Falls the Shadow

By Anne Callanan and Kathleen E. Lehew

Part 5/14

Nancy McNally would have been disappointed. Truth to tell, McGarry was as well. No emotional outbursts, no arguments or demands, and no verbal shrapnel whatsoever. The senior staff, including a reluctant Charlie, had simply sat, stood or slouched their way through his clipped briefing. Sam Seaborn had done a particularly good job holding up the inner office wall.

McGarry was forced to conclude that what little information he was able to give them was either far too much, or incredibly too little. They'd already known that the crashing of Marine One had not been an accident. That revelation had been one of the lesser disasters resulting from the First Lady's birthday party. He supposed he should be grateful their reactions weren't bordering on the atmospherically ballistic.

Small favors. He would have preferred just a few digressions into emotional venting, for their sake as well as his own. The Chief of Staff waited a few more beats, giving them time to truly digest the information, before asking, "Are there any questions?"

Silence greeted that inquiry. McGarry watched them all carefully for a moment, waiting for something else, but it never came. It had all been too much. They were political games players, experts at the murky world of party and governmental manipulation. Criminal behavior with little motivation other than a strict eye to a questionable profit margin didn't come anywhere near their normal operational territories.

McGarry scowled. Unfortunately, they were going to have to learn. "That'll be all then, people. The Oval, eight AM tomorrow."

Slowly, as if in a dream, they began to file out. McGarry sighed. Shell-shocked was the only explanation he could come up with. He'd never seen them react like this before, and the foreboding it gave him now did little to relieve his own deep held concerns. He needed these people sharp, not dulled by events.

"C.J.," he called.

The Press Secretary paused, stepping back as Josh Lyman passed her.

Toby Ziegler hung back a little, expectantly watching her with concern as she turned towards McGarry. The look she gave the Chief of Staff was neither questioning nor challenging. Without a word, brushing a lock of hair out of her eyes, she just waited.

"You okay?" McGarry asked, all too aware that C.J. and recent death brought a whole new perspective to current revelations. He needed her focused.

"I'm fine, Leo," C.J. replied in a carefully neutral voice.

Ziegler looked down, shuffling his feet.

McGarry weighed that answer carefully for a moment, and then nodded. Everyone had been walking on eggshells around her since Donovan's death, and she hadn't been any more open about it to them or the President. The only person she seemed to have confided in was Ron Butterfield. Despite their own understanding, McGarry had got nothing from that man. Perhaps that was as it should be.

Satisfied, McGarry let it go. C.J. Cregg was made of far sterner stuff. She didn't need sympathy from her boss or friends. Maybe later, but not now. "Okay," he told her, almost smiling at her barely veiled relief at being let off the hook. "Keep an ear open for rumors. Anyone in the press corps starts sniffing, I want..."

C.J. rolled her eyes. "I know the drill, Leo."

"Yeah," McGarry smiled softly. Maybe she needed this, something to keep her mind occupied. He pitied the unfortunate reporter who crossed her. "You do."

"He noticed," C.J. muttered, brushing past Ziegler with a tight smile. "Be still my beating heart."

One corner of Ziegler's mouth twisted at that, but his expression lightened. Of all the staffers, he knew her best. For the first time, he realized she really was okay. He was proud of her for that. Of all the revelations tonight, that at least lightened his soul a bit. With a curt nod to McGarry, he started to leave.

"Toby," McGarry called, his tone and expression suddenly hardening. "Stay."

Following close behind C.J., Ziegler blinked and turned with a start at the sound of McGarry's voice. Not unused to being singled out, the request still made him nervous. There was a distinct edge to the man's clipped words and he couldn't help but irritably note that his name and the command, spoken as they were, came insulting close to sounding like an order to a unruly dog.

Shaking his head reassuringly at Seaborn's questioning look, touched at the somewhat misplaced protective instinct being displayed, he gestured that the younger man should leave. Hiding his own apprehension behind his usual indifferent mask and shoving his hands into his pockets, he confronted the Chief of Staff.

"Close the door."

There was that tone of resolute command again. Ziegler sighed heavily, not unaware that the sound only reinforced the mental image of a reluctant canine obeying its cruel, unfeeling master. Ruefully, he realized that something about the ridiculous picture appealed to him. Reluctantly following the order, he also knew that closing the door did not bode well for what was coming next. His misgivings were increasing by the second. McGarry wanted something and he had a nasty suspicion he knew what it was.

The problem was that Ziegler couldn't give it to him. It was common if unspoken knowledge that earlier in the year he and the President had had an... altercation. That was the only polite way to put it. Leo had asked him what had happened only once and been denied, however evasive or docile that rejection may have been.

Ziegler grimaced. He was going to have to do something about the canine metaphors bouncing through his head. It simply wouldn't do and right now he needed to be anything but compliant. At the time, he'd been shocked to learn that the President had told his oldest and most trusted friend nothing, that the quarrel, which had nearly come to open blows, remained a closely held secret between the Communications Director and his Commander-in-Chief.

The implied faith and trust placed in him had been nearly overwhelming and Ziegler wasn't about to betray it, no matter how much the President's friend poked and prodded at the source.

McGarry searched Ziegler's face, watching the man with a keenly observant eye and searching for some small clue. The man knew why he was here, but if the Chief of Staff had hoped he would volunteer the confidence, he'd been sadly mistaken. It was a waste of time. Of all the senior staffers, this man alone could hide behind a mask constructed of equal parts grouchy belligerence and cool indifference.

This wasn't going to be easy. He gestured towards a chair. "Sit down, Toby."

"I don't think so, Leo."

McGarry briefly debated whether or not to make the request an order. Watching Ziegler stand at defiant attention, combined with his carefully blank demeanor cautioned him that any further orders at this point weren't going to be received in a civil manner. And right now he didn't need to get in another useless and empty battle of words.

It was solutions McGarry needed, not more questions.

Shuffling his feet, a bit of tense agitation breaking through his deliberately constructed facade, Ziegler waited.

Damn! He really wasn't going to make this easy. McGarry took a deep, calming breath. This was something he had no right prying into, but circumstances left him little choice. "I think you know what I want to ask."

Ziegler shrugged, uncomfortably looking everywhere but directly into McGarry's eyes. "Leo... "

"Relax, Toby, I'm not going to."

Unbending just a bit, but still wary, Ziegler waited in silence for the rest. McGarry wasn't going to leave it at that.

"What went on between you and the President that night is your business. I could pry it out of you if I had to, but I don't have that right."

"You could try."

"Yeah," McGarry admitted with a rueful smile. "And we both know how far I'd get."

"Then why start?" Ziegler demanded bluntly. He never had been one for beating around the proverbial bush.

"I'm not." McGarry's eyes narrowed, his expression clouding with barely contained anger. It was late, he was tired and he wasn't in the mood for Toby's usual word games. "It doesn't take a genius to figure out that you crossed a line with him. I don't know what it is about you and boundaries, but there's just something about a line that you just can't resist stepping over. Do you drive with the same disregard for traffic barriers as you have for personal ones? Because I know it was personal, Toby. You hurt him."

A brief spark of uncertainty flashed in Ziegler's eyes. "He still hasn't told you?"

"You know he hasn't. And Dr. Keyworth hasn't been any more forthcoming either."

"No," Ziegler winced at the trauma therapist's name. "He wouldn't." The President's easily delivered jokes about accountability aside, that whole fiasco and its resulting mental turmoil had been his fault. He couldn't hide from that.

Remaining silent, volunteering nothing more, Ziegler continued to wait.

McGarry bit back a curse. For a speechwriter, a master of the written and spoken word, Ziegler was being unusually tight with the verbiage. He couldn't really blame him. Letting him off the hook, he told him, "I'm not asking, Toby. It's over and done with. You've both mended your fences."

"We have." Ziegler's thoughts flashed back to the chess set, a gift he fully intended to treasure for the rest of his life. Apology and acknowledgment of sincerity without wasted speech. Even so, he hadn't been able to stop what happened next, the wounds he had reopened.

It was that damned need of his to communicate his point, especially when it was just.  He should have realized the man wasn't ready to acknowledge it, couldn't even see the rightness of it yet.  All Ziegler had achieved was to aggravate a still raw hurt, the very last thing he had wanted to do.

Perhaps looking for absolution, however oblique, he offered McGarry this excuse. "I can't change who I am, Leo. I can't pick and choose the truth, or change how it affects what we laughingly refer to as reality. It just... is."

"Truth," McGarry snorted with profound disgust. He'd had his fill of questionable veracity these last few months. "That's weak."

It was weak, he couldn't argue with that and wasn't about to. Toby shrugged, wrinkled his nose with a scowl and bowed his head; combining four of his usual conversational warnings signs into one complete gesture.

Choosing to ignore the far from subtle hints that he was trespassing, McGarry persisted. "I only need to know one thing. You can answer as you see fit, offer whatever truth you feel necessary. Or not answer at all. It's entirely up to you."

"But will you respect me in the morning?"

McGarry stopped the interrogation for a moment, leaning back in his chair and regarding Ziegler with a new understanding. Considering the topic of conversation, the Communications Director's uncharacteristically off-color humor was a clear indication that he was close, skirting the edge of a pain-filled issue he so wanted to get to the bottom of.

Taking into account what little he already knew, the scarce clues provided by Toby, Dr. Keyworth and even the phobia and fear-induced revelations of the President himself, McGarry strongly suspected that if he pushed the man fidgeting in front of him just a little harder, he'd have his answers.

But he couldn't do that.

Pinching the bridge of his nose and letting out a slow breath, McGarry had to content himself with one question. "Will what happened that night, in any way, have an effect on him now? The President is bearing a heavy enough load as it is without the fallout from whatever you began taking him further into his head."

Struggling with his conscience, the only answer Ziegler could give the President's deeply troubled friend was, "It... might."

"It might." It wasn't enough, but pushing for anything more would not only be a violation of a lifelong friendship, but the respect he'd earned and given in return to Toby Ziegler. "That doesn't help me, Toby," McGarry snapped shortly. "Or him."

"I know." An empty concession, but it was all he could give. Even now, no matter how much he might want to, or how much masterful persuasion was brought to bear, Ziegler would not break the trust that had been placed in him. If it cost him Leo McGarry's regard, then so be it.

The thought had barely crossed his mind before another followed. Trapped between the concerns of one man and the welfare of another, he could offer them both this. The rest was up to McGarry. "You could help him, Leo."

McGarry leaned back in his chair and stared at him silently, expectantly. If he had expected a simple yes or no from Ziegler, he'd sadly underestimated him. He should have known better.

"Be his friend, Leo," Ziegler blurted out, scarcely aware of his own voice. He was doing it again, sticking his analytical nose in where it didn't belong. One of these days it was going to get bitten off. Then again, if it made a difference, maybe it did belong there. "Just for once, stop being the Chief of Staff and be his friend. You've had this protocol bug up your ass for the past three years. How many times have you called him by name? Once? Twice?"

"Traffic barriers, Toby." McGarry cautioned the man softly with a black look. Eyes narrowed, the frustrated rage that had been simmering just below the surface was ready to boil over. "You're crossing that line again."

"I told you, I can't change." Ziegler shrugged dismissively, ignoring the barely veiled reprimand. Hell, when it came to dirty looks, he'd learned how to dodge more than his fair share, even from Leo. "But you can. For him."

"Toby ... "

"He's a person, Leo!" Ziegler snapped, starting to get upset himself. Despite his growing anger, he still managed to keep his volume levels relatively civil. "Professor, Governor, President. Those are just titles. Josiah Bartlet is much more than that; he's flesh and blood. You've let the job and the disease take that away from him."

"Bullshit! I've done nothing of the kind!" McGarry denied the charge vehemently, although the small, mocking voice of his conscience insisted it was painfully close to the truth. How many times, in the privacy of his own mind, had he whispered the name Jed, only to have multiple sclerosis follow persistently behind?

President. Multiple Sclerosis. Somewhere between the two was his friend. Where, between the office, the daily battles to keep it and the disease, did Jed fit in? Was it all in a name?

McGarry's temper began to rise in response to the questions. And why did it have to be Toby who forced him to ask them in the first place?

So furious at the man's presumption that he could hardly speak, McGarry glared up at his accuser. He had begun this and for his reward he was reluctantly being taken down the same road as his friend. Only the destinations appeared to be different.

Or were they? Yet another unanswerable question.

He was starting to get a small glimmer of what the President had had to deal with that night; the sharp, relentless mind behind Ziegler's dogged persistence. And as much as he wanted to deny it, he couldn't. In the halls of ultimate power, the codes of behavior dictated by protocol created a barrier to friendship that could not, should not, be breached.

McGarry had tried to overcome that barrier, had attempted to balance friendship with duty. He thought for the most part that he had succeeded.

Perhaps his failure was at this moment staring him in the face.

"He's the President, Toby," McGarry snarled in return, not quite ready to admit defeat.

"He's a man. And somebody is trying to kill him."

"Don't you think I know that?"

"He's your friend." The solution had finally occurred to Ziegler. It was so easy, so simple. He could only hope Leo McGarry would understand. "He's got people to protect him. Right now he needs someone to listen. Give him his name back, Leo. Say it and mean it. That's all he needs."

"I can't, not now," McGarry said in a dull, troubled voice. His anger had faded somewhat, replaced by a deep regret he couldn't quite place. Damning Ziegler's observation skills and his timing, he growled more forcefully, "He needs to be reminded who he is, especially now."

With an odd twinge of disappointment, Ziegler shrugged sadly and said, "Then you've already damned him." He'd tried. If it cost him his job, then so be it. It wouldn't be the first time.

"There's that line again."

"Your line, Leo. You drew it."

A heavy silence settled over the office, loaded with unspoken possibilities as the Chief of Staff stared at the man who waited with willful composure in front of him. Ziegler blinked at him, waiting for the executioner's stroke, or what? McGarry couldn't say. The man had never been an easy read even at the best of times.

A tentative knock at the door broke the tense standoff.

To be continued…