AMENDMENT IX

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.


For days afterwards, Evie was startled every time she saw her own face in the footage of the press conference that was being rerun on various news channels. Of course she knew that she had been there, but it had been such an overwhelming out-of-body experience that she could barely remember the announcement itself. One moment, she was signing a copy of the Fourteenth Amendment for Toby Ziegler's infant daughter, at the request of the President; the next, she was stepping off the stage behind an equally-stunned Chris Mulready, with a thousand camera flashes still flaring around them like the finale of a round of fireworks. Presumably, somewhere in between lay the bit that modern news media had captured for posterity. When Lottie all but forced Evie to sit down and watch the remarks that she had made from the podium, Evie was pleasantly surprised to discover that she had been not only lucid, but arguably even eloquent in expressing her thanks to the Bartlet Administration, to her family and friends, to her mentors and colleagues, and so forth. All this, and yet while the rolling cameras had recorded everything, her own brain hadn't retained any of it. Memory was a funny thing.

What she did recall was the aftermath, funny little details that shouldn't have stayed with her. Her heel had caught on one of the steps off of the stage, and she only just kept herself from stumbling forward into Chris. Behind her, C.J. Cregg had taken over at the podium, and up ahead, the President was working the crowd of reporters a bit, slowing their little procession's progress out of the room. Evie was immensely relieved to finally cross that barrier over into the relative quiet of the hallways of the West Wing, where the broad smile that she had fixed onto her face for the press could relax into something more organic.

Once the squabbling journalists had been shut out behind them, Chris turned to her.

"This is actually happening," he muttered.

"I guess so, although I still keep pinching myself."

"You're not alone there." Chris glanced sideways at the door they had just entered, clearly still conscious of the throng of reporters lurking on the other side. "You know, I never in my wildest dreams thought that this would be how I got to the Supreme Court..."

"I never in my wildest dreams thought that I would get to the Supreme Court."

"Well, that too." Chris smiled slightly bashfully. "But is it strange to admit that I'm glad it happened this way?"

Evie was by nature the type of person who laughed easily and looked for the best in everything and anyone. She hated being disappointed and so did her utmost to forgive imperfections and enjoy what she could of any situation. But her determination to absolve mediocrity did not preclude her from recognizing excellence. And Chris Mulready, for all his faults, was an undeniably excellent jurist. She had known as much from their first interaction at the ABA conference in Miami, but it was their more recent interactions – after the opera, and then the previous night in the Roosevelt Room – that had impressed upon her the quality and depth of his reasoning. Hammering out constitutional ideas with Chris was daunting, but at the same time thrilling; they spoke the same complex language with equal levels of fluency, albeit in different and occasionally irreconcilable dialects. And it wasn't that her more-than-qualified colleagues on the Fourth Circuit didn't engage her intellectually, only that there was something particularly electrifying about going head to head with someone as brilliant and confident as Chris Mulready, someone who loved the law just as fiercely as she did and would defend his positions with a degree of passion that she could only describe as operatic. Evie couldn't think of a single Justice on the Supreme Court whose mind intrigued her quite so much, other than perhaps the man whose seat she would soon occupy, and she was suddenly overjoyed that Chris would be seated on the bench with her, challenging her by the force of his formidable intellect to be at her own very best every single day of the rest of their careers.

"Not strange at all," she answered, elated. "I'm so glad that it did, too."

Chris looked surprised but extremely pleased, and for a moment, the two of them simply stood there, grinning giddily at each other and feeling beyond lucky to have ended up here together, in this most surreal of circumstances. It took a few unsubtle clearings of his throat for the figure behind Evie to alert her to his presence.

"With apologies for intruding on your nonverbal bonding ritual, I just wanted to extend my congratulations," said Chief Justice Roy Ashland, mostly to Evie, once she had turned around.

"Thank you, Your Honor," said Chris politely, nodding respectfully to the man whose entire legacy he had worked so hard to undermine.

Ashland emitted a noise of acknowledgement, his beetle-black eyes scrutinizing Chris. Then he turned to Evie.

"If I could have a private word?" he asked her, and Chris obligingly stepped away.

Evie had met Roy Ashland several times before, but she still was always star-struck when she found herself standing next to him. Since his elevation to the Court, he had been nothing short of a legal hero for her, as he had been for so many other young, progressive lawyers. Ashland the jurist loomed large as a giant in her imagination, so it was always a surprise to discover that the man, stooped with age, wasn't much taller than she herself was.

"Mr. Chief Justice," she said.

"I'd respond in kind, but I'll cling to my title for as long as they'll let me keep it," Ashland replied. His voice was as raspy and proclamatory as always, but a warmth emanated from it that matched the twinkle in his eyes as he studied Evie. "That said, I'd be as ecstatic as the next person, if those Sphinxes in the Senate accepted your answers to their questions with good grace and let you pass through their gates quickly and relatively unscathed."

"You're leaving me some pretty big shoes to fill, sir."

"Am I?" Ashland chuckled to himself. "Well, here's some advice that my predecessor gave me, once upon a time: Don't try to make your tenure about filling whatever shoes I leave behind. Instead, figure out what you need to do to be the best Chief that you can be, and lead the Court on your own terms. If anything I've done will help you make those determinations, that's terrific; but they sure as hell had better be your own decisions, based on who you are, and not based on what you think I would do, if I were still there. I'd wager that our feet are pretty different sizes, in the first place," he added.

"I'll do my best, Your Honor."

"I know you will," said Ashland, clapping a shaky hand on Evie's arm.

"If I may, sir..." Evie hesitated, not wanting to seem rude. "What made you decide to step down at this very moment? Assuming that the Administration requested that you do so, this seems like a tremendously dangerous gamble on which to stake your retirement, especially given that they've named someone as difficult to confirm as I am."

Ashland cocked his head as he regarded Evie, his lips curling into a bemused smile.

"They didn't tell you?"

Evie shook her head. Of course she remembered the news of the Chief Justice's collapse and hospitalization; she and her colleagues had spent a fair amount of time speculating if this meant that Ashland would finally step down, sorry as she and many of her friends would be to see him leave the Court. But he had surprised everyone by making a full recovery and staying on the bench, and she couldn't see why, without prompting, he would choose to step down now rather than then.

"Jed Bartlet's minions came to me with a proposal," Ashland explained, his expression positively impish. "After they'd sent me a gorgeous display of flowers to express their condolences for my passing, I should add. Nincompoops. Well, like I said, they had the audacity to appear in my chambers and propose that I retire so that they could negotiate my successor onto the Court, parallel to whatever nefarious bastard the Senate Republicans chose to push onto Brady's seat. Crazy idea, wouldn't you say?" he asked her.

"Unorthodox, to be sure," she agreed. "But you said yes, in the end."

"In spite of my numerous reservations, and my discomfort at this obvious breach of the separation of powers on which our nation was founded, I did. They ultimately managed to convince me, the tricky devils."

"How?"

Ashland's glittering eyes crinkled fondly.

"They said they'd name you to fill my seat. You, rather than some spineless moderate who would let himself be bullied into submission by the right and end up kowtowing to their bigoted whims. I didn't know that Jed Bartlet's people had it in them, to make a bold stand for the left like that. But they asked me if I was familiar with Evelyn Baker Lang, because they had a plan to get her on the Court, a plan that would require that my seat be in play. And I knew then that I could afford to let go, because with you on the bench, at least my legacy would be safe."

Evie wouldn't have known what to say to that even if she hadn't seemingly lost her powers of speech temporarily.

"They'll get you confirmed, I don't doubt that. They have their ways, their political tricks, their secret backroom bargains – I don't ask, because I'm sure I don't want to know how it all works. But, once you're on the bench, you'll have to deal with him for the rest of your life," Ashland continued, jerking his head aggressively towards Chris, who was by now apparently introducing both himself and his wife to Bill. "Think you're up to it?"

"You know, I think I am, sir," Evie replied.

"Typical reactionary scoundrel," muttered Ashland, glowering. "I read his book – or, at least, as much of it as I could stomach before it ended up in my recycling bin in several pieces. Doesn't like unenumerated rights, that one. What do you say to that?"

"I'd say that the Ninth Amendment makes a pretty incontrovertible argument that rights don't have to be enumerated to exist."

"Good girl." Ashland beamed at her. "I always suspected you had what it took, even before Drori. Don't let the gadflies chase you away, however sharply they may sting."

"Thank you, Your Honor. For everything."

Evie wished she could package the full depth of her gratitude into those simple words. Saying anything more would feel unwieldy, but those brief sentiments alone fell far too short of Roy Ashland's illustrious accomplishments. Still, she hoped that the Chief Justice nonetheless understood what he meant to her, what he meant to the entire liberal intellectual community.

"Tush," scoffed Ashland. "I could just as well thank you for this. My complaints about Bartlet's sparrows aside, this is no usurpation of power. I give this heavy weight from off my head, freely and precisely because I am a very foolish fond old man. The work is not yet finished, but I'm leaving it in your capable hands, and I know you won't disappoint any of us. And now, I've kept you long enough," he decided, waving his hands at Evie. "Off you go, back to your antithesis there, that tiger's heart wrapped in a judge's hide."

Evie shook Ashland's hand once more, and then wandered back across the room, to where her husband and Louise Mulready were commiserating over the quality of writing in the latest New York Times bestseller while Chris looked on, clearly entertained.

"Good chat?" he asked Evie.

"I was feeling a little overwhelmed even before he started dropping Shakespeare into every other sentence," she muttered. "But yes. Very constructive."

"How so, constructive? Liberal battle plans?"

"You could say so." Evie grinned. "Scared?"

"Not in the slightest."

"Judge Lang? Judge Mulready?" C.J. Cregg had apparently abandoned the press to its own devices and was now waiting patiently by the door. "The President wants a few photos in the Rose Garden. If you'll follow me..."

Chris gestured for Evie to take the lead. As she followed the Press Secretary down the corridor, Roy Ashland caught her eye once more, and years later, Evie's enduring memory of the morning would be of the silent applause with which he marked her departure out into the sunlight, carrying the Chief Justice's approval even if not just yet his title.


Author's Note: I'll admit it, this chapter mostly exists just because I find Roy Ashland totally hilarious, and I wanted to write in his voice for a little while. Seriously, he's like a grumpier edition of Albus Dumbledore, who gives zero damns about anything other than the Supreme Court and is inclined to quote Shakespeare somewhat unnecessarily at people. This is really all I've got - no longer Ashland-centric fics forthcoming, alas - but I'm satisfied to have gotten that authorial impulse out of my system. :)