Title: Expectations
Author: Darwin's Ape
Rating: G
Spoilers: H. Con - 172 (ep 3.11). Otherwise, only vague allusions to other events.
Summary: Toby-centric post ep for H. Con - 172.
Notes: This episode was only shown in the UK (on terrestrial TV) a few days ago. For those too far ahead to remember the events, try the TWoP episode recap at www.televisionwithoutpity.com/story.cgi?show=4&story=2679
Warning: Unbeta'd.
===
Toby doesn't expect to be in the loop for everything. He's not Sam, he doesn't think it's about him, about what Toby Ziegler should or shouldn't be told. He knows he serves at the pleasure of the President, and if it pleases the President that the White House Communications Director not know what's happening in the Oval Office right now, that's how it goes.
He doesn't expect- He doesn't expect to be told.
Sam's all skittish, which makes Toby smile into his beard. It's good that someone's jittery, that someone cares, and it's good that that someone doesn't have to be him. Sam sublimates. Sam Seaborn sublimates. Sam Seaborn stoically- No. But he does sublimate, with his ridiculous quest to discredit some third-rate photographer turned fifth-rate hack and it's good, because that way Toby gets to be superior, gets to be the wiser man, as if his insides weren't churning up as well.
He doesn't expect to be told.
CJ is- She's CJ. Sometimes she doesn't get told, and that's all right because she's CJ, and she learned how to roll with the punches way back in grade school. She didn't, of course. She's reeling as much as the rest of them, maybe more, and with every new secret so ostensibly being kept from her, Toby doesn't know how she copes. She the public fact of the- She's CJ. His screw ups take the form of a failed marriage (and he is not prickly, damn it) and a thousand mistakes attributed to a "senior aide at the White House". Hers take place on national TV and in front of an entire room of people with maybe more power than he and she have combined. And "maybe" here means "definitely".
She's CJ. She doesn't even mean to take it out on Sam, though her words were more barbed and his reaction more personal than they might be another day. She says the words they all need to hear, lets Sam vent the brunt of his anger on her while Toby gets to pick up the ball for the final few yards and be Talmudic wisdom guy, or at least pretend he is.
Damn it, he has no right to expect to be told.
Josh is chasing some woman. Today of all days, he has to fixate on this woman and - worse - bug Toby about it. And just because this is Josh's way of sublimating doesn't give him the right to be so Josh about it. Some of the staffers have actual jobs to do and speeches to write and, you know, work and what did that photographer mean, marriages that they know of? But Josh is inside on this thing and Toby isn't and while it doesn't matter, maybe Josh should be doing something more important than chasing Amy Gardener.
He knows he'll be told when he needs to know.
Toby doesn't have time to worry about Leo, so he won't. He doesn't have time to drop less than oblique hints to the President, so he won't. He doesn't have time to sublimate the concern he doesn't have by tilting at windmills, so he won't. He has the State of the Union to write, and he doesn't need to be told to do that.
===
Feedback greatly appreciated.
