Chapter Text
Hillary eyed the woman across from her, face carefully impassive, thoughts concealed. It should have been a common enough scene. Whitehaven had borne witness to more than its fair share of Clinton adversaries sitting at this same table, drinking coffee, or tea, with a nice side of silent, simmering rage.
But this meeting felt different. With the infamously antagonizing figure across from her smiling so warmly they might have been mistaken for friends, the walls seemed to press inwards; the room felt smaller.
It was rare, in Washington, to find people whose political smiles still looked genuine, but Warren’s closed-mouthed, lopsided little grin looked unnervingly authentic. Hillary blamed it on New England, on something about the infamous Northeast habit of never looking anyone in the eye when walking past, never acknowledging the other chin-down passersby, never pausing to greet anyone outside the scope of their immediate mission. These career northerners hadn’t wasted a quarter of the smiles southerners had, so they had plenty to spare for the years of Washington’s most disingenuous pleasantries. Arkansas had groomed her for constant grinning, constant pausing to greet the most minor acquaintance and wish them her heartfelt best. Those cultivated “I care about your troubles” smiles always served her well on the campaign trail, speaking to a few supporters after an event or engaging the immediate audience in a town hall, but she was hard pressed to summon them here in Washington. Next to the icy cordiality of the professional politician’s smile, her warmth was too easily dismissed for the fraud it too often was.
Elizabeth Warren, however, was smiling at her like she was the best damn thing since sliced bread, and it was starting to feel… unnerving.
“There’s no camera here, you know,” she finally said, breaking the silence that had settled around them since she had first greeted the Senator at the door of her Washington residence. She aimlessly ran her thumb up and down the side of her coffee cup, grounding herself in the familiar territory of insulating porcelain fighting to contain the dangerous heat of the dark brew inside. She was unsettled by this woman, her least trusted, most needed ally, but hell would freeze over before she let that show.
Elizabeth Warren’s smile, if anything, grew warmer.
“I know.”
Teeth flashed for a moment, giving that odd little smile an edge. If either of the men on her VP shortlist had been sitting across from her, Hillary would have taken that flash of white for the posturing presumption it was, but somehow, on this strange, irritating woman, this gesture was one of authentic mirth.
“I’m sorry, I know you brought me here to try and... bargain me past old grievances and into your inner circle. Or whatever role you’ve decided will help herd the progressives along like the good little sheep we’re supposed to be. But, I mean, I’m sorry. I’m having a hard time getting into the politics right now. I just can’t stop being so… thrilled .” She raised and lowered her shoulders in a quick, excited motion, grin stretching wider. “I’m so happy for you right now.”
Hillary blinked. Twice. In rapid succession.
Elizabeth Warren laughed.
“What? Are you that surprised I was rooting for you?”
She didn’t give Hillary time to pull together a reply.
“You’re going to be the first Madam President. You did it. Sorry, but… I had to bask in it for a minute. Look. I’m the first to admit Bernie’s a friend, but he’s no revolution. The Senate needs him; America needs you.”
As she spoke, she leaned in towards the table, one palm flat against the wood, the other punctuating her words with brisk, open gestures.
Hillary found herself distracted by that hand, wishing she could borrow some of this woman’s intensity, some of the life force that forty years in the spotlight had stolen from her. Hillary was tired. She was tired, and the campaigning wasn’t even halfway over. In some ways, it was hard to look at Elizabeth Warren, to acknowledge her as a peer, as someone only one year younger than herself, when she was brimming with this constant vitality, a ready energy Hillary could barely remember from her days as First Lady.
“And I’m here to help,” Warren said, plowing through Hillary’s thoughts. “You don’t have to sell it to me; I want to get the progressives on your team. You want me at campaign events, I’m there. You want me signing off on emails, I’ll sign. You want me going after Drumpf? It’s my pleasure.”
“And if I want you on my ticket?”
It was the Senator’s turn to blink. Hillary couldn’t hide a small, pleased smile. She wasn’t the only one getting startled today.
“You don’t.” Warren’s brows pulled together as, for the first time in their meeting, she frowned. “I mean, if you want to field me as a distraction, to draw media attention, I’m happy to help, but everyone already knows it’s going to be Kaine.”
Hillary nodded once. “He was the first one I started vetting, yes. But he’s not at the top of my list anymore. My staff and I are in agreement; you’ve been in the top three, and, as of right now, you’re the best option I have.”
“I—I don’t know what to say.”
Hillary held up a hand. “I’m not offering you the job right now, so I don’t need you to accept or reject anything, or to make any excuses or ask for more time. This is me testing the waters. The scope of the entire election could change in the next month. By then, I might come back willing to make a lot of major policy compromises to get you to agree, or, on the other hand, I might not need you at all. I might decide, after we’ve had an event together, or even after today, that I can’t work with you. You might feel the same. But, in this moment, you’re the smart choice, the right choice, and I need to know, if I start things in motion, that you’re not going to embarrass me.”
As Hillary spoke, she was surprised how bitter the hard sell tasted in her mouth. She had never much liked the idea of this meeting, of this prospect for the next eight years of her presidency, but she had learned a long time ago that there were times to let the strategists on her team have their say. She wanted someone safe, and she wanted someone loyal. Elizabeth Warren was neither of those things. But her team wanted a life-long progressive, and history demanded a firebrand, an attack dog, so Hillary, against her better judgement, had set up this meeting.
But she hadn’t intended to make it easy. She was here to play hardball, to play into every negative image of her the media had so carefully cultivated these past forty years. She was here to play the pragmatist, to let Elizabeth Warren know she had a shot at becoming the nation’s right hand woman, but that that would be the end of it. This was not a meeting to cultivate friendship, or to offer forgiveness for the irreverent words weighing heavy in their past. This was a meeting to get someone on her side and make sure she could stomach what would come of it.
But Elizabeth Warren had startled her today. Hillary invited her here to bargain; Warren had graciously… volunteered.
And now, she was smiling again, that warm, disarming smile that seemed to say she knew exactly how unhappy Hillary was with the arrangement she was offering, and seemed to say she was already ready to prove her wrong.
“Never.” She paused. “Never again. I know what I’ve said about you. What I’ve said about your ties to Wall Street, about the bankruptcy bill. Like so many of us, I made a name for myself using your reputation. If you want an apology—”
“—I don’t.” Hillary shook her head. “That’s just good politics.” It was a truth she had resented, every time an advisor tried to talk her into this, every time someone insisted that Warren’s past was nothing more than political savvy, and yet here she was, slowly starting to let herself believe it.
Warren sighed. “Well, thank you, I guess.” She opened her mouth, then closed it again, and Hillary could practically see the scales shifting in her brain as she weighed her next words. “But there’s no such thing,” she finally added.
As the quick phrase sank in, Hillary smiled in surprise. “As good politics?”
Warren’s nod didn’t earn a laugh, but Hillary’s smile stayed.
It was getting easier.
“Smart politics, then.”
Elizabeth Warren raised her coffee, offering a subtle toast to the change. Hillary mirrored her before she took a sip, startled at how cold the drink had already gotten. She had half an hour blocked out for this conversation, but no one would interrupt her if it took longer. She had three other engagements this afternoon alone, and this had been the one she most wanted over and done with. Now, this one felt… important.
“Anyway,” Warren continued. “All I wanted to say was, I’m here. I didn’t endorse you because you won, or because I was trying to get something out of it. I endorsed you because I want you to be the next president of the United States, and because... it was time. Any sooner would have alienated my base. Now, I’m a sellout, but I didn’t sell out Bernie. I just…” She trailed off, looking uncomfortably towards the wall behind Hillary’s head. “Sold out. Period.”
Hillary let the admission hang between them for a minute, sizing up this conversation, weighing it against the vision of the uncompromising progressive who had needled at her public image from afar for so many years. “And how does it feel?”
There were politicians who would have said “Good” without hesitation, thinking that was what she wanted to hear. There were others, people closer to her, who would have admitted, “It feels… wrong. Slimy.” There were few who truly understood how distasteful she found the intentional lack of integrity in Washington, and Elizabeth Warren certainly wasn’t one of them.
“It feels like…” She made a face, wrinkling her nose. “...'Winning.’”
Hillary knew, immediately, that she was imitating Drumpf. She lowered her voice, slack-jawed and drawling, and Hillary’s lips quirked up in a brief, unintentional smile.
“In every disgusting way he means that word. Which is exactly why it has to be done. But then again, I don’t really feel like that at all. I don’t feel like supporting you is selling out. I mean, don’t get me wrong. If you… If this offer gets serious, I’m going to want to talk economics."
"—Then let's talk," Hillary cut in. "Because I'm serious. I am one hundred percent serious about wanting you on my ticket, even if, right now, you're not the only one. You hated my vote on the bankruptcy bill. You—"
"—I didn't understand how you could be so transparently bought out by special interest!"
"You didn't understand how I could sit down with you, learn about that bill, and talk the whole White House out of it as First Lady, then turn around and vote for it in the Senate. You didn't understand how I could see potential in a piece of legislation you had spent years tearing apart. All you saw was the money involved. I ended up opposing that bill with the same anger I felt after we finished our very first conversation, and if you can't see how I got there, why I did that--"
"—Consumer credit products—"
"—then you're more like Senator Sanders than I thought."
Whatever Elizabeth Warren had intended to say about the credit industry was cut short by Hillary's words.
"There is money in politics that shouldn't be there. But I have never run a single-issue campaign, and I was never a single-issue Senator. You gave me the background I needed to understand that bill, and I'm still grateful for that. But if I could have gotten the protections I wanted, that bill could have become a... a lesser evil." Hillary shook her head. "And, of course, it didn't. If anything, it got worse, and I tore it apart again four years later."
"You did." Warren sighed, glancing away. "And I'll bet there were other things happening behind the scenes. Greater evils. But my vision for banks and deregulation and antitrust legislation hasn’t changed. I won't be making any speeches to Goldman Sachs in your name, that's for sure." She looked up, and their eyes connected across the table. "But supporting you is the best hope progressives have had in decades. Maybe I just… wasn't ready to hear that yet.”
She offered an apologetic smile, pushing her glasses gently up the bridge of her nose with two fingers.
Hillary leaned forward, resting her arms on the table to either side of her coffee. “And now? Are you ready to say that, every day, on camera, for the next five months of your life?”
“I am. And the next eight years after that.”
As she spoke, she reached out and rested her fingers on the back of Hillary’s hand, maintaining eye contact so naturally, still smiling in that particular way of hers that had so quickly gotten under Hillary’s skin, that it was hard to imagine dishonesty or manipulation emerging from between those same lips.
Hillary glanced down, bemused by the sight of that casual contact. Aside from perfunctory handshakes and stilted hugs, she had very few peers who would initiate physical interaction with her when the cameras were away. Oh, her crowds of cheering supporters invaded her personal space often enough, but those eager connections were rooted in the deep entitlement the public felt over her life, an eerie idolization simultaneously endearing and exhausting. It was very different among her colleagues. She had long since grown used to the phenomenon of men visibly steeling themselves before accepting a proffered handshake, as though even the slightest physical contact might trap them in a mire of political scandal or make their balls shrivel up and disappear for good, but she never failed to feel a twinge of disappointment when that same irrational disgust manifested in the greetings of her female peers. Her presence in a room was simultaneously accepted as an elevation of the quality of company and as a ghostly corruption of once-pure space.
She had never before had the occasion for more than a half-acknowledged handshake with the woman across from her. But now, here they were, five calm, gentle points of contact between them, the tips of each of Elizabeth Warren’s fingers resting in easy reassurance on the back of her hand, and when Hillary returned her smile, it felt real.
“A yes, then?” she asked, allowing the contact between them to remain as she prepared to draw their business to a close. “You’ll cooperate when I start the vetting process, and you’ll consider my offer, such as it is?”
“Absolutely.”
With a gentle squeeze of her wrist, the Senator relinquished control of Hillary’s hand. As she pulled her arm back across the table, it seemed to draw with it all the weighty introspection of the past hour, and Hillary couldn’t remember the last time she had felt this... light.
She rose.
Senator Warren mirrored her, brushing down the sides of her slacks as she stood in a quick, nervous motion that reminded Hillary of her high school beau wiping sweaty palms on his tux before holding hands with her in the driveway as they left for the dance.
But Elizabeth Warren’s hands were steady, cool, and dry.
“Well, I’m sure I’ve taken up more than my share of your time today.”
Hillary shook her head. “Not at all. Still, I’m sure the press are waiting to ambush you, and who am I to deprive them of the three-minute frenzy between my door and your car.”
The resulting laugh startled Hillary, once again, with that same eerie sincerity that had yet to abandon Warren’s smile. A half-breath of her own laughter snuck out in sympathy.
They walked to the door in an easy silence. Before she opened it, Hillary extended her hand. “I’m so glad we had this conversation, Senator. Your support… is incredibly valuable to this campaign.”
And , she admitted only in the safety of her own thoughts, suddenly... important to me.
“Thank you for having me...”
Hillary found herself locked in a comfortably firm handshake, trapped by the fierce, hopeful look in the Senator’s eyes.
“...and please. Call me Elizabeth.”