Title: Confluence
Author: freak-pudding
Disclaimer: The West Wing and all associated articles are the sole property of Aaron Sorkin and NBC. No copyright infringement intended.
Summary: Tragedy, media mix-ups, and a living funeral. Just how much is it going to take? JD AU-S.5 ending
Author's Notes: Okay, this isn't getting any easier. Those of you waiting for the actual J/D part of this to start? Hang in there. It's coming.
Chapter Six: In the Shadow of Two Murders, Part One
He calls Mal, just in case.
10:47 PM
"Hey kid. I know you're probably asleep."
After the Address
"Look, I just wanted…"
He sighs, leans back in his chair. He's staring at the photos again, and he fights the sudden, strong compulsion to smash them all.
"If you're asleep, don't wake up. And…and if you're awake, you don't have to pick up."
He pulls forward that one photo again, that picture of him and Josh and Donna and Sam and Toby and CJ on Election Night the First, cherry-red noses and chapped hands and wooly scarves pulled tight beneath their chins.
"I just wanted to call. To see if you're okay."
He runs a thick fingertip over Donna's pale face, Josh's arm settled gently around her waist.
"I wanted to tell you that I…that I love you, Mal. I love you so much. And I miss you."
Leo jabs the button quickly, lets the dial tone catch his tears.
He wonders when he stopped thinking of them as two separate people.
- - -
Will walks the final draft down to the Oval at 7:57, and Toby's already halfway out the door. Sam stays on the couch, staring at his hands.
"Will you be okay in here?" he asks, pulling on jacket, snuffing out his cigar.
"I'll be fine," Sam says, soft and hollow. "I saw Ginger around here somewhere. I'll yell if I need anything."
And he knows it's all a show, a conciliatory acquiescence, Sam's gentle and amicable way of saying, "Get off my back," so Toby turns away and does just that.
He leaves his phone on Bonnie's desk and the last rubber ball bouncing down the hall towards the lobby. His feet find their own way out, and he hears the beginning of the address floating away into the dark.
"My fellow Americans. Good evening."
Slow and measured, like his own metronome. It's been a high blood-pressure day. Have to stay out of sight.
"This morning we lost five distinguished Americans in a despicable act of terror in the Middle East."
His shoes squeak on the marble; he doesn't even raise his eyes to Ed and Larry as he passes the Roosevelt Room.
"I come before you tonight shocked and saddened by our loss, and angered as we all are at the tragedy thrust upon us."
He'd called it Tolkien. Will had called it flame-thrower language. Sam had stared at his hands, cold and empty and somehow so alone.
"The search is underway for those responsible. I ask for your patience while we hunt for answers."
Toby likes this next part best.
"And as we pray with those who grieve, let us resolve to search not only for justice, but also for a just end to this senseless cycle of violence."
It's tribal. Hatfield and McCoy. Abbott and Costello. Batman and Robin.
It doesn't end.
"Thank you. Good night, and God bless America."
The President's voice follows him out into the night.
- - -
She doesn't go into the bullpen.
She'd had every intention, when she left Abbey behind, to march right through that door and up to Josh's desk.
Her resolve had crumbled, like so many times before, at the first flickering glance.
Sylvia's made five more circuits by now, angry tears rolling down her cheeks as she clenches white-knuckled fists.
She goes around and around in drunken circles, veering and avoiding and cursing herself with every passing second.
The ninth time she passes the darkened Roosevelt Room, Sylvia glances left.
The place is strangely empty of staffers, the windows and doorways dead and dim. She traces an etching of the presidential seal on one of the doors. Abbey'd called this one the Communications area.
She pushes through the door.
The lights are low; the door to the office on her right is closed tight. The door to the other office, the one she knows to be Toby's, is slightly ajar. She sees the back of a dark, down-turned head through the window.
She knocks lightly on the door, and the slumped form straightens. The smile creasing the corner of her eyes is a prelude to tears.
"Sam, honey," she says. "I didn't know you were here."
"Mrs. Lyman," he says, and that's all they need. Sylvia settles herself beside him. "I didn't know you were here."
She takes his hand in her own, running thinned fingers over his smooth palm.
"Would you like to talk?" she asks, timorous. He squeezes her fingers and nods.
"I think I would."
- - -
She runs all the way back to her office. Carol's there, waiting, and CJ slams the door in her face, collapses against the wall and begins, once more, to cry.
She slides to a crouch, hands covering her face, chest creaking and searing with the force of breath as she tries to fight it. She stays there until the speech.
"CJ."
Carol knocks softly.
"He's about to go on."
"Thanks," she says, choking and stifling her tears. Carol waits a moment longer; CJ doesn't turn the TV on until she leaves.
After the obligatory "My fellow Americans", CJ mutes the president.
"He looks tired," she says, loud and jarring.
The president sits behind his desk, face shiny and hands turning over and over. She stares into his eyes, trying to read what's there. He fidgets; his eyes dart back and forth between the camera and the prompter. His glasses, glinting and obvious, are beside his elbow.
When the speech is over, she flips off the TV and curls back onto the couch.
She closes her eyes and lets her head fall back against the cushions.
He was wringing his hands on national television. She smiles softly into her fist, feels the tears trickle over her skin.
He always did wear his guilt like a badge of honor.
- - -
He thinks it started during the campaign. Maybe even that very first day, the way they moved and spoke, so tentative and hopeful and dangling their feet.
Leo stares at his computer screen a moment longer, makes a decision and flicks it to life.
It had to have been the first day. Or maybe that first day after she'd left. The way he'd seemed to quiet and sullen in their brisk and bustling meetings; CJ casting him pitying glances and Abbey speaking to him so benignly and even the president (then, the governor, he supposes), had seen something.
As always, Leo had been clueless to the change. Completely oblivious to the actual moment of the transformation, that very second he'd stop seeing them as just one or the other, but both together.
The day he'd stopped thinking of Josh and Donna as two separate people.
For the first time, he's glad Margaret wrote down the instructions on how to get into his e-mail.
She's sitting outside at her desk, shoulders slumped and shaking with silent sobs. If he were a better man, he supposes, he'd be out there right now comforting her.
Today, he's only got enough pity for himself.
He opens the folder, stares at the two weeks' worth of unopened letters, unfelt love blended with irritation.
He smiles as something bursts, hot and harsh, inside him. They even used the same e-mail address.
He doesn't want to think that this is the last time he'll get something new from them. The last time he'll hear a good joke, the last time he'll laugh, the last time he'll cry, the very last time he won't see them as Josh and Donna, but as something whole and complete and beautiful.
He recognizes this as depression. The last step before he's ready. The last step before they're really gone.
"Hey."
Leo looks up, surprise coloring his face.
"Hey."
He's forgotten anyone else is in the building.
Jed leans against the doorframe, hands in pockets. His whole body exudes a terrible weariness, a feeling of oppression and misery so deep as to have almost no identifiable source.
"I was just…"
Leo looks back at the screen, back at the piles of past he's yet to regret.
"I was just reading some e-mails."
"Yeah?"
The president pushes off the wall and wanders his chief's office. Leo rises.
"From who?"
"From…"
He can't say it. Can't say their names. When he does—
"Yeah," Jed says again with a slow nod, knowing what he means.
Leo drops onto the couch, frozen, unfeeling. Jed sits beside him.
"I hadn't read any of them," Leo admits. "Not one, not since they left."
"How come?"
Leo looks at him with a smile.
"You really had to ask?"
Jed laughs softly.
"They go on and on for pages about every damn thing they've seen and heard and did and—"
It's there again. That indefinable place, the part where he knows there's Donna, and he knows there's Josh, but they both blend so beautifully into one damn thing.
"I just didn't have the time," Leo says quietly. Jed glances at the glowing screen.
"We've got time now."
- - -
He spends most of the time staring at the carpet, but he gives the occasional glance to the phone, and once, he looks right at the TV.
It's a superstitious thing, he guesses. Like the guys who don't wash that one pair of socks before the big game, or the people who pray to pagan gods to win the lottery, the people who throw salt over their shoulders and keep umbrellas closed inside.
He doesn't watch the president speak. Can't watch this time. Can't jinx it.
Sam isn't superstitious. He doesn't throw salt, he walks under ladders, he steps on cracks in the sidewalk, and he thinks Friday the 13th was just a series of very bad movies.
But he can't watch the president speak tonight.
Toby's gone. Will walked the speech down, hasn't come back yet.
Sam sighs, rests his head in his hands, and tries to enjoy the silence.
"What is the most ubiquitous man-made object in America that does not interact with any mechanism or machine?" he whispers, a choked-off laugh burning his throat.
He holds his breath for the answer that isn't coming, and this, at last, makes him cry.
- - -
"I think I'll stick around for a few days."
Their entwined hands rest on Sylvia's lap. Sam leans his chin on his other fist, gazing blankly to the distance.
"I'm sure they'll need your help," Sylvia says encouragingly, the tone soft and sad. "Josh used to tell me how much they all missed you."
The ventilation provides a soft buzz in ambience, and an errant bug tinks against the window.
"Mal would like it back here. Me and her and the baby in our own little place in Georgetown."
"You could live by the Potomac," she offers. "Mallory always liked the ocean."
Sam falls back into the depressed cushions of the couch, pulling his hand from hers.
"Josh wanted children," he says. "Not always, but…after Toby had Huck and Molly, he really wanted a baby. But he never…"
Sylvia smiles, a painful and bittersweet expression of deepest regret.
"They would've made good parents."
"Would've," Sam agrees, and they lapse once more into silence. Sylvia's eyes shift to the carpet.
"What are we doing here, Sam?" she asks quietly. His fingers flex slightly in his lap.
"This can't be how it goes."
Sylvia glances at him.
"This just…it can't be how it goes," Sam repeats, disbelieving, shaking his head slowly. "They spent their whole lives…they loved each other so much and they never…they never had…"
"They were in love," Sylvia says. "Sometimes that's enough."
"But…" Sam sputters, momentary. "There…there has to be…"
Tears begin to flow, harsh and hot, down his face.
"This can't be the way it works," he says. "They should've…They deserved more than that; they—"
"Sam," she says softly.
"They just got into a car," he continues. "All they did was get up in the morning and eat breakfast and read the paper and…"
"Sam," Sylvia repeats, a little less gentle.
And he doesn't know what makes some men walk into general stores, makes some old women buy new cars, makes some people smile and wave to the cheering crowds as they leave a building, or makes a man and a woman step into a car on a bright sunny morning halfway across the world.
"There's just this," he says, hollow. "Maybe there's just this."
Sylvia runs her thumb over the back of his hand.
"There is just this," she says, firm and tremulous at once, wavering and certain. "Sometimes there's death and planes crash and people fall out of love, and there's nothing we can do to stop it. I want to say it gets better, that eventually things balance out, you get as much good as bad, but…"
The first sob shocks him; Sam stares at Sylvia's crumbling face, feels helpless as he watches a woman who could be his own mother fall to pieces.
He shakes his head, slow.
"Why did you come here, Mrs. Lyman?" Sam asks, squeezing her hand. She wipes at her eyes with her fingers, giving up on the crumpled kerchief in her lap.
"The same reason you did," she replies, soft. Sam watches, eyes dry. "I didn't have anywhere else to go."
- - -
His fingers tremble as he leaves the Oval, the envelope held far in front of his body. At any moment, he expects it to explode.
Sylvia rises from the couch as he closes the door, crosses to his desk.
"The president's going to give his address now," he tells her. Sylvia ducks her head at the envelope.
"What's that?"
"Intelligence report," he says, dismissive, dropping it casually on the desk. "Classified, obviously."
"Obviously," Sylvia echoes. She rubs her hands together, fretful.
Next door, he can hear the lights and cameras rolling in.
"Leo," she says suddenly. "Would it be alright if I walked around for awhile?"
"I don't…"
He hears the drone of voices through every door; his eyes land on CJ's blank envelope.
"Yeah," he hears himself saying. "Go ahead. Margaret can show you around."
She leaves, shuts the door behind her. Locks him in his little oaken cage.
Fingers trembling, Leo reaches for the envelope and takes the pictures out.
He knows, deep inside, this won't be the last time he sees them.
- - -
Toby finds Will wandering the Mural Room, dragoons Bonnie and Ginger along the way, and decides in about a minute that they should just hijack the Mess.
"Where's Sam?"
"Still in your office," Will tells him, already heading down the stairs. "You gonna go get him?"
"Yeah," Toby sighs. "See if I can get CJ to come with us, too."
He disappears around the corner of the corridor, and Will begins the mass exodus down the stairs.
- - -
Ruth meets him, wide-eyed and sleep-ruffled, at the door.
"I thought you'd be coming by."
The screen snaps shut behind him; he hands Ruth his jacket.
"They're asleep upstairs," she tells him. "You want some coffee?"
"No."
"I could put on a pot, just in case."
"No," he repeats. "I'm fine, thank you."
She gives him a tight-lipped smile.
"Andrea's on a plane?"
He nods. They'd never been much for conversation, even when he'd been married to her daughter.
Toby moves slowly up the stairs, bent slightly at the waist, every bit the tired old man he feels like. The wood beneath the threadbare carpet creaks as he walks across it.
He trudges through the shadows, slips through the door and up to the bed in silence.
They lay side-by-side, tiny fists raised, fingers clenching and unclenching rhythmically. The little bodies curl around each other, an unconscious habit left from the days of cramped space in a warm body.
"Hey," he whispers, kneeling at their feet, chin on fists on the edge of the bed. Huck shifts a bit, wrapping one chubby arm around his sister, little mouth working into a small yawn.
Toby reaches out and pulls the blanket higher over their bodies. His hands linger beside their faces; he strokes one cold finger down each of their soft, warm faces. The contrast scares him so much, and all he's thinking of are dream houses and failed attempts.
"I'm sorry," he whispers, depression gathering low in his gut. "I love you so much."
He stands, lowers himself slowly beside them. Toby puts his arm gently over the two, pulls them closer, and waits in silence for it to begin.
- - -
They've been on-and-off with Dave Marimer, AP's man-in-the-thick-of-it in Israel. Katie passes around stale coffee; Chris is off somewhere checking on the late wires.
"I think they just landed."
"The FBI team?"
"Yeah. They're arriving now."
"Is press still out there?"
"They pushed the press away pretty quick; there was one guy already at the scene when I got here. He was following Lyman around, trying to get a story on something."
"You been able to talk to anybody?"
"They're pretty reluctant," Dave sighs. "So far I've spoken to an Israeli soldier, and the FBI agent from a few hours ago."
"I thought they just got there."
"I think he came straight from London."
"What's the FBI doing in London?" Mark asks, head falling onto his open palm as he stifles a yawn into his coat sleeve. Danny raises his eyebrows.
"Do we care?"
"No," Mark admits.
"You told the agent it's not for a story, right?"
"Said it was just fact-checking. He still doesn't want to be named."
Danny pauses, looks back at the photos in his hands. He flinches a bit, but it's easier when he doesn't think of them as people he used to know.
"Dave, do you still have your FBI guy there?"
"Yeah."
"Ask him about the bodies."
"Danny—"
"Just do it."
They wait for a few minutes, anxious. Dave comes back, sounded just as tired as before.
"He says they took the bodies to Tel Aviv; most were identified at the scene. Yossi said someone saw the two congressmen, the admiral, Lyman, his assistant, the driver. I got there in time to see them taking the body bags away, but…"
"Wait, what about Prebbler?"
All eyes turn to Katie.
"Steve said Ariel Prebbler was in the car."
"So?"
Danny ignores them, still thinking.
"So there's seven bodies, right?" he asks.
"Six bodies."
"Six?" Danny repeats.
"No, wait—"
There's a rustle of cloth, a crackle of static, and Mark pops his gum with a gun blast. Danny glares.
"He gave me the finger."
They laugh, collective.
"I saw at least two body bags being taken away, Danny," Dave offers. "One person in an ambulance."
"Did you get close enough to—?"
"No. They were already shuffling Ayres away when I got there, but…"
"Yeah," Danny sighs. "So you've got nothing."
"Sorry, buddy."
Danny shakes his head, stares at his fingers.
"Ayres," Brock repeats suddenly. "A-Y-R-E-S, right?"
"I guess," Marimer sighs, the shrug in his voice. "Colin Ayres. He's been with the CODEL since they arrived in Gaza. Hung with Lyman and Moss a lot."
"You know him?" Danny asks, probing Greg's pensive silence.
"Few years back, I worked correspondence at the American Embassy in London, and I met a BBC stringer by the name of Colin Ayres. He was tracking an IRA story from Belfast."
Greg sighs, rolls his shoulders and thinks hard.
"Guy was pretty unethical. Heard tell he got fired, but I'd already taken this post with the Times."
"Is that the guy, Dave?" Danny asks, crumpling the egg roll bag.
"Probably," Dave replies. "He's Irish, stumpin' some special report on conditions in Gaza. Freelancer, I think. Photojournalist."
"Think he's AP's unnamed source?" Steve asks quietly.
"You said he was close to Josh and Donna?"
"With them almost 24/7."
"And he was the only one at the bombing site?"
"Yeah. Rest of us already loaded in a van; we were about twenty minutes ahead of the convoy."
Danny chews his lip a moment, pondering and dark.
"Who identified the bodies?"
"Well, it wouldn't be that hard to—I mean, they were pretty famous faces around here. Why do you care so much?"
"Fact-checking," Danny says dryly. Chris re-enters the room, puts a piece of paper in front of him. "Hang on."
"Wire service out of Germany says two people were medevaced in a few hours ago," she tells him quietly.
"From Gaza?"
"He says yeah, but…"
She gives a helpless shrug and sits back down. Danny skims the piece.
"This says one was a woman."
"There are six bodies," Katie says. "The two congressmen, Admiral Fitzwallace—that's three. Josh and Donna make five. The driver makes six?"
"Ariel Prebbler wasn't in the car," Dave confirms, coming back to their world. "She was back at the Embassy, didn't go on the border tour."
"ABC News's foreign correspondent's on, saying the scene was complete chaos; the soldiers couldn't keep control of the crowds, and they barely got the press out after half an hour," Mark tells them, pointing to a muted computer monitor.
"So far we've got a couple of unruly mobs and a guy with two people at Ramstein," Danny sighs. "This is starting to read like a bad Gilbert & Sullivan."
"Weren't those about duty?" Steve asks, confused.
"Yeah," Danny admits with a slight grin. "I just couldn't think of anything else."
"So Ariel Prebbler wasn't in the car, and some guy in Germany's claiming that a woman was medevaced out of Gaza?" Katie asks suddenly, scribbling across her notebook. "But if Prebbler wasn't there and—"
"Well, now he's saying the unidentified bodies where transported to Tel Aviv."
"What unidentified bodies?"
"He says all of them."
"The FBI guy?" Steve clarifies.
"Yeah. And now he says there's one left at the site that doesn't have enough…they're having trouble identifying the remains."
"The hell—?"
They look around at each other, incredulous.
"Does anyone down there actually know what's going on?" Steve asks.
"I doubt it," Dave chuckles. "Except Ayres. He always seems to be right in the middle of it. Yossi says he's the one that identified Lyman and Moss, except…"
"Except what?"
"Except…" Dave sighs again. "According to the agent I've been speaking to, there was no way Ayres identified Moss. Not if she was the only woman in the car, and a woman was medevaced to Germany."
"Thank you all for coming around to the point I made five minutes ago."
Mark gives Katie a glare.
"But then how did Ayres identify their bodies?"
"You think he might've lied?"
"Could be that he just—"
"Did the FBI guy confirm that two people were medevaced?"
"Yeah."
"When?"
"Just now."
"Wait a minute."
Danny leans his head on one hand, brain throbbing with too much information.
"None of the bodies were a woman? Are you sure?"
"No," comes the automatic reply. "I think he's lying. Or not talking about what I'm talking about."
"But you could find out? For sure?"
"Danny…"
He silences Katie with a glare. The others glance around, unwilling to say anything. It's too personal.
"I can—"
"Will you check it out?"
"Danny, I really can't—"
"Will you please check it out?"
"Yeah," he sighs at last. "Would you be happy with a 'no comment'?"
"Absolutely not."
He hangs up with one definitive stab of his finger.
"Danny…"
"Don't say it."
He stands, gathers up some notes and empty Chinese cartons.
"They're dead, Danny," Katie says gently. "I know you were close with the staff, but—"
"I'm just having him check the bodies," he replies. They watch him; he smiles in what he hopes is a reassuring way. "That's it. I just wanna be sure."
"Well, I'm going home," Mark announces with a yawn, dragging his coat from a chair.
"I'm gonna go see my kids," Katie nods, grabbing her purse. "See you guys tomorrow?"
"She hasn't called full lid."
Steve gives a half-smile, claps Danny on one broad shoulder.
"G'night, Danny."
"'Night."
He watches them leave in twos and threes, a rag-tag marching line into the crisp spring air. Then he turns back to the phone and goes to work.
- - -
The temple doors are unlocked and open; he slips quietly onto a bench near the front.
"Good evening, Toby."
"Rabbi Glassman."
He folds his hands and perches beside Toby.
"You left the doors open."
"I had a feeling you'd be dropping by," the rabbi says with a gentle smile. "How are you this evening, Toby?"
"If you'll forgive the vulgarity…" Toby sighs. "Incredibly shitty."
Glassman chuckles, raspy and thick.
"It's to be expected. You lost someone very dear to you this morning."
Toby looks at his hands, then glances at the thick, closed Torah far away.
"Why does it always feel like this?"
"Toby…"
"I mean, will there ever come a day where I—where I can wake up and not have to worry if…not have to care so much about people?"
"Toby," the rabbi says, "there wasn't anything you could've done."
"I know," Toby replies. "I think that's the worst part."
They face forward together.
"He was the least Jewish Jew I ever met," Toby says quietly.
"Would you like me to say Kaddish for him tomorrow?"
Toby looks over at the rabbi, gives him a small half-grimace.
"I'd appreciate that, thank you."
Rabbi Glassman stands, goes back down the aisle, and Toby watches him go.
"You can stay as long as you like."
A few minutes later, he's gone again.
- - -
"What're the words?"
"What?"
Leo looks up, eyes focusing over the brim of his glasses. Jed lowers the printouts.
"What was it that Andi kept telling Toby?"
"In the e-mails?"
"Yeah," Jed nods.
"Oh."
Leo lets out a short, bittersweet laugh.
"This morning, he told me that every single e-mail always begins with the words, Go see your children."
Their laughter grows and spills out, filling the darkened room, bouncing off the dull walls and hollow papers in their hands. It's infectious and warm and so very, very inviting that they can almost forget the darkness lingering on the edge of their minds.
"Leo."
Margaret's at the door, face pale and eyes lined with dark circles.
The laughter ends, abrupt and stale. They seem to realize, then, what they'd been doing.
"Yeah, Margaret."
She holds her arms wrapped around her middle, like she's holding something deep inside that needs to break free.
He's never seen her so very fragile before.
"Are you okay?" he asks, gentle and too kind.
"Yeah," she nods, voice barely above a whisper. "E-everyone's…everyone is heading down to the Mess."
"What for?" Jed says.
"Just to…they're just going down there for a drink, to talk about…"
She waves a hand in the air beside her body, a vague gesture that will soon grow to a desperate commonality.
"Is Debbie going?"
"Yeah…yes, sir," she amends slowly. "Everyone's going down there: Toby, CJ, Sam, Will—"
"Sam's here?"
Jed blinks, surprised and slightly pleased.
"Yes, sir. He arrived a few hours ago."
"He's here? In the White House?"
"Yes, sir. Would you like me to get him?"
He looks back down at the e-mails Leo'd printed off, the papers they're passing back and forth, remembering, regretting.
"No, that's alright."
There must be thousands of them everywhere in the room.
"Do you need me for anything?" Margaret asks.
"No," Leo replies. "You can go ahead down there."
She nods and makes her way out.
"We'll probably come down in a bit!" Jed calls after, but she makes no sign that she's heard.
- - -
His eyes saw only blood in the glare of television lights; he heard only explosions, felt only the trembling of the earth as a car comes crashing down.
He gave the speech in tight, brusque tones.
Jed paces the Oval, mind on things long ago and far away. He doesn't want to think about the photos on Leo's desk.
He knows he should've left the television off, should never have given a speech, should never have let them leave the country.
He almost doesn't hear Abbey when she enters.
- - -
She walks through the doors, Sam's hand tightening in her own.
"First step is the worst," she whispers, shaking.
"Yeah," Sam says, because it's the only thing he can remember.
They come in near CJ's office; the lights are dim and half-off. The bullpen is empty.
Sam and Sylvia teeter at the edge of the long hall; it's a precipice they'll never come back from.
"I think I'd like to do this alone," she says, turning to look at Sam.
"If you're sure."
"I am," she smiles, timorous, and lets go of his hand. "Thank you, Sam."
"You're welcome," he replies, turning away.
She takes each step slowly, pauses, almost unconsciously, at the places she thinks they shared the most. The coffee pot, the little gray filing cabinet in the middle of the walkway, the bank of inboxes, Donna's little cubicle. She stops at the door of the office.
She knows she'll take this next step because it's there. It's what's next, and she can't stop the world from going on. She can't stop herself from existing, and so she'll step forward because she has to, because there's nothing else, because it's all there is.
Because she has nowhere left to go.
In the stilling silence of deepening night, Sylvia Lyman lays her wearied head down as she sits at her baby boy's cluttered desk and thinks of happy, beautiful times before guns and bombs and kitchen fire.
- - -
In the glaring illumination of consciousness, he slips through time and reality on a thin, thready wire. The voices are too deep to be saying anything, the touch too fleeting to be there, the lights too bright to look at.
He squints against a harsh sun, gasping for breath.
"Shouldn't be at this…"
His head turns to the side; he feels hands trying to force him back. Blurred gold is all that's there, and he flails one arm out.
"I shouldn't be at…"
Quietly, he slips back down.
- - -
A single lamp is lit in the dark and empty press room. Danny Concannon hunches over his laptop in the dimness, digging the cell phone deeper into his ear, desperate not to lose this connection. His heart hammers in his throat; his palms sweat and slip on the edge of the table.
"Say that again, Dave."
There's static, crackles and pops that nearly drown out the words of someone long ago and far away. Nauseous hope fills Danny as he listens, a sickening feeling he won't hold onto too tightly.
"Say it again."
