Title: Gone
Rating: G, Child... whatever you call it
Disclaimer: I, sadly, don't own them, otherwise they wouldn't all be getting destroyed by a nutcase...
Authors Prattle: Oh tra lala, I was inspired so here is what I wrote. This is my first story like this, so please let me know what you think! All mistakes are mine, as I don't have anyone but my handy-dandy spellcheck to look for mistakes for me.
On with the story!

-Gone-

Walking down the stairs, she smiles and waves, clinging to her husbands arm, just like any good politicians wife would. But then at night, at night she sits in the room opposite her husband and wonders what it would be like if he did love her, if this marriage wasn't simply to preserve his political stance.

She knows, of course, that he will always love Abbey, and that Abbey was more a part of him than she will ever be. And some nights that bothers her, it bothers her more than she can explain to anyone. All she wants is one night, one night where she and he can truly be a married couple, where they can at least pretend to be in love.

Shaking hands with every person in the room, she beams radiantly and accepts the applause and the compliments. But during the day, while she sits in the office that was once occupied by a woman who prefered to be called "Doctor" instead of "Ma'am", she can't help but wonder why she and her new husband don't communicate. He rarely speaks when they are alone, and any inquries are dismissed with a shrug or a grunt, never the direct response given to others around him.

She understands that it must be hard, grieving for the woman his life was devoted to, while being married to another woman, a woman that was practically thrust into his world without anyone so much as considering that he may not be ready. Or maybe they had considered and just decided that putting her at his side would help.

Either way, they had disrupted the fragile balance that he had been maintaining.

Ever since the quick marriage ceremony that had been performed three short weeks after Abbey's passing, his entire demenor had changed. Even the very day of Abbey's passing he had been able to smile, for it was what she would have wanted. And after her funeral, he had shown such promise, such a will to let her beautiful memory rest in peace. But now. Now he is silent. Now he sits in his office, his office of utmost importance, and simply signs papers, allowing Leo to run this White House utterly and completely alone.

She still cannot understand how it had become her fault that he was like this. She hadn't asked for anyone to arrange a marriage with the president. She had, in fact, been perfectly content to serve, to give all of her time and personal life up. It had been an honor. Working with men who had once reguarded her as a friend, a confidant. But even that had changed. Where there had once been companionship and laughter there was now stony silence. And somehow, in some odd way, she has come to accept the blame for what he has become. Maybe it's just the loyalty she still feels for him and the office he holds. She doesn't really know for certain.

All she does know is that this, this lifelessness, this hollow emptiness, is all, in someway, her fault. And everyday her guilt consumes a little piece of her, leaving her a little less vibrant, a little less willing to make an effort to change anything in the world.

After three months of this. After three months of living in a world that has forgotten all that could have been, she sits alone in a darkened bedroom. And she decides that maybe this really is the only way out, that it is the only way to make him smile again.

So she lifts a suitcase. And leaves him a letter on his pillow.

And with a feeling of resignation and resentment, C.J. Bartlett walks out of the White House to find somewhere she can truly call home.