Fic: Starting With I

[orbythesea]

Title: Starting With I
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: The Good Wife
Pairing: Alicia/Will, a bit of Alicia/Peter
Summary: She stops thinking. She closes her eyes and opens her mouth and speaks without a filter.  Future-fic.


She must learn again to speak
starting with I
starting with We
starting as the infant does
with her own true hunger
and pleasure
and rage.
-Marge Piercy, "Unlearning Not to Speak"

It's different, when it's a governor. People care more. It's all that much more salacious, even without the added thrill of a prostitute and the accompanying video. Still, sex with a staffer is just a hair less intriguing than sex with an intern, and put that together with Peter's past, and it's big.

Alicia is different, too. She's wiser now, and when her heart breaks again, it's like picking at the scab of an old wound, healing, but never fully healed. There is no gush of blood, no river of tears, just a slow trickle as the last bits of pain work their way up to the surface. It didn't even occur to her that she hadn't let him back under her skin until he gave her another reason to want him out. Loving is not the same as being in love, and she hasn't been in love for a long time.

She is more prepared, this time. Almost too prepared. Maybe she's been prepared ever since Amber. Since Kalinda. Her hands are steady as she drives to school to pull Grace out before the day is over. Her voice doesn't shake as she books plane tickets for herself and her children. She texts Cary to let him know that she's going, then boards a plane with Grace. Zach doesn't come. He insists that he's fine at school and doesn't want to miss his Statistics midterm. That breaks her more than Peter, and she wishes that he was still young enough that she could insist. He's an adult, though, so she leaves him a credit card and instructions not to worry about the cost of a flight, just in case he changes his mind.

"Don't watch the news," she tells him. "Don't talk to the press, but if they try to follow you into your dorm, it's okay to tell them that they're trespassing. If it gets to be too much, just come. Just come."

It's still news in Toronto, but it's different. There are no reporters outside her hotel, no one to gawk when she steps out on the street.

"We can't just stay here," Grace says after the third day. "I mean, not forever."

"I know." Alicia closes her eyes. "I just don't want- I don't want to feed the frenzy. I want to protect you from that."

Grace pulls her into a hug. "I'm okay, Mom," she says. "I can deal with it."

"I know," Alicia whispers. She hates that it's true.

In the end, it's Judge O'Doyle who forces her back.

"Alicia, I tried," Cary insists. "You know O'Doyle, he's a stubborn old oaf who won't reschedule for death, much less- " He doesn't finish the sentence, and she is reminded of how kind he has become. "Besides, no one knows this case like you and the clients are- "

"Okay," she says. "Then I'll be there."

Owen offers up his living room, but she doesn't take it. "He's got an entire mansion in Springfield," she says. "He doesn't get my house." Not again, she wants to add. Not this time. She almost regrets her stubborn insistence as she navigates her car past the news vans lining her block. When she steps inside though, she knows that coming home was the right decision. She won't cower or hide, won't cede ground that is rightfully hers. Not this time.

When she sees the gallery, she is grateful for Cook County's ban on cameras in the courtroom. She keeps her eyes forward, refuses to acknowledge the furious scratch of pen against paper.

Judge O'Doyle smirks as he greets her. "So glad you could join us, Mrs. Florrick."

She tries to ignore the way it makes her skin crawl, the utter cruelty of turning her own name into a taunt. "Actually, your Honor," she hears herself saying. "I think I'd prefer Ms. Cavanaugh." She didn't mean to say it, didn't plan it. Her own name feels foreign on her tongue, and when she blinks she can see the request printed above the fold in the morning paper.

The rest of the hearing is uneventful, and the judge approves the proposed class settlement without modification.

She doesn't speak to the press as she leaves the courthouse, doesn't even look at her phone until she's behind the wheel of her car.

She deletes Peter's text without reading it, then smiles when she sees Cary's. Heard we're blowing the budget on new stationery.

Florrick Agos becomes Cavanaugh & Agos a good nine months before she officially becomes Alicia Cavanaugh again. Grace has fled to California for college, and for all that Alicia hates the distance, she understands it. Alicia moves out of the house when Grace does, and it doesn't hurt as much as she thought it would. The house is still in the kids' trust, and before she puts it on the market, she offers it to both of them.

"Just sell it, Mom," Zach tells her. "It's just a house."

The buyers are a young couple, both lawyers, both looking for a place to raise a family. She wishes them well and walks away.

It's another year before she finds herself sitting across a conference table from Will, fighting over the details of a wrongful death suit.

"You love to think that you're on the side of angels, don't you?" he asks. "That's always been your- "

"No." Her voice is soft when she cuts him off. "No, I know better." He blinks and she laughs. I stopped believing in angels a long time ago, she wants to say. She shakes her head and jots down a number. "I'll beat you in court," she says, instead. "So take that to your clients." She gathers her things quickly, starts to stand up, then sits again when he says her name. "Yes?"

"Alicia," he says again. "Alicia Cavanaugh. I never understood why you changed it, back then. Florrick's too harsh, it's got too many sharp angles."

"It's just a name," she says, but it's so much more than that, and they both know it. "Just one more piece of me for you to hate." It hurts. It hurts so damn much.

"I don't hate you," he counters, and it sounds as if he's realizing it as he speaks. She arches an eyebrow and he shrugs, sheepish. "Not anymore, anyway."

She's quiet for a long time, just watching him. "I had to go," she says, finally. "I- I have to go."

"My client's not taking this offer." Even now, she knows the nuances of his voice well enough to know that he's serious.

"I know." She meets his eyes, smiles. "And mine won't go any higher."

"It's a strange life," he murmurs. "Isn't it?"

"I'm not sure I know what you mean."

Will leans back in his chair, watches her with an intensity she hasn't seen since he was her boss. "We spend our days fighting or trying to avoid fighting. As if life is just a series of battles to be won."

She can feel his gaze even after she closes her eyes. Against her lids she sees creamy hotel sheets, sees the line of his jaw, the curve of his hip. She sees him younger, too, with hair that needed cutting and a faded Cubs t-shirt. Sees him watching her across the table in the library, in his apartment, in their First Amendment seminar. She remembers him jumping to her defense, remembers him picking silly arguments as they studied, just to get her riled up. "So, are you telling me you're sorry?" she murmurs, opening her eyes. "Or are you asking for another apology?"

He shakes his head. "Neither," he says, then clears his throat, still as awkward and boyish as he was when he was twenty-two. "I think I'm asking you to dinner."

She blinks. She opens her mouth to say yes, but before the words come out, she is flooded with memories. Her desk cleared with swipe of his hand, guards escorting her from the building. She remembers his snarl, low and dangerous as he insisted that he never wanted to see her again, remembers standing in a courtroom shouting to be heard, every secret insecurity she shared twisted into a weapon as he tried to cut her down. The first time, she walked out of court and into Peter's transition office, locked the door and demanded that he move faster and harder as she dug her nails into his skin. Hate-sex with the man she wanted so badly to love, carefully calculated to make her forget how much the man she didn't want to love hated her. It didn't work, then. It never worked. You checked out, Peter told her in a mediation session once. I screwed up, but you left me years before you left. She denied it at the time and her lawyer jumped to her defense, but he was probably right.

"Will," she says. "If I've learned anything, it's that there's no going back. Not after-- "

"I'm not asking you for a quick fuck at the Michigan Avenue Hilton," he says, and voice is gentler than his words. "I'm not even asking-Forget it. It's not-"

"Yes," she says, interrupting him. "After this case is over, but- yes. We should get dinner."

A pipe bursts at their chosen restaurant, and they end up drinking in the hotel bar next door. It's awkward and uncomfortable and she they don't know what to say to each other, anymore. Maybe they never have. No. They used to know. They used to speak without ever saying a word, used to know every inch of each other, inside and out. His hand brushes hers as he reaches for his glass and that brief contact is enough to set her blood racing. She drains her glass and orders another one, opens her mouth to ask if he wants to get a room but stops herself. She is wiser, now. Or maybe just older. She swallows deep.

"I miss waffles," is what she says instead, and he laughs. "From that diner, near Georgetown. I miss- "

"I know," he says. "You- You said something once. Years ago. Something about how if it had been us, at school, that we would have lasted a week."

"I did," she says, closing her eyes. "I think…. We were young."

"I haven't been young in a long time," he murmurs.

"Will." She takes a deep breath. The air crackles between them. "I can't spend my life chasing might-have-beens."

He says nothing and she is quiet for a long time, just watching the way he watches her, the way he has always watched her. Her mind drifts back and forward through the years, settling finally on her high school English class. Can't repeat the past? Why of course you can! She had argued against it, then, had brushed her hair out of her face and ripped the entire book apart. Daisy's not worth it, she concluded. No one is worth that. She was probably too young to understand it, then. She read it again during Peter's trial, back when she thought that if she could just retreat into fiction that she wouldn't have to feel anything that was her own.

"Penny for your thoughts," he murmurs.

"Daisy Buchanan was an ungrateful bitch," she says.

Will laughs, startled, then shakes his head. "She was a victim of circumstance," he counters. "Too smart to be a fool, too much of a fool to realize that she didn't have to be what she was expected to be."

"You would defend her," she mutters before she can stop herself.

"You've always been harder on yourself than you deserved," he says, and it's more pointed than she remembers him being.

"And you want too much," she shoots back, pushing up from her barstool. "I have to go."

"No." He grabs at her wrist, stops her. "No, I've never wanted enough." His fingers loosen their grip, but she stays. "I took whatever scraps you gave me and I never dreamt of demanding more than that, never once asked you to disavow your life or your love or Peter. Play Daisy all you like, but don't you dare reduce my life to mooning over a green light. Whatever metaphor you've concocted in that pretty little head of- "

She kisses him. She presses her mouth against his to stop his words before they have the chance to sink in, to wound. It's hard and angry and she thinks of that night in her office, the way they crashed into each other without thinking, then ricocheted off into the night, into Peter and Cary and God only knows who on his part. She wonders how many words have been lost between their lips, how many arguments forgotten.

He tastes like scotch and hard angles, like the past and the future and whatever exists in between. When he pulls away, she stumbles, still leaning into him and he catches her, holds her steady.

"Stop," he breathes when she moves in again. "Alicia, if you want to talk, let's talk, but I- I'm too old to keep believing that we'll be okay if we can just get each other naked."

"Do we even know how to do that?" she asks. "I mean it, Will, when was the last time we gave each other the time to get the truth out?"

"Georgetown, probably," he admits.

She shakes her head. "But even then, we didn't," she says. "I didn't. I- " she hesitates, then slides back onto her bar stool. "I spent as much time trying to hide my heart as I did sharing its secrets, back then."

"So did I," he says. "But I- I would have listened, if you'd tried. I would have given you that."

"Maybe," she murmurs, closing her eyes. "So… " She looks over at him. "What if we did that? Even just for one hour. What would that look like?"

He smiles, slides his fingers over hers. "I think… I think it would look a lot like this, actually."

"No, I don't mean- I don't mean sitting in some bar trying to decide if we want to rip each other apart or build each other up. I mean- I don't know what I mean," she admits.

"We should eat something," he says. "Go find a restaurant with running water and- "

The sound of her phone interrupts him and she glances down at the name. Cary. "I have to get this," she says, apologetic and relieved. There is a conversation to be had, but it's not for tonight. Not with a bottle of wine coursing through her veins and her skin still humming from his touch. He's right, and they should talk, but she isn't ready. She doesn't trust herself.

Will leans back as if to give her space and she holds the phone up to her ear.

"What's up, Cary?" she says, closing her eyes.

"We lost our cardiologist," he says. "Heart attack."

"She- Really?" She laughs, in spite of herself. It's inappropriate and she knows it, but between wine and nerves, it strikes her as ridiculously funny.

"Yeah." Cary doesn't laugh. "Where are you, Alicia?"

"Dinner. Did you try the one we used for Gleason?" She can't remember his name. "Feinman? Feinstein?"

"Feinburg, yeah. He's in Seattle on another case." Cary's voice is tinged with frustrated exhaustion. "We've got the report, but can another one testify about it?"

"I don't know," she admits. "I can do some research, just give me- "

"You've been drinking, Alicia." Cary speaks slowly, carefully, and that's a conversation for another time.

"No, no, it's fine," she says.

"Alicia…"

"We'll talk," she tells him. "Just give me fifteen minutes."

She hangs up the phone and gives Will the most apologetic look she can. "Know any good cardiologists?" she asks Will. "We're on an expedited discovery schedule and ours just had a heart attack."

"Your cardiologist had a heart attack?" Will asks, and she can't help the giggles from spilling out as she nods. He laughs too, and for the first time all night, she feels comfortable in her own skin, giggling with Will in the bar. "I'll e-mail you," he says through peals of laughter.

"I have to go," she says, suddenly regretting her choice. "I- We'll talk."

"Will we?" he asks, and his laughter is gone, replaced by a sad smile.

"We will," she whispers, nodding. "Soon."

Will's list of cardiologists arrives as she's stepping off the elevator and she forwards it to Cary on the walk to her office.

There's a short memo from one of the second-years, too. She opens it and starts to read, the text blurring in front of her. She reaches for a bottle of water and keeps reading, squinting at her laptop and trying to make sense of the words on the screen. Between the wine and the way she can still taste the hint of Will's scotch on her lips she can't focus, can't keep staring at her computer. She gives up, decides to screw their efforts not to waste firm money on paper.

Her printer is loud, and it must muffle the sound of Cary's footsteps because when she looks up, he's standing right in front of her and she jumps.

"Will," he says, flatly.

"Don't." She holds up a hand. "Cary, don't."

"I think I will," he says, sinking into the chair across from her desk. "Are you going back?"

"I don't see how it's any of your business," she says. "My life is-" She blinks, then. Realizes. "I'm not leaving, Cary. I just went out for a drink with an old friend."

"We need to talk about that, too," he says, nodding to her water bottle.

"No." She narrows her eyes. "No, Cary, that is not something we need to talk about."

He sighs. She can't help but remember him when they first met, all young and full of energy and ambition. He's aged more than his years, and she can see tiny wrinkles across his forehead, fracturing his otherwise perfect face. She wishes that she could reassure him, wishes she could tell him that it's rare that she doesn't have a glass of wine in her hand when she works from home, wants to tell him about a hundred nights spent drinking beer out of paper bags with Will in the library at Georgetown or sipping scotch in his office during her first few years at Lockhart Gardner.

She doesn't, though. Everything feels like an excuse and her mind is moving too quickly to let her tongue form the words so she just shakes her head. "Give me half an hour," she says instead. "I'll make a pot of coffee."

He gets up to go, but pauses in her doorway. "I haven't seen you happy in a long time," he says before he goes. "You're probably the saddest person I know."

She doesn't allow herself the luxury of thinking about that, just puts on a pot of coffee and dives back into work.

Her home phone is ringing when she walks in the door three hours later and she stumbles over her heels rushing to pick it up.

"Even when I hated you, I didn't hate you," Will says when she answers. "You can't hate someone that much unless you're crazily, stupidly in love with them."

"Will." She closes her eyes. A hundred explanations and excuses and apologies die on her lips and she gives him the truth, instead. "I left for me," she says. "I- I needed to learn how to be me without you. And I hate how I left, but I- If I hadn't, I wouldn't have been able to stay away."

"We could have made it work," he insists. "I've always respected your boundaries, if you'd just said something-"

"Don't," she says. "Will, I tried but you- You do this thing. I start to talk and you blow right past me because you think I know what I'm going to say but it's- "

"It's self-preservation," he says. "It's always been self-preservation."

"No," she counters. "It's not. It's- I think you think you're being kind or protecting me from something, when you do that. Like you're saving me from saying something that you know it hurts to say but you don't know me as well as you think you do. We don't know each other as well as we think we do." She sinks down on the edge of her bed and pulls her shoes off, tries to massage the day out of her feet.

He's quiet for a long time. "I want that to change," he says. "I want to know- I want to know what you're thinking. I want to get inside your head."

"It's a mess in there," she says, gently. "I don't even want to be inside my head."

He chuckles. "I don't know about that, Cavanaugh. I've seen your work product."

She laughs. "It's not the same," she says.

"I know. But come on, Alicia, just give me a tiny peek. I won't run away." He sounds so sincere, and it makes her ache for him.

"I don't think Peter ever banged that staffer," she says. "I think- In hindsight, I think she was a 20-something kid with student loans and a crappy government salary who saw Peter as an easy ticket to a book deal."

She can hear Will inhale, a long, drawn-out thing. "Do you regret the divorce?" he asks.

"No," she says. "But I- It's complicated. It… " She doesn't know where to start. Peter was always the most taboo subject on their unwritten list of taboo subjects, and she can't figure out how to explain it all now, doesn't know how to reduce more than two decades of her life to mere words. She waits for him to interrupt, to tell her that it's okay, that he understands, that she doesn't have to say anything.

"I'm listening," is what he says instead. "If you want to say."

She stops thinking. She closes her eyes and opens her mouth and speaks without a filter, without concern for how her words will affect him. She tells him about being twenty-three and easily impressed, about being twenty-four and saying 'I love you' for the first time in her life, about being twenty-five and so in love with the life growing inside of her that she couldn't imagine anything that would make her happier than building a future with her child's father. She doesn't gloss over the details, so she walks him through her first tumultuous year of marriage, the late nights with the baby and the shouting matches and the inadequacy of their tiny apartment.

"We barely survived it," she admits. "There would be days when we just agreed not to talk because we were so tired of fighting, nights when I would wait until I knew he'd be asleep before I left the office but then I'd get home and Zach would start screaming and he'd wake Peter so we would start screaming and it was awful. I remember calling my dad one night and just sobbing into the phone because I didn't want to be my mother but I didn't think I could do it anymore." She takes a deep breath. "You still there?" she asks.

"Yeah, I'm here," he whispers. "I- You never said. When we talked back then, you always sounded so… happy."

She shakes her head. "I wanted to be," she says. "I- I was embarrassed. And it got better. Zach started sleeping through the night and we remembered that with more than three hours of sleep we actually liked each other, and when I got pregnant again I just… I think life is about prioritizing."

"You're a good mom, Alicia," he says. "Not that I- I never really got to see it, but I've never known anyone who loves their kids the way you love yours."

She smiles. "I tried," she says. "I- I was a great mom, for a while, but then with Peter and- I've never been very good at juggling."

"You did alright in school," he points out, and she shrugs.

"That was just school," she says. "School and a boyfriend a few hundred miles away. It's so different when it's kids and a husband and work."

"Maybe," he admits. "Were you ever happy?"

"Yes." She doesn't hesitate. "I was, yes. For a long time. I- I loved the time with my kids, loved watching Peter- God, I love the way he works with power. I've always loved that about him. And it all just… Yes."

"And now?" his words are barely more than a whisper, and it takes her a moment to figure out what he's said.

"I don't know," she admits. She thinks about Cary in her doorway, thinks about the emptiness of her apartment and the thrill of seeing her name on the wall when she walks through the door. "I like work. I like working with Cary. I just… You asked, earlier, you asked about the divorce and I- I never stopped loving Peter. I probably never will and I wanted to make the marriage work. I wanted that for my kids, for- I wanted it for me. But I- I think I let someone else get under my skin and there just wasn't room for him anymore." She swallows, hard.

"I want to ask- ?"

"Yeah," she confirms. "Yes." And suddenly she thinks that maybe they can get what they used to have back. Maybe they can forget about the anger and the hurt and remember to speak without words. "And after that girl came forward and the press got wind of it, I just… He promised me that he'd never put me through that again. And I don't think he did, I don't think he meant to, but I just- Grace was two months from graduation and Zach was already out of the house and I just… You know, it's funny, I found out about Amber from CNBC and he found out I was leaving from Mandy Post."

"You didn't plan that?" he asks. "Your call-me-Cavanaugh courtroom performance?"

"I didn't plan it," she says. "I didn't even know I was- I didn't even know it was over until I said it."

He's quiet for a long time. "I just get so tired of people leaving," he says, softly. "After a certain point, you get so used to people leaving that you forget to ask them to stay."

She hurts for him. Her stomach twists and her heart aches and she curls up on her side and just hurts all over. "I'm sorry," she whispers. "Will, I- "

"I know," he says. "But it's not- It's not just you. It was Diane and my dad and- "

"I didn't know your dad left," she says, softly. "You never- "

"He killed himself," he says, eerily matter-of-fact. "Years ago. Right before I came back to Chicago. He- He was a shitty business man who lost everything on a bad investment and he killed himself because at least that way my mom could collect the life insurance."

"Will," she breathes. She doesn't know what to say.

"I think it's easier to be angry," he says.

"Anger can only sustain you for so long," she counters. Still, she understands it. She understands it and she understands him and she wishes that he was sitting across from her or lying next to her. Wishes that she could wrap her arms around him and hold on until all of their pain just faded away.

"I'm in court at nine tomorrow," he says. "I should sleep."

"Do you want- At some point, do you still want to get that dinner?"

"I do," he says. "I really do."

One dinner turns into two, two into three and three into every Friday at seven. They sit across from one another and talk, sharing secrets and jokes and stories and somehow they never run out of things to say.

"You seem different, lately," Cary tells her one afternoon when they're holed up in his office going over annual billings. "Lighter."

"Lighter?" She arches an eyebrow at him and he laughs.

"Not like that, not thinner, just- You've always walked around like the weight of the world was resting on your shoulders. But now, you- You're different."

She smiles. You seem heavier, she wants to say. You look like a man who's taken on too much too soon, who's given up a piece of his soul to this thing we've built. "I- I don't know what to say about that."

"Is it Will?" he asks, and there's no malice, there. "You don't have to say, I just figured… "

"Yes," she says. "Part of it's Will." Part of it has always been Will, but it feels wrong, putting all of the credit on him. "I think- I think it's me, though. I think I'm figuring out how to balance it all."

Cary nods, slow and thoughtful. "Any tips?"

She laughs. "Oh no," she says "You have to figure that one out on your own."

"With age comes wisdom?" he teases, and she swats at his head with the Aries Media file.

That night, she tells Will about the conversation, and he just smiles across the table at her, eyes dancing. "What?" she asks.

"Just you." He keeps beaming at her, and if this was a few years ago, she might have ducked her head and looked away, embarrassed by the love she sees behind his eyes. Now, though, she meets his gaze, arches an eyebrow at him until he laughs. "You know what I like?" he asks. "I like talking with you. I like listening to you."

"I used to think that we could say everything that ever needed saying without uttering a word," she admits, softly. "I- I missed that more than anything."

"I bet there are still some things that we can do without words," he breathes and her mouth goes dry.

"Yeah?" she whispers.

"Oh, yeah."

He comes home with her that night for the first time since they started talking again. They take their time, and she doesn't have to tell him yes or more or right there. He takes his cues from a look or a gasp and when they're finished he wraps his arms around her and holds her close.

"I love you," she whispers, and the words don't even stick in her throat.

"Mmm, you're not too bad yourself," he teases and she jabs him in the rib with her elbow. "I never stopped," he adds. "I'll never stop."

It isn't the way it was before. It's different.