Madam President

Chapter Seven

She regarded Rebecca a little more rationally as the other woman moved towards a sofa in the middle of her sitting room, snatching up a tablet along the way and finding herself a comfortable spot as she opened a document Freen had seen more than once.

"State of the Union?" Freen asked, making her way over and finding a place in an armchair near the end of the sofa Rebecca was sitting on.

"Mm." Rebecca murmured absently as she scrolled along the screen she was peering down at.

Freen smiled and tilted her head as she folded her hands in her lap and got comfortable. "Another long night, then."

Rebecca nodded and folded out a keyboard, clicking away for a moment or two before she was scrolling again just as she had been before.

"Mm. It's getting closer." Rebecca said once she was finally able to split enough of her attention to speak with some semblance of coherence.

"I've read it a dozen times." Freen watched the way Rebecca worried at one of her cuticles with her teeth with a small frown. "It's good, Rebecca."

Hearing her name made Rebecca glance up at the woman who had spoken it. At the entreaty in her eyes and the encouraging curl of the corners of her lips.

"Is it? Or is it just a bunch of bullshit fluff to make it seem as though my efforts aren't being blocked at every turn?"

Freen hadn't ever heard Rebecca speak like that. She hadn't really realized how much this must have been weighing on her. "Can I sit with you so that we can look together?"

"Of course." Rebecca's response sounded like Freen had asked her the most ridiculous question she could have. And maybe she had, but she stood and moved to claim the cushion next to Rebecca's nonetheless.

"Which part is the bullshit part?" Freen asked as she looked over the words Rebecca was still scrolling through.

"This," Rebecca responded simply, stopping the document and highlighting a passage with an irritated expression on her face.

Freen read over it carefully. Even leaned forward and furrowed her brows in concentration. "This is just, in essence, saying that you've made progress. What's untrue about that?"

"The part about me having made progress," Rebecca responded dryly.

"This country deserves to know that I haven't done a fraction of what I intend to do. Every person that's going to be listening to this deserves to know that I know they want to see results and that I'm going to give them exactly that."

"Then tell them," Freen responded, leaning back into the couch and meeting Rebecca's gaze when it was leveled on her.

"I'm serious. Tell them. Tell them you're doing everything in your power, and you'll never stop. I don't claim to have some deep understanding of politics. All I know is that we have never been more disenfranchised as a nation, and you are the only thing standing in the way of a loss of hope that would send it all tumbling to the ground. They believed in you enough to put you here. In everything that you've said and done so far. Do you really think it would be a bad idea to tell your proofers to take a day off?"

Rebecca was a little dumbfounded. It was easy to assume Freen paid little attention. That she drowned a lot out in her little world of shadows and mystery that she lived in.

Rebecca hadn't ever really considered the possibility that that wasn't at all the case.

"No," Rebecca said quietly. "No, I don't think that would be a bad idea, at all." Freen smiled softly in response to that. "Can I tell you a secret?"