Category: Angst, Character Death, minor J/D
Rating: PG
Sypnosis: Leo, while shaving, reflects on life and the consequences of Bartlet's Presidency.
Shaving Guilt
Every time I look at my daughter, in the mirror, at the boy I've known since his birth and now outclasses me in my own business, it hits me how old I am. The President once said that this is the last job he will have, and it will be mine, too: all I will ever do after this is lecture, read the newspapers and reminisce about a time when I made a difference.
There is only one time in the day when I allow myself to think about such things, and that is when I shave. I stand in front of the mirror for a good five minutes, even after the actual business of shaving is completed, depreciating myself. I'm nearly sixty years old, and what do I have to show for it? A destroyed marriage. One child with whom I have a relationship that, at best, can be described as rocky. I'm a drug addict and an alcoholic. Then I remind myself of my wider family: Jed, Abbey, their daughters, CJ, Sam, Toby. Josh, and Donna who seems to come with him, part and parcel of who he is.
It seems like forever, an eternity, since I went to Jed that summer morning and told him I thought we should run. Even as he agreed, neither of us dreamt we'd be living this life, using these offices, and certainly not as casually as we do it. It took us until he stepped over the threshold in '98 to even begin to contemplate what we were doing: a month later, we had adapted to it. The jobs became a part of us.
I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I hadn't asked the question, just left it running in my mind. Part of me knows that someone like Hoynes would be President, ruining the country, and that I would feel almost unbearable guilt for letting the chance slip away. That part of me - and it grows every day - knows that America would be worse off without Jed Bartlet. And yet.
I could have saved Mrs Landingham. I could have stopped Josh being shot, not knocked ten years off his life. I could have not delayed this thing - whatever it is - between Josh and Donna. We all know it can't happen now, not while we're in office, but it will after. The rational part of my brain knows that if it weren't for the campaign, they may never have met, but still when I see them together my heart sinks, knowing they will have to keep apart for perhaps the next five years.
Perhaps history will remember Jed Bartlet as a great statesman; perhaps he will only be the man who lied to the country. Whatever history chooses, I will still have my doubts and my triumphs.
Today, for some reason, I can't stop thinking about these things. I walk away from my shaving mirror, but instead of my doubts being left behind in the luxurious hotel bathroom they stay with me. They follow me into the lift, to the morning room where I eat breakfast, out of the hotel lobby and into the street where I walk without looking.
I don't even realise it's hit me. But then again, I only have a split second left.