Author: Regency
Title: God Lay Me Down To Sleep
Spoilers/season: Anything up to "A Constituency of One"
Category: Drama/Angst
Rating: PG-R
Pairing: I don't know. Jed/Abbey maybe.
Summary: God Lay Me Down To Sleep; I Pray The Lord My Soul To Keep.
If I Should Die Before I wake; I Pray The Lord My Soul To Take. If I
Should Live For another Day; I Pray The Lord To Guide My way.
Goodbye, Amen, and Halleluiah.
Author's Notes: This first few parts are to be solely from Jed's PoV.
At least that is what I intend. Abbey and Zoey are still gone to New
Hampshire. Everything is as is.
I'll try to finish the post as soon as I hit home, but it's not a
promise. I have school work due tomorrow.
Be warned, this post was better until my mom leaned over the keyboard
and, accidently hit the delete button teice. I lost everything amd
undo was useless then.
Disclaimer: I own anyone you don't recognize. Everything else is that
genius, Aaron Sorkin's.
~~~~~~~~~~~
God Lay Me Down To Sleep
I pace restlessy around the Oval Office. I'm too tired to work, too wired to sleep. Even if I wasn't, I'm sure I would find no solace in the emptiness of the Residence tonight.
I have billions of lives in my hands as we speak, yet the only
people I really care about want nothing to do with me. Much less do
they want their fate in my hands. Every step I take feels like one
closer to the grave that has reached for me so eagerly for so long,
it seems.
In my mind's ear, the world screams for justice in the face of my
many-committed sins. The dead of which their blood stains my hands or
my pen, for lack of better term, plead for equal bidding. They demand
that the one who took them away from their life, their youth, their
loves and their children pay. That one is me.
I'm not selfish enough to ask if I haven't paid enough. Is the loss of my wife and youngest child so diminshed to me you must ask? No,
but the feeling is. The feelings I have felt have been at best
etching, maybe litte more than empathy. The moment Abigail looked at
me with such stone-cold hate and contempt and told me she blamed me I
was numb to and since then. But only to that. Everything else in this
self-preserving world has fallen into my lap and has proceeded to
slowly crush my soul. And in all of this, the one thing I crave that
I lack is sleep. Yet, everytime I close my eyes, they flash by. All
of them. Every soldier, sailor, airmen, and marine. Everyone that
I've sent to die; snd every one that has died or has come back as
someone they never imagined they could by. A killer, a quadraplegic,
a paraplegic, an amputee, an ex-prisoner-of-war. Everything they
never should have been. Everything I made them be. A unbelievable
number have tried to kill me afterwards...for what they've become,
for what they've lost as a result.
They've never succeeded. I can't decide whether that's good or not. At least I'd be asleep. There's an advantage to death. I can't help the bitter laugh that escapes.
It's good I'm alone or others would worry if their President was
doing so well. And to tell you the truth, I wouldn't answer simply
because I wouldn't realize they were talking to me. I don't feel like
a president or the leader of the Free World. But that's what I do,
what...who I am. I can no more separate the man from the office than
one can separate the soldier from human heart.
I finally see that no good can come from pacing a ditch into my
Presidential Seal. I'm going to the Residence.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I rest my head on the pillow beside Abbey's and I can still smell
her here. Could it be real that she was gone already and for so long?
Was it really? It was and yet my grief at that simply slides off of
me like water on plastic. I feel the fight in every limb. The tips of
my nerve endings snap and crackle with what only can be the self-fury
I'm hiding from myself.
Who am I furious with? With the wife who got tired of what this job was doing to her family and took them away from it after it was
already too late? Or am I angry at myself for not realizing that no
longer included me? I don't know. I don't care. I really don't. I
just want to not be this...man. He has nothing. He is nothing, but a
voice for various useless hidden agendas and a face and name to blame
when the shit hits the fan and the Republicans split.
He doesn't even have his family anymore. What I would give to sleep,
and just not wake up. No, I'm not delusional, though I am mildly
stressed. I would give anything to give them a release from their
binds as his, my family. They deserve so much better.
I can feel the sleep clouding my monotone thoughts. I miss Abbey, so much. My wife, the love of my life. If not the first, definitely the
last.
With final consciousness, I whisper..."God Lay Me Down To Sleep..."I feel myself fading before ever getting beyond that.
I wonder if my wish should come true and I don't awaken, will the
Lord keep my soul? If he won't, who will?
Title: God Lay Me Down To Sleep
Spoilers/season: Anything up to "A Constituency of One"
Category: Drama/Angst
Rating: PG-R
Pairing: I don't know. Jed/Abbey maybe.
Summary: God Lay Me Down To Sleep; I Pray The Lord My Soul To Keep.
If I Should Die Before I wake; I Pray The Lord My Soul To Take. If I
Should Live For another Day; I Pray The Lord To Guide My way.
Goodbye, Amen, and Halleluiah.
Author's Notes: This first few parts are to be solely from Jed's PoV.
At least that is what I intend. Abbey and Zoey are still gone to New
Hampshire. Everything is as is.
I'll try to finish the post as soon as I hit home, but it's not a
promise. I have school work due tomorrow.
Be warned, this post was better until my mom leaned over the keyboard
and, accidently hit the delete button teice. I lost everything amd
undo was useless then.
Disclaimer: I own anyone you don't recognize. Everything else is that
genius, Aaron Sorkin's.
~~~~~~~~~~~
God Lay Me Down To Sleep
I pace restlessy around the Oval Office. I'm too tired to work, too wired to sleep. Even if I wasn't, I'm sure I would find no solace in the emptiness of the Residence tonight.
I have billions of lives in my hands as we speak, yet the only
people I really care about want nothing to do with me. Much less do
they want their fate in my hands. Every step I take feels like one
closer to the grave that has reached for me so eagerly for so long,
it seems.
In my mind's ear, the world screams for justice in the face of my
many-committed sins. The dead of which their blood stains my hands or
my pen, for lack of better term, plead for equal bidding. They demand
that the one who took them away from their life, their youth, their
loves and their children pay. That one is me.
I'm not selfish enough to ask if I haven't paid enough. Is the loss of my wife and youngest child so diminshed to me you must ask? No,
but the feeling is. The feelings I have felt have been at best
etching, maybe litte more than empathy. The moment Abigail looked at
me with such stone-cold hate and contempt and told me she blamed me I
was numb to and since then. But only to that. Everything else in this
self-preserving world has fallen into my lap and has proceeded to
slowly crush my soul. And in all of this, the one thing I crave that
I lack is sleep. Yet, everytime I close my eyes, they flash by. All
of them. Every soldier, sailor, airmen, and marine. Everyone that
I've sent to die; snd every one that has died or has come back as
someone they never imagined they could by. A killer, a quadraplegic,
a paraplegic, an amputee, an ex-prisoner-of-war. Everything they
never should have been. Everything I made them be. A unbelievable
number have tried to kill me afterwards...for what they've become,
for what they've lost as a result.
They've never succeeded. I can't decide whether that's good or not. At least I'd be asleep. There's an advantage to death. I can't help the bitter laugh that escapes.
It's good I'm alone or others would worry if their President was
doing so well. And to tell you the truth, I wouldn't answer simply
because I wouldn't realize they were talking to me. I don't feel like
a president or the leader of the Free World. But that's what I do,
what...who I am. I can no more separate the man from the office than
one can separate the soldier from human heart.
I finally see that no good can come from pacing a ditch into my
Presidential Seal. I'm going to the Residence.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I rest my head on the pillow beside Abbey's and I can still smell
her here. Could it be real that she was gone already and for so long?
Was it really? It was and yet my grief at that simply slides off of
me like water on plastic. I feel the fight in every limb. The tips of
my nerve endings snap and crackle with what only can be the self-fury
I'm hiding from myself.
Who am I furious with? With the wife who got tired of what this job was doing to her family and took them away from it after it was
already too late? Or am I angry at myself for not realizing that no
longer included me? I don't know. I don't care. I really don't. I
just want to not be this...man. He has nothing. He is nothing, but a
voice for various useless hidden agendas and a face and name to blame
when the shit hits the fan and the Republicans split.
He doesn't even have his family anymore. What I would give to sleep,
and just not wake up. No, I'm not delusional, though I am mildly
stressed. I would give anything to give them a release from their
binds as his, my family. They deserve so much better.
I can feel the sleep clouding my monotone thoughts. I miss Abbey, so much. My wife, the love of my life. If not the first, definitely the
last.
With final consciousness, I whisper..."God Lay Me Down To Sleep..."I feel myself fading before ever getting beyond that.
I wonder if my wish should come true and I don't awaken, will the
Lord keep my soul? If he won't, who will?