The little family of three was warm and content, and Bella's days passed pleasantly enough; she would often catch herself thinking that living out her whole life just like this wouldn't be half bad.
The wider world, over these two months, had been anything but calm. The crisis of the biochemical-virus leak was finally under control, though the losses in lives and property defied any reckoning. The crux of it was that one tug on a single strand set the whole web trembling: Benjamin Asher wanted to expand the scale of United States Forces Korea, and the move drew fierce opposition from South Korea's own hardline faction and from several major powers in the region.
Charlie had been run ragged this whole stretch. Through maneuvering within the party, he resigned his seat on the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners and formally took office as a U.S. Senator for California. He'd stepped into the role back in early May.
The California house was kept on, but by the rules he had to spend several months of the year working over in Washington, D.C. — that is, sitting in sessions of Congress. Those wrangling, hair-splitting meetings routinely dragged on for months, and he plainly couldn't sit in session by day and fly back to California each night, so he needed to find a place in Washington. Out of the seven days in a week, he had four days of meetings there — which meant staying three nights.
In a parallel timeline, that newly elected President Biden, back when he served as a Senator for Delaware, had ridden the train an hour to Washington for work every single day — there wasn't a rail worker on that line who didn't know him. Delaware was close enough to make that work; California was simply too far.
A senator did draw a salary — just under 170,000 dollars a year. In Washington, D.C., that income counted as no better than upper-middle-class; factor in the cost of a proper wardrobe and everyday living, and buying a house on 170,000 a year was extremely difficult.
Bella had money, but this wasn't the moment to bring it out. Was that train-riding President Biden poor? Hardly! The man was far wealthier than the average person; it was simply that anyone with ambitions for the future would never leave a weak spot in that department. Charlie didn't want to leave any stain either, so — simple enough — he rented.
Because Natasha worked at S.H.I.E.L.D., Bella and her family were also living in Washington — though the three of them had a house of their own and didn't have to crowd in with Charlie. Charlie left his wife and little daughter back in California and rented a place in Washington for himself.
He certainly wouldn't serve out the full six years as senator; whatever the outcome, he'd have to resign before the general election four years down the road. It was far too early to speak of a campaign platform now, but the handful of campaign advisers poached from the Black president's camp — their salaries paid by Bella under the Chanel name — had already sketched out a rough framework for him: family, traditional order, a man of responsibility. These were all to be Charlie's labels.
Charlie held the advantage on the family and personal front. In his fifties, in his vigorous prime, he was at the ideal age for the presidency; Benjamin Asher, that freshly discharged soldier, came off as far too young by comparison.
Charlie had a wife, an ex-wife, a daughter, a stepdaughter, and now a granddaughter, while both his own parents had passed — every bit of it an advantage! And Benjamin Asher? His wife had just died, he had only a single six-year-old boy, and his parents were still living.
On the campaign trail, living parents are a liability! Who ever laid eyes on the Donald's parents? Dead long ago! Who ever laid eyes on the Zippergate fellow's parents? Having both parents dead is the best possible outcome — the one that fits the public's mental picture of a president most snugly. A president is supposed to be a thoroughly mature figure; parents in the wings, from an optics standpoint, just take something off it.
Family was a strong card in Charlie's future hand; with family as the binding thread, traditional households were very likely to throw their support behind him.
***
July 4th is America's Independence Day, and once the holiday was past, the Benjamin Asher administration's bold moves came thicker and faster. Half a year into his term, the president's way of doing things was by now widely understood: hard-line, exacting, in deadly earnest. Public opinion had cooled from the unanimous praise of his first days in office; some had started to feel the previous Black president hadn't been so bad — weak, granted, and not tough enough on other nations, but you could coast along just fine under him. Coast along under Benjamin Asher? What, are you looking to get yourself fired?
In the South Korea biochemical-virus leak, Benjamin Asher's hard-line style was on full display: he deployed the whole of America's Asia-Pacific military strength to South Korea, and wanted still more troops besides. The move provoked fierce opposition from Congress, from South Korea's hardliners, and from a whole host of Asia-Pacific nations.
Weighing the many considerations at play, he didn't add troops after all; instead he reduced the U.S. Forces Japan garrison and reassigned those soldiers to South Korea, building an air base in Incheon and one naval base apiece in Busan and Daegu. The garrisons of the three bases together came to more than twenty thousand, and counting the existing Yeongcheon Base, the total strength of United States Forces Korea thereby reached fifty thousand. He further stationed several dozen C-130s at the Incheon air base.
His moves left every party stunned; many couldn't figure out his strategy. What was he driving at?
The Independence Day holiday had barely ended when the Prime Minister of South Korea was invited to visit the United States. Never mind South Korea's domestic hardliners — even the South Korean government and America's many allies couldn't make out Benjamin Asher's true intent. Was this really about stopping the spread of biochemical weapons?
At exactly 6:30 that evening, the South Korean Prime Minister's motorcade pulled up to the White House, both sides ready to sit down and talk things through properly.
At that very moment, Bella and Natasha were at a convenience store with their child, buying diapers.
As a desk-duty agent, Natasha had to work out of S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters; there was no way she could work on the East Coast and go home to Los Angeles on the West Coast each night. For the baby's sake and for her wife's job, Bella had been staying here in Washington with her all this while.
"Little Elsa, do you like this brand of diapers?" Bella held up a big, gaudily packaged bag and asked her daughter.
Little Elsa's mind wasn't yet up to parsing the meaning of the question; she only cocked her head to study her papa's expression, chewed on her fingers, and shook her head on reflex.
Natasha nudged a certain someone aside and, with an expert eye, picked out an ultra-thin, breathable brand of diapers.
"Look at this packaging — see how much care went into it, the fine edges, the quality feel. Diapers of this caliber are the ones worth buying. It's not as if the more expensive a thing is, the better it must be! Dummy!"
With great satisfaction, Natasha gave the child's papa a proper dressing-down. Bella scratched her head and held the two brands side by side for a careful comparison; she honestly couldn't spot much of a difference, except that the one she'd picked happened to be a bit pricier.
"Fine, fine, you're right about everything!"
"I am right, as it happens."
"Yes, yes, yes—" Bella drawled it out. "You're the rightest of them all!"
To make it easier for little Elsa to tell her mama and papa apart, Bella had cut her long hair short. The ear-length bob, with its slight upward curl at the ends, set against her refined features, lent her a bold, untamed kind of beauty. She'd taken off her earrings and the rest of her accessories, and her wardrobe had shifted from spaghetti-strap dresses to a casual blazer and trousers. Her new look was downright dashing.