Title: Home To Stay

Author: Jeanine (jeanine@iol.ie)

Rating: PG

Pairing: Leo/Ainsley

Spoilers: None

Feedback: Makes my day

Disclaimer: If it was in the show, it's not mine.

Archive: At my site The Band Gazebo (helsinkibaby.topcities.com) Anywhere else please ask first.

Summary: When every road has had its say, then I'll be bringing you back home to stay…
Author's Note: For Heidi, who wanted Leo/Ainsley fluff for Valentine's Day. The song is Home to Stay by Josh Groban

***

He tried not to notice Margaret's worried gaze when she told him that she was leaving for the evening, just nodded and waved her off. He didn't look up, not even when she stood there a few seconds longer than she normally would, as if inviting him to volunteer further information on his state of mind. Any other time, under any other circumstances, he might have looked up, smiled at her and muttered some meaningless platitude to get rid of her, but not today.

Because today was Thursday.

That was unusual in and of itself, because over the last year the one thing that everyone working in the West Wing had come to know was that Thursday was the day to approach Leo McGarry about something. That Thursday was the day when the man wouldn't be as cranky and curmudgeonly as he normally was, and that you might get away with the proverbial loss of a limb rather than total decapitation. Thursday was the day that doors weren't banged as loudly, that the sound of his yelling didn't rend the air quite as frequently, the day that Margaret didn't tread quite as softly.

Not today however.

Once she was gone, he turned to his computer again, checking his email for the hundredth time that day. Once again, he was told that he had no new messages, and for the hundredth time he wondered where she was.

* I know you're gone
I watched you leave *

A year she'd been gone, just upped and left without so much as a bye-your-leave. The first he'd known about it was when Oliver Babish had blown through his office doors like a rampaging fury, and not even Margaret with all her rules about appointments had tried to stop him. Babish had been shouting at the top of his considerable lungs at a rate that left Leo floundering in his wake, but he'd focussed once the piece of paper was thrown on his desk, certain key phrases leaping out at him.

"Offer my resignation"

"Immediate effect"

And underneath the size 12 Times New Roman letters was her name, her neat signature in blue ink, the same blue ink that she always used, had to order specially to fill the pen that her father had given her when she graduated from Harvard Law School.

He didn't know what Babish expected him to say, what he expected him to do. He was pretty sure that his walking out of the office without saying anything wouldn't have been on the list. He was dimly aware of Babish following him, quiet now, all bluster gone, until he was standing in the doorway of her office, looking at the empty shelves, the bare desk, light streaming through the windows to show the dust drifting slowly down onto the polished surface.

He felt a hand on his shoulder, almost in sympathy, looked at Babish and saw his lips moving. But it was her voice that he heard, chattering excitedly about having a real office instead of a dungeon, with windows and sunlight and no pipes booming at unpredictable intervals.

He hadn't gone back to his office, getting his driver to take him to her apartment. He didn't have his own key anymore, and she wasn't answering the door, but he'd gone to her landlord, who recognised him straight away from all the time he'd spent there. He'd told him very nicely that she'd moved away, left no forwarding address, that he had no way of tracing her. And when Leo had expressed a wish to see for himself, he'd brought him up to the apartment, let him in, let him walk around the empty rooms that had once been the centre of his world, the rooms ringing to his footsteps as they had once rung to his voice and hers.

He'd gone back to the White House then, and he'd never noticed how many bars were between the apartment and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue before, and the only reason that he didn't go into one was the faint hope that one day she might come back to him.

And on that day, he'd have one more crack at the perfect conversation, the one where he said all the right things, where he decimated her arguments, the one that ended with her wrapped in his arms instead of walking out the door.

Not like their last conversation.

* You made it clear with that last kiss
You couldn't live a life with maybes and what ifs *

He'd known when she was getting back into town and had told her to go back to his place. That was where they were spending most of their time now; the hotel suite being more resistant to prying reporters than her apartment. He'd known something was wrong the minute he walked in the door. A suitcase stood nearby, far too big to contain the packing needed for a week in North Carolina. Besides which, he'd been with her when she packed for that trip, had been with her on that trip, carried her suitcase along with his own.

The other thing that tipped him off was the silence. She usually had music playing, or the news turned on. She never sat in silence.

Yet there she was, sitting on his couch in funereal black, staring into space. She was utterly still, her arms wrapped around her middle, as if that was the only thing keeping her together. The only indication that she was even alive was the steady trickle of tears coming from both eyes, yet she didn't make a sound.

It was he who broke the silence, her name escaping from his lips as a choked whisper, an admission that he knew what she was going to say, a plea not to say it.

She turned her head to him, and the look of raw pain in her eyes took his breath away. "It's better this way," she told him, and her voice was flat, emotionless.

Suddenly, he was standing not in his hotel suite, but in the lobby of the house where he'd spent most of his married life, watching Jenny tell him that their marriage was over, and he shook his head, clearing the image. "It's not better for me, it's not better for us," he told her, going over to her, sitting beside her and putting his hands on her shoulders. "We can get through this."

"I can't do this anymore Leo," she whispered.

The only thing he could think of to do as history repeated itself was repeat his words, and so he did. "We can get through this."

She shook her head, a harsh laugh accompanying more tears. "Look at us Leo," she told him, standing up, throwing off his hands. "Did you miss the press scrum that's camped outside? Or the ones that are living on my front stoop? The ones who gatecrashed my father's funeral to get a picture of the White House Chief of Staff and his floozy?" Her words could have sounded angry, but instead, they were calm, collected. She could have been discussing the weather.

"Ainsley…"

"I knew that he wasn't well. I knew that he was having problems with his heart. That's why I waited, that's why I didn't tell him…I was going to tell him. I didn't know what was going to happen…"

He was shaking his head, remembering how she'd blanched when CJ had told them that the story was going to break in wide circulation, had already broken on the internet. How the first thing on her mind had been to call her father, to warn him, but that she'd been waylaid by him and the rest of the Senior Staff as they battered out a strategy for spinning this to the Press. How he'd snapped at Margaret when she'd interrupted them, only to realise that his assistant was paler than he'd ever seen her, and that she was looking not at him but at Ainsley.

Her sobs had echoed in his dreams every night since then, but he nearly preferred those to this stony teariness.

"This is not your fault Ainsley."

"My father is dead Leo." Her voice was as cold as he'd ever heard her. "I am now an orphan. I have no brothers and sisters. I have no one."

"You have me."

"And every time I look at you, I'll remember my father dying. I'll remember Margaret's face, and the expressions on the people's faces at his funeral. I'll remember the Press taking photographs as we buried him. And I'll end up hating you."

"It doesn't have to be like that." He'd gone over to her, taking her arms at the elbows, his gaze pleading, trying to convince her.

"I can't live my life like that Leo. What if I'd told him sooner? What if I'd never stayed in that meeting? Maybe the Press will go away, maybe people will stop looking at me like I'm some scarlet woman, maybe your daughter will speak to you again… I can't do that to you. And I won't let me do it to me." She reached up and kissed him on the lips, and he almost recoiled because her skin was cold, so cold, but he wrapped his arms around her anyway and held her tighter, as if he could bond them together by the sheer strength of his will and never let her go.

But she pulled away and told him goodbye, and he let her walk. He heard her lift up her suitcase, heard her set it down so that she could open the door.

"I love you," he told her.

There was an instant of silence. "I love you too."

Then there was a click as the door closed behind her.

* I have the cards you sent to me
You wrote of trains and Paris galleries *

The month after Babish had stormed into his office was the longest one that Leo could remember, longer than those summer months after the MS announcement, longer than any month in either campaign, longer even than his month at Sierra Tucson. He'd worked insane hours, longer than he'd ever worked before, and it wasn't uncommon for Margaret to come in at her normal time and find him still sitting at his desk, reading. She got used to it after the first week, began bringing in breakfast for him, making him eat it, even if that meant that she had to stand over him, before all but pushing him down to the locker room to shower and shave and change his clothes.

After the first week, she talked to Donna about it. Who talked to Josh. Who in turn talked to Leo, and when he got no joy there, went to the President. Who also talked to Leo and when he got no joy there, went to the First Lady. By the time that she came up empty, they were pretty much at a loss as to what to do.

And that's when the first one appeared.

He checked his email every morning, flagging the important things for Margaret's attention so that she'd send it to the relevant people. It was pretty normal, the usual round of meetings and schedules and memos, and then one morning there was something different.

An email with no title, and a little paper clip beside it.

Anyone more au fait with the intricacies of the World Wide Web would have deleted it sight unseen, but Leo, oblivious to the dangers of viruses, and possessing faith in the White House IT Department, opened it.

The attachment turned out to be a photograph of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the previous day's date imprinted on the bottom of the image.

There was no text in the body of the message.

He was staring at the picture, wondering what it meant, who'd sent it, when the notion that it was her struck him, and he told himself that he was crazy, that he was seeing what he wanted to see. The sender's name gave him no clue, just a collection of random letters, and a Hotmail address. He tried to reply to it, but the email just bounced back to him.

For a week, he tried to put it out of his mind, and almost succeeded.

And then the next week, on the same day, at around the same time, another email appeared. This time, the photograph was of the Sydney Opera House, again with the previous day's date on it. The sender was the same too, and once again, there was no text in the body of the message.

And he didn't care that it made no sense, that there was no earthly reason for him to conclude that it was her. But he knew. Deep in his heart, he knew.

It became a pattern, a routine, something that he looked forward to, the knowledge that every Thursday morning, a photograph from some far-flung corner of the globe would be waiting for him. Sometimes it was from the same place as the one that had arrived the week before, sometimes from a different country, even a different continent. He tried to keep track, tried to guess her itinerary, but there was no rhyme or reason it to that he could see. So he stopped trying to do that and just enjoyed the emails that came every week from blndrpblcnsxkttn@hotmail.com.

He had the first pictures from Sydney, then one of the Great Barrier Reef, then Ayers Rock. The Independence Monument in Jakarta. City scenes from Singapore, Japanese houses. The Taj Mahal in India. The Great Wall of China. The Pyramids in Egypt.

A record of one person's globetrotting, as well as a way of letting him know that she was all right.

It had been a full six months before the penny dropped properly, before he received confirmation that it was indeed her. It had come accidentally; after all, once she'd left, after the initial round of how-are-yous and you'll-feel-better-if-you-talk-about-its, no-one had mentioned her name to him. He'd enquired discreetly if anyone had heard from her, but even Donna and Sam just shook their heads silently, and Margaret, his lone ally, the only person who knew about the emails, didn't hear any different. Ironically, it was the President, the man seemingly least likely to provide Leo with any answers, who did so.

It had been a late night conversation in the Oval Office when the President had regarded Leo thoughtfully, his reading glasses held loosely in his hand, the arm of them resting on his lower lip thoughtfully. Leo had been expounding on something that Josh and Sam had been doing that day, when he'd realised that the President wasn't listening to a word that he was saying. "Sir? Are you ok?"

"I feel like I should be asking you that question Leo," came the reply.

"Sir?"

"The last few months…" The President laid down his glasses, leaning forward in his seat to talk to Leo quietly. "We were all worried about you. After…you know."

Leo nodded. "After Ainsley left," he said bluntly.

"But you seem to be coming out of it. You seem…well, more like yourself is what I'm trying to say. Things are ok with you, aren't they?"

Leo had smiled, knowing that the President was asking him if he was in any danger of falling off the wagon, or if indeed the wagon was already in a different zip code and Leo still in D.C. "I'm fine Sir."

"Good. Good." He was silent for a moment. "You ever hear from her?"

Leo considered telling him about the emails, but decided not to. "No."

"You remember the first time I met her? You and Sam engineered that meeting in your office after the State of the Union…."

"To make up for her disastrous first impression." Leo could still see her standing there, face beaming with pride when the President told her that he was sure her father was proud of her, the image taking on a bittersweet tang in light of subsequent events.

"She had some fire to her," the President chuckled. "Browbeat Sam into arranging the meeting. I wonder if she ever knew that he was the one who coined the phrase 'Blonde Republican Sex Kitten'?"

"I'm sure she did," Leo said, and might have said something else, were it not for the proverbial thunderbolt striking him at that very moment. "Will that be all Mr President?"

His oldest friend had nodded, waving him away. "Good night Leo."

"Thank you Sir."

The expected response, the only permitted response on leaving the President to be sure, but Leo had never meant it quite so much as he did that night. He made a beeline for his office, for his computer and clicked open the email program to make certain of what he already knew, and he read the sender's name once more and wondered why he hadn't realised sooner.

And then, for the first time in six months, Leo McGarry laughed out loud.

* This spring you'll draw canals, and frescoed walls
Look how far your dreaming's gone *

And still, the pictures kept coming, moving to Europe after that, to the Trevi Fountain in Rome, the Acropolis in Greece, gondolas in Venice, snowy Swiss mountains and Dutch canals. The Louvre and the Eiffel Tower from France, Big Ben and Buckingham Palace from England.


One had come the previous week showing the entrance to Trinity College in Dublin.

And he'd arrived in that morning, fully expecting another.

He'd been mildly surprised when one hadn't been waiting for him; there had been times during a crisis or during a big vote when he'd been in the office at the same time that one had arrived in his inbox; sometimes he'd even timed a break in the discussion so that he could sit and watch and wait for it. But by the mid-morning, when one still hadn't arrived, surprise had given way to worry, and now, with the sun hidden behind the horizon and the sky as black as ink, worry had given way to fear as he ran down a litany of all the things that could have happened to stop her getting to a computer.

He slept on his couch that night, and when he woke up the next morning to the smell of coffee and the sound of Margaret's worry, the first thing he did was check his email.

"Still nothing?" she asked him when he turned back to her, having no doubt seen the slump of his shoulders, having almost felt the hope draining out of him.

He didn't say anything, just took his food and allowed her to fuss around him, cleaning his desk, handing him papers that he needed to see to, before heading down to the locker room to clean himself up before staff. He'd taken his fears, his worries, out on the rest of them, and he'd noticed them looking from one to the other, as if to say "What's with him?" but that only caused him to be shorter, snappier with him, and even he knew that he was being too hard on them for no good reason, but he couldn't help himself.

A meeting with the Black Caucus didn't help his mood, nor did another meeting with Josh right before lunch. He saw the looks that Josh and Margaret gave one another as Josh exited and Margaret entered through the same door, and didn't look at Margaret as he barked instructions to her, and she gave him his messages. He didn't look at her until he heard the words that she'd said to him hundreds, thousands, of times since she'd been working for him.

"And you need to check your email."

Those seven normal everyday words had the effect on him that the President's words had had six months earlier, and his head snapped up to look at her. She held his gaze for a second, then nodded slowly once, the tiniest of tiny smiles appearing on her lips.

"Thank you."

The moment the door closed behind her, he wheeled around to his computer, finding his hand shaking as he manipulated the mouse, his heart literally leaping in his chest when he saw the sender's name there.

It was the same thing as always - no title, no message, just the name and a photograph.

At least, that's what he thought.

Then he saw that there was not one attached file, but three.

Imaginatively titled one, two and three, he took that as a subtle hint that this was the order in which they were to be opened.

Number one showed the edge of a wall, and the pillar of a set of gates. The picture was clear enough that he could make out the lettering on the plaque in the centre of the picture - a crest of some kind, and around it, the words "Saint Patrick's College, Drumcondra."

Number two showed the corner of a street, the façade of a bar the main focus of the picture. And he frowned, wondering what he was meant to see before he noticed the street sign, the words "Botanic Avenue" clearly visible.

Not sure of what he'd find in number three, he saw a gate in the foreground, leading up a small path, to a red front door, the number 25 in ornate black letters at the side, a golden door knocker glistening from his computer screen.

And he leaned back in his chair, hardly daring to believe what he was seeing, hardly daring to believe what it meant, before reaching for his computer, clicking on the internet icon to do a little research.

When that was done, and when he'd finally brought himself to believe it, he went straight to the office next door and told the President everything. And then he told him what he was going to do about it.

To say that the President was shocked at this would be quite the understatement, but Leo was not for turning, not on this, not now. "Are you sure about this Leo?" he was asked for the hundredth time.

"I have to see her. I have to know."

"It's a long way to go on what could be a wild goose chase."

Leo shook his head. "Be that as it may…I need to do this. For her. And for me." He took a deep breath as he prepared to admit a truth that he'd tried to bury over the last year. "I love her Jed. I never stopped. And if she walked in her tomorrow, I'd take her back with no questions asked. But she's the one who's reaching out here. So it's up to me to meet her halfway."

There was a slight smile on the President's face. "That's only the second time you've called me Jed since we got here," he pointed out. Then the moment passed, and he was all business again. "This is what you want?"

"This is what I want." His voice was strong, certain.

"Then go."

He'd taken the first flight out of D.C the next morning, flying straight to Dublin Airport, but still arriving when it was dark outside. He stood in a queue for what seemed like hours and took a cab to his hotel, falling into bed gratefully, and the first thing that he did the next morning was find another cab to take him to where he needed to go.

The driver frowned when he told him that he wasn't quite sure of where he was going, but once he mentioned the magic words, Drumcondra, Botanic Avenue, number 25, his face cleared, and they were soon moving through the late Sunday morning traffic.

And then there they were.

"Want me to wait Mister?" the driver asked him when Leo paid him his fare, and he saw him staring up at the familiar front door that he'd never seen before.

"Nah," Leo told him. "I'm good."

The noise of the car driving away had long since faded before Leo put one foot in front of the other, before his hand fell on the wrought iron of the gate. The catch creaked rustily under his hand, the high pitched whine of the gate swinging open and the noisy clang of it banging closed grating on his frazzled nerves. The short path seemed longer than the Potomac as he walked up it, and his hand appeared to move in slow motion as he reached out to grip the shiny brass of the door knocker, raising it once, letting it fall.

It seemed another eternity before the door opened, and the last twelve months fell away.

Her hair was as long as he remembered it, but blonder it seemed to him, perhaps bleached by the sun on her travels. It floated loose around her shoulders and down her chest and back, over the pale grey T-shirt that she wore with faded blue jeans. Her green eyes were huge, first with surprise and then with tears, and her knuckles were white on the doorframe.

She was the first to speak.

"I didn't know if you'd come."

He shrugged.

"Here I am."

She nodded.

"Here you are."

He nodded.

"Nice doorstep you have here."

She started slightly, as if she realised how rude she was being, just standing there looking at him, and her cheeks, which had paled when she saw him, grew pink.

"Are you coming in?"

He nodded and stepped over the threshold.

"Come on back," she told him, and he looked around him as she led him past the door on his left that a passing glance told him lead into the living room, past the stairs, which were directly facing the front door. He followed her down the narrow hall into what, he discovered, was the kitchen. It was neat as a pin, her kitchen always was, and there was a Bartlet for America coffee mug sitting on the counter.

He'd given her that mug as a joke present when they'd first begun to see one another.

He was lost in thought when the whistle of a kettle pulled him back, and he found her staring at him. She jumped when he met her eyes, and turned away hastily, pulling another mug from the cupboard. "You want coffee?" she asked him, pulling a jar of instant from the opposite cupboard, the kind of stuff that she'd always refused to touch back in D.C, telling him that it reminded her of liquefied mud, not real coffee. He didn't say anything when she unscrewed the lid, but he did notice how, when she was putting the spoon in the jar, its tapping against the rim shattered the silence of the room.

"Nah. I just want you."

The spoon and jar met the counter with a clatter and she was staring across at him, her eyes wide, shocked.

He shrugged, lifting up his arms in defeat. "That's why I came here Ainsley, that's why I'm here. I don't want coffee, I don't want explanations, I don't want to know where you've been, or why you changed your mind. I just want you."

She took a shaky breath. "OK."

She looked away from him, down at the counter, bracing her arms against it.

"What do you want Ainsley?" he asked her softly.

If the few seconds that he'd waited for her to answer the door had seemed like an eternity, then this was another, longer, one.

Then her head slowly lifted and turned to him, and there were tears in her eyes as she whispered her response.

"I want to come home Leo."

He nodded, clenching his jaw against the lump in his throat, but powerless against the tears that came into his eyes. "Well," he managed to choke out. "That's good then."

"Good?"

"Good."

And there was no more need for words after that, because he didn't know if he moved, or if she did, but her arms were wrapped around his waist and his chin was resting on top of her head and her tears were soaking his shirt. And then his lips were on hers, and her hands were everywhere and so were his and it was like the time that they were apart had never happened, like the hellish couple of weeks before that were just a bad dream.

If that had been the nightmare, then the week that followed was the idyll, as they spent time together, walking, talking, catching each other up on their lives, on all that had happened. This time, he helped her pack, the same suitcase that he remembered her leaving with, and it was on one of their walks through the city that they stopped outside a shop with a black façade and an expensive window and a string quartet camped in front of the door, playing Pachabel's Canon. They stood there in silence, his hand in hers, and without thinking, just feeling, he found himself going down on one knee as she stood in front of him, one hand over her lips and tears streaming down her cheeks. She managed to choke out one word, to the applause of the watching crowd, and they hugged and kissed on the street before they went into the shop, and she accused him, as Margaret once had, of spending too much money.

And he told her that he didn't care, and that she was worth it, and that caused her to cry a little more.

But there were no more tears after that, just smiles and certainty, and when she got on the plane with him, muttering that she never wanted to get on another plane as long as she lived, he told her that she'd never have to. And he squeezed her hand and told her the truth, that this time, she was travelling home to stay.

*When every boat has sailed away
And every path is marked and paved
When every road has had its say
Then I'll be bringing you back home to stay
Reach out to me, Call out my name
And I would bring you back again
Today *