Rating: K
Disclaimer: I don't own the West Wing or any of its characters.
Author's note: This, I hope is chapter one of what will become Chaps for all of the main characters, and some of the not so main characters.
Gone
Annabeth
Her blue eyes were streaked and stained with mascara smudged from crying, as she stood at the bathroom mirror. The agonizing pain of the last few hours had settled as a dull ache in her chest, as she thought of all that needed to be done. There were people who needed to be called and arrangements to be made. There was paperwork and preparations, and all the otherminutia of death; each and every one a new kind of agony as the mundane details of life dared to intrude on this least mundane of human activities: grief. As if the world mocked your pain, by reminding you that it was still here. Earth still turned in all of its glorious dullness. Life would go on without him; your life would go on without him, whether you wanted it to or not. She sniffled and dug into her purse for one of the moist towlettes she kept there tofixher make-up on the trail. Those days that Leo had loved, when they had to catch cat-naps on the bus or the plane because they didn't have time to stay at a hotel between campaign stops. When you changed your clothes and refreshed your hair and make-up in the cramped bathroom of the bus, or in the stalls at a public rest stop. I know I have one in here somewhere, she thought to herself as she dug through make-up and pens and her wallet. Then, buried under some Kleenex packets, she found the watch. Leo's watch; the one she had taken from him. She held its cold weight in her hand as she remembered another day she had held it in her hand, when it had been, notcold, but warm, from his wrist, and knew that it would never know that warmth again, that she would never know that warmth again. She would never againfeel his hand brush hers as passed him a memo, or squeeze itin triumph, or pat her shoulder as he wished her goodnight. Would never see this watch glinting on his wrist as he shook someoenes hand. Instead itlay inher own hand, cold, andcounting off the seconds as if nothing had changed, ticking off each new second that didn't have him in it. And the dull ache sharpened once more into the stabbing pain that brought tears to her eyes, as she thought of how stupid she had been to take any of those moments for granted