His story is an old one, one that he has written and rewritten for years, decades. It is the first story and the last, with him. The characters and places and times have changed over the years but the pattern remains the same.
This story, his story, weaves its almost invisible thread through everything he's written. It's in countless of President Bartlet's speeches, it's scratched on the wall in his prison cell (hopelessly clichéd but, at that point of his life, he felt like a cliché).
He loses the story when he goes to jail, leaving the words behind on the walls when he gets his pardon. The story is there, too, though – written between the lines of a letter signed by the man who he betrayed.
The threads of his story are cut loose, thrown to the winds, and he cannot gather them again. He tries, he does, but cut off from what has been his life for years (from his friends, from his job, from his talent, too) he cannot find them again. Those threads, once so colorful and vibrant, are bleached white by the sun, and vanish. How can he find them when the world around him is the same color?
But slowly his eyes adjust to the light and his sense of touch becomes more sensitive. He picks up the threads one by one and reweaves them into a tale that makes sense again, putting his world back together little by little. It's not completely there, but it will do, and he can put it together as they go along.
He sees the missing threads of his story in the cut of C.J.'s dress at the dedication of the presidential library. She has always been part of it, a bright and vibrant pattern, even before he met her. But over the years she has been woven, rewoven into the story, her pattern forming in a shape completely organic and representative of her. Even though she's with Danny, her pattern and its place in his story remains the same.
He feels like the nervous teenager he never was with the envelope holding his story (finally finished – well, not finished, but set down on paper at least) tucked in his suit pocket, waiting for her. It's her story, too, after all. And this is all part of the pattern.