TITLE: Life and Loyalty

CATEGORY: General

RATING: PG-13, for strong language (and gratuitous depression...)

SUMMARY: Something happens that changes CJ's life and causes Toby to question her loyalty -- and his own.

SPOILERS: possibly none

WRITTEN BY: Amber

DISCLAIMER: I have no rights to these characters, just too much free time. They were created by the extremely talented Aaron Sorkin (I'm not holding Sports Night against him), but are most likely owned by some evil conglomerate.

FEEDBACK: Yes, please. And a little bit of encouragement or criticism is always welcome at minttown1@aol.com, and would be eternally appreciated.

AUTHOR NOTES: I'm not writing this to be preachy, though I'm sure it is, and maybe that doesn't bother me so much. I'm actually writing it to satisfy part of a bet.

This story can be set after another story of mine, "Trying To Beat This", if you are particular about these things. They both stand alone though. Assuming either of them stands at all.

I don't really care for the flashback format, but it seemed to be the best way to do this. This takes place somewhere in the future, late 2001-early 2002. Just use your imagination here.

And now, the story...

It was almost eleven at night. Way too late to still be at work. Not unusually late anymore, but still too late. By human standards.

"Do you need me for anything else tonight?" Margaret asked Leo from the doorway.

"No. I didn't even know you were still here. Go home," Leo said, all without looking up.

"Thank you. Good night." Leo only nodded, so Margaret turned to leave.

She passed Toby in the hall a few minutes later.

"Is Leo busy?" Toby asked.

"I don't think so." she answered. With slight hesitation she added, "Why?"

"I need to talk to him."

"Are you two going to need me for anything?" she asked, sounding slightly desperate.

Toby shook his head. "No, we'll be fine." He seemed about to add something else, then walked away down the hall toward Leo's office.

He stopped when he reached the doorway and just stood there. This wasn't exactly going to be an easy conversation to have.

"I have to talk to you," Toby finally said.

"Yeah?" Leo replied. Toby didn't move from the door. Leo looked up. "This is the part where you sit down and say something."

"I don't actually want to talk to you," Toby told him as he sat down. "I just figure I have to."

"I think the same thing most mornings about before staff meetings."

"Was that a joke?" Toby asked.

"Does it matter?"

"Maybe. No. I have to talk to you."

"As we've established," Leo said, impatience growing in his voice. "So talk."

"We're running for re-election as we speak," Toby said slowly. "You know CJ hasn't been... okay, since October."

"Her miscarriage?"

"Yeah," Toby said, biting his tongue. He didn't say anything else.

"Are those two statements somehow related?"

"I don't think she's sure she wants the President to get re-elected," Toby told Leo. "In fact, she's made more than one comment that makes me think she'd rather he didn't."

"I'm having trouble seeing a connection there," Leo said. "She's worried that the stress is going to hurt his health like it did hers? I'm... I'm lost, Toby."

"It wasn't stress that... No. She just disagrees with him about something very important."

"Why wasn't this an issue before?"

"Because she didn't before."

"Are you actually going to tell me what's bothering you or do I have to play Twenty Questions? Because I won't do that."

"Okay." Toby sighed. "She got pregnant in May. She realized she was pregnant around the end of June... June twentieth. And she already knew by then that she wanted to keep the baby. Said she was getting older, and that for all she knew this might be her last chance to have a child. Cliches, but she meant them." Toby stopped, trying to get his thoughts together.

"And she told you all this?"

"Yes."

"Because she needed a confidante?" Leo asked, a barely detectable note of sarcasm in his voice.

"Yes! I guess so. Why else would she have told me?" Toby looked up to see skeptical eyes looking back at him. "Leo... That was not my baby."

"Okay," Leo said. Even if it had been Toby's child it didn't really relate to this situation. He waited for Toby to continue.

~*~*~*~*~

Instead, Toby was lost in thought. He could remember sitting in his office that night, June twentieth. The investigation was in full swing, and it was humiliating for everyone. Things were brought out that shouldn't have been, things like who was sleeping with who during the campaign. And everyone was dealing with it in one of two ways. Some of them were sticking together. Most nights when he was leaving he'd see Sam, Josh, and Donna all working on different things but sharing a single office, spread out on couches and the floor. Then there were people like CJ, Leo, and himself who avoided each other when possible and didn't make eye contact even when conversation was required.

It was wearing on him, though. These were the only people he really spent any amount of time around, and now they weren't even really talking to each other. He wouldn't have minded someone showing up at his door and inviting him to join them.

"Hey," a voice spoke, almost timidly, from the doorway. The tone sounded like a scared aide, but they would never say 'hey' to senior staff. He looked up. To his surprise, it was CJ.

"What?" He was a perpetual asshole, even when he wanted company.

"I wanted to see if you wanted to grab whatever you're working on and join me in my office. I have a fan, so I figured you could come work on whatever you're working on there." She stopped her rambling.

"A fan? You brought a fan from home?"

"No, I stole one that Josh brought from home. But it works just as well."

He looked at her a minute, then shook his head. "I'll just stay here."

"Oh, come on. Would it be that much hassle? If you get heat stroke and die it will really mess up the prosecutor's case. They haven't had a chance to tear you to shreds yet."

"We're aiding the prosecutor now?"

"Civic duty? Come on. I want to talk to you. Give me the home court advantage."

He sat down the paper he was looking at and stared at her. "What are you rambling about? 'Home court advantage'? CJ, what exactly do you want to talk to me about?"

"Back in May. The night I went out with you and Sam. Remember?"

"Vaguely," he answered.

"What?"

"I remember. I was kidding."
"Yeah? It wasn't funny."

"I see that now by your face. I'm sorry. What's wrong?"

"I'm pregnant," she said. She continued, in a rush, "I'm keeping the baby, because I want to be a mother and I don't know how many opportunities I'll have. I think I'm lucky to get this chance. And I'm offering you the chance to be involved too. If you want it." She stopped, then added, "The chance, I mean."

He stared at her. He had no idea how to respond. If he was supposed to apologize or congratulate or...

"Toby?" she asked. He didn't look happy.

"Yeah. I want it. I want to be involved." He stopped, the situation sinking in. "Wow." He smiled.

"You're happy about this?" CJ asked, not at all prepared for this reaction.

"Well, yeah. I am." He came over and sat beside her. He was actually grinning now. "We have so much to talk about." He hugged her quickly.

"Thank you," she whispered, only partly to him. "I... I'm excited about this. About being a mother. I'm glad you're okay with this."

He was beaming. The way she'd seen him do when one of his ideas worked or one of his speeches was a success. But more. Brighter. "I'm better than 'okay'," he told her. He places his hand on her stomach, and was surprised when she laughed softly at him.

"There's nothing to feel yet, Toby."

"Yeah, maybe," he said quietly.

"There's not." She was smiling at him.

"Okay, there's not. Still, unless I'm making you uncomfortable..."

"No, it's fine. This is a much better reaction than I was expecting. Sure the stress hasn't gotten the better of you too?"

He shook his head. "I'm fine. When are we telling everyone?"

"I don't think we should. Not yet anyway. There's so much going on. I don't want him or her brought into it. We should wait until everything dies down."

"Figures," he said quietly. He hugged her again. "This is... Nothing like this has happened to me. Not like this..." He looked at her. "It's... scary."

"Are you changing your mind?" she asked.

"No. No, I just have no idea what I'm doing."

"Neither do I. I... I wasn't expecting this good of a reaction. Are you sure?"

"Whatever you're referring to, yes, I am sure." He looked up at her eyes only to see that she was crying. "CJ, it's okay. CJ?"

"God, thank you, Toby." She sank against him and continued to cry until she had fallen asleep. He got her settled on the sofa in his office. He spent the night there himself, watching her sleep.

~*~*~*~*~

"Toby?" It was Leo, sounding angry. Thank God he had no idea what Toby had just been remembering. "How is any of this related to re-election?

"Oh. Sorry. CJ isn't sure she wants the President to get re-elected. But she won't tell him that. Because she cares about him. She just doesn't want him to be President. And she hates helping him. She feels guilty as hell about doing this job."

"Then why hasn't she resigned? I mean, she's even still putting her all into the job. It's not like she's showing any signs of not wanting to be here." Leo was confused. Most likely because Toby wasn't telling him anything.

"She won't resign because she doesn't want it to look like she's resigning because she can't handle it, but she also certainly doesn't plan to tell everyone why it is she'd be doing it. And the only reason her job performance hasn't suffered is because she knows she's doing an important job and she's being trusted. And she doesn't want to hurt that for her own reasons."

"You know, you're not making any sense, Toby."

"I know." Toby sighed. "Um, she's had a change of heart. Actually, that's insulting. That makes it sound unimportant, like she switched shampoos or something. She... She loved the baby. I mean, we already knew what the baby's name was going to be. She had a boy's name and a girl's name. She read to the baby and everything. Might as well have been another member of the family sitting right there at the table, you know? I mean, that was already her child. Six weeks into it, that was already her baby."

Toby stopped and looked at Leo, tears in his normally blank eyes.

"Toby?"

Toby shook his head and kept talking. "You have your daughter, you know what I mean, there's nothing you don't do for your child. Well, I lost mine. Five months old, I guess is how I looked at it, and my baby's gone now."

"God, Toby, you should have said something."

"Why? I was there to help CJ. And I certainly didn't want to be treated the way she was.

"You think we mistreated CJ in some way?"

"No, I just mean... I don't need your pity. And she didn't either. Never mind, that hardly matters now."

"I know what you meant, though. About... You already know you're a father. You already love them, even before they're born." Leo smiled at him. "I really realized that for the first time when I got jealous of Jenny for being pregnant twenty-four hours a day when I only got to be right there a few hours a day."

Toby laughed a little, wiping the tears off his face. "Yeah. I drove CJ nuts trying to be there all the time. I think I was at her apartment six nights a week. It was nice." Toby fell silent, remembering something. Leo watched his face. The line about being able to see a memory play across someone's face had always seemed more than a little dumb to Leo, but it was actually happening.

~*~*~*~*~

"It's the beginning of September, you know"

"I know."

"You haven't gone home in about two weeks," CJ said, looking up from her book to Toby, who was sitting at the table across from her reading over a report.

"Yes I have. I'm still wearing clean clothes, aren't I?"

"It looks like it. I was mad at you this morning, then I remembered that you work for the President. And I figured that warranted a few missed doctor's appointments even"
"CJ?" he interrupted.

"Even if you do only get to see your child for the first time once...Yes?"
"I apologize sincerely for missing the appointment. Which you know I didn't want to do."
"Apologizing?"

"Missing the appointment."

"Not that you wanted to apologize either."

"At this point we're just talking without direction, right?"
"Yeah, I've gotten better at it over the last couple years."
"We all have." He turned his attention back to the report. She continued to watch him. She didn't really mind him being there. She was looking forward to raising a child with him.

"Do you have a picture?" Toby eventually asked.

"Of course." She slid the sonogram picture across the table to him. He ran his fingers against the paper on the back of the picture.

"This is amazing," he finally managed.

"Oh, I know." She moved around the table to where he sat and kissed the top of his head.

She walked down the hall to her bedroom and closed the door. God help her, she was falling for Toby Ziegler.

FURTHER AUTHOR'S NOTES: Well, there's the first part, finally posted somewhere long after it was written. The whole story is outlined, but I don't see a reason to write the rest if someone isn't interested. If anyone is at all curious, just leave a review or email me and I'll write more. (Wanting to see how much worse my writing can get doesn't count as being curious.