A/N: This is the last one of these. Hope you enjoyed the five different versions! A word of warning: aside from the post-season 4 setting, it's quite AU and also Alicia is very OOC. It seems to be the only way for me to write Alicia/Will these days.

Edward Flynn had not deserved the tears she had shed over him. Dumping her for a less high-maintenance girl that happened to be blonder and bustier was a tell-tale sign of an unworthy young man.

But he had been her first crush and she was just fifteen years old.

She had run back home convinced that homeschooling surely had to be the suitable method of education for her. Her mother had laughed, given her a glass of wine and told her:

"The next boy is just around the corner, Alicia. You're a woman now, use it and get over that one."

The implication had been sinister for her at the time. She wasn't comfortable in her body enough to be like the red-headed woman in the kitchen nor she particularly wished to be. She had closed herself off in her room, thankful for her brother's field trip. Her father had found her almost catatonic at her desk.

"Someone will sorely regret the decision he made today."

He was not angry at Edward, nor compassionate towards her. He had a serene and reassuring expression of his face, as if his was the voice of an oracle that had a clear glimpse of the future. At seeing him, the dam broke and she ran into his open arms crying.

"Oh, Daddy."

She did not use the childish nickname very often. But whenever something happened to her, her Daddy's girl identity came back in full force. In the arms of her father, Alicia could stop being strong and let go.

"You'll move on soon enough, you'll see."

"What if I don't?"

"The likes of Alicia Cavanaugh always get over the Edward Flynns. He couldn't keep up with you, sweetie. You were always out of his league, didn't I tell you that?"

She laughed but stubbornly repeated her question.

"What if I don't?"

"Then, if you're sure that you can't get over him, you get him back, because that is the person you should be with."

"How will I be sure?"

"Time is the most powerful antidote there is, sweetie. It heals all the ailments of love but one, the one caused by the true partner of your life."

Watching the photo on his gravestone she remembered the precise timbre of his voice at pronouncing the words. That warmth that protected and that seriousness that admonished were forever etched in her memory. She had accused him of being sappy and he had counteracted saying that she was the one crying over a brainless twat. They had both ended up laughing uncontrollably.

She was at the cemetery that day to acknowledge that another year without him had passed, that the calendar had hastily moved forward. One would think that she'd stop counting at a certain point. What good was it to know the number of years (and months) she had lived in a world without her father? Despite all her rationalizing, she just couldn't help herself. Especially lately, when her world spun furiously without making any sense and she would have done anything for a word of advice from the mute ashes that resided in the soil under the grass.

The recollection of Edward Flynn had not been random.

She had been treated to the grieving parade that accompanied Sir Thomas Connor to his resting place. Among the crowd she had spotted his lawyer, the man she couldn't commit out of her life.

Any effort on her part meant to extirpate him from her mind, to move on, had been fruitless, in vain. Months after that election night, he still plagued her thoughts as much as ever. Had she cared for him any less, she would have resented the tyranny exercised by the figure that was able to command her attention from a distance, without even being aware of it.

"Use the proper words, Alicia!" her father had taught her, as soon as she had learned how to talk.

She was terrified of using the proper words with Will.

"What words would those be, Daddy?" she craved to ask.

"Love? Betrayal? Hate? Loss?" she wondered silently.

She loved him. She had betrayed him. He hated her. She had lost him.

She hadn't been at all prepared for the agony the loss of Will had caused. She had been operating under the assumption that it would have been similar to the first time it had happened.

Wrong. Deadly wrong.

Back then, there had been a slew of painkillers coming her way, helping her to cope: the brand-new marriage with Peter, a newborn Zach, her ensconced in her Highland Park home with no chance at all of seeing him. Now that there wasn't anything to dull her pain, she felt it every day, an anchor dragging her down from any family-related, Peter-related, work-related high.

At night, whether Peter was sleeping next to her or in Springfield, her train of reflections veered dangerously towards him. Did he have someone to share his bed? Did his companion realize just how lucky she was? Would he ever give her again that lopsided smile of his? Would his eyes ever welcome something resembling affection towards her?

The fissure in her heart was not even in the process of closing. The ache as burning and debilitating as the beginning.

"You get him back, because that is the person you should be with."

Teary-eyed as she was, she wished she had a chance to answer to the man in her memory.

"It's too late, Daddy. It's too late."

Will was moving away and hadn't even noticed her or if he had, he had ignored her. She sprinted a bit to reach him.

"Will, wait up!"

He tensed immediately and froze in his position.

"I'm sorry for your client."

What a ridiculous ice-breaker that was! And yet, she didn't have much of a choice, did she?

"Madam First Lady, it's a surprise to see you here. The grieving family is that way, though I'd wait a little bit more to try and steal my business. They don't take well to outsiders."

"Will, I would never..."

The retort had been instinctual and she realized her mistake too late. His eyes had conjured a pure fury and incredulity that she would say something so stupid. She went for the truth, her last weapon.

"It's the anniversary of my father's death. I'm here to pay my respects."

The Will of a few months before would have taken her in his arms because he had been aware of the significance of that day for her ever since Georgetown. The one in front of her was trying to adjudicate a brawl in his head between his rage and his decency as a human being. Decency won.

"I am sorry, Mrs. Florrick, that was out of line. I'm due in court, I have to go."

She felt like crying and if wasn't for the brush-off. It was because, even in the only moment of kindness he had given her, even after her having confessed she was vulnerable, he still hadn't called her Alicia.

Grace was staying at a friends' house, Zach was in college, and she was due in Springfield for the night. Peter had remembered the date and had offered to skip the event but she had insisted. An evening out would take her mind off things. But that afternoon, putting on her makeup, she didn't have the strength to maintain the mask even for an hour.

She called Peter, told him he had been right and that he would spend the end of the day with Owen, maybe reminiscing about old times. He had agreed that it was a great idea, had asked if she wanted him in Chicago for the night, but she had refused and did not reciprocate the "I love you" at the end of the call.

It would be hypocritical because she had no intention of going to Owen's.

She had counted on his going home on foot, given the warm evening and she was not disappointed. He got out of the building that used to house her office and she approached him. She had parsed beforehand what kind of sentence would most be able to capture his attention. One had come prominently to the forefront of her mind but those three words would seem a manipulation and not the truth if she blurted them out as a sort of greeting. She had settled on something that would somehow reopen the pathetic excuse for a conversation they had had in the morning.

"I let my father down."

"I'm sorry for that."

"Don't you want to know how or why?"

He said nothing and picked up his pace. She almost ran to grab his arm. He stopped, breathing heavily as if he needed to calm down.

"Let me go. You lost the privilege of talking to me like this the day you walked away from that office..."

"I know, but Will..."

"Let me go, or your father won't be able to protect you from what I want to say. I'll be forceful, I'll be cruel, I'll be blunt and trust me, you don't want to hear any of it."

"What if I do want to hear it? Have at it, Will. Shout and vent, scream and call me names, I'll hear it all. It will be my first, minuscule, step towards atonement."

"Atonement, huh? Don't you see that there's no atonement for what you've done? That it will never be enough?"

"I think you're fooling yourself, Will. As long as you hate me, there's always a possibility for atonement."

"You're unbelievable. Do you listen to yourself? Is it being the First Lady of Illinois that makes you so conceited? Or is it something else? What is it, Alicia, that makes you so convinced that you'll get your way?"

It took him a bit to replay what he had just pronounced and that name he hadn't dared to use in so long. He had slipped.

There was hope.

"I never knew how much my name meant, until you stopped using it, Will."

"Oh, please, spare me the false sigh-inducing bullshit. I can see through your act now, don't you get that? I couldn't, for way too long but now my eyes have been opened. What do you want?"

" Time heals all the ailments of love but one, the one caused by the true partner of your life."

He used her distraction to start moving again. Will was a fast walker when he chose to be, and she had to struggle to reach him again.

"Spare me your fortune-cookie wisdom."

"It's not from a fortune-cookie. It's what my father told me the first time I got dumped."

"I'm sure he'd be glad to be proven wrong by the First Couple of Illinois."

He was trying to push her off-path. She continued undeterred.

"I forgave Peter completely. He has a new ethics assistant that is younger and much more beautiful than me and she even bears a passing resemblance to Amber Madison and he was so scared about it. About how I would take it. He wanted permission. I gave it easily. Do you know why?"

Silence. Her spleen was starting to ache at the speed he was forcing on her with his pace.

"I forgave him but if I have to be truly honest, I am sort of wishing he does it again."

That shocked him enough to warrant a pause on his part.

"Not the public humiliation or the kids getting hurt part, but him cheating again? It would give me an excuse to stop feeling guilty, to leave him once and for all."

"Don't look at me like that, Will. I'm not crazy. But I feel like I've been cheating on him for months now. He has become the ideal husband, you know? Or as ideal as a Governor can be for a husband. And as wonderful as he is, I still can't stop thinking about you."

He laughed, with a menacing flair.

"Why are you telling me this? Do you think it'll make anything better? That I'll feel better because you're thinking about me? I must have given you the impression of being an utter patsy. I must have."

"No, Will, listen..."

"No, you listen to me, very carefully. You could tell me that you think of me while you fuck him and I wouldn't care. You could tell me you loved me and it wouldn't even faze me a bit. You could shout to the world that you're leaving him and you're spending the rest of your life trying to get me back and it wouldn't change a thing. Whatever idyllic little idea you have in your mind won't come true..."

His eyes, completely focused on her, weren't telling a different story. On the other hand, they were helping him driving his point home. Far from being blank-faced he was ablaze now with the glint of revenge.

"Stop being selfish for a second and see your father's sentence from my point of view. I thought you were supposed to be the true partner in my life. So I won't forgive, time won't heal anything."

She should have maintained her composure but the weeping could not be halted.

"Tears won't move me either..."

"Stop, please, stop..." she murmured. She felt lightheaded, ready to drop on the cement pavement of the almost-void sidewalk.

"See? What did I tell you? You didn't want to hear it after all. Don't worry, I'll stop. Leave me alone and I'll be ecstatic to do the same."

She was exhausted, feeble, and frail as she had ever been. But her father's words came to her aide.

"You get him back!"

All of a sudden a surge of vim, of probably-quixotic enthusiasm animated her. She remembered the blue irises in his arms when she had allowed him to come visit his father one summer-break, the lengths he had gone to in order to improve her mood whenever she returned from Chicago, the fervor in his voice when she had chosen to accept his job-proposal, the intoxicating taste of his forbidden kisses, the heat of his hands all over her body, the smile he could barely contain whenever they ended up in a room together.

"I'm selfish, Will, you said it yourself so I won't leave you alone. I will pester and nag, I will stalk you until you'll get a restraining order."

"Please, you have a reputation to maintain."

"Try me, Will."

"You're delirious."

His tone was melting by the second.

"Maybe I am. But you know how I am when someone challenges me Will."

"I'm not doing any such thing."

"Fine, when I challenge myself."

"So I am a challenge now? A bet to entertain the bored First Lady?"

He was an extraordinary lawyer. At the moment, he was using that in his favor against her.

"You can twist my words however you like, Will. I'm in love with you and I'm tired of running."

He had spouted that a declaration of love wouldn't even faze him but that was talk. His body, that suddenly relaxed, the breath that he exhaled, the eyes abruptly devoid of all malice were all contradicting his previous words.

She still meant enough to him that he had to struggle a bit before regaining control.

"I know that I don't deserve a chance but I'm used to getting my way, I know it'll take time but I'm resilient, I know it's an impossible task but I'm conceited enough to believe in my success. I know that I come with a baggage of complications that you'd have to sift through but I'm sure that we would be worth it, Will. Given a real chance at a relationship, without me stupidly trying to sweep it under the carpet, without you being my boss, without me being married, without you worrying about Diane..."

She took a brief pause to make sure he was still following.

"Given a real chance, we wouldn't fizzle and die. We would thrive, as we would have at Georgetown, Will. And I know you probably already knew all of this, that you tried to tell me in one way or the other. I'm sorry is never going to be enough but it's all I have."

"I don't believe in any of that anymore."

Resignation had replaced his turmoil of emotions. He was telling her his truth.

"Think about your advice before my closing in the Criminal Law mock trial. Don't you remember? Me all scared on your couch? Terrified of losing the one case in which we had gotten to represent an innocent? "You're a powerhouse, Alicia. If you believe what you're saying, the jurors will succumb to your point of view without even noticing." Quite a few years have gone by but I'm still that powerhouse, Will. You'll succumb to my point of view. You won't have to look longingly at reunited families anymore. I won't have to spend the rest of my life wondering what if. We'll get to live instead of watching others living."

"Once upon a time there was a madwoman named Alicia. Reality brought her home and washed her folly away. The end."

"Once upon a time there was a boy making cannonballs at an Orientation Party and a girl watching him shyly from the sidelines. There's only a way a story like that ends."

She saw the effort he was making to stop himself from engaging in that exchange. He was biting his lip but, despite what probably would have been his better judgment, insanity prevailed.

"One way?"

"One way."

"I thought you hated fairytales and cheesy romantic movies."

"There's an exception to every rule."

He moved away from her, towards his home. The road would be long and winding and her effort was just beginning but her father would be proud of what she had done that night. Fighting for the partner in his life. She was confident to have gotten through to him.

Before he could be out of earshot, he turned around and asked a rhetoric question.

"Happily ever after?"

She responded with her first true smile in way too many months and a promise.

"Happily ever after."