fic commentary #2: "no song has gone unsung"
no song has gone unsung, west wing fic (written for oro's five things challenge), zoey bartlet and one massive AU.
*
hello. this is commentary. i don't know why i'm introducing myself.
[No Song Has Gone Unsung]
because, see, Five Things That Happened to Zoey Bartlet is too plain for the likes of me. tangleofthorns gave me the title, and i know it's from some song, but i forget. all i know is that it was lovely.
by Tahlia; West Wing, PG-13, Zoey
Five things that never happened to Zoey Bartlet.
(for Oro's 100 Things That Never Happened challenge)
like, seriously. this was such a good idea.
this was also truly a group experience. bananasrock and tobiascharity let me bounce ideas off them and gave suggestions, and tangleofthorns kicked its butt into shape with a beta.
*
incidently, this is the only vignette not from zoey's point of view.
I. Children, go where I send thee
it's the name of a spiritual that my college choir sang for a wedding. peter, paul, and mary do a good version. i'm all for the irony of it, too-- because it's such a happy song, about the birth of Jesus and what-not and isn't-that-so-wonderful. and these vignette, well, isn't.
The nurse mumbles, "Excuse me," and "Pardon me," through a crowd of concerned faces in the waiting room and pushes on the doors to the prenatal intensive care unit. They've been there for days, weeks even; so has he, hand on the edge of the incubator, one finger running up and down his daughter's tiny, tiny chest. (At least now, she's larger than his hand.) He doesn't say a word.
my mom's best friend, her son was born something like five months premature. there's a photo of him in his father's hands-- literally. christopher was about the size of her husband's palm. it's the kind of thing that just sticks with you.
Today, however, she is rifling through a chart and she feels his presence beyond her. She turns, not at all startled, but surprised to see a Senator's face so fallen and sad. He asks if she is the nurse on duty, and she replies, "Yes, Senator," (because his face has been on television for as long as the people have been rotting in the waiting room chairs) and there's a spark of something in his face.
"Will she--" (Pause.) "Is she--" (Pause.) "How is she?"
The nurse saw his wife only once, because she doesn't normally work this shift, but Celia remembers that she was crying and her other daughter was old enough to try and comfort her mother.
"other daughter" being a reference to Ellie, not Liz. there's something about a daughter, even at that young age, afraid to comfort her own father. that's what i meant.
One glance at the chart: she can't possibly lie, but the truth isn't that much easier. "It's hard to say, Dr. Bartlet."
i like this. originally, she addressed him as "Mr. Bartlet," but it was later changed to Dr. and it works, you know? the nurse is obviously trying to treat him like a Father instead of a Senator, but she still can't drop the formality completely.
He sighs. "Please--" but then he's covering his face with the palm of his hand.
see, he notices what she's doing. but then he realizes that it doesn't matter.
Celia doesn't have the kind of answers that he needs; he already knows about her underdeveloped lungs, about the (slim) chances she will ever breathe without a machine, about the limits of modern medicine.
jed and his conscience.
He sways between her and the incubator, before waving his hands to wipe his slate and turning back to his dying baby daughter. (This is the truth they've been hiding from the cameras.)
in my head, the original version of this was jed addressing the press after her death, and the balancing act between being a public official and grieving privately. jed and abbey were supposed to be the kennedys. but then i remembered this was about zoey, not jed, and changed it around.
The nurse hears him apologizing, "I'm sorry, Zoey," over and over again, sounding more broken than the man who was elected to the New Hampshire Senate two months ago.
On the way out, she thinks she hears him say, "I used to hope you were a boy."
a reference to a passage in the tell-all Bartlet book from "H. Con 172," which claims jed had, ahem, special underwear, in hopes of finally having a boy. also, and this is somebody's fanon, but early on in my discovery of this fandom, i read a fic in which abbey had a miscarriage, and it was a son. always stuck in my head.
No, that's not what she heard.
Can't be.
a little value judgement on the nurse's part, perhaps?
*
part two: in which tahlia goes for the cliched thing-that-never-happened. although, i'm quite impressed at how real and not!schmultzy it turned out.
affectionately referred to in my notes as The One Where Zoey Gets Knocked Up.
II. Pack and get dressed, before your father hears us
radiohead, "exit music (for a film)." the meaning? like the name suggests, it was written after the band was sent the last half hour of "romeo & juliet," and appears during the end credits of the movie. the line itself refers to juliet's plea for romeo to leave through her window before her parents wake. i thought of charlie and zoey a little like romeo and juliet in these piece, sneaking around their (her) parents' backs, falling in love and facing the consequences.
also, ask Luna. i used to hear this line wrong. ;)
Zoey could put her hand on the wall and feel the stereo blaring next door.
i do this all the time. the crew guys nezt door love the blast their basses at three in the morning and my bed in right up against our shared wall. how pleasant.
She calls Charlie, is short and brief and yes, he's already suspicious; she throws the cordless on the bed, where it sinks into the sea of her comforter, and does just that-- raises her hand, with her palm flat against the cinderblocks. She's lost in the rhythmic beat that maybe on another day she could identify, so she misses the first time he knocks on the door.
yes, there are times when i know what song they're playing because i can recognize the bassline. you know you can do it, too.
The second knock is harder, more insistent; he's nervous. And she opens the door and kisses him right there, standing in the hallway, knowing she'll endure the stories later: she'll say, "fuck off," and push past them.
again, personal experience. well, no, not PERSONAL personal experience, but you know. our floor is very gossip-y. plus, hey, she's the president's daughter.
She kisses him hard, delaying the inevitable, and his fingers entwine with hers and he smiles when he says her name: "Zoey?"
One glance over his shoulder to Gina, and she pulls him into her room, slams her door.
like when Charlie goes to Zoey's dorm to apologize in, um, whatever that episode is. crap. i suck.
She collapses on her bed, but he's still standing there in the half-light, so she's going to have to say something eventually.
"There's," but she stops. Can't find the words. She tries, "I," but fails. Finally: "There's a thing."
aahh! kiss of death! using the phrase "a thing" in a fic!! except, it works, i think, because it's something zoey would say. and she's nervous, too. duh.
She can hear him breathing; the bass beat is gone. "Yeah?"
She hides her face in her hands for a minute, wiping away her fear; or, trying to. Then she says, "I'm late, Charlie."
this is all such a cop-out. fucking cliched dialogue. i am horribly unoriginal.
And, yes, it's the same conversation between thousands of couples on a thousand different college campuses.
see? i even hated it as i wrote it, but knew i couldn't come up with anything better. and there are only so many ways.
But then, Charlie isn't one of those boys without his wits. It hits him like a ton of bricks-- she sees it in his face-- but he doesn't play dumb, doesn't let his tongue get ahead of him.
of course, the one thing i refused to do was have him responded, "Late for what?" *smackshead*
She can't stand the silence, but he speaks before it kills her. "Okay."
"Charlie--"
He says it again, but the inflection is different: "Okay." Like he's trying to convince someone, maybe himself.
the image of charlie doing this (as well as him throughout this entire piece) is so CLEAR in my head.
Neither says a word. In the next room, someone turns the stereo back on, and the throbbing makes its way to her ears and suddenly, she can't bear it. (There's a small twinge in her: is it the hormones?)
"Are you--" He stops. "Have you--" Pause; sigh. "I don't want this to come out the wrong way, but--"
She waves her hand to a plastic bag by her schoolbooks. "Stacey bought me one. Five, actually."
ok, so here's the thing: i can't say the words. you know, the words. "have you taken a test?" i hate hearing them, writing them, i don't know what. so his hesitation is my hesitation.
"Right." His brain takes a minute to catch up. "Wait, she didn't just go down the street, did she?"
this occurred to me halfway through. what the hell kind of story would it be if the president's daughter was seen buying a pregnancy test at a drugstore? the poor thing.
i guess the point is: this is as much about zoey getting knocked up as it is about her inability to lead a "normal" life.
She hates that this is the second time this question has come up today. "Of course not. Five different stores, in five parts of Washington and the surrounding area I hope to God she never visits again. She could have been shot or mugged or-- or--"
She doesn't really notice she's crying until she feels Charlie's arms around her. That their contact makes her register the salty lines running down her cheeks. He gathers her up and suddenly she's sobbing into his shoulder, letting the fear and the anxiety and everything wash over like a tidal wave. And then--
"Oh, God."
Charlie pulls back, leaning in close with his arms still on her shoulders. "What?"
"My dad. Oh, God." She can't begin to imagine the disappointment. "What am I going to say?" (To say nothing of what she'll have to tell CJ and what CJ will have to say to the press, because God knows the American public would love the story.)
i tried as hard as possible to make this about two kids afraid to tell their parents that they were pregnant. that she's the president's daughter is only an added piece of information. her "My Dad. Oh, God," isn't in reference to her father being the president at all. it's just that he's her father.
Charlie hugs her again, holding her tight, and into her hair she thinks she hears him mutter, "Later."
Eventually, she untangles herself from him, wiping the moisture from her face, and with one eye on the plastic bag, she declares, "Let's do this."
*
this one was inspired by a night of watching Requiem For A Dream. FUCKED UP MOVIE, YO. yes.
III. You ought to be praying, sinnerman
nina simone, "sinnerman," from the movie, The Thomas Crown Affair.
She swallows the tequila shot to wash away the taste of her own vomit in her mouth.
bartlet, in ITSOTG, "she booted all over the car. you know they're gonna charge me for that one."
It's been three months, but it hasn't gone away; the sight of Josh in a wheelchair, trying to smile under the lights of the cameras, only makes it stronger.
josh is one of only four other (real) characters that appear in this fic. (jed in part one, leo later in this one, charlie in part two, and jean-paul in part five.) anyway, he only gets this one line, but this is Josh, post-shooting. trying to be the same old sport that he was, but irrevocably changed.
i always thought zoey recovered a little too easily from Rosslyn. charlie, too, but charlie wasn't my concern here. personally, i'd be vaguely fucked up if my boyfriend got shot at because of me. so, while Josh went nutso and put his hand through a window, zoey dealt with her PTSD with drugs and alcohol. sniff.
It doesn't take long for the alcohol to affect her, and her body moves with slightly more feeling to the music in the crowded basement, and maybe it feels good.
ew. frat parties.
Maybe it feels good to feel so free after all this time, and to not care that there are at least two pairs of eyes watching her that aren't classmates of hers.
being her agents.
She stumbles through Georgetown and barely makes it to her floor before she's in the bathroom, vomiting. Maybe she cries a little, too. In the hallway, students are still breaking down boxes, unpacking their possessions for another year of learning. It occurs to her that she used to make fun of girls like her, the ones who came to college and got wasted on their first night.
i did that. the making fun, not the excessive drinking on the first night.
She's sure not to slam the door when she finally reaches her room, because it's almost four in the morning and Stacey is sleeping.
look! same roommate as before.
This happens more than once, and a few more times than she can remember.
that line is weird. i like the sentiment, but, i don't know. weirdness.
Charlie says she parties too much these days. (She likes to tell people it was she who finally broke it off, because that way she can make him something he was not, but he said, "Zoey," and she ran with it from there. She ran.)
this is a zoey that is very, very scared.
She tells him that his concept of fun is warped, and when he starts to argue, it occurs to her she feels a little hung-over from last night.
Josh almost loses it at Christmas, and this is the first time she tries cocaine.
i don't need to tell you that this is a reference to Noel.
A friend of a friend slips her an invitation to a party (because who wouldn't want to party with the President's daughter?), and she's sitting in the corner drinking eggnog when Billy Parsons invites her to the basement. "Merry Christmas, baby," and she doesn't miss his hand inching higher up her thigh as she leans over the mirror. It burns; oh sweet Jesus, it burns. "Jesus Christ, Billy. Make sure I don't do this again." Except, now she's less aware of what she's doing, and she lets him take her upstairs.
as if i'd know what taking cocaine does to you. a shot in the dark.
The new year comes and the dancing becomes more frenetic; the drugs become more familiar and the thrill becomes to wear off.
my notes? "Zoey's a drug addict!!"
Because she is her father's daughter, she learns the fine art of shrugging off her protection.
see: "In Excelsis Deo"
In the springtime, she finds herself in the basement of Billy's fraternity.
"Zoey--"
"Come on, you promised."
"I," but he stops. He takes two steps back and covers his face with his hand. For a moment, he resembles a decent human being. "I can't."
She can feel the anger pulsing through her, but then, that could be her body's cravings. "Why the hell not? I gave you seven hundred. I want my stuff."
It takes a little to get his words out. There's a long pause, and somewhere a bird is chirping, and then he says: "You're too emotional."
Anger. "What?" A beat, and she is suddenly defensive. "I don't know what you're talking about. Billy, please."
She's moved close, a hand on his arm, slowly moving up and down. He breaks from her, pushing her away. "Your dad...and then the funeral. It's on TV, Zoey. You're sad, you're angry, you feel betrayed, and now you want to score to help you forget that. I-- I can't."
the funeral being Mrs. Landingham's; the betrayal being bartlet's decision to run after he, no doubt, agreed with his family that he wouldn't.
With venom in her voice, "What the fuck is that, Billy, a conscience?"
Luna said, "aww. a dealer with a heart!" hee.
Her words are exacting, and they are precise. "Give it to me. I don't care, I'll give you an extra hundred, just do it."
i almost killed her in these next few paragraphs. but then i thought three deaths in one fic was a tad excessive. so i had her ALMOST die.
Later, her body will be strapped to a stretcher on CNN, MSNBC, and FoxNews, and the analysts will sigh and say what a broken family the Bartlets were. They will pump her stomach, and everyone from Baltimore to Seattle will know how much she took and when and how she hid the marks on her arms.
the irony is that she'll become another story, which is exactly what she was trying to escape.
She will be asleep and Leo will visit her, and much later, when she's old enough to know how stupid she was, he will say that he saw himself in her and it almost broke his heart.
(and mine, too. LEO!)
In the future, her therapist's voice will correct her-- not stupid; it's Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Even still, when it enters her bloodstream, her vision goes white and it is bliss.
an effect taken straight from Requiem for a Dream.
this is probably my favorite of the five. also, the one that got me my funniest feedback ever: "ZOEY BARTLET IS NOT A DRUG ADDICT." lmao
*
the first vignette i wrote. also a cop-out, when you think about it, because how obvious is THIS? geez. it's also a continuation of another fic i wrote, Face of the Enemy. (the trouble was how to make it that without making it completely necessary to read the first fic, too.) to top things off, it exists in the same universe as one of tobiascharity's Nancy vignettes. (more on that later.) like, whoa.
IV. One of these mornings, I'll be gone
moby, "one of these mornings." i have Without a Trace to thank for reminding me that this song existed.
She comes to before she can tell the difference between the darkness and her eyes, shut.
i wrote these five vignettes completely out of chronological order, so i wasn't aware of the transition between three and four. at the end of three, i have her passing up, and then in four, she's waking up. that's just weird, yo.
Her eyelids feel heavy as soon as they are open, and it's the only way she can tell that she is awake. Instinct tries to lift her hands to rub the creases of her eyes, but she can't: she's restrained, duct tape around her wrists, and a cold, heavy chain around her waist. In another instant, she feels the adhesive of the duct tape around her mouth sticking to the tiny hairs on her face. She can barely breathe.
She feels her legs stretched out in front of her; her thigh muscles ache a little when she tries to move, and her half-coherent mind is already jumping to conclusions. She thinks she's crying, too, but it could be sweat. It's so fucking hot, here, in the dark, and her sheer shirt is sticking to her arms like a second skin.
"her sheer shirt" is there only to indicate that this is post-Commencement/25 Zoey.
Her chest heaves with a sob, and the chain around her waist cuts into her, and she winces. Now her head is throbbing, too.
It hurts everywhere.
She hears voices. Ahead of her, there's a shaft of light: someone is opening a door. Heavy footsteps on wooden stairs; she squirms more, and then there's the sound of a gun cocking in the darkness. Her resistance escapes her, and she is still.
the image of the basement is stolen from an XF episode, Oubliette.
"Little bitch." His voice is rough, and she recognizes the way it makes the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end, from when he pressed her against the bathroom stall and held that gun to her temple.
The door opens again, and suddenly there's a flood of light; she winces. A man with a small radio is standing at the bottom of the stairs. Even in this dim light, he looks like one of the new agents assigned to her detail. (She can't remember his name.) He runs a hand through his blond hair. "Jorge--"
The other man snaps: "What?"
He holds up the radio, and Zoey can hear CJ's voice: the words wash over her; she doesn
*
hello. this is commentary. i don't know why i'm introducing myself.
[No Song Has Gone Unsung]
because, see, Five Things That Happened to Zoey Bartlet is too plain for the likes of me. tangleofthorns gave me the title, and i know it's from some song, but i forget. all i know is that it was lovely.
by Tahlia; West Wing, PG-13, Zoey
Five things that never happened to Zoey Bartlet.
(for Oro's 100 Things That Never Happened challenge)
like, seriously. this was such a good idea.
this was also truly a group experience. bananasrock and tobiascharity let me bounce ideas off them and gave suggestions, and tangleofthorns kicked its butt into shape with a beta.
*
incidently, this is the only vignette not from zoey's point of view.
I. Children, go where I send thee
it's the name of a spiritual that my college choir sang for a wedding. peter, paul, and mary do a good version. i'm all for the irony of it, too-- because it's such a happy song, about the birth of Jesus and what-not and isn't-that-so-wonderful. and these vignette, well, isn't.
The nurse mumbles, "Excuse me," and "Pardon me," through a crowd of concerned faces in the waiting room and pushes on the doors to the prenatal intensive care unit. They've been there for days, weeks even; so has he, hand on the edge of the incubator, one finger running up and down his daughter's tiny, tiny chest. (At least now, she's larger than his hand.) He doesn't say a word.
my mom's best friend, her son was born something like five months premature. there's a photo of him in his father's hands-- literally. christopher was about the size of her husband's palm. it's the kind of thing that just sticks with you.
Today, however, she is rifling through a chart and she feels his presence beyond her. She turns, not at all startled, but surprised to see a Senator's face so fallen and sad. He asks if she is the nurse on duty, and she replies, "Yes, Senator," (because his face has been on television for as long as the people have been rotting in the waiting room chairs) and there's a spark of something in his face.
"Will she--" (Pause.) "Is she--" (Pause.) "How is she?"
The nurse saw his wife only once, because she doesn't normally work this shift, but Celia remembers that she was crying and her other daughter was old enough to try and comfort her mother.
"other daughter" being a reference to Ellie, not Liz. there's something about a daughter, even at that young age, afraid to comfort her own father. that's what i meant.
One glance at the chart: she can't possibly lie, but the truth isn't that much easier. "It's hard to say, Dr. Bartlet."
i like this. originally, she addressed him as "Mr. Bartlet," but it was later changed to Dr. and it works, you know? the nurse is obviously trying to treat him like a Father instead of a Senator, but she still can't drop the formality completely.
He sighs. "Please--" but then he's covering his face with the palm of his hand.
see, he notices what she's doing. but then he realizes that it doesn't matter.
Celia doesn't have the kind of answers that he needs; he already knows about her underdeveloped lungs, about the (slim) chances she will ever breathe without a machine, about the limits of modern medicine.
jed and his conscience.
He sways between her and the incubator, before waving his hands to wipe his slate and turning back to his dying baby daughter. (This is the truth they've been hiding from the cameras.)
in my head, the original version of this was jed addressing the press after her death, and the balancing act between being a public official and grieving privately. jed and abbey were supposed to be the kennedys. but then i remembered this was about zoey, not jed, and changed it around.
The nurse hears him apologizing, "I'm sorry, Zoey," over and over again, sounding more broken than the man who was elected to the New Hampshire Senate two months ago.
On the way out, she thinks she hears him say, "I used to hope you were a boy."
a reference to a passage in the tell-all Bartlet book from "H. Con 172," which claims jed had, ahem, special underwear, in hopes of finally having a boy. also, and this is somebody's fanon, but early on in my discovery of this fandom, i read a fic in which abbey had a miscarriage, and it was a son. always stuck in my head.
No, that's not what she heard.
Can't be.
a little value judgement on the nurse's part, perhaps?
*
part two: in which tahlia goes for the cliched thing-that-never-happened. although, i'm quite impressed at how real and not!schmultzy it turned out.
affectionately referred to in my notes as The One Where Zoey Gets Knocked Up.
II. Pack and get dressed, before your father hears us
radiohead, "exit music (for a film)." the meaning? like the name suggests, it was written after the band was sent the last half hour of "romeo & juliet," and appears during the end credits of the movie. the line itself refers to juliet's plea for romeo to leave through her window before her parents wake. i thought of charlie and zoey a little like romeo and juliet in these piece, sneaking around their (her) parents' backs, falling in love and facing the consequences.
also, ask Luna. i used to hear this line wrong. ;)
Zoey could put her hand on the wall and feel the stereo blaring next door.
i do this all the time. the crew guys nezt door love the blast their basses at three in the morning and my bed in right up against our shared wall. how pleasant.
She calls Charlie, is short and brief and yes, he's already suspicious; she throws the cordless on the bed, where it sinks into the sea of her comforter, and does just that-- raises her hand, with her palm flat against the cinderblocks. She's lost in the rhythmic beat that maybe on another day she could identify, so she misses the first time he knocks on the door.
yes, there are times when i know what song they're playing because i can recognize the bassline. you know you can do it, too.
The second knock is harder, more insistent; he's nervous. And she opens the door and kisses him right there, standing in the hallway, knowing she'll endure the stories later: she'll say, "fuck off," and push past them.
again, personal experience. well, no, not PERSONAL personal experience, but you know. our floor is very gossip-y. plus, hey, she's the president's daughter.
She kisses him hard, delaying the inevitable, and his fingers entwine with hers and he smiles when he says her name: "Zoey?"
One glance over his shoulder to Gina, and she pulls him into her room, slams her door.
like when Charlie goes to Zoey's dorm to apologize in, um, whatever that episode is. crap. i suck.
She collapses on her bed, but he's still standing there in the half-light, so she's going to have to say something eventually.
"There's," but she stops. Can't find the words. She tries, "I," but fails. Finally: "There's a thing."
aahh! kiss of death! using the phrase "a thing" in a fic!! except, it works, i think, because it's something zoey would say. and she's nervous, too. duh.
She can hear him breathing; the bass beat is gone. "Yeah?"
She hides her face in her hands for a minute, wiping away her fear; or, trying to. Then she says, "I'm late, Charlie."
this is all such a cop-out. fucking cliched dialogue. i am horribly unoriginal.
And, yes, it's the same conversation between thousands of couples on a thousand different college campuses.
see? i even hated it as i wrote it, but knew i couldn't come up with anything better. and there are only so many ways.
But then, Charlie isn't one of those boys without his wits. It hits him like a ton of bricks-- she sees it in his face-- but he doesn't play dumb, doesn't let his tongue get ahead of him.
of course, the one thing i refused to do was have him responded, "Late for what?" *smackshead*
She can't stand the silence, but he speaks before it kills her. "Okay."
"Charlie--"
He says it again, but the inflection is different: "Okay." Like he's trying to convince someone, maybe himself.
the image of charlie doing this (as well as him throughout this entire piece) is so CLEAR in my head.
Neither says a word. In the next room, someone turns the stereo back on, and the throbbing makes its way to her ears and suddenly, she can't bear it. (There's a small twinge in her: is it the hormones?)
"Are you--" He stops. "Have you--" Pause; sigh. "I don't want this to come out the wrong way, but--"
She waves her hand to a plastic bag by her schoolbooks. "Stacey bought me one. Five, actually."
ok, so here's the thing: i can't say the words. you know, the words. "have you taken a test?" i hate hearing them, writing them, i don't know what. so his hesitation is my hesitation.
"Right." His brain takes a minute to catch up. "Wait, she didn't just go down the street, did she?"
this occurred to me halfway through. what the hell kind of story would it be if the president's daughter was seen buying a pregnancy test at a drugstore? the poor thing.
i guess the point is: this is as much about zoey getting knocked up as it is about her inability to lead a "normal" life.
She hates that this is the second time this question has come up today. "Of course not. Five different stores, in five parts of Washington and the surrounding area I hope to God she never visits again. She could have been shot or mugged or-- or--"
She doesn't really notice she's crying until she feels Charlie's arms around her. That their contact makes her register the salty lines running down her cheeks. He gathers her up and suddenly she's sobbing into his shoulder, letting the fear and the anxiety and everything wash over like a tidal wave. And then--
"Oh, God."
Charlie pulls back, leaning in close with his arms still on her shoulders. "What?"
"My dad. Oh, God." She can't begin to imagine the disappointment. "What am I going to say?" (To say nothing of what she'll have to tell CJ and what CJ will have to say to the press, because God knows the American public would love the story.)
i tried as hard as possible to make this about two kids afraid to tell their parents that they were pregnant. that she's the president's daughter is only an added piece of information. her "My Dad. Oh, God," isn't in reference to her father being the president at all. it's just that he's her father.
Charlie hugs her again, holding her tight, and into her hair she thinks she hears him mutter, "Later."
Eventually, she untangles herself from him, wiping the moisture from her face, and with one eye on the plastic bag, she declares, "Let's do this."
*
this one was inspired by a night of watching Requiem For A Dream. FUCKED UP MOVIE, YO. yes.
III. You ought to be praying, sinnerman
nina simone, "sinnerman," from the movie, The Thomas Crown Affair.
She swallows the tequila shot to wash away the taste of her own vomit in her mouth.
bartlet, in ITSOTG, "she booted all over the car. you know they're gonna charge me for that one."
It's been three months, but it hasn't gone away; the sight of Josh in a wheelchair, trying to smile under the lights of the cameras, only makes it stronger.
josh is one of only four other (real) characters that appear in this fic. (jed in part one, leo later in this one, charlie in part two, and jean-paul in part five.) anyway, he only gets this one line, but this is Josh, post-shooting. trying to be the same old sport that he was, but irrevocably changed.
i always thought zoey recovered a little too easily from Rosslyn. charlie, too, but charlie wasn't my concern here. personally, i'd be vaguely fucked up if my boyfriend got shot at because of me. so, while Josh went nutso and put his hand through a window, zoey dealt with her PTSD with drugs and alcohol. sniff.
It doesn't take long for the alcohol to affect her, and her body moves with slightly more feeling to the music in the crowded basement, and maybe it feels good.
ew. frat parties.
Maybe it feels good to feel so free after all this time, and to not care that there are at least two pairs of eyes watching her that aren't classmates of hers.
being her agents.
She stumbles through Georgetown and barely makes it to her floor before she's in the bathroom, vomiting. Maybe she cries a little, too. In the hallway, students are still breaking down boxes, unpacking their possessions for another year of learning. It occurs to her that she used to make fun of girls like her, the ones who came to college and got wasted on their first night.
i did that. the making fun, not the excessive drinking on the first night.
She's sure not to slam the door when she finally reaches her room, because it's almost four in the morning and Stacey is sleeping.
look! same roommate as before.
This happens more than once, and a few more times than she can remember.
that line is weird. i like the sentiment, but, i don't know. weirdness.
Charlie says she parties too much these days. (She likes to tell people it was she who finally broke it off, because that way she can make him something he was not, but he said, "Zoey," and she ran with it from there. She ran.)
this is a zoey that is very, very scared.
She tells him that his concept of fun is warped, and when he starts to argue, it occurs to her she feels a little hung-over from last night.
Josh almost loses it at Christmas, and this is the first time she tries cocaine.
i don't need to tell you that this is a reference to Noel.
A friend of a friend slips her an invitation to a party (because who wouldn't want to party with the President's daughter?), and she's sitting in the corner drinking eggnog when Billy Parsons invites her to the basement. "Merry Christmas, baby," and she doesn't miss his hand inching higher up her thigh as she leans over the mirror. It burns; oh sweet Jesus, it burns. "Jesus Christ, Billy. Make sure I don't do this again." Except, now she's less aware of what she's doing, and she lets him take her upstairs.
as if i'd know what taking cocaine does to you. a shot in the dark.
The new year comes and the dancing becomes more frenetic; the drugs become more familiar and the thrill becomes to wear off.
my notes? "Zoey's a drug addict!!"
Because she is her father's daughter, she learns the fine art of shrugging off her protection.
see: "In Excelsis Deo"
In the springtime, she finds herself in the basement of Billy's fraternity.
"Zoey--"
"Come on, you promised."
"I," but he stops. He takes two steps back and covers his face with his hand. For a moment, he resembles a decent human being. "I can't."
She can feel the anger pulsing through her, but then, that could be her body's cravings. "Why the hell not? I gave you seven hundred. I want my stuff."
It takes a little to get his words out. There's a long pause, and somewhere a bird is chirping, and then he says: "You're too emotional."
Anger. "What?" A beat, and she is suddenly defensive. "I don't know what you're talking about. Billy, please."
She's moved close, a hand on his arm, slowly moving up and down. He breaks from her, pushing her away. "Your dad...and then the funeral. It's on TV, Zoey. You're sad, you're angry, you feel betrayed, and now you want to score to help you forget that. I-- I can't."
the funeral being Mrs. Landingham's; the betrayal being bartlet's decision to run after he, no doubt, agreed with his family that he wouldn't.
With venom in her voice, "What the fuck is that, Billy, a conscience?"
Luna said, "aww. a dealer with a heart!" hee.
Her words are exacting, and they are precise. "Give it to me. I don't care, I'll give you an extra hundred, just do it."
i almost killed her in these next few paragraphs. but then i thought three deaths in one fic was a tad excessive. so i had her ALMOST die.
Later, her body will be strapped to a stretcher on CNN, MSNBC, and FoxNews, and the analysts will sigh and say what a broken family the Bartlets were. They will pump her stomach, and everyone from Baltimore to Seattle will know how much she took and when and how she hid the marks on her arms.
the irony is that she'll become another story, which is exactly what she was trying to escape.
She will be asleep and Leo will visit her, and much later, when she's old enough to know how stupid she was, he will say that he saw himself in her and it almost broke his heart.
(and mine, too. LEO!)
In the future, her therapist's voice will correct her-- not stupid; it's Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Even still, when it enters her bloodstream, her vision goes white and it is bliss.
an effect taken straight from Requiem for a Dream.
this is probably my favorite of the five. also, the one that got me my funniest feedback ever: "ZOEY BARTLET IS NOT A DRUG ADDICT." lmao
*
the first vignette i wrote. also a cop-out, when you think about it, because how obvious is THIS? geez. it's also a continuation of another fic i wrote, Face of the Enemy. (the trouble was how to make it that without making it completely necessary to read the first fic, too.) to top things off, it exists in the same universe as one of tobiascharity's Nancy vignettes. (more on that later.) like, whoa.
IV. One of these mornings, I'll be gone
moby, "one of these mornings." i have Without a Trace to thank for reminding me that this song existed.
She comes to before she can tell the difference between the darkness and her eyes, shut.
i wrote these five vignettes completely out of chronological order, so i wasn't aware of the transition between three and four. at the end of three, i have her passing up, and then in four, she's waking up. that's just weird, yo.
Her eyelids feel heavy as soon as they are open, and it's the only way she can tell that she is awake. Instinct tries to lift her hands to rub the creases of her eyes, but she can't: she's restrained, duct tape around her wrists, and a cold, heavy chain around her waist. In another instant, she feels the adhesive of the duct tape around her mouth sticking to the tiny hairs on her face. She can barely breathe.
She feels her legs stretched out in front of her; her thigh muscles ache a little when she tries to move, and her half-coherent mind is already jumping to conclusions. She thinks she's crying, too, but it could be sweat. It's so fucking hot, here, in the dark, and her sheer shirt is sticking to her arms like a second skin.
"her sheer shirt" is there only to indicate that this is post-Commencement/25 Zoey.
Her chest heaves with a sob, and the chain around her waist cuts into her, and she winces. Now her head is throbbing, too.
It hurts everywhere.
She hears voices. Ahead of her, there's a shaft of light: someone is opening a door. Heavy footsteps on wooden stairs; she squirms more, and then there's the sound of a gun cocking in the darkness. Her resistance escapes her, and she is still.
the image of the basement is stolen from an XF episode, Oubliette.
"Little bitch." His voice is rough, and she recognizes the way it makes the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end, from when he pressed her against the bathroom stall and held that gun to her temple.
The door opens again, and suddenly there's a flood of light; she winces. A man with a small radio is standing at the bottom of the stairs. Even in this dim light, he looks like one of the new agents assigned to her detail. (She can't remember his name.) He runs a hand through his blond hair. "Jorge--"
The other man snaps: "What?"
He holds up the radio, and Zoey can hear CJ's voice: the words wash over her; she doesn