This one comes right after the end of 100,000 Airplanes... and obviously I am still far too preoccupied with big brother Toby and little brother Sam.
It was well written; Toby had to admit that. Even if it had been an insane idea, even if they never could have used it… it was well written. He was glad Sam had done it. He was glad that, even after everything that had happened over the past few months, Sam was still Sam - mostly.
Sam had annoyed Toby from the moment he'd met him. He was a dreamer, an idealist with stars in his eyes and a firm belief that the right person in the right position could fix the world. But that wasn't what had annoyed Toby. That idealism and the beliefs that went with it Toby could relate to; it was the innocence that he just couldn't understand. Toby himself had grown so used to the world's eternal disappointments that he now expected them as a matter of course. But Sam… the little disappointments seemed to glance off of him, and he continued to go out to meet the world with a smile and an almost annoyingly sunny disposition. It had irritated Toby to no end - until the day he'd realized, to his great astonishment, that he wasn't irritated. He was worried. Someday, something would come down the line that would just hit Sam too damn hard, and it would break him. Bright, sunny Sam would be gone, and what they'd be left with instead would be… what? Another Toby? He couldn't let that happen. They already had one Toby; they didn't need a second one. They needed a Sam.
In the last few months, Toby had really thought that they might have lost that. Hell, the start of it had been his fault. It was the GDC speech that had done it. He hadn't told Sam about the drop-in beforehand because he didn't want the fight, and he hadn't thought Sam would take it as hard as he did. He should have known. Sam had put a lot of work into that speech, had been proud of it, and rightly so - and Toby had ruined it in just thirty short seconds. Sam had been hurt, but he'd gotten over it and moved on. But then, just a couple weeks later, he had learned of his father's twenty-eight year affair. And then there was President Bartlet's MS.
Sam wasn't Sam after that. He was quieter, more serious, even a bit short-tempered from time to time. Toby had worried more than ever - but it had only lasted until Manchester, when the President had at last apologized to the staff, had told them all how much he needed them, and Sam's eyes had lit up in a way Toby hadn't seen in a long time. The President had made a mistake, but he was still the man Sam had believed in for so long, and once he was able to see that, Sam was Sam again - or so Toby had thought.
He was different now. It was subtle; only the people who knew him best were likely to notice it. Toby had noticed. It had started as merely a slight suspicion, but Toby hadn't been surprised at all to learn that he'd been correct.
"Hey, Sam."
Sam was sitting at his desk, staring absentmindedly at his computer screen. He blinked, snapping out of whatever world of his own he was lost in, and looked up at Toby. "Hey." He rubbed his eyes, mustering up a smile. "We did good today."
"Yeah," Toby agreed.
Sam glanced back down at his laptop again for a moment, then slowly reached out and snapped it shut.
Toby watched him, frowning slightly and wondering. He had a question to ask. A few months ago, he knew exactly what the answer would have been - now, though, he wasn't so sure.
"What did you do with it, Sam?"
"What?" Sam asked, his head tilted slightly to one side.
"The paragraph about curing cancer you wrote for the President… what did you do with it?"
Sam looked away, fiddling with a pen that lay near his hand. "I deleted it." He hesitated for a moment, then added, "It was a pipe dream. We'll never really do anything like that. There was no reason to keep it." He finally looked up at Toby again. "Right?"
Not for the first time in recent days, Toby looked him in the eye and what he saw there worried him. But now wasn't the time to bring it up. Right now, he just needed to get Sam out of his office. "You know, everyone's still celebrating over in Josh's bullpen," he said, nodding vaguely in the direction of the door. "I think he was looking for you. You should go… you know…"
Sam raised an eyebrow. "You are familiar with the proper usage of the word 'fun,' aren't you?"
Toby glared at him. "Just get going."
Sam raised his hands in mock surrender, standing up from his desk and moving around Toby to the door. "All right, I'm going!" As he walked away, he called back over his shoulder, "You could come too, you know. Fun wouldn't kill you!"
Toby rolled his eyes as he watched him go. Then, as soon as he was out of sight, Toby closed the door and headed for Sam's desk. There was something he needed to find.
Toby sat back and inspected his handiwork, proofreading it one more time, glancing back and forth between the laptop screen and the crumpled sheet of paper next to it as he read. Finally satisfied with his efforts, he named the file and saved it in Sam's drafts folder. It had only taken him a few minutes to find the copy of the paragraph that Sam had printed out for the President crumpled up in his trash can, and not much longer than that to retype it word for word.
Once upon a time, Sam would have kept that paragraph. He would have held onto it, just in case. And maybe he would never need it - but maybe someday when he needed the reminder, he'd find it and remember the things he'd once believed in - and with any luck, their Sam would always stay their Sam.