Title: End of a Missing Year
Pairings: None (Unless you want to see some slash, in which case go ahead)
Spoilers: Up to Here Today. Very explicit spoilers for that one.
Characters: Toby, Sam POV, (CJ, twins, Andy, Josh)
Rating: PG-13
Summary: A worstcase scenario for a post Here Today world. Or perhaps a bestcase one. In the holiday season, a moment of reconnect.
Archive: Just ask.
AN: I'm writing a set of semi-festive, semi-fluff for all my fandoms. This is what came out for the West Wing one. Thoughts on the topic: what happens if Toby actually goes to jail?
Toby looks neither disappointed nor surprised to see only Sam and CJ waiting for him. Sam notes that as he notes everything else. Toby is thinner, and greyer, and he knows that he should not be shocked by the difference that not quite a year has made.
CJ walks to him faster than Sam would believe possible in her unnecessary heels. She pulls him to her, and though they have never meshed exactly – she all long legs and poise, and him all clenched fists and awkwardness – Toby looks especially uncomfortable today.
Sam wishes he had CJs boldness, or at least her disregard for Toby's uneasiness. But he restrains himself, and settles for a handshake, and clasping the other hand round Toby's elbow to lead him across the car park. Toby feels fragile, as if back in the real world he might crumple and fly away. He has been such a force in Sam's head for so long that this pale quiet man he finds shocks him into gripping the arm too hard. Toby doesn't complain, and that is perhaps the most disturbing of all.
He hadn't visited. He had wanted to, had offered, asked, insisted in the end. But Toby had refused, first politely, and then less so. He had allowed Andy to come, because she brought the twins, and Toby feared becoming his father more than he feared letting his children see him as a criminal. But no one else was permitted. It was perhaps some shadow of the resignation Toby had showed when they had met him. Perhaps some fear that, once again, he would be met only by the two people in his life who could never quite manage to fall out of love with him.
Sam puts Toby in the front seat of his car, ignoring CJ's protests that tall women shouldn't be forced into the back seat. He steps back, looking Toby up and down. Toby is crumpled in a grey suit, and holding the brown envelope of his "effects" that Sam had been convinced only existed in film. Toby turns his head slowly and enough of familiar exasperation makes his way onto his face that Sam smiles.
They make their way to find coffee and bagels. The morning is crisp and cold, and nothing like California or New York, but Sam feels more at home now, walking alongside CJ and Toby, than he has felt for all the years without them both. Toby jolted in surprise at a crash from inside one of the restaurants, and Sam is pulled out of the pleasant fantasy that this is six years ago, and Josh is waiting for them at the coffee shop.
He orders for all three of them, and CJ ponders whether it's sad that her preferences haven't changed in the four years Sam has been away. They make small talk, him and CJ, because Toby has never been good at it, and now seems to find it impossible. His hands are still in his lap, and his eyes are fixed on the table as he says nothing. It is not that he is unfamiliar with the scandals, because Sam, forbidden from meeting, has written to him constantly. He is certain that he averaged a letter a week, perhaps more, terrified in some dark place that Toby would forget how to write if Sam did not force him to write back. It was ridiculous of course, because if Toby does not bleed ink, it is only because the universe does not love a good metaphor as much as Sam. But Toby, once he had made sure that Sam was not going to visit, had shrugged and obliged. He had not filled as many pages as Sam, but that was nothing unusual. Sam would, in fact, have been more worried if Toby had started spouting adjectives and imagery. But he had corrected Sam's speeches, and answered when Sam asked his opinion on the news, and Sam had almost forgotten that the Toby in real life could go so long without saying a word.
He feels the need to fill the sudden silence, and starts by apologising for Josh's absence, repeating the ghost of a lie. He's busy getting ready for the Inauguration. Toby nods, and looks interested for the first time since they greeted him. He asks why they aren't busy too. CJ, understandably, is soon to be taking a break from politics, and is just praying for no crisis between here and January. But it is Sam that Toby is looking at it. He explains, head down, that yes Josh had asked. But Santos is not the real thing, and Sam was not prepared to do it for anything less. It would probably kill me to do it on my own anyway. There isn't anyone on his staff capable of doing an Inaugural Address justice. Toby looks oddly satisfied with that.
When Sam tries to guide Toby back across the road, he receives a glare for his efforts. It's been a year, Sam, I haven't forgotten how to cross a street. The little sardonic smile Toby aims his way is worth the rebuke.
They are heading towards Toby's new apartment. Toby had been coldly methodical about arranging his affairs before he left. He had treated it, largely, as though he was simply going to stop existing for a year. He had ended the lease on his apartment, and cancelled his credit cards. Andy had the phone numbers of the company who had Toby's things in storage, and he had changed all his bank accounts into both their names. Andy hadn't used the money, and he had asked her if she feared their children would be tainted by his treason. She explained, eventually, that he was going to have no job and no prospects when he was released, and that as much as she loathed having to take her children to see their father in jail, she really didn't want to take them to visit him on the street. It had been the next day that he agreed to sell his story to the papers. Andy had received the cheque in the post the day after he had entered prison - a lump sum maintenance payment.
Andy had the numbers, but Sam had been the one to find Toby a new apartment, and move his things from storage. He had moved the furniture around the rooms for hours, knowing that Toby would move it all somewhere else when he got there. His fingers had hovered over the box of pictures, but he had not opened it. He knew what was in there. Photographs of Toby with the President who had ordered him frog-marched off White House property without a word of thanks. Of the Senior Staff who in those first years of office had been called, sometimes even without sarcasm, the best and the brightest. Sam had gone to Andy for help, and the only picture on the walls of the new apartment is of Huck and Molly, smiling at the camera on their first day of school.
They ride the elevator to Toby's floor, and Sam opens the door, hoping against expectation that this will work. Toby steps in, eyes finding Andy on the opposite side of the room. Their two children are sitting stiffly beside her. She does not smile when Toby looks at her, and makes no move towards him, though she has been the only one of them who has seen him in the last ten months. She, surely, should be the one who is not surprised to see Toby so grey and lifeless. This is another one of Sam's failed plans to tilt at windmills and all he hopes now is that this silence will be ended soon.
There is no sound until Molly starts crying. Her wails aren't really the interruption Sam had hoped for, since they are breaking Toby's heart. He has become the father he swore he would never be. He has made his baby girl cry. But then she is squealing, running across the room as fast as her small legs can take her. Daddy, daddy, daddy! Toby, still silent, kneels down to receive her. Huck is more sedate, he has been the man of this house for almost an entire year after all, and Toby was often absent even before. But when he is a few feet away he abandons dignity to rush to his father. Toby's head is bowed into his daughter's red curls, and his fingers are fisted in Huck's sweater. Sam is just close enough to hear Molly's excited chatter, and Huck's happy, Hi Daddy. Toby's answers are whispered. I missed you, kid. It's good to see you too, sweetheart.
Sam looks away so Toby can greet them without feeling eyes on him, even friendly ones. In the corner, incongruous despite all Sam's troubled thoughts of his absence today, stands Josh. He is unkempt, and looks uncertain of his welcome. There is a moment when Sam could be angry at him. Yesterday Donna had sworn that Josh would not be here, and Sam had been unsurprised. Josh had exchanged them all for Santos and the chance of a clean win for once. But he has changed his mind at the last minute, because there is sweat beaded on his forehead where he has ran to get here in time. Josh is here, and that is the most important thing.
CJ gives him a wide grin, as if this was her plan all along, and perhaps CJ has got better at improv in the years since he has left, because he almost believes her. Andy is maternal and affectionate, even sitting all the way across the room, because Toby is a wonderful father if a lousy husband. He has made her daughter shine like God himself just walked into the room, and her son laugh like the little boy he is, and not this strange solemn creature who reminds her all too much of the man she left behind.
And Josh's unexpected presence is only the second most important thing, because Toby turns to look up at Sam, a child held to him in each arm. And maybe Sam knows a little of how Molly feels when Toby crooks the corner of his mouth up the smallest fraction. He isn't sure if what he whispers is Happy Christmas, or whether his brain caught his instinct and remembered to say Hanukah instead. But he knows beyond doubt what it is Toby means when he slowly, consideringly nods agreement. Yes.