…and Life Is Not Always Fair

"Do you know what it's about?" Donna asked, smoothing her hand along her skirt for the third time since Addy had been sent to fetch her.

"I don't know anything more than I did two minutes ago," Addy said as politely as she could manage. She'd just been told to fetch Donna personally, instead of with a phone call or a note. At least this new development was keeping her mind off of the question of whether it had been her boss who'd drunk the coffee she'd left behind in the thermos!

She'd thought Toby's message had been loud and clear about whether he'd wanted her to ditch her tradition of bringing him her coffee. Her empty thermos was a mystery, one she didn't think she ought to solve. Discovering that Toby Zeigler only wanted her coffee if she wasn't personally delivering it wasn't the kind of answer she was looking for.

"I seriously doubt you're in trouble, Donna," Addy said. Her friend's fidgeting had gotten worse the closer they got to the bullpen.

"I'm sorry. It's just that there's a whole 'steer clear' warning going on for your whole area thanks to Toby, so being called to his office is several steps above being ordered to the Principal."

"I get it," Addy said, tapping lightly on Toby's open door. He looked up from his desk and nodded, closing his laptop and getting up.

"Come in," he said, his expression grave. "Shut the door?" he said to Addy. She nodded, grabbing the door and turning to pull it shut behind her, only to feel resistance in the last few seconds. Toby stood there, looking sheepish with his hand on the other side of the handle. "I meant for you to stay."

"Oh!" she said, letting go of the door and stepping past him into the room, fighting down her embarrassment. Donna was already seated at the chair in front of his desk, so Addy sank into the chair beside the couch, scooting forward and folding her hands in her lap. There was a terrible sort of ceremony to the meeting, and as Toby started to speak, the reason dawned on her.

This was it. The secret.

"I'm about to tell you something shocking, except we don't have time to be shocked, so I'm going to need you to just hear it and then get back to work," he said.

Toby's expression was as bleak as it had been the night he'd confronted Leo, and Addy tightened her hands around each other in her lap.

The news of the President's MS was exactly as shocking as he predicted, but what struck Addy was the inclusive language Toby was using. It was appropriate given his position in the administration, but after having watched him wrestle with what he didn't know, only for this to be what he'd found out… it made her defensive on his behalf.

Addy listened as Toby shifted to dismissal language, which Donna understood and responded to, getting up and leaving without looking to the side or pausing at all. She shut the door behind her, leaving Toby standing awkwardly beside his desk, and Addy equally awkwardly in her chair, eyes cast down, blood boiling. She knew she needed to calm down before she left his office, not the least of which because her demeanor would be noted by her coworkers.

"Are you-" Toby started, faltering when she looked up at him. "You're angry." He straightened, body language shifting to do battle.

Addy opened her mouth to respond and closed it, unequal to the rush of words that all clamored to be spoken at once. Instead, she just nodded.

"I'd say go ahead and yell, but given how thin the walls are…" Toby trailed off with a mirthless chuckle.

"You're not the person I want to yell at."

"Does it help to know that I did my own yelling in the Oval?"

Addy stood up, willing her fists to unclench at her sides, but failing. "It does, but he's not who I want to yell at either."

That seemed to surprise him. Toby lifted a hand to scrub through his beard, and she kept quiet, just to see what he would do.

"Okay, I'll bite," he said, sliding his hands into his pockets and lifting his chin.

"What they did was wrong. It was wrong to keep his condition from the voters, and even more wrong to deceive the campaign staff like that." Addy relished the quiet bite of fury she could hear in her own voice.

"It was."

"The fact that they didn't reveal this after Rosslyn is just a testament to, let's face it, Leo McGarry's arrogance about whether anyone else had a right to know," she realized aloud. "I mean damn, the revelation might have landed better then than it will now!"

A bemused smile played around the edges of his mouth. "Good point."

"What makes me angry is that they've got you in charge of this! You have to stand there and explain that 'we' lied to you, and 'we' are going to fix it. Someone with your integrity would have argued against keeping this kind of secret!" she hissed in an angry whisper, conscious of being overheard. "It's unfair, but- shit, there's no better way to do this thing, is there?" Addy was only a foot away from him now, so she stopped, dropping her hands as all of her anger left her in a long sigh. "I want to go holler at Leo, but it wouldn't do any good. Neither does telling you how mad I am about it, so I'm just going to go back to work."

Toby was back to looking shocked; he made no move to stop her until she reached out for the doorknob.

"It does," he rasped.

Addy turned. "I'm sorry?"

"It does some good." He was looking down, his fingers smoothing down the hair above his ear. After a second, Toby made eye contact, his dark eyes glittering with intensity. "Thank you."

"You deserved better." She felt mulish about it, and that probably showed.

"We all did," Toby replied in that gentle voice he used when things were dire.

There was nothing left to say, so she just offered him a wan smile, then blurted, "Was he mad? Leo, I mean. When you figured it out."

Toby's smile was subdued, but proud. "He was."

Addy opened the door, pulled it mostly shut, then stuck her head in the gap to add, "Good."

88888888

Toby wasn't an artist, but if he were, he would have immediately sought to preserve the image of Addy Blair smiling at him from the doorway, the vindictive light of fury in her eyes.

She was angry because of the way he was treated! It was impossible not to hope that meant something more than simple outrage. Now that she was in on the secret, he could get her help with phrasing, with constructing the intricately delicate message of 'please don't hate us, we thought he was the best choice for America before, and we still do.'

"Damn," Toby said aloud. Somehow he'd managed to forget one of the reasons Leo had asked him to bring Donna and Addy in, namely, a wider perspective on the Bartlets' marriage. 'I wonder how much is fucked by the fact that politicians are always married, and their staff never is,' he'd said to Toby with that wry smile of his.

Toby had pointed out that Leo's marriage had lasted quite a while, which was characteristically waved off. 'It's not just about marriage. CJ's got a lot to do, we can't just rely on her perspective here. Get Donna to help out Josh, get Addy to help you and Sam. If they can offer any insights into mending things for the First Family, so much the better!' While Leo was right about a wider perspective, it would be harder for Toby to keep up a mental separation between his feelings and his work if part of the work he was asking Addy to be involved in blurred that line into the personal.

Someone tapped at his door, and Toby walked over to get it, since he was still standing. It was Addy.

"Oh," she said, clearly surprised he'd answered the door instead of calling out for whoever it was to come in. He just raised his eyebrows in silent query. "This is impertinent, but-"

"My favorite," Toby teased, shifting his indulgent tone to sardonic at the very last second.

"The busywork, are you planning to shift that around so I can better support-"

"Yes, yes," he grumbled, stalking over to his computer. "Give me some time to-"

"Wait, before you- I mean, excuse me, sir, but if you don't mind opening the new 'Important Tasks' folder, I've separated everything out by relevance. I was already working on this, and, well. I presume there'll be more to do now, so now that I have more context, I've put the easier tasks in subfolder B."

Toby kept his eyes on the computer screen, but he was flooded with gratitude, respect, and longing. The file showed that her assessments were mostly correct, with a few adjustments that had to do with preparing for the poll they'd called Joey Lucas in to do. Though the two women were friends, he wanted to make sure he didn't let anyone not in the know see that until it was finished. Knowing Hoynes had put a poll in the field had been a key point in figuring out that there was some kind of deception going on, and it was Toby's job to keep everyone else from making the same connections.

That thought gave him a headache.

"If that's all?" Addy said in a small voice.

"You're the one who knocked!" he shot back.

"You looked shaken all of a sudden, and let's be honest, if I were you, I wouldn't tell me everything. I just figured you might need space."

"I'm definitely not telling you everything," Toby admitted, looking her straight in the eyes. It was dangerous, like flirting with a nuclear bomb, but he was beyond caring. Addy pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes, and he wanted to walk around the desk, push her against the wall, and kiss her until her suspicion turned to shock and hopefully, that shock to desire. "And I don't want space," he added, also truthfully. He probably needed space. He ought to transfer Addy back to being managed by CJ's office so his inevitable crash and burn didn't involve acting on the thoughts that kept cropping up about touching her- but he didn't want space. Space was not what he wanted from Addy Blair.

"Tell you what, I'll work on folder A until-"

"No, take this, work on the first and last pages," he interrupted, pulling a folder out from under a bunch of last month's polling numbers about energy. "Try to keep anyone from seeing your screen, though. If the First Lady finds out the contents of that page-"

"Okay, how about I read it in here, then I'll work on it in the notebook and transcribe it at home?" Addy said, taking the folder.

"Good call. Grab Sam first, will you?"

"You've got it, boss," she said, grinning.

Toby watched her go, then spent the next five minutes positioning things on his desk so his line of sight would not include ogling his subordinate while they both worked on the biggest political scandal of the last twenty years.

88888888

Five weeks later

Addy was engaged in a morale campaign, but it had taken a very strange shape. Every day, sometimes twice a day, she left a positive note somewhere in the West Wing. She'd only planned to do a few, but Mrs. Landingham had caught her leaving one on the side of her computer monitor, hidden except to people who would be looking to greet the President's most beloved secretary. It said, 'Great deeds are often controversial except in retrospect.'

The President's beloved secretary was the only person who knew that it was Addy leaving the notes, and when she died, the whole staff was left with even more of a need for positive reinforcement (or bad puns, like the note she'd left in Leo's office that said, 'I'm not lion, you're the king of negotiation!'). Honestly, Addy felt obligated to continue.

The problem was, as time passed and the scope of their tasks became clear- re-elect a hopefully forgiven Jed Bartlet -most staffers found it more comforting to band together in their hatred of the often sunny platitudes. That had made the process of leaving them more exciting, because as the mystery deepened, so did the fervor from her colleagues.

There were even a few copycat notes, helpfully enough.

In a strange way the self-appointed task gave Addy something to look forward to beyond the discouraging day-to-day setbacks on the journey from Bartlet's public confession and the backlash from his announcement that he was resolutely running for re-election. In the process, the staff closed ranks. Now they were all battle-hardened fighters in the war of public opinion, each ready to lay everything on the line to support their President, and in the process, discover the identity of the dastardly note-leaver (dubbed 'Grace Notes' in an internal memo).

The stakes were high, because Addy had no intention of stopping. She was going to leave a note on Air Force One and get away with it.

Her plan was brilliant: the note in question would be strategically twisted just slightly out of shape and stuck to one of the Senior Staff as though they'd snagged it onto their clothing by walking past. The only question was who she'd choose, and whether she'd be able to do it on the way out or on the way back. Given how stressed everyone was about the speech, it was looking more like it would be on the way back.

88888888

"Just- could you go and sit out there, please? Your glowering is actively stressful."

After Sam's paper-throwing outburst, the speechwriting team had decided that, valuable as it was, their flight time needed to be spent doing anything but writing. The idea was to scatter, socialize, decompress, then reconvene in New Hampshire feeling refreshed. It wasn't Toby's fault he'd ended up in a room where the Deputy Chief of Staff was having a private meltdown. In the interests of the 'decompress' part of their latest mandate, Toby just patted Josh on the arm and got up, heading out toward the seats in the hallway.

CJ was there, settling morosely into a seat next to Addy. There was one seat left at the end of the row, two or three seats away, which Toby rationalized was far enough away to be considered appropriately 'scattered.' It was good to see that CJ had Addy to talk to, she really needed some old fashioned, low stakes chatting.

Addy had been faced away when Toby sat down, and he draped his trenchcoat over his shoulders in front to give the impression that he was going to doze. His seat was against the bulkhead, and he leaned his head there and closed his eyes, keeping his ears open. They were in danger of losing their Press Secretary. There had been rumblings in the party that any other administration would have had new blood out there already, but his instinct was that this was a time for loyalty and solidarity, not a vote of no confidence. As such, anything he could learn about her state of mind during the flight would be valuable.

His plan was cramped by the sound of the engines at take-off, but Toby remained in his faux sleeping position, listening as intently as he could to the two women's vague, almost indistinguishable voices.

As they reached cruising altitude, Toby's patience was rewarded- but he couldn't help but wonder what the hell they'd been talking about that could have led to what he was hearing now.

"-a long make-out session with someone I already know and respect," CJ was saying. "I want the cuddles and kisses without all the build up, you know? All the work. I just want to skip ahead to that point where you can have a bad day and it's not a personal affront."

It was just his luck that his plan to eavesdrop would give him an impossible goal for what could help cheer CJ up. Toby was distracted enough to have missed a quiet comment by Addy.

"-waste my genie wish on. The rest of you can do the altruistic things," CJ replied, laughing. "I'm not asking for much, just the perfect man to appear with all the memories of the stuff between meeting and feeling safe. Though, damn," she paused, and there was the sound of shuffling papers. "That would skip the first kisses. That might be too big of a trade-off, what do you think? Hypothetically."

"I honestly wouldn't know, but it sounds like too big a trade-off," Addy said, to the accompaniment of more paper noises. "I wanted to ask you about this paragraph, I plan on submitting it for the-"

"Hold on, what do you mean you wouldn't know?" CJ asked, quickly adding, "I mean, I'm out of line, but that's par for the course these days, so spill."

Toby couldn't stop himself from tensing up. CJ often joked about her misfortunes, but usually in a combative way. That remark of hers had its roots in defeatism, which didn't bode well.

Her next words were hushed. "Wait, if it's related to an assault-"

"No, nothing like that," Addy interrupted. "My mother was sick through most of my teen years, and my dad was killed in an accident halfway through high school. According to my best friend, most of the guys didn't think it was worth trying to date me if things didn't work out. Too much pressure, you know? Can't dump the 'sad girl!'"

CJ and Addy paused their talk when Bruno and Leo stepped out of a nearby door. Toby pretended he was invisible as the two of them 'vigorously discussed' the idea of the President apologizing while walking past.

Toby had Thoughts about that, namely that he'd believed Jed Bartlet when he'd said he wasn't going to apologize to Toby during their talk about concealing the condition. The evening had still ended up with a begrudging but heartfelt apology, one that felt more real than anything the man would have done out of obligation. The President's apology had come from the heart, and it had come once it was clear that Toby had given up on any idea of getting one.

Bruno's strategy was never going to work unless they could come up with a way to replicate that situation, one where the President saw things from a different perspective and admitted he was sorry for choosing that particular path.

"So you were the sad, straight-laced high school girl, what about college?" CJ asked once Bruno's distinctive voice faded out of earshot. Addy must have made a face or something, because CJ said, "Humor me, OK? I personify 'that sad girl' lately."

"I put off college for a little while to take care of my mom. By the time we lost her, I was a little older than my classmates. Apparently, I was 'wife' material, the kind of girl you took home to your parents, not just a hookup." Addy's tone conveyed enough for Toby to picture the exact face she was probably making. He was lurking for insights into CJ, but he'd take the chance to learn a little more about Addy's life. "Problem was, everyone pretty much married their hookups, and I just threw myself into student government and classwork instead."

"Well, shit," CJ said. The hurt in her voice made Toby wince. "I'm sorry about your parents. As for the boyfriends, you're not-" she sighed and laughed, a raspy sound that was just shy of mournful. "You're not really missing much. Even if you had a pre-existing relationship, they tend to fall apart with the workload. You're probably better off staying above it all."

"Oh, don't get me wrong, I know what it's like to want, I just don't know what it's like to have," Addy said.

She sounded lonely, and Toby wished he could give her just the barest glimpse of what he thought of her, how much he thought of her, but if he did that, he'd be leaving his President without a key staffer at the worst possible time. It was enough to make a man crazy- but instead, he shut down that part of his mind, exiled it away, and kept eavesdropping.

"-sorry I couldn't cheer you up," Addy said.

"No, you did. I still have my dad, I love where I live, I've got a killer wardrobe…"

"And a job you love, don't forget! I can see that. Everyone can."

"Mmmhmm." CJ didn't sound very convinced. "Hey Toby, you awake over there? I have something to run by you," she suddenly said, very loudly.

He made a show of waking up, ignoring the spooked look on Addy's face. Soon he was swapping seats to the one beside her, and the three of them talked over various communication issues until the seatbelt sign went back on for the descent.

Note: I decided to skip over my favorite episode (Two Cathedrals) and the accompanying drama because I can't do better than the show did, and the sadness and uncertainty aren't placed well in the story arc. Some of the events in this season nestle so perfectly within that arc that I felt like it would be obvious how much those don't! RIP the GOAT, Mrs. Landingham. The slow burn is heating up, thanks for your patience!