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.
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.
Also I really hated how Jed just kind of moved on from Leo and the heart attack. I really did think the character behaved badly and was never called to account on it. Not really in my opinion anyway.
And we have less than ten chapters to go now!
I don't plan on going much into S7 for obvious reasons so Season 6 will be the most covered one in this story.
Future Perfect
Chapter 19-Good Man In A Storm
In which Jake's PTSD isn't getting better even though he, Donna and Leo are all back in the White House. There is a trip to China on the horizon and CJ is still struggling to make the work life balance work.
Jake was okay…
That was what he was telling himself anyway, that he was okay. He was up, he was walking and he was back in the West Wing prepared to sit in the conference room and do a mountain of schoolwork.
Well…admittedly the last bit was optional but he was walking down to Josh's office gritting his teeth with every step when the man himself came out looking harried and looking no doubt for a Donna who was not there.
Josh opened his mouth caught Carole's eye turned and then saw him.
"Jake!"
"Hey Josh"
"You look…great"
"Very convincing"
"No seriously mate" Josh said embracing him as gently as he could. "It's really good to see you back here"
Jake swallowed.
"Thanks Josh"
"I hear Donna is coming in today too"
"Is she out the chair?"
"No but she wants to work and I need her…I think her filing system might have been a bit…"
"Destroyed?"
"Ah…I didn't want to let her in on just how much I missed her."
Considering Donna was well aware that Josh had flown to Germany for her (in the same way she had driving to Virginia and begged eight different secret service guys to get to him) Jake supposed that Donna must see what they all saw but then again…
He sighed and then let Josh slink off and he sat down in the bullpen looking down at his hand and seeing it shake.
He was still not used to this.
But he was fine.
He was fine.
He was fine.
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?
He swallows and tries to look at his books but there are doors slamming all over the place and he is not okay. Jake swallows trying to get rid of the taste in his mouth but he is not okay…he shouldn't be here, he shouldn't…he knows that he should not be here…
"Jake?"
He looks up eyes white with fear to see a gunman—
No…no it's Ainsley. Ainsley with her baby on her hip. The two of them stare at him and Jake wonders what he must look like to get that look etched on the face of Ainsley Haynes.
"Jake?"
"Yeah?"
"Gracie wanted to say hi"
"Oh" he said staring at the baby. She was no longer a baby she was a toddler now on her mother's hip and she was all big with gold curls and big blue eyes. Jake watched her for a second and then waved back and she gave him a smile. There was an innocence in the baby that Jake felt he wanted to steal from her even though it was totally irrelevant. But it was better to do it now than to do it later right? To snatch away the innocence before you believed that the world was good and then realised only too late that it wasn't.
"Hi" he said smiling. "Sorry Ainsley I wasn't…I mean…" he pointed at the door and Ainsley her face creased with sympathy nodded and then gently shut the door on them. Jake was under no illusion with Ainsley. She liked him and he liked her and she was a great lawyer but she didn't bullshit you and she didn't bullshit his Dad so he imagined that she was straight off to find him right now.
Couldn't be his Mom…she was too busy.
And that was the other crux of the matter.
As selfish as it was.
He wanted his Mom to recognise that he was not okay.
Was that too much to ask?
The numbing shock of war is behind me now.
Pain has taken it's place. Hurts to move, hurts to breathe.
Even stars die eventually. This one called Earth will die soon enough. And we don't know anything about it.
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
"Hey Jake"
"Hey Donna"
She looked at him and he thought that he could feel eons of pressure in her gaze. She read him well…cut him to the quick with what he was feeling and what he was seeing and what he was going through. This was Donna who was there with him and he looked away suddenly ashamed because at least he was up and walking and she for the next six months was still confined to a chair.
"Don't do that" Donna said looking at him sharply. "Do not do that Jake, don't look at me like that, you went through something the same just as I did. You don't get to pretend that I am the worst off because of some bullshit excuse of being okay. I am not having a Josh Jr running around pretending that he is running the government when instead he is dying inside. I won't have that. I don't want that. So don't give me that look. How are you doing?"
"I have two new secret service agents who live with me now. Mom has four and a personal car, I can barely walk, haven't seen my Dad in two weeks, haven't seen my Mom in longer and I am breaking at every loud noise I hear and shaking at every corner. So…there is that"
There was a pause as she sat there and then Donna nodded.
"So roughly the same as me" she said nodding. "Minus the Mom and Dad thing. Mine spent a week convincing me that this job is too dangerous and that if I'd have played my cards right I could have been the wife of a doctor by now and they'd have grandchildren not shrapnel wounds"
"Jesus Donna"
"Ah they don't mean to be cruel. It's just…fear makes people do shitty things"
Jake considered what she was saying and then nodded.
"Yeah" he said finally. "Fear makes people do real shitty things"
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.
Ironically it was Josh that found him in the bathroom.
He was sat on the floor and he was face down in it and Josh slipped in past Charlie who had come for a piss and found him. Josh who sat down next to him as he laid there cool marble under his cheek and tried to remember how to breathe again.
He didn't even know what set him off.
Josh sat down next to him and then sighed pushing his knees up by his chest.
"For me it was the music"
Jake said nothing.
But he listened.
And Josh knew it.
"The music in the lobby…it sounded like sirens. Sometimes it still does. I have tricks I can use to cope with it. The music in the restaurant that reminded me and that was as boring as you can get. I don't like going to the carol concert now and Donna held my hand when Hail To The Chief was playing during the ceremony. But it's fine, because once you know you've got the issue you can work on it"
"It's humiliating"
"Kid I put my fingers through a glass window that's humiliating."
Jake dragged himself off the floor. It took more of an effort than he wanted to admit.
"I don't know what to say"
"You don't have to say anything" Josh said. "You've been through a massive trauma. There's nothing wrong in admitting that you're not okay with that."
"Leo's had a heart attack"
"What's that got to do with it?"
"Seems trivial in comparison" Jake said shrugging.
Josh watched him for a second and then smacked him hard on the back of the head.
"Ow!"
"Your lucky that was me and not Leo" Josh warned. There was a pause and then.
"I'm going to tell you a story. And it was told to me by a wise man and he was wiser than me…wiser than I will ever be." He said and then he began.
"This guy's walking down the street when he falls in a hole. The walls are so steep he can't get out.
"A doctor passes by and the guy shouts up, 'Hey you. Can you help me out?' The doctor writes a prescription, throws it down in the hole and moves on.
"Then a priest comes along and the guy shouts up, 'Father, I'm down in this hole can you help me out?' The priest writes out a prayer, throws it down in the hole and moves on
"Then a friend walks by, 'Hey, Joe, it's me can you help me out?' And the friend jumps in the hole. Our guy says, 'Are you stupid? Now we're both down here.' The friend says, 'Yeah, but I've been down here before and I know the way out.'"
Josh nodded his head and Jake stared and then.
"I don't—"
"It means that while Leo has a job I have a job and while I am putting one foot in front of the other you are. And the rest…we can figure out"
Jake was not sure that was what it meant at all but he was too tired to argue. He nodded and dropped his head to Josh's shoulder letting his eyes close and the sound of screaming fill his ears…and that was where he was when his father coming with Sam at a very fast powerwalk as not to alarm the secret service arrived.
And there you go see you next time.
Next Chapter-Toby and Jake share a moment and then the former goes to find CJ to brutally inform her of what is happening with her son. Mentions of PTSD.