Hi, so here is the sequel to Perhaps Love! I am so excited to get this out and finish Season 5-7.

So...the usual. This will not be episode specific, certain episodes will be skipped. Dialogue will not be the same. If that's something you look for in a story then please don't start because you won't get it here.

Also in my West Wing Universe Sam doesn't leave and Ainsley joins full time. Will is in the story...so far...Mandy is not and never will be. Andy had Toby's babies via embryo's not by sex. Also Jake is bisexual.

Pairings are CJ/Toby (eventually) Josh/Donna, Sam/Ainsley, Jed/Abby.

Disclaimer-Nothing but Jacob is mine.

It is advised that you read Perhaps Love before you read this.

And this is 28 chapters long.

And there will always be swearing in this story. If this offends you then please don't read.

Also I do not do Private Messaging anymore, any questions stick them in a review and I will get back to you next chapter note.

And look...I don't like Amy. I don't like her. Nothing against the actress but as a feminist, pro choice woman (and damn proud of it) she was so annoying. In Season 5 I skip her scenes because she doesn't get it. No disrespect to anyone who likes her but she was wrong for Josh and wrong for the show. Sorry, not sorry. That's just my opinion, you are of course completely entitled to yours.

Also I know that we are heading towards the end of Season 5 and into Israel/Gaza. I ask that you please keep your comments respectful as I will try and be respectful also. That story takes place in the West Wing Universe and has no reflection on today's life.

I wrote this chapter while on a Yellowstone/1883/1923 Binge. Some of the quotes in italic are from that show in case you wonder-none of it is mine though some of the words have changed and adapted. Anything in italics is in Jake's first point of view.

Not a massive fan of Kate either, she gets better in Season 6-7 but I really don't like her in Season 5 early Season 6. Personally I think she plays too big a role in the Jed/Leo breakdown.

This will be the last one I think with these quotes too.


Future Perfect

Chapter 14-A New Breeze Blowing

Toby's thoughts as the President changes his speech mid air and refuses to deal with the military. Sam meanwhile is mired deep in a conflict of his own.


I remember the first time that I saw it, tried to find words to describe it. But I couldn't. Nothing had prepared me. No books, no teachers. Not even my parents, I had heard a thousand stories…but none could describe this place. It must be witnessed to be understood. And yet, I've seen it. And I understand it even less than when I first cast eyes on this place.

To know it you must walk it, bleed until it's dark, drown in it's rivers. Then it's name becomes clear. Gaza. Gaza is hell and there are demons everywhere. But if this is hell then I must be here for a reason. And that is because I am already dead.

I'd know death since I was a child. It's everywhere. But it had never touched me like it had touched me today. It had never placed it's finger on my heart, it's brand on my soul. Today my eyes died, my innocence died, ironic that it took this long really. I can now see the world through my mother and father's eyes in a way that a shooting never could. Yes. Freedom has fangs. And it sunk them in me.

Choices have claws. And they had dragged me into pieces.

And bombs…bombs have shrapnel and they have obliterated my world to pieces the same way that they have obliterated…well…you know.

Don't you?


His son is breathing and they tell him that is enough, his son is alive and they tell him that is enough and then Donna crashes and codes and Josh dies on the floor and Toby forces him to sit in Jake's room and talk about politics, it's the worst thing that any of them can ever do but they talk and they talk about politics. He knows that they have too, when all of this is over they have to go back to a White House with a President who is slowly losing his grip or so it seems.

Sam rings and gives him his best estimation

"He doesn't like the idea of bombing civilians, half of the Middle East has been giving him advice, Hutchinson is all for detonating a nuke himself and Kate Harpers coming out with soundbites that my daughter could do better at, and Ainsley's sure that if we strike and hit civilians the UN will go nuts, we've been in and out of the powder keg for so long that a war crimes tribunal…" he trails off and Josh swears. CJ watches him watch Jake and Toby tries to think, knows that he has to think and yet he can't quite seem to make it work.

"Define soundbite?"

"Plague of Jealousy and Hatred"

"Fucks sake"

"I know" Sam says quietly. "And I would say something but he…I mean the whole speak was reworked on the fly and Carole couldn't get the draft back which means they all know what he was going to say…the Speaker is kicking off and I know this resolution is going to go against us, I mean really, really against us and Leo is not even in the room—"

Josh's head shot up then and he paused. Toby dragged his eyes off Jake and then turned them to look at CJ. CJ was watching too, never before in the history of this administration had there been a gap that could not be bridged via the President and Leo. Now since this, since the bomb, since Kate Harper there was a wedge that was growing.

"And Camp David?"

"Israeli's say they won't go if the Chairman is there, anyway getting them there is not the issue, the issue is going to be what to do if we do get them there, Israeli's wont give up Jerusalem and you don't have to be a Rhode Scholar to know that the Palestinians won't do a deal without it, coupled with the tanks surrounding the compound and—"

"Yeah we get it"

"I don't know what else to do" Sam said sounding frustrated, "I know I shouldn't be asking but I don't know what else to do. I cannot go to Leo because Leo won't take anything to him that's not a strike, I can't take anything to the President that's not peace and Kate Harper is irritating me and if she' s irritating me then Ainsley's that close you know…and the press are worse, Carole's doing well considering but she's not coping, CJ I think you need to get someone in—"

"Annabeth Scott" CJ said flatly.

"Pixie woman?"

"She's small but she can pack a punch, send her in and make sure that they know I will be back when I'm back I don't want them calling me at all Sam"

"And the widows?"

"Don't stop the widows talking to the press, we can't have them say they support us when we don't know what the hell the President is doing"

Unspoken was the understanding that the President might have lost his mind here, they had been attacked and everyone knew there had to be a strike back and this was not the region nor was it the time to do a dance over tea and papyrus.

Josh walked to the door as flowers arrived and he took them. Nurse Ratchet shot them a look but Josh shut the door in her face and threw her his nastiest look and she disappeared. Toby watched him as he took the card and then he saw the change in his face. Jake's heart machine beeped in comfortable silence, soon he would be dragged off the drugs Toby knew but for right now that machine was keeping his son alive and he was grateful for it.

But he saw the change in Josh's face and he felt his stomach plunge again. Whatever was on that card it was not good.

"Sam" he said cutting through the conversation. "We might need you to go and get Leo, I think something's happened over here"


The numbing shock of war is behind me now.

Pain has taken it's place. Hurts to move, hurts to breathe, the back of my head throbs. I lost the world through the hazy lens of broken bone and body and it somehow seems to make it clearer.

What is death anyway? What is this thing that all humans and animals regardless of age, race, creed, religion, gender, class share? What is the difference between me the seventeen year old boy dying on the dusty road of Gaza and Simon Donavon dying on the dirty floor of a seven eleven? What's the difference between me and Harrison's father dying in a flat spin heading out to sea? What's the difference between my death, hopefully quick and the long slow one that my grandfather is going through where mind rots quicker than the body.

Even stars die eventually. This one called Earth will die soon enough. And we don't know anything about it.

I asked my father once about dying. He pushed it off as a joke and then when I was older tried to explain it. I didn't know then that it was like this, that death could come for you even here, fathers here in Israel and Gaza tell their children about death before they can even walk, they don't have a choice, death is all around them doesn't matter which side your on it's a fact of life, I have been here for three days trailing Donna and her friend and I have seen enough and heard enough to know that to live here has a degree of risk that nobody can ever understand.

I saw it in the face of that mother who woke up to get her children breakfast and found a bomb in her kitchen. To the young people not much older than me who know in this era of proclaimed peace they could die at any moment. I can see it in the face of the martyr Colin told me about, the one with two small children who thinks that her cause is more important than her life.

I don't understand this place, I don't understand why I am here. But I am and now I am dying. I am not the same person I was when I got on that plane that day excited and thinking that this is school project, I didn't know what was going on then.

To be fair I don't know what is going on now. I just know that things are not the same as they were before.

The world doesn't care that if you die, it won't listen to your screams, if you bleed then the hungry ground will drink it, doesn't matter if it happens here in the dusty road or on a sidewalk in America. It's been that way for centuries, through World Wars and Kings and Queens and battles that have lasted a hundred years and taken out a generation of men. Through rebellions and fallen dynasties and countries being founded and created and ended. Monarchies falling and their countries with them.

The world doesn't care about me. I didn't understand that before today. I didn't understand that before I came here. I am nothing in the grand scheme of things. I Jake Cregg-Zegiler are nothing in the grand scheme of the world. I am not even a tiny pin prick.

I did not understand that before.

I understand that now.#


"I've heard it all now" Toby said quietly. "Josh conducting secret meetings with the Palestinian's in Germany, in a restaurant…Christ he's going to do something stupid you just know it"

CJ smiled and then.

"Did you call Harrison?"

"I called his mother and then I called Anna and then I called Anna's Dad and then I asked Andy to pop round when she got back. Why?"

"Because I've been sat here watching my baby and I know we have to go back."

"Camp David?"

"You think he needs us?"

"I think…" he shook his head. "He doesn't need press up there"

"So I can stay?"

"Yes"

"But you have to go"

There was a pause as Toby looked at her and he knew that she could see the depths of his anguish in his face. The truth was that he was in the rock and the hard place. CJ spoke once about serving two masters and he knew that he was doing the same, he had a duty to the President and he had a duty to his son.

"I don't want to go" he said finally.

"Wanting to do something isn't the same in this line of work"

"I know"

"Do you ever wish that we'd never done it?"

"No" he said shaking his head. "No but there is a part of me that is very glad that he cannot do another four years"

CJ smiled scrubbing a hand down her face and then.

"Ugh"

It didn't come from either one of them.

It came from the bed.


Germany. Quite a round trip I am making here isn't it? Breaking the fourth wall in two different continents, I had never been to Europe before. I had wanted to go but I didn't do the overseas trips. Not unless I had to. I had wanted to go to Helsinki but there had been a general consensus that I might have plunged the world into a new nuclear winter.

Granted I might have. I had a lot of questions for the ex KGB boss head of the Russian state.

Like seriously…were the rumours true about their toilet paper?

Oh God, this must be the drugs. I can barely see or feel anything. Andy is crying and I am on a plane heading away from that death and destruction to my parents who I imagine will cry in that contradictory way that parents do.

I hope not though. I don't think I would be able to stand it if I woke up to see my parents crying. They are arguably the strongest people in the world. They don't cry.

And then I think of Zoe, of the President and Mrs B keeping it together and then I want to go to sleep again. Everything hurts. I don't even know what happened.

I think I know what happened

And Harrison…oh my God Harrison. I love him, I really do think I love him. I know your not supposed to say that about your high school sweetheart unless you're in some backwoods town on an MTV special but I do love him. I love him so much I don't know what to do with it or where to put it.

Love. Love is a bit like freedom. Freedom and love. Accepting consequences, embracing them. Wrapping them around you like a warm blanket.

Freedom. To most it is an idea. An abstract dirty thing that pertains to control. That's not freedom I think, maybe that's independence. But not freedom. Freedom is a moment where nothing exists beyond what you are living. I have known freedom in the arms of Harrison. I am seventeen years old and I know freedom and I know love. That's no small feet for me as I lay here on this bed and bleed and listen to the beeping, as I am wheeled off and taken straight into surgery where Doctors look at me and determine weather or not I can survive.

I asked my grandfather once about heaven. My father couldn't give me a straight answer so I asked my grandfather, my grandfather who by the time he was my age had seen a thousand men and woman and children die like dogs in the street. My grandfather with numbers on his arm.

"There is no heaven to go to if your good and no hell to go to if your bad" he said quietly looking out over the office to see his son work in the West Wing. "You are very young son but soon you will understand that life is heaven and life is hell and they coexist. Right beside each other. And God…God takes form in the land"

They operate on me and I don't know if I will wake up. I find I don't care. Right now I don't hurt. That has to be something.

There is a moment where your dreams and your memories merge together and form a perfect world. That I think is heaven. I've had time to think about it caught in this half world of limbo while the world outside me falls to shit. I've had time to think about it when the President gives speeches about peace and promises an incredulous Leo McGerry that he can make peace in a land that has been at war for centuries.

I have thought about heaven and hell when I saw the mangled body of the most decorated man in the country next to me. When I saw Donna her blonde hair dyed pink with her blood.

Each heaven I think must be unique, special only too you. The land is filled with all you hold dear and the sky burns down your imagination.

My heaven is filled with untamed land, fresh air and a man that loves me. There are no storms here, no war, no politics and I am the only lightening.

My parents are not here yet.

Harrison is.

I take his hand, I smile.

I don't care what happens to me now. Maybe I will wake from this, maybe I will not.

Either way I have done what many people cannot do.

I have looked death in the eye, I have seen him smile, he had no fangs.

It was beautiful.

My name is Jake Cregg-Zeglier.

This is my heaven. This is my hell. This is my moment, my battle cry, my war and my peace.

And I am signing off.


It was like waking after a deep sleep. That was the only way to describe it. It felt like his eyelids were crazy glued shut as well but that was just that, he dragged them open though, he was used to the numb feeling, the way that everything felt as if it was pinned down, he was used to the way that it felt, used to the dead feeling. Didn't think that he wanted to be here when those drugs wore off.

But he dragged his eyes open and he saw first his father, his well loved face creased with worry but that smile on his face still there, he felt a hand in his and he let his eyes flicker to his Mom her face wet with tears her hair hastily thrown back and then he sighed.

"Your still here" he said and he knew that they had been here throughout, knew that throughout the aftermath they had been there with him, throughout Gaza, Germany, through the many snares and toils his parents had been there and as his Dad bent down to kiss his head and his Mom sobbed a little, Jake knew that despite the new breeze that was blowing somethings were never going to change and one of them was the love that his parents had for him, more fixed and permanent than anything, Presidents, bombs and even stars in the sky.

And he knew…he knew that he would survive.


And there you go, I hope you all enjoy and I will do my best to bring you the next chapter soon.

Next Chapter-Jake is up in hospital but slightly groggy when both of his parents are sent to Camp David, Josh stays behind which is both the best place to be in the world and the worst when Donna goes into surgery and Leo has a heart attack.