Author's Notes: For a small post-premiere challenge. Just drabble, but it got me into the mood to actually care about the show when very little else of the premiere did... for the gang over at TWoP. Lyrics are from Michelle Featherstone's "Stay".
"We can't do this."
He heard his own voice crack and he knew that it would be moments before he would lose the tenuous hold he had upon himself.
You can't do this, he thought, looking in her eyes honestly for the first time in months. Don't do this to me.
He watched her and held his breath, because her presence was magnetic, still. Their time apart had done nothing to dampen the visceral reaction she caused in his solar plexus when she entered a room. Across from him, she was golden and confident and ... ethereal.
You can't do this.
Months away from her had made him tired and angry. He snapped and shouted in ways that even the White House staff had never experienced on a bad day. Age crawled upon him, into his muscles and down his spine, dampening his spring and making him wary of everything that wasn't of the campaign. There was no longer the "personal", only the "professional". There were no birthdays or anniversaries and someone else always got his coffee. It was all just business, now.
He pulled the file from his desk and began to read off quotes. When he had first started the file, he had been angry. They were attacks upon his man, his campaign. But as the file grew, so did his pride, because she was right. She was good.
I can't do this.
She was good and she was exactly what he needed. Just as she had been exactly what he needed eight years ago in that dusty office in New Hampshire, when his candidate couldn't remember his staffer's names, let alone the reasons why he was campaigning. Just as she had been exactly what he needed in the months after Roslyn, when he wanted to give up and die, and there was so little to really cling to amidst the pain. Just like she was exactly what he needed when she left.
That was the rub. He had yet to determine which hurt more – the abandonment or being found again.
The campaign needed her. He desperately missed Sam and CJ and Toby and the days when doing this was fun, when idealism was king, when they thought that being in the White House meant they could make a difference. She had always believed that... even after Gaza, she had kept a little of that optimism. It was hidden, but it was there.
The campaign needed her.
"...and if you think I don't miss you every day..."
The words came out of his mouth before he could stop them. The elephant in the room suddenly had a name and was standing center stage before a captive crowd. He had sworn to himself that he would never admit his pain to her, because in doing so he acknowledged to himself, that it existed.
But it was done. He was no longer Superman, and his kryptonite was sitting in a leather chair not five feet away.
Cursing himself, he watched the bowed blonde head and scrambled for words.
"I could make a couple of calls..."
Her gesture cut him off. It was hollow offer, anyway. He would no more let her work for someone else, smile in someone else's office, glide through someone else's door, than he would let her come back into his life.
If he lived in this misery, so would she.
As he stood in the doorway watching her leave, he felt a sick wave of deja vu flooding through his system. Their pattern of coming and going, weaving in and out of one another's lives, was permanently tattooed upon his very being like an addiction. A craving for that which is so beautifully destructive that you can't help but want to dive in over and over again.
And yet, once again, he was watching her walk away, his feet rooted to the floor, his clenched teeth holding in the words he had shoved down so deep he wasn't sure he could bring them out into the light of day.
Later that night, as he sat in the warm evening air of his Georgetown neighborhood, he wondered what she was doing. Did she mourn, like he did? Did she see the past, flitting in and out, walking them down the road to that very moment this afternoon when he turned her away? Did she know he was more afraid of having her leave than asking her to stay?
He wanted to know the answers to those questions and, yet, he wished to remain ignorant. To know he caused her pain would only add to the utterly unbearable burden he now carried with him. Not knowing was the only gift he would give to himself in the new life he had created.
From down the street, a soft melody floated on the humid air. He took a sip of beer and strained for the words, which were soft and sweet, the piano quiet in the background.
If I was sincere
And whispered in your ear
Would you still be here?
Would you stay?
Would you stay with me?
Standing up on the steps, he looked down the street in the direction of the music. Smiling softly to himself, he nodded to the elephant and went inside.