients. There was nothing wrong with Olivia, not even under the microscope. No one normal had nothing wrong with them.
Jake had plenty wrong inside, and he accepted his humanity. He was only as good as his worst day, and once he’d fallen any comfort was a nice overcompensation. He had power gifted through silent moves to arrange people like game pieces. He had a mentor who showed genuine pride when he delivered on a plan to leverage human frailty. Eli Pope could be very loving when his creations obeyed orders.
Being adopted by the man was the oddest lifestyle. He was a grown man taken in like a very dark version of a family reunion. Jake saw the flaw in escaping his violent father to take shelter in fighting for his country and then becoming an assassin. Command had sculpted him into a man who craved control as a cure for the tumult of his childhood. But there was an inner peace in taking orders from someone who was an absolute.
He had to spend some nights at Vanessa’s apartment. His preference would be his own apartment, but it was simpler to give up his freedom willingly. If there could be no secrets, Jake wasn’t patient enough to pretend his place hadn’t been searched while he was out. He was trying to find complacency in being owned by Command, under the guise of paternal tolerance.
Olivia had survived the pressure of her upbringing. She was like a rare, lost species that lived where no one thought anything could. The pressure was just normal for her, and anyone who’d been pushed to achieve less seemed like a lesser version of human. It felt right to listen to her because she was as fixed in her morality as her father in his rejection of it.
Jake was in the drift of the plan, treading water to breathe but not going against the waves. He would wash up on a beach somewhere, cough up his share of the ocean of blame, and rub sand from his eyes. Maybe it would be on a sunny day.