Will You Remember Me

by marciaplome

Preadministration, Jed and Leo reflect separately about their places in each others' lives. JL slash, but not explicit, and maybe possible to read as strong friendship if you squint hard.

Title: Will You Remember Me
Author: Marcia Plome
Fandom: The West Wing
Characters: Jed/Leo
Rating: PG-13 for one line and an implied M/M relationship
Disclaimer: All characters belong to Aaron Sorkin, etc. Nothing in this for me, no offense intended.
Spoilers: very minor for "An Khe"
Summary: pre-administration, Jed and Leo reflect separately about their places in each other's lives
Archive: Yes, but please let me know.
Feedback: marciaplome AT Notes: Probably as close to a songfic as I'll ever write. Concept came to me while listening to a version of "Will You Remember Me" on my boyfriend's iPod. Many thanks to Phoebe for all her fact finding, encouragement, and wordsmithing.

Leo McGarry sat on the commercial jet trying not to let his discomfort show. He opened the book Jed had handed him just before he'd walked down the jetway, "Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen", more to discourage conversation than because he expected to be able to read it just now. Moving his eyes over the page, he tried to categorize what he was feeling.

Certainly the queasiness in his stomach could be related to the scotch he'd drunk last night, trying to anesthetize himself from the goodbyes. Still, he hadn't really had that much, and besides, his hangovers tended to manifest themselves as headaches, not as digestive problems. He looked up the aisle to see where the closest lavatories were and was surprised to see it still jammed with passengers.

As people continued to board the plane, he wondered if they could tell he was a military man, and what their reaction would be if they knew. He was in civilian clothes, of course, but he wondered if there wasn't something about his bearing, not to mention his haircut, that gave him away. England didn't seem to have reached the consensus of opinion that the so-called conflict in Vietnam was becoming a quagmire, but he knew their government was in opposition to the war and he figured most of the English wouldn't be too eager to shake his hand and wish him luck on his assignment. At least he wasn't wearing the uniform, that was an open invitation for people to let him know exactly what they thought about the war, and about him for going. Thinking about the uniform brought a smirk to his face, it had been worth lugging it all across the Atlantic to see Jed's reaction to him in it, and even better, Jed's exquisite care in getting him out of it.

Leo felt the engines rumble to life beneath him and his already unsettled stomach gave a lurch. Being a fully qualified pilot himself had added dramatically to his level of concern in the take off and landing processes, a fact which he'd discovered, to his considerable surprise, on the flight over to London last week. The DC-9 was nothing like the F-105 Thunderchief he'd be flying over there, but even so, there were enough things that could go wrong that he doubted he'd ever take flying for granted again.

Jed had been merciful on this visit, and beyond pleading with him to be careful and not to go hunting medals, he hadn't brought up his problems with the war in general, or with Leo's going in specific. Not that they hadn't been through all of that before, multiple times, but he'd been relieved not to have this last visit marred by those arguments. Jed was still under the impression that he was safer flying over the country than he would be fighting down on the ground, and Leo had been careful not to disabuse him of that notion. He allowed himself to admit, just for a moment, that somewhere among the excitement of piloting that marvelous machine, somewhere amidst the pride over doing his duty, somewhere along the satisfaction of being able to provide for his sisters, there was a little kernel of fear that he wouldn't be good enough or fast enough to keep his plane under him for the required hundred missions, that he'd get over there and the experienced fighter jocks would take one look at him and decide he didn't have what it took. He would never confess that to Jed, of course.

That was the crux of it, and being honest with himself, he could admit it. All the other issues bouncing around in his head and in his gut were secondary to Jed, and Leo's concern that this visit had been their last, or at least their last on these terms. Jed had Abbey now, and Leo was happy for them. Not only was Abbey gorgeous and smart, but she and Jed had some kind of electricity between them. Leo didn't know how Jed had convinced her that their little affair was going to continue, but Abbey seemed genuinely okay with it and Leo knew that even if this had been his last time with Jed like that, he'd owe her an eternal debt of gratitude for letting them have it. Leo wasn't jealous of her, both he and Jed had always known they wanted wives and families someday, but he did expect that now that Jed had started down that path, it was the end of their thing together. If he'd read the looks between them right, Jed and Abbey would have a little one before he got back from Vietnam. He wondered if the baby would look like Jed. Abbey might be okay with letting Jed have a fling with Leo on the side when it was just them, but certainly a baby would change all of that. Jed's life was streaking along according to his plan and Leo was headed out of it. By the time he came back (if he came back, he pointedly didn't think to himself) Jed would probably have a doctorate and a kid and he and Abbey would have a whole new circle of sophisticated friends. They probably wouldn't even want some vet around them at that point.

The fluttering in his stomach condensed to a sharp ball of knives as the plane shuttled forward, and Leo realized what had him so upset. This man that meant so much to him, this man that had helped define his very being these last years, this man who had held him and loved him and made him promise to come home to him just last night, probably wouldn't even remember him by the time he got back. The plane's momentum pushed Leo back in his seat and as the wheels left the ground, he sent one last thought out to Jed, wherever he was by now. "I will remember you."

Thirteen months later…

Jed Bartlet hurried down the aisle to his seat near the back, his heart pounding, as it had been continuously since he'd woken up in a cold sweat three nights ago. Abbey and he had gone to bed early, and Jed had only been asleep an hour or two when he'd woken up shaking, with Leo's name on his lips. Abbey had tried to tell him it was nothing, just a nightmare, but Jed had been sure something was wrong. He didn't have nightmares, Leo did, mostly because Leo lived the kind of life that induced them, and Jed had known right then that something had happened. He'd spent the rest of the night alternately pacing and re-reading Leo's letters, despite Abbey's attempts to reassure him and get him to come back to bed. When the embassy car had pulled up in front of the flat the next afternoon, he'd been almost relieved to have an answer instead of just the terrible sense that something had happened. Jed was listed as Leo's next of kin, although he still didn't know how Leo had managed to pull that off, given that both his sisters were easily reachable in Chicago. Being next of kin meant that it was to him the casualty notification team came, and Jed was happy he'd been able to spare Leo's sisters that.

He fumbled with the latch on the overhead compartment, knocking a book out of his carryall before finally getting the bin open and his bag into it. The man on the aisle handed him the book as Jed climbed over him to the window seat. As he sat down, the worn copy of "The Golden Treasury" flipped open to where he'd left Leo's most recent letter. Lovelace's words, written more than three hundred years ago, still rang true, and Jed allowed himself a brief moment of amusement at how people, and especially Leo, would react if they knew he imagined himself as Lucasta. He trailed a finger along the page, now noticeably thinner than the ones surrounding it, as the words echoed in his mind of their own accord.

Jed unfolded the letter and skimmed it again, its content almost as familiar to him as the poem. Leo didn't write very often anymore and Jed worried it was because he was pulling away from him. All the excitement of living on the edge over there was a very different life than Jed's quiet academic one. In his letters, Leo told about wild nights in town and crazy stunts he and his friends pulled and Jed felt like the man he'd sent over there, the man who had promised to come home to him, might have gotten lost in the shine and glory of what he was doing now. Jed still thought of Leo all the time, and about how badly he wanted him home. Not like this though, he quickly amended to himself, not like this.

The plane pulled away from the gate and Jed reflected on what little they'd been able to tell him. Leo's plane had been shot down, he'd sustained some kind of injury to his leg, and the delay in retrieving him had allowed an infection to set in that was now considered more serious than the leg. There had been further complications in the rescue, and Jed had been told Leo hadn't regained consciousness. He'd been taken immediately to a hospital in Thailand, where they'd stabilized him, then to a bigger one in Vietnam (the military attaché had called it "in theater", a phrase Jed felt totally inappropriate when discussing the very real drama of war) and was being transported from there to Travis Air Force Base outside of San Francisco. Neither the chaplain nor the major had come out and said it, but Jed had been able to infer that the speed with which Leo was being sent home was unusual, and that sort of thing was only done when the doctors had decided travel was unlikely to make things any worse, that is, things were already as bad as they could get.

The embassy chaplain was a white-haired Catholic priest, clearly enjoying the London posting as a reward for a long and well regarded career, and had performed a private Mass at Jed's request. They'd said "The Prayer For Those Wounded In War", and Jed repeated it to himself as he felt the plane level out into its ascent. When he got to the part about "Raise them to health again, if it be thy good pleasure," he forced himself to remember the rector at his parish at home, who had taught him as a small boy that the only unselfish prayer was, "Lord, Thy will be done." Jed thought about that for a moment and threw it out the window, praying selfishly that Leo would live. His fingers gripped his rosary as he prayed that Leo would survive and return to him. His eyes still resting on Leo's small, scratched lettering, he prayed the rosary until the stewardesses came through with dinner.

Jed forced himself to eat a few bites, having no way of knowing what to expect when he got to San Francisco. The major had assured him that patients' families were allowed on base at Travis, but Jed had left with no definite plans about how to get from the airport to the base or where he would stay once he got there. He'd called Josie and Beth in Chicago and had a brief conversation with them to let them know what he knew before promising to call again as soon as he'd seen their brother. Beyond that, Abbey had assured him that she could handle everything in London and that he should get on the first available flight. Her urgency had concerned him, and when he'd pressed her about it, she'd admitted that if Leo had had an untreated infection for three days, and been unconscious from it when they rescued him, the chance of some sort of brain damage was fairly high. Leo needed someone there who was empowered to make medical decisions for him, especially if he were helpless at the mercy of an indifferent military machine. Jed had left her at the airport with a lingering kiss and a promise to call when he had more details.

They turned the cabin lights out, but Jed knew he wouldn't sleep. The possibility of Leo brain damaged was too awful to contemplate. The man was one of a very few people by whom Jed was challenged intellectually, and he loved that about him. For Leo to lose that, it just wasn't fair. This was a man who had invented his own rules to make the Times crossword more challenging, a man who had the analytical ability to resolve the most complex dilemmas, and a man, he admitted grudgingly, who usually beat him at chess. Still, Jed told himself, this was Leo, and if he lost that mental sharpness, Jed would just focus on the other reasons he loved him. Just let him live.

Jed looked out the window, it was dark, but he told himself he could see water beneath them. That meant they were still less than halfway there. What would he do if Leo lived, but wasn't the same person? Jed had heard about some vets who came home so destroyed they couldn't function, they had no memory of their lives before the war. Not Leo, please not Leo. Jed wished the pilot would push the plane a little faster, there was nothing he could do from up here in the air, and the waiting was only giving him time to contemplate how bad things were likely to be. He was scared, and sitting here with nothing to do but think was making things worse. He wanted desperately to be by Leo's side, to offer his presence for whatever comfort it might bring. As Jed leaned his head back against the seat, willing the hours to tick by more quickly, he imagined that face he knew so well, the hazel-green eyes staring at him from a hospital bed, and silently begged, "Will you remember me?"