Commentary: For I come without answers (TGW, Ensemble)
Commentary on For I come without answers, as requested by abvj. Can originally be found here.
Okay, so first, let's talk about Yuletide sign ups, because that's really where this fic starts. I debated for a long time whether or not I wanted to offer to write this fandom, because I was absolutely convinced that if I did I would match on it and I knew I was also going to ask for it and that a bunch of other people on my flist were considering asking for a story similar to the one I wanted and I didn't want to be assigned to write an approximation fo what I asked for. But in the end I decided it was worth it and that I should go for it, because I really wanted to write for this fandom again and didn't have any good ideas.
So I sign up and of course I match on it, just like I knew I would, and then On Tap aired and I knew what I wanted to write. Which begins our tale...
The night that it’s officially announced that Diane is leaving Lockhart/Gardner & Bond, Alicia meets Kalinda for drinks.
“Have either of them asked you yet?” Kalinda asks while they wait for the bartender.
Alicia doesn’t pretend to be surprised by the question. It was only a matter of time and she knows Kalinda is just the first person who will ask. “No,” she says, shaking her head. “I’m not sure either of them will.”
It’s not false modesty. Alicia can never tell if it’s going to be a day Diane will think she’s actually good at her job, more than just a pawn to be strategically deployed in the multi-dimensional chess game that is Chicago’s legal system. Derrick doesn’t like her, that Alicia is sure of. And Will -- well, Alicia doesn’t know where she stands with him these days. She hasn’t known since the night of Peter’s press conference.
Even before she knew about the second voicemail, things were just so different between them this season. For good reason, of course, but Alicia never really talked about it and I wanted to make the point that she was aware of it. It becomes more important in light of what ended up happening later, but I didn't know that was going to happen yet. That sentence will make sense eventually. I promise.
Alicia doesn’t know what she would have done if she’d gotten that voicemail, but she will forever be angry that she didn’t get to make that decision for herself.
“They’ll both ask,” Kalinda says, and she looks like she wants to say more, but then the bartender is in front of them and Kalinda is ordering drinks for both of them. “Gin martini,” she says. “Two.” She gives Alicia the enigmatic smile that Alicia has come to know so well. “It’s a -“
“Lockhart/Gardner tradition?” Alicia finishes for her, letting her lips curve up into the smallest of smiles.
Kalinda shrugs her shoulders, just a little, and Alicia laughs.
She hopes that wherever she ends up, Kalinda is there by her side. Life would be a lot less interesting without her.
***
Diane asks Alicia first, calling Alicia into her office late on a Tuesday afternoon. It’s already half empty, cardboard packing boxes lining the glass walls.
As a sort of aside, this was the first time I'd written Diane and she and Kalinda are the characters I struggle with the most, by far. I'm still not one hundred percent certain that Diane sounds like Diane in this. That's also why there's so little Kalinda, even though she was on the list of characters my recipient included on their list. I just couldn't make there be anymore.
She knocks on the door and Diane waves her inside.
“Thank you for coming,” Diane says. She gestures at one of the chairs in front of the desk. “Have a seat, please.”
Alicia sits, crossing her legs and folding her hands together in her lap. She resists the impulse to tie her fingers together into a knot. Visible signs of nervousness are a weakness. Peter taught her that, more years ago than she can remember. She learned the lesson well.
I think of Alicia's self-containment as both an inate and a learned trait. I absolutely think that she'd be that way anyway, that she'd chosen that path long before she met Peter, but I think meeting and marrying him and his life, honed those skills. More than maybe any other character, she doesn't have the physical tells that everyone else does, which makes her all the more dangerous.
“I’m sure you know why I asked you to meet me,” Diane says with no preamble whatsoever.
Alicia shakes her head, a quick dismissal. “I didn’t want to assume,” she says, looking Diane straight in the eye. “Not these days.”
She doesn’t know what she expected Diane to say to that, but it certainly wasn’t Diane tipping her head back and letting out a full throated laugh. “This is why I like you, Alicia,” Diane says finally, once she’s regained her composure and become the austere senior partner once more. “You know too much to ever let yourself assume.”
Do you all know how hard it is to write Christine Baranski's laugh? It is freaking impossible. There are certain things that just can't be described. That laugh is one of them.
“I’m not sure if that’s good or bad,” Alicia says, her politician’s wife mask falling farther into place with each word that she speaks.
“It’s excellent,” Diane says with the quick certainty that is her trademark. “In fact, it’s one of the most valuable things about you.”
“Well then, thank you,” Alicia says. She allows herself the briefest of smiles. “But this isn’t why you asked to see me.”
“No,” Diane says, shaking her head. She leans forward, just a little. “I want to offer you a position in the firm that I’m forming with David Lee.”
And there it is, Alicia thinks to herself. The end. Or the beginning. She doesn't know what she wants it to be.
Okay, so here's where I part ways with the show. I'm not actually sure I believe Alicia would have been all "I want to go with you" when she talks to Will about the firms splitting up. It was great on a shipper level, sure, but given the conflicts inherent in him remaining her boss, I don't know. Something about that didn't feel right to me. Of course part of that may have just been that I had two months to live with my fic in my head before that episode aired, but still.
“I’m sure that Will has made you an offer as well,” Diane continues, her eyes sharp on Alicia’s face.
Alicia returns the look evenly, refusing to give anything away. What Will hasn’t offered isn’t relevant to this conversation.
“I’m sure that you have some residual gratitude to Will for bringing you on board. And I know that you’re old friends,” Diane says, after only a moment’s hesitation. “But David and I would like you to strongly consider our offer. I hope you know how highly we both think of you.”
Alicia nods. Her mouth is dry. “How long do I have to decide?”
“Two weeks.”
Alicia nods again and stands. “Thank you, Diane. I promise that I’ll let you know as soon as I’ve made a decision.”
Diane stands too and holds out her hand. “Whatever you decide, it’s been a pleasure working with you.”
“Thank you,” Alicia says again, shaking her hand. “I feel the same.”
With that, she walks out of Diane’s office and down the stairs to her own, not even letting herself look across the hall to Will’s office. She doesn’t know what she’d find there. She’s not even sure she wants to know what she’d find there.
She closes her office door behind her and sinks into her chair. Two weeks isn’t very long, she thinks to herself. Not long enough to make this type of decision.
Her phone rings and she picks it up automatically. “Alicia Florrick,” she says, and she’s glad for the distraction, for the chance to worry about something else besides her future.
Even if she can already feel the time she has to decide slipping away.
***
Alicia talks it over with Peter that night, after Zach and Grace have gone to bed. They’re in the kitchen, both clutching mugs of coffee that have long since gone cold, whispering in hushed tones.
Peter thinks she should take it, that she shouldn’t wait for Will to even make an offer. She wishes she could believe that it’s not about the fact that Peter’s never liked Will, never wanted her to work for him at all, but she can’t. She remembers the past the three of them share too clearly.
She knows Peter remembers it too.
I both love and hate that the show hasn't made the past that the three of them share explicit. There's so much left unsaid and I appreciate that on a narrative level because the characters know and no one talks about stuff like that all the time and I like that the show gives their audience that kind of credit, but goddman if I don't want to know. Ahem. Someone write me fic of the three of them. Pretty please?
“If I wait for Will to make me an offer, I could use that to get a better one from Diane,” she points out, not for the first time. “Why shouldn’t I do that?”
Peter sighs, scrubs his hands over his face. When he moves them back, there’s a look of tired resignation on his face. “Alicia, I can’t tell you what to do. If I tried, well, you’d be within your rights to do the opposite to spite me. If you want to wait, if you want to work for Gardner, I can’t stop you.”
“No,” she says. “You can’t.”
He stares at her for a long moment, his eyes searching her face for something. When he finds whatever it is, he asks the question she’s dreaded for months. “Are you in love with him?”
Alicia looks away before she answers. “I don’t know.” Peter’s hand catches her chin and turns it back to face him. “I don’t know,” she repeats. It’s not a lie.
Peter nods, his eyes still fast on hers, apparently satisfied that’s all the answer he’s going to get or all the answer that he deserves. “Good night,” he says, pressing a kiss to her forehead.
He sets his mug of coffee down on the counter and walks out of the room. She watches him go.
It’s a long time before she goes to bed and a longer time before she falls asleep. In the morning, Peter acts like he never asked the question and she never answered.
Alicia lets him.
If I am being honest with myself, I think I underwrote this, but I don't care, I love it anyway. The blessing of having actors like Chris and Julianna and Josh is that you have years of them being on screen in front of you, so you can see them doing things without needing long drawn out descriptions. This may be why my TGW fic is so sparse in general, I'm not a writer that's heavy on imagery on a good day, but this fandom it's even worse. I don't know. But I do love this section. And Alicia and Peter's relationship, broken and dysfunctional as it is. I know, I know, I'm alone in this. I'll move on.
***
At work, nothing and everything has changed. Partners and associates alike file in and out of Will and Diane’s offices, leaving with either relief or abject misery on their faces. Alicia understands why; it’s still impossible to find a legal job in Chicago. She should be grateful that no matter what happens with Will, she has a job waiting for her if she chooses to accept.
She’s not as grateful as she should be.
When she sees Will in the hall or on the elevator, he avoids her eyes, making only the smallest of small talk. She doesn’t have the courage -- or maybe she doesn’t feel that she has the right -- to force the issue. She doesn’t want anything from Will that isn’t willingly given.
“Day four of Will and Diane’s divorce proceedings,” Kalinda says, slipping into Alicia’s office and making herself at home on the corner of the desk. “Still nothing?”
This is the one line of hers that I felt was Kalinda. The rest of it? Yeesh. I want a do over on writing her.
Alicia shakes her head, her mouth a thin line. She looks out into the hall and sees Michael Ross, the associate from finance, headed up the steps towards the partners offices. “No,” she says.
“You should talk to him,” Kalinda says, standing once more. “Let him know you’re interested.”
“No,” Alicia says. “I won’t do that.”
“Is keeping your pride really worth it?”
Kalinda’s question hangs in the air long after she’s left the room. Alicia doesn’t know the answer.
And this is where I get to tell the story of how I almost ditched my entire fic! So okay, I wrote everything before this on my commute home one night, the day before I left to go out of town for Thanksgiving. And don't get me wrong, I really liked it. I still really like it. But if you've ever heard me talk about the way I write before, you've heard me say that I don't plot fics out beforehand, I just go where the spirit moves me. The spirit did not move me for about two weeks after I wrote any of this. Which puts us a couple of weeks into December and rapidly approaching deadlines, especially since I self impose an earlier one because I travel during the deadline and I ended up begging torigates to catch up on the show and then read my fic and tell me what should happen next. And she did and she did and she immediately said that Alicia should go with Diane. I thought about it for about five seconds, realized she was right, and wrote the rest of it.
But if she hadn't helped, I really would have started over. I have no idea what I would have written, but it would not have been this. Also, this is where I give thanks for the weirdass beginning of December hiatus the show took, because not having new canon airing also made this possible. I swear, next year I am not offering to write anything that has an open canon while the writing process is going on. It sucks. No one let me do it, okay?
(Let's be real, it'll end up happening again. I'm weak. Weak, I tell you.)
***
A week passes, and Alicia is done. Done waiting, done wondering, done letting everyone else make choices for her. On a cold February morning, she'd promised herself that she was done letting other people decide her future. She owes it to herself to keep that promise.
Once she's made her decision, she doesn't ask for a meeting or wait for an invitation, she just walks up the stairs to Diane's office and knocks on the door.
"Come in," Diane's voice calls out and Alicia opens the door, steps inside. "Alica," Diane says with surprise. "I wasn't expecting you."
"No," Alicia agrees, looking around the once pristine office. It's barely a shell of itself now, the art stripped from the walls and the boxes gone. "You weren't."
"Does this mean you've made a decision?" Diane asks, her eyes intent on Alicia's face. "I hope you're going to say yes."
"It does," Alicia says, nodding her head once. She takes a deep breath, braces herself to actually say it aloud. Once she says it, it's real. She says it. "And the answer is yes."
I wish I had that sentence to write over. There's nothing objectively wrong with it, I just don't like it all that much. This is why I don't reread my own fic. I could nitpick forever.
She thinks she sees surprise on Diane's face, but it's gone in a second, like it was never there at all. "Yes?" Diane asks.
"Yes," Alicia says, nodding again. This decision, it feels right. It feels like something that's hers, something she earned, through hard work and her own talents. As grateful as she still is to Will for giving her a chance in the first place, she knows she didn't earn that chance. She earned this one. "I'm looking forward to the opportunity."
This, on the other hand, I really like. It's not like I think Alicia keeps a mental scorecard, no, wait, I do, but I don't know. I feel like with as independent as she is, she would want the chance to really stand on her own two feet. Working with Diane would have given her that.
A wide smile spreads across Diane's face. "We're very glad to have you," she says, holding out her hand. "Welcome aboard."
Alicia shakes her hand and lets a smile cross her own face. This, right here, it's a new beginning.
But before there can be a beginning, there has to be an end. Alicia knows this, knows it better than anyone. So it's with that in mind that she excuses herself from Diane's office just a moment later.
She takes the five steps across the hall to knock on Will's door. It's time for the ending.
***
"Alicia," Will says when he opens the door. "This isn't really a good --"
She ignores him and steps around him, into the office itself. She takes a slow, deliberate look around the empty room. "I don't see anyone here."
Something in Will's jaw tightens, just a little. Someone that didn't know him wouldn't see it. Alicia knows him -- or she thought she did. "Fine," he says, voice clipped, shoulders tense. "What can I do for you?"
As a whole, I'm still not sold on this fight, either. It was never quite what I wanted it to be. Bits and pieces of it, though, I like. The previous sentence, for one. It's something I can picture Josh Charles doing and saying really easily, which probably helps.
She pulls herself more tightly together, as if bracing for a blow. "I've accepted a job with Diane's new firm. I wanted to be the one to tell you."
"You did --" Will starts, before he catches himself and stops. He stares at her, a mix of confusion and anger on his face. "Why did you do that?"
Much as I love Will, he is a far more simplistic emotional creature than Alicia. Even though he knows how to operate in the grey's, he doesn't live there the way she does. He might say that he does, but he doesn't get the realities of her life, what he asked her to give up without a plan. Because, okay, as great as that second phone call was, IT WAS NOT A PLAN. I love you and we'll figure it out is not a plan. If she'd gotten that voicemail, and she'd left, right after giving him that kickass speech, the one I want to have embroidered on a pillow, I would have been very sad. And we're into territory that has nothing to do with the scene at hand.
She shrugs her shoulders. "You didn't ask. I had to do what was right for my family."
He laughs then, a hollow, bitter sounding laugh. "Your family? Of course you had to do what's right for your family."
"Yes," she says. "I did. And for me. I had to do what's right for me, too."
More of Will just. not. getting. it. I don't blame him for that, mind you, but it's not one of his more attractive qualities.
"You had to know I was going to ask you," he says, running his hands through his hair in frustration. It's a gesture she knows well, from years ago and from now. That never changed, even when the rest of him did. "Why didn't you wait? Or at least talk to me before you accepted Diane's offer?"
"I didn't know, actually," she says. "You haven't talked to me in months, Will. Why should I have thought you were going to offer me a job a second time?"
"You know why -- I couldn't -- don't go there," he grinds out, the anger mounting on his face again, and this time in his voice too. "You should have waited."
"Maybe I should have," she says. "I didn't."
The words hang between them, the silence in the room deafening. He stares at her and she stares at him, and though there's less than two feet between them, it feels more like two miles. He feels like he's so far away that there's no way she'll ever be able to reach him again.
I think this is my favorite part of the fight. Because they're both right and they're both wrong and it's the kind of messy, realness that the show specializes in and I think it's one of the only points during the conversation that what I was going for really comes across the way I wanted it to. Because she really should have talked to him before she took Diane's job and of course he shouldn't have assumed she'd wait and well. I like this part. Also, I can picture them acting it out. Which makes me happy.
He nods, just once. "Well then, I guess that's all there is to say. Good luck with your new position. When can I expect your resignation on my desk?"
"Will," she says, taking a step forward, reaching out to touch his arm. It's a mistake; he instantly backs away, pulls his arm out of her reach. He's never recoiled from her like that before. It stings more than she could ever have imagined it would. "Don't let it end like this."
He laughs again, that horrible, monstrous laugh from before. In all the years she's known him, this is the only time she's ever heard him laugh like that. She never wants to hear it again. "How did you want it to end?" he asks. "How did you picture this scene, Alicia? Tell me, I'm dying to know."
She doesn't have a ready answer to that, because she doesn't know. She'd never been able to imagine this scene, no matter how many times she tried. She thinks it's because he's not someone that she knows how to say goodbye to. "I didn't know," she says, silently begging him to understand what she means. To just know, the way he's known so many times before.
Of course he doesn't, he just stares at her in confusion. "Didn't know what?"
She braces herself again; if it falls, this will be the most painful blow of them all. "The night of Peter's press conference. How many voicemails did you leave me?"
He shakes his head, looks away. "I don't want to talk about that."
"Will," she says, her voice raw and pleading. He looks back. "Please."
"Two."
She nods and closes her eyes. She needed to hear him say it. When she opens them again, she says, "I only got one. I didn't know."
He shakes his head, denial written on his face. "What?" he asks. "How? I left you two messages, Alicia."
"I know," she says, nodding again. "The wiretaps, you were on them, and --"
"Why didn't you say something once you found out?" he demands.
"I was going to," she says, feeling herself grow angry for the first time, "but when I came to tell you, Tammy was here. And I didn't think I had the right any more."
He looks stung. She finds she doesn't much care.
I like the last two lines, but the rest of it? Oy. I feel like I was crossing into melodrama a little bit too much. Seriously, I wanted this to be such a good scene and reading it back it's just not what it should have been. But once she gets angry I'm on board. Maybe she should have been angrier throughout the whole thing. I don't know.
"I should go," she says, turning to walk to the door. "I think we've said all that there is to say."
"Like hell," he says, slapping a hand on the door before she can open it.
She doesn't turn around. "Let me leave, Will."
He's barely touching her, yet she can feel him against her as much as if they were pressed up against one another. When he speaks, his breath is hot against her neck. "What would you have said?" he asks.
She shakes her head. "Don't make me answer that."
"Because I won't like the answer or because you don't want to admit the answer?"
She closes her eyes. "Because I don't know the answer."
It's not the answer either of them wants. That doesn't make it less true.
He backs away, and she slips out the door. In the morning, her resignation is on his desk.
***
A month later, Alicia settles behind her desk at Lockhart & Lee for the first time.
And I really like the rest of it. I like that she doesn't have the answer and she's not going to lie to him or herself about that. I got a bunch of comments about the ending being really painful and this is where I'll admit that I was sort of going for that. Because much as I may ship them (and I do, don't let my love of Peter/Alicia confuse this point), I don't know that I see or want a happy ending for Will and Alicia. I'm sure that if they get one I'll be happy about it, but I don't know. This show is about making hard choices and being an adult and part of that is that there isn't always a happily ever after. Sometimes, no matter how much you want them, things just don't work. And I think I could be pretty into that kind of story.
All that said, I think you can read this ending however you want. It's not happy, but it's not the end of the world, either. Yes, Alicia's left, but Will's not her boss anymore and there's one less thing potentially stopping them from getting together and it can be whatever you want it to be.
But it is sad. Apparently that's my thing with this fandom. I hope people don't end up hating me for it.
Okay, so first, let's talk about Yuletide sign ups, because that's really where this fic starts. I debated for a long time whether or not I wanted to offer to write this fandom, because I was absolutely convinced that if I did I would match on it and I knew I was also going to ask for it and that a bunch of other people on my flist were considering asking for a story similar to the one I wanted and I didn't want to be assigned to write an approximation fo what I asked for. But in the end I decided it was worth it and that I should go for it, because I really wanted to write for this fandom again and didn't have any good ideas.
So I sign up and of course I match on it, just like I knew I would, and then On Tap aired and I knew what I wanted to write. Which begins our tale...
The night that it’s officially announced that Diane is leaving Lockhart/Gardner & Bond, Alicia meets Kalinda for drinks.
“Have either of them asked you yet?” Kalinda asks while they wait for the bartender.
Alicia doesn’t pretend to be surprised by the question. It was only a matter of time and she knows Kalinda is just the first person who will ask. “No,” she says, shaking her head. “I’m not sure either of them will.”
It’s not false modesty. Alicia can never tell if it’s going to be a day Diane will think she’s actually good at her job, more than just a pawn to be strategically deployed in the multi-dimensional chess game that is Chicago’s legal system. Derrick doesn’t like her, that Alicia is sure of. And Will -- well, Alicia doesn’t know where she stands with him these days. She hasn’t known since the night of Peter’s press conference.
Even before she knew about the second voicemail, things were just so different between them this season. For good reason, of course, but Alicia never really talked about it and I wanted to make the point that she was aware of it. It becomes more important in light of what ended up happening later, but I didn't know that was going to happen yet. That sentence will make sense eventually. I promise.
Alicia doesn’t know what she would have done if she’d gotten that voicemail, but she will forever be angry that she didn’t get to make that decision for herself.
“They’ll both ask,” Kalinda says, and she looks like she wants to say more, but then the bartender is in front of them and Kalinda is ordering drinks for both of them. “Gin martini,” she says. “Two.” She gives Alicia the enigmatic smile that Alicia has come to know so well. “It’s a -“
“Lockhart/Gardner tradition?” Alicia finishes for her, letting her lips curve up into the smallest of smiles.
Kalinda shrugs her shoulders, just a little, and Alicia laughs.
She hopes that wherever she ends up, Kalinda is there by her side. Life would be a lot less interesting without her.
***
Diane asks Alicia first, calling Alicia into her office late on a Tuesday afternoon. It’s already half empty, cardboard packing boxes lining the glass walls.
As a sort of aside, this was the first time I'd written Diane and she and Kalinda are the characters I struggle with the most, by far. I'm still not one hundred percent certain that Diane sounds like Diane in this. That's also why there's so little Kalinda, even though she was on the list of characters my recipient included on their list. I just couldn't make there be anymore.
She knocks on the door and Diane waves her inside.
“Thank you for coming,” Diane says. She gestures at one of the chairs in front of the desk. “Have a seat, please.”
Alicia sits, crossing her legs and folding her hands together in her lap. She resists the impulse to tie her fingers together into a knot. Visible signs of nervousness are a weakness. Peter taught her that, more years ago than she can remember. She learned the lesson well.
I think of Alicia's self-containment as both an inate and a learned trait. I absolutely think that she'd be that way anyway, that she'd chosen that path long before she met Peter, but I think meeting and marrying him and his life, honed those skills. More than maybe any other character, she doesn't have the physical tells that everyone else does, which makes her all the more dangerous.
“I’m sure you know why I asked you to meet me,” Diane says with no preamble whatsoever.
Alicia shakes her head, a quick dismissal. “I didn’t want to assume,” she says, looking Diane straight in the eye. “Not these days.”
She doesn’t know what she expected Diane to say to that, but it certainly wasn’t Diane tipping her head back and letting out a full throated laugh. “This is why I like you, Alicia,” Diane says finally, once she’s regained her composure and become the austere senior partner once more. “You know too much to ever let yourself assume.”
Do you all know how hard it is to write Christine Baranski's laugh? It is freaking impossible. There are certain things that just can't be described. That laugh is one of them.
“I’m not sure if that’s good or bad,” Alicia says, her politician’s wife mask falling farther into place with each word that she speaks.
“It’s excellent,” Diane says with the quick certainty that is her trademark. “In fact, it’s one of the most valuable things about you.”
“Well then, thank you,” Alicia says. She allows herself the briefest of smiles. “But this isn’t why you asked to see me.”
“No,” Diane says, shaking her head. She leans forward, just a little. “I want to offer you a position in the firm that I’m forming with David Lee.”
And there it is, Alicia thinks to herself. The end. Or the beginning. She doesn't know what she wants it to be.
Okay, so here's where I part ways with the show. I'm not actually sure I believe Alicia would have been all "I want to go with you" when she talks to Will about the firms splitting up. It was great on a shipper level, sure, but given the conflicts inherent in him remaining her boss, I don't know. Something about that didn't feel right to me. Of course part of that may have just been that I had two months to live with my fic in my head before that episode aired, but still.
“I’m sure that Will has made you an offer as well,” Diane continues, her eyes sharp on Alicia’s face.
Alicia returns the look evenly, refusing to give anything away. What Will hasn’t offered isn’t relevant to this conversation.
“I’m sure that you have some residual gratitude to Will for bringing you on board. And I know that you’re old friends,” Diane says, after only a moment’s hesitation. “But David and I would like you to strongly consider our offer. I hope you know how highly we both think of you.”
Alicia nods. Her mouth is dry. “How long do I have to decide?”
“Two weeks.”
Alicia nods again and stands. “Thank you, Diane. I promise that I’ll let you know as soon as I’ve made a decision.”
Diane stands too and holds out her hand. “Whatever you decide, it’s been a pleasure working with you.”
“Thank you,” Alicia says again, shaking her hand. “I feel the same.”
With that, she walks out of Diane’s office and down the stairs to her own, not even letting herself look across the hall to Will’s office. She doesn’t know what she’d find there. She’s not even sure she wants to know what she’d find there.
She closes her office door behind her and sinks into her chair. Two weeks isn’t very long, she thinks to herself. Not long enough to make this type of decision.
Her phone rings and she picks it up automatically. “Alicia Florrick,” she says, and she’s glad for the distraction, for the chance to worry about something else besides her future.
Even if she can already feel the time she has to decide slipping away.
***
Alicia talks it over with Peter that night, after Zach and Grace have gone to bed. They’re in the kitchen, both clutching mugs of coffee that have long since gone cold, whispering in hushed tones.
Peter thinks she should take it, that she shouldn’t wait for Will to even make an offer. She wishes she could believe that it’s not about the fact that Peter’s never liked Will, never wanted her to work for him at all, but she can’t. She remembers the past the three of them share too clearly.
She knows Peter remembers it too.
I both love and hate that the show hasn't made the past that the three of them share explicit. There's so much left unsaid and I appreciate that on a narrative level because the characters know and no one talks about stuff like that all the time and I like that the show gives their audience that kind of credit, but goddman if I don't want to know. Ahem. Someone write me fic of the three of them. Pretty please?
“If I wait for Will to make me an offer, I could use that to get a better one from Diane,” she points out, not for the first time. “Why shouldn’t I do that?”
Peter sighs, scrubs his hands over his face. When he moves them back, there’s a look of tired resignation on his face. “Alicia, I can’t tell you what to do. If I tried, well, you’d be within your rights to do the opposite to spite me. If you want to wait, if you want to work for Gardner, I can’t stop you.”
“No,” she says. “You can’t.”
He stares at her for a long moment, his eyes searching her face for something. When he finds whatever it is, he asks the question she’s dreaded for months. “Are you in love with him?”
Alicia looks away before she answers. “I don’t know.” Peter’s hand catches her chin and turns it back to face him. “I don’t know,” she repeats. It’s not a lie.
Peter nods, his eyes still fast on hers, apparently satisfied that’s all the answer he’s going to get or all the answer that he deserves. “Good night,” he says, pressing a kiss to her forehead.
He sets his mug of coffee down on the counter and walks out of the room. She watches him go.
It’s a long time before she goes to bed and a longer time before she falls asleep. In the morning, Peter acts like he never asked the question and she never answered.
Alicia lets him.
If I am being honest with myself, I think I underwrote this, but I don't care, I love it anyway. The blessing of having actors like Chris and Julianna and Josh is that you have years of them being on screen in front of you, so you can see them doing things without needing long drawn out descriptions. This may be why my TGW fic is so sparse in general, I'm not a writer that's heavy on imagery on a good day, but this fandom it's even worse. I don't know. But I do love this section. And Alicia and Peter's relationship, broken and dysfunctional as it is. I know, I know, I'm alone in this. I'll move on.
***
At work, nothing and everything has changed. Partners and associates alike file in and out of Will and Diane’s offices, leaving with either relief or abject misery on their faces. Alicia understands why; it’s still impossible to find a legal job in Chicago. She should be grateful that no matter what happens with Will, she has a job waiting for her if she chooses to accept.
She’s not as grateful as she should be.
When she sees Will in the hall or on the elevator, he avoids her eyes, making only the smallest of small talk. She doesn’t have the courage -- or maybe she doesn’t feel that she has the right -- to force the issue. She doesn’t want anything from Will that isn’t willingly given.
“Day four of Will and Diane’s divorce proceedings,” Kalinda says, slipping into Alicia’s office and making herself at home on the corner of the desk. “Still nothing?”
This is the one line of hers that I felt was Kalinda. The rest of it? Yeesh. I want a do over on writing her.
Alicia shakes her head, her mouth a thin line. She looks out into the hall and sees Michael Ross, the associate from finance, headed up the steps towards the partners offices. “No,” she says.
“You should talk to him,” Kalinda says, standing once more. “Let him know you’re interested.”
“No,” Alicia says. “I won’t do that.”
“Is keeping your pride really worth it?”
Kalinda’s question hangs in the air long after she’s left the room. Alicia doesn’t know the answer.
And this is where I get to tell the story of how I almost ditched my entire fic! So okay, I wrote everything before this on my commute home one night, the day before I left to go out of town for Thanksgiving. And don't get me wrong, I really liked it. I still really like it. But if you've ever heard me talk about the way I write before, you've heard me say that I don't plot fics out beforehand, I just go where the spirit moves me. The spirit did not move me for about two weeks after I wrote any of this. Which puts us a couple of weeks into December and rapidly approaching deadlines, especially since I self impose an earlier one because I travel during the deadline and I ended up begging torigates to catch up on the show and then read my fic and tell me what should happen next. And she did and she did and she immediately said that Alicia should go with Diane. I thought about it for about five seconds, realized she was right, and wrote the rest of it.
But if she hadn't helped, I really would have started over. I have no idea what I would have written, but it would not have been this. Also, this is where I give thanks for the weirdass beginning of December hiatus the show took, because not having new canon airing also made this possible. I swear, next year I am not offering to write anything that has an open canon while the writing process is going on. It sucks. No one let me do it, okay?
(Let's be real, it'll end up happening again. I'm weak. Weak, I tell you.)
***
A week passes, and Alicia is done. Done waiting, done wondering, done letting everyone else make choices for her. On a cold February morning, she'd promised herself that she was done letting other people decide her future. She owes it to herself to keep that promise.
Once she's made her decision, she doesn't ask for a meeting or wait for an invitation, she just walks up the stairs to Diane's office and knocks on the door.
"Come in," Diane's voice calls out and Alicia opens the door, steps inside. "Alica," Diane says with surprise. "I wasn't expecting you."
"No," Alicia agrees, looking around the once pristine office. It's barely a shell of itself now, the art stripped from the walls and the boxes gone. "You weren't."
"Does this mean you've made a decision?" Diane asks, her eyes intent on Alicia's face. "I hope you're going to say yes."
"It does," Alicia says, nodding her head once. She takes a deep breath, braces herself to actually say it aloud. Once she says it, it's real. She says it. "And the answer is yes."
I wish I had that sentence to write over. There's nothing objectively wrong with it, I just don't like it all that much. This is why I don't reread my own fic. I could nitpick forever.
She thinks she sees surprise on Diane's face, but it's gone in a second, like it was never there at all. "Yes?" Diane asks.
"Yes," Alicia says, nodding again. This decision, it feels right. It feels like something that's hers, something she earned, through hard work and her own talents. As grateful as she still is to Will for giving her a chance in the first place, she knows she didn't earn that chance. She earned this one. "I'm looking forward to the opportunity."
This, on the other hand, I really like. It's not like I think Alicia keeps a mental scorecard, no, wait, I do, but I don't know. I feel like with as independent as she is, she would want the chance to really stand on her own two feet. Working with Diane would have given her that.
A wide smile spreads across Diane's face. "We're very glad to have you," she says, holding out her hand. "Welcome aboard."
Alicia shakes her hand and lets a smile cross her own face. This, right here, it's a new beginning.
But before there can be a beginning, there has to be an end. Alicia knows this, knows it better than anyone. So it's with that in mind that she excuses herself from Diane's office just a moment later.
She takes the five steps across the hall to knock on Will's door. It's time for the ending.
***
"Alicia," Will says when he opens the door. "This isn't really a good --"
She ignores him and steps around him, into the office itself. She takes a slow, deliberate look around the empty room. "I don't see anyone here."
Something in Will's jaw tightens, just a little. Someone that didn't know him wouldn't see it. Alicia knows him -- or she thought she did. "Fine," he says, voice clipped, shoulders tense. "What can I do for you?"
As a whole, I'm still not sold on this fight, either. It was never quite what I wanted it to be. Bits and pieces of it, though, I like. The previous sentence, for one. It's something I can picture Josh Charles doing and saying really easily, which probably helps.
She pulls herself more tightly together, as if bracing for a blow. "I've accepted a job with Diane's new firm. I wanted to be the one to tell you."
"You did --" Will starts, before he catches himself and stops. He stares at her, a mix of confusion and anger on his face. "Why did you do that?"
Much as I love Will, he is a far more simplistic emotional creature than Alicia. Even though he knows how to operate in the grey's, he doesn't live there the way she does. He might say that he does, but he doesn't get the realities of her life, what he asked her to give up without a plan. Because, okay, as great as that second phone call was, IT WAS NOT A PLAN. I love you and we'll figure it out is not a plan. If she'd gotten that voicemail, and she'd left, right after giving him that kickass speech, the one I want to have embroidered on a pillow, I would have been very sad. And we're into territory that has nothing to do with the scene at hand.
She shrugs her shoulders. "You didn't ask. I had to do what was right for my family."
He laughs then, a hollow, bitter sounding laugh. "Your family? Of course you had to do what's right for your family."
"Yes," she says. "I did. And for me. I had to do what's right for me, too."
More of Will just. not. getting. it. I don't blame him for that, mind you, but it's not one of his more attractive qualities.
"You had to know I was going to ask you," he says, running his hands through his hair in frustration. It's a gesture she knows well, from years ago and from now. That never changed, even when the rest of him did. "Why didn't you wait? Or at least talk to me before you accepted Diane's offer?"
"I didn't know, actually," she says. "You haven't talked to me in months, Will. Why should I have thought you were going to offer me a job a second time?"
"You know why -- I couldn't -- don't go there," he grinds out, the anger mounting on his face again, and this time in his voice too. "You should have waited."
"Maybe I should have," she says. "I didn't."
The words hang between them, the silence in the room deafening. He stares at her and she stares at him, and though there's less than two feet between them, it feels more like two miles. He feels like he's so far away that there's no way she'll ever be able to reach him again.
I think this is my favorite part of the fight. Because they're both right and they're both wrong and it's the kind of messy, realness that the show specializes in and I think it's one of the only points during the conversation that what I was going for really comes across the way I wanted it to. Because she really should have talked to him before she took Diane's job and of course he shouldn't have assumed she'd wait and well. I like this part. Also, I can picture them acting it out. Which makes me happy.
He nods, just once. "Well then, I guess that's all there is to say. Good luck with your new position. When can I expect your resignation on my desk?"
"Will," she says, taking a step forward, reaching out to touch his arm. It's a mistake; he instantly backs away, pulls his arm out of her reach. He's never recoiled from her like that before. It stings more than she could ever have imagined it would. "Don't let it end like this."
He laughs again, that horrible, monstrous laugh from before. In all the years she's known him, this is the only time she's ever heard him laugh like that. She never wants to hear it again. "How did you want it to end?" he asks. "How did you picture this scene, Alicia? Tell me, I'm dying to know."
She doesn't have a ready answer to that, because she doesn't know. She'd never been able to imagine this scene, no matter how many times she tried. She thinks it's because he's not someone that she knows how to say goodbye to. "I didn't know," she says, silently begging him to understand what she means. To just know, the way he's known so many times before.
Of course he doesn't, he just stares at her in confusion. "Didn't know what?"
She braces herself again; if it falls, this will be the most painful blow of them all. "The night of Peter's press conference. How many voicemails did you leave me?"
He shakes his head, looks away. "I don't want to talk about that."
"Will," she says, her voice raw and pleading. He looks back. "Please."
"Two."
She nods and closes her eyes. She needed to hear him say it. When she opens them again, she says, "I only got one. I didn't know."
He shakes his head, denial written on his face. "What?" he asks. "How? I left you two messages, Alicia."
"I know," she says, nodding again. "The wiretaps, you were on them, and --"
"Why didn't you say something once you found out?" he demands.
"I was going to," she says, feeling herself grow angry for the first time, "but when I came to tell you, Tammy was here. And I didn't think I had the right any more."
He looks stung. She finds she doesn't much care.
I like the last two lines, but the rest of it? Oy. I feel like I was crossing into melodrama a little bit too much. Seriously, I wanted this to be such a good scene and reading it back it's just not what it should have been. But once she gets angry I'm on board. Maybe she should have been angrier throughout the whole thing. I don't know.
"I should go," she says, turning to walk to the door. "I think we've said all that there is to say."
"Like hell," he says, slapping a hand on the door before she can open it.
She doesn't turn around. "Let me leave, Will."
He's barely touching her, yet she can feel him against her as much as if they were pressed up against one another. When he speaks, his breath is hot against her neck. "What would you have said?" he asks.
She shakes her head. "Don't make me answer that."
"Because I won't like the answer or because you don't want to admit the answer?"
She closes her eyes. "Because I don't know the answer."
It's not the answer either of them wants. That doesn't make it less true.
He backs away, and she slips out the door. In the morning, her resignation is on his desk.
***
A month later, Alicia settles behind her desk at Lockhart & Lee for the first time.
And I really like the rest of it. I like that she doesn't have the answer and she's not going to lie to him or herself about that. I got a bunch of comments about the ending being really painful and this is where I'll admit that I was sort of going for that. Because much as I may ship them (and I do, don't let my love of Peter/Alicia confuse this point), I don't know that I see or want a happy ending for Will and Alicia. I'm sure that if they get one I'll be happy about it, but I don't know. This show is about making hard choices and being an adult and part of that is that there isn't always a happily ever after. Sometimes, no matter how much you want them, things just don't work. And I think I could be pretty into that kind of story.
All that said, I think you can read this ending however you want. It's not happy, but it's not the end of the world, either. Yes, Alicia's left, but Will's not her boss anymore and there's one less thing potentially stopping them from getting together and it can be whatever you want it to be.
But it is sad. Apparently that's my thing with this fandom. I hope people don't end up hating me for it.