fic: shadows of an incomplete whole (The West Wing/HDM fusion)
title: shadows of an incomplete whole
characters: ensemble
rating: pg
summary: in which everyone gets a daemon; no really.
author's notes: every fandom should have a daemon AU/His Dark Materials fusion. you get a daemon and you get a daemon, everyone gets a daemon! This runs through Season Two basically from the top to the end; my only regret is that we have no Amy Gardner in this season.
Ainsley's daemon bids you enter:
Something was wrong.
A stupid statement considering the sirens and the police and the secret service crawling all over the place, the press pushing forward and being repelled back, and the few civilians that remained watching with curious eyes.
Something else was wrong, other than all of that, and Toby could taste it in the back of his throat.
A noise cut through the cacophony of all the other sounds, and Esir's talons pricked his neck where she rode on his shoulder. He knew what that sound was: a daemon's howl of injury and pain. He turned, loafers crunching the small stones underneath his feet.
Esir twisted her small body, rising to look on her hind legs. "There,” she said, urging him on, her voice rising in tone.
Toby moved quickly, feet carrying him down the steps and closer to the noise that was growing louder and louder, and then there-
He stopped, heart jack-hammering in his chest. Esir made a pitiful noise, as pitiful of a noise that a bearded dragon could make.
Olesia lifted her head where she lay against Josh's side, brown eyes, the same shade as her owner’s, lidded and heavy. She tipped her muzzle towards the sky and howled again in time with the silent gasps her owner made.
"Josh," Toby moved forward, feeling Esir crawl from his shoulder to his arm and then the ground to rush to the collie's side; claws ran through the normally luscious fur, now dank and matted.
"Josh," he repeated again, hand going to the blood that covered Josh's suit. So much blood, too much blood, and how long had he been here? Why had no one else heard Olesia's cries?
The answer was the sirens and the ambulances and the police and everything else going on. Hard to hear over the chaos of what was already going on unless you were listening for it. And the President had been the first priority.
"Okay," Toby said softly, noticing that Josh's eyes at least flickered somewhat in recognition when he touched his chest. And then louder, behind him, voice raising to a scream that he normally would never let forth. "Help! Someone!"
---
Josh blinked, struggling to keep his eyes open. Where was he? He couldn’t remember, and his body was perpendicular. He was moving too, but he wasn’t doing the moving. No, he was rolling, somewhere. And then an explosion of pain all over, his skin feeling stretched and tight simultaneously. Why did he hurt so much?
Olesia, where was Olesia?
A whine and a familiar wet nose pressed against his hand, or what he thought might be his hand. He felt so disconnected. He struggled to feel their bond, to reach for the one who had always been with him, and found it, weak but there, attached to the pressure on his could-be-hand.
Josh tried to move his lips, attempted to talk, rolled his eyelids again to see whiteness above.
“Josh, Josh.”
He was Josh, yes; who was saying his name?
“I’m here, Josh. Right here.”
He knew that voice, but it was too hard to put a name to it.
The wetness against his hand pressed again, and he chose to focus on that instead.
---
Galian might have been smaller, but he bared his teeth in a hiss at Olesia all the same. The collie daemon moved her head on the bed so that her snout was hidden in the green comforter and only one eye showed.
Donna matched her daemon’s stance, hands on her hips as she stood at the end of the bed.
“Donna,” Josh whined, looking nothing like the man who went head to head with Congressmen day after day. But then, no, this was Joshua Lyman in full reality here in the bed. Whining, sometimes childish Joshua Lyman.
“No,” Donna bit out behind gritted teeth. She thought of how she’d cried when Toby had told her it was Josh in the hospital, how her hands had shook as she covered her mouth to keep the sounds from escaping, how the harsh glare of the lights above had made her blink, how she’d thought it all a lie or a dream; how she’d wished it was something like that, anything but the reality. “No,” her voice went quieter, dropped in tone and inflection till it was nothing short of a statement of finality. “You nearly died.”
Josh had no quick retort to that.
On the bed, Olesia made a half-whining noise, moving her head forward towards Donna’s daemon.
Galian lifted one tanned paw to tap the collie daemon’s nose. A soft purr erupted from his throat, his tail swishing on the bed near her.
Donna shifted her eyes away from the two daemons, biting her lip at their behavior.
Josh blinked, a slow, friendly smile creeping over his face. He settled back down against the headboard and pillows, seeming to abandon his request for her to bring him work from the West Wing. “Okay,” he said.
She turned away and tried to ease the thickness in her throat.
---
The street in front of Josh’s apartment was quiet for the most part. Only a few cars that drifted down ever so often, and then their conversation on the steps. Somewhere above CJ could hear someone’s radio through their open window, the soft hum of a country song whose lyrics she didn’t know; or particularly care to know.
The atmosphere as they lounged like lizards in a group on the stone stairs was in contrast to their own general mood over the recent congressional results.
Nolan shifted from his perch on her shoulder, rustling his wings, the feathers brushing against her cheek and neck. He echoed her feelings, all of their feelings really, and she could find no blame for him or them there.
CJ reached up and ran the tips of her fingers over his head, his sharply curved beak, and the spotted feathers on his head.
“Tomorrow,” he whispered into her ear. “Tomorrow we can fight again.”
She smiled, her fingers closing around her beer bottle. A reply was not necessary, and he hopped from her shoulder in a smooth movement to land near Esir, leaning down to talk with Toby’s daemon. Satisfied, she turned herself back to the conversation of the others, sliding back in as if she hadn’t left to begin with.
---
Ainsley smoothed her fingers over the ends of her hair, trying to hide the fact that the digits were shaking, adrenaline pumping through her.
Mazrim nipped her chin from his usual perch on her shoulder, where he liked to curl his small body in the indention between her neck and clavicle. “Stop,” he said, claws brushing over her earring. “Don’t fidget so. We only have to be nice, say what we came up with before. They wanted us here, remember. They asked for us.”
That they did, and she nodded.
She looked up as the other two men entered. Watching her opponent, she let her eyes drift from Sam Seaborn’s pressed suit to the ocelot daemon that prowled at his feet, ears flicking backwards and forward, long tail sweeping out behind her. Mazrim sat up on her shoulder, claws dropping from her earring to dig into her jawline. His nose twitched at the other daemon, and she watched the ocelot bare her teeth in a crooked sort of smile at them.
Her attention was diverted to Gottfried who pressed a hand to her back, leaning down to say, “And don’t overreach yourself.”
Ainsley’s smile dropped and Mazrim squeaked in indignation. “Destroy them,” he growled, teeth gnashing together.
Later, she leaned forward and said, “Did I overreach too much?” with such fake sincerity that her mother would have been proud.
Against her neck, it was Mazrim who bared his teeth in a mocking grin at the ocelot daemon whose ears slunk to her head, whiskers bent back in defeat.
---
Toby shook his head. “No.”
Josh leaned forward on the couch in Toby’s office, running his palms over his pants, causing more wrinkles to form. Olesia leaned her head against his knee, eyeing where Esir curled around her owner’s pen holder, dark eyes slitted, her scaled tail swiping back and forth across the desk. “You don’t think I could do it? Win? That it’s a good idea?”
“Do I think you could win?” Toby asks softly, drumming his fingers on the desk. “Yes, eventually, maybe. Do I think it’s a good idea? No.”
Josh nodded, exhaling and rubbed Olesia’s silky ears. “Yeah.”
“You deserve better. More than what happened and what you’ve got now.” Toby’s face was serious, his eyes hard with anger, not at him, for him; he remembered that it’d been Toby that found him. “But suing these groups won’t make anything better.”
“Yeah,” Josh sank back against the couch, the tension leaving his body. He felt better, lighter. “You’re right.”
---
Sam followed Ainsley down the stairs, not heeding when she'd told him to just leave her be. He was angry, could feel the tension leeching underneath his skin, making his shoulders seize up. How dare she, he thought, just what did she think she was doing. He watched the sway of her blonde hair as it whipped around the corner of the basement level.
Aesina wove between his feet, a growl thick in her throat. "Sam," she said.
He ignored her, bottom foot hitting the floor and turned sharply to the left where the newest addition to the White House Counsel's office was. They'd stuck her in the basement, and part of him registered the disgrace of that.
Her back was to him in the dimly lit office. He barreled through the open door, feet propelling him forward. "Look, I don't know what--"
The words died in his throat as he came to stand behind her, hovering over her shoulder. She was shorter than him, but even without the difference he could read what was on her desk.
Aesina bit him on the leg through his pants, teeth sharp, drawing him back into focus. He hadn’t realized that he’d zoned out to begin with.
"Ainsley," he started again. "Who did this?"
The handwriting was blockish, black ink that spelled out five letters in one horrific word atop a bouquet of dead flowers. His anger from before fizzled and then morphed, taking new shape at someone else. He had been mad at her, but to dare to think he'd ever call her a bitch. He thought of the woman who'd beaten him on TV, how she'd not spoken from malice but from intelligence, and how after she'd looked so happy and pleased at winning her argument.
"It's nothing, Sam." Her fingers trembled, the fine line of her shoulders under her suit jacket doing the same.
Aesina growled again at his feet, and Sam watched as Ainsley's daemon darted from the desk to her arm, traveling quickly up to curve under her neck, head pushing against his human's jaw and cheek. The ermine daemon squeaked, attempting to console her.
Everything could be read in that gesture despite her steely insistence that she was fine. Sam knew it and his daemon knew it as his side.
He repeated himself. "Who did this?"
She inhaled, a wet noise that probably escaped without her permission. Involuntary, a show of weakness when weak was anything this woman was. Shame suddenly hit him in his gut for how she had been treated; he hadn’t sent the flowers, but was he any better with what he’d allowed, how he’d spoken to her, how others had spoken about her?
He knew then the gift givers and turned away, feet pushing him forward of their own volition. He needed no guide, sure of whom he needed to find.
"Sam!" Ainsley called after him, but he was already gone.
Aesina darted up the steps in front of him, the spotted fur on her neck raised, teeth bared. She matched him in his anger, and when they burst through into the bullpen they made a formidable and impressive pair.
---
“Why not offer incentives?”
Heads swiveled around to look at Charlie, and Briony arched her back at his feet under their scrutiny. Her furry ears twitched and her paw tapped the top of his shoe.
Charlie shrugged. “Tuition incentives. Why not?”
There was silence, and then a flurry of movement and noise as the senior staffers and the President went back to discussing.
Charlie looked down and grinned. Briony echoed with a smile of her own, a purr in her throat.
---
Josh rocked backwards on his heels. “You look good in that dress tonight, Donna.”
Olesia whuffed from his side, darting forward to stick her nose into the fur of Galian’s neck. It only lasted a moment and then she retreated, loping back to circle around Josh’s legs to his side.
Donna looked at him, leaning down to scoop Galian into her arms. She bit her lip, a tiny smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.
---
Nolan clacked his sharp beak, feathers ruffled and puffed up, his talons digging into her shoulder.
The two turkeys on the floor drew his displeasure, and CJ found herself matching his ire. She stared at them, noting the feathers that littered the floor of her office. This was a problem, to say the least.
She exhaled, one hand on her hip, the other carefully dropping her folder onto her desk, mindful of the large bird that was eyeing her next to her keyboard. “Who?”
Nolan shifted on her shoulder, inclining his head to better look at the common birds. “You know who would.”
CJ huffed, grinding her teeth. “Of course they would. Men, more like boys.”
Her daemon laughed, a dry sound that involved him exhaling and clicking his beak together. He sobered after a moment, turning his head to her. “How will we choose?”
That was a better question.
---
Charlie held the knife in his hand, tilting it so that he could read the initials that served as its marking. Briony placed her paws on his leg, rising up so the initials would be seen by her too. The knife gleamed in his hands, and he held it lightly, reverently almost.
“Sir,” Charlie looked up from the knife. “PR?”
The President smiled and on his shoulder his raven daemon ruffled her glossy blue-black wings, looking as calm as ever. “It was made for the Bartlet family by a silversmith.”
“A silversmith?” His voice held disbelief at its age.
A knowing look, one that said he knew more than what Charlie did, and that Charlie was going to regret this. “By the name of Paul Revere.”
Briony reacted before he could, her ears flattening against her head, a shocked noise escaping her throat.
The raven daemon cawed in laughter from the President’s shoulder.
---
The hallways was empty except for them, and Josh knew that he wouldn’t be able to pass by Leo without ignoring him completely. It wouldn’t work, and he didn’t want to at any rate. He slowed down and stopped.
Leo tilted his head away from the Christmas decorations. “How’d it go?”
Olesia sat at his side, sliding out a paw in greeting to Leo’s daemon. The wild dog daemon gave a yip of acknowledgement, choosing to remain standing; the lights from the tree and above played off the spots of her fur, turning the red into an amber brown.
Josh ignored the two of them. He schooled his face into something resembling lightheartedness. “You waited around for me?”
Leo gave him a look, unobliging to Josh’s want to avoid, and repeated his question.
He shrugged, reached down and put his hand on Olesia’s head. He liked having a hand on her, had always been more touchier than others with their daemons, in contrast to Leo whose daemon usually walked right in step with him instead of against him like Olesia. “He thinks I might have an eating disorder.” He goes for levity again.
“Josh,” Leo’s voice sounded bemused, but his face was anything but.
One last time, he tried to divert, and found he couldn’t. Finally, he sighed and confessed, “I didn’t cut my hand on a glass. I broke a window in my apartment.”
Olesia bumped her head, nudging his fingers with her nose, trying to comfort him as she felt how hard it had been to admit what he just did.
Instead, Josh found comfort in Leo’s next words. Story really, and he found his chest loosening and the weight on his shoulders lifting, decompressing, his body becoming lighter.
"Yeah, but I've been down here before, and I know the way out." Leo paused, holding his gaze, his eyes serious and heavy. His daemon stared too, her amber eyes unwavering; she paid attention to humans more than daemons. “Long as I got a job, you got a job, you understand?”
Josh swallowed, his throat tight. He nodded, no words able to convey what he really wanted. He swore that Leo’s daemon was smiling at him, tongue lolling behind sharp teeth.
---
Ellie leaned forward in her seat, settling her arms so that they held her weight. From this close her nose picked up the familiar smells of her father that had been staples of her childhood: ink, the staleness of an old book, and the aftershave that her mother had gotten him one Christmas that he’d never replaced with something new.
She was tired of fighting, of whatever this was they were doing. Feelings of inadequacy and anger, and she didn’t regret what she’d said. She’d meant, in a way that wasn’t trying to use her father’s position, or speaking out against him just to do so, but because she’d believed that it was wrong.
Mathias hopped from her shoulder, his tiny sparrow feet clutching at the theater seats. Sometimes she thought it wondrous that both her father and she had birds for their daemons; it was a fact she held close to herself.
She sighed, moving her fingers, plucking at the cloth. “I don’t know how to make you happy, dad. For that you’ve got to talk to Zoey or Liz.”
A pause, and then his answer while she waited in trepidation for an answer she was sure would upset her. “The only thing you ever had to do to make me happy was come home at the end of the day.”
She smiled, and settled her head so she leaned against his shoulder, breathing in the scent of him, and she didn’t bother to fight the wetness that crept into her eyes.
---
The solitaire reflection gave him away to CJ, and Sam knew that but ignored it. The ambivalence that had settled over him wouldn’t shake, and he didn’t know if he wanted it to. He was calm on the outside and a wreck on the inside; anger and betrayal, and how was he supposed to deal with this revelation about his father and his infidelity?
Aesina sat in the chair next to him, her fur bristled and her teeth gnashing at empty air.
CJ’s face was sympathetic, and she opened her mouth to probably try and assuage him. Instead, she closed her lips and then reopened to ask, “Who’s your favorite writer, Sam?”
The question needed no longer than a second for the answer to rise on his tongue. Aesina quieted beside him, turning her eyes to the hawk daemon on CJ’s shoulder.
“Toby.”
---
Donna held the book tightly in her hands, her excitement making her want to yell at the top of her lungs to gain their attention. Galian wound his way between her legs, nearly tripping her up. She held the answer in her hands to their filibuster problem, and she wondered how no one else had seen it before her.
“It’s his grandson,” she finally blurted out.
Josh’s head swung towards her, and Galian paused in his movement at her feet.
She handed over the the papers, letting him look at them, seeing what she’d found and put together.
Josh turned away from her, already moving and crying out for “grandfathers” and needing every one of them in the Senate right now.
Donna didn’t mind though, didn’t fault him, things moved so fast around him, and besides the look he sent back over his shoulder to her, full of gratitude and pride, was enough.
---
The ball made a steady noise against the wall.
Thud. Thud. Thud. Back to his hand. Thud.
Esir clicked her nails on his desk in time.
Toby rolled his neck, let his thoughts lull themselves to the rhythm of his daemon and the ball in his hand. It was here. The answer, somewhere in all of this with Hoynes, all of it was here, waiting for him to put it all together.
He didn’t need to look at the files and information he’d pulled that littered his desk. They were all there in his mind.
Waiting.
Thud. Thud. Thud. Back to his hand. And...
...Stop.
Esir stilled on the desk.
Simultaneously it came to them.
He stood, reaching for her, his palm up to catch her as she met him off the desk, lifting her up to his shoulder.
The walk to Leo’s office was the quickest he’d ever made.
---
The figure walking through the Communications bullpen made his mind go blank, and Sam found himself at a loss for words; a rare occassion, but one he didn’t mind with the view in front of him.
Ainsley Hayes swaggered towards him, a smile on her red lips. Around her neck lay her ermine daemon like a stole -Mazrim his name, Aesina had told him- all white fur and a bright contrast to the black dress she wore.
“Sam,” she said, happiness in her voice despite the fact that he’d called her back from her event.
Aesina purred at his feet, stepping forward to meet her daemon as the ermine slipped from her neck to the floor.
Sam watched as the two daemons touched, the ermine running claws through the fur at Aesina’s neck.
“Hayes,” he breathed out, warmness spreading in his chest, making himself, dare he say, giddy. “You could make a good dog break his leash.”
---
CJ barked out a laugh, and Nolan shifts his wings menacingly, spreading them wide and arcing them upward. "You guys are like Butch and Sundance peering over the edge of a cliff to the boulder-filled rapids 300 feet below, thinking you better not jump 'cause there's a chance you might drown.”
Josh’s face scrunched in confusion, and he opened his mouth to speak.
She beat him though, continuing on. She thought of how Babish had grilled her over, how she’d only learned yesterday of the President’s MS, how Sam would know soon and would feel just as reeled as she did.
She went on, filling in the gaps, completing her comparison. “The President has this disease and has been lying about it, and you guys are worried that the polling might make us look bad? It's the fall that's gonna kill ya.”
---
Joey’s hands moved rapidly as she relayed the polling numbers, but somehow they didn’t need a translation to know what she was saying.
It could be read in the slump of Josh’s shoulders, the way his daemon’s tail drooped to the floor, the way Toby clenched his hands, the way they all reacted as if the air in the room had deflated them.
“Bad news,” Josh tried to joke, extending a hand for the polling.
Joey gave it over, and they listened half-hearted as Kenny translated: Americans weren’t going to like that the President had lied.
Tell them something they hadn’t already figured out.
---
He stood in the aisle, held the cigarette to his lips and inhaled one long pull, and then blew out. Smoke drifted up towards the ceiling of the church.
A stir of wind by his face and she was off, circling high, her glossy wings catching the light from the stained glass windows, colors like gems on her blue-black feathers.
Angry, he was so angry, and he let it loose.
The words tumbled forward, sarcastic in the beginning and his formed his speech. “Gratias tibi ago, domine.” His voice rose, louder and louder till the church echoed and returned his vitriol. “Haec credam a deo pio, a deo justo, a deo scito?”
He threw his hands outward, disgusted.
“Cruciatus in crucem.”
Bared his teeth, snarled at the front dais, towards the pulpit, as if he was speaking to God standing there at the pew.
“Tuus in terra servus, nuntius fui. Officium perfeci.”
Two steps forward.
“Cruciatus in crucem,” he waved his hand, turned away. “Eas in crucem.”
She cawed loudly, swooping down towards him as he walked away. She landed on his shoulder, a familiar weight, the dry rustling of her wings as she settled.
“You get Hoynes!”
toby's daemon esir
josh's daemon olesia
donna's daemon galian
cj's daemon nolan
ainsley's daemon mazrim
sam's daemon aesina
charlie's daemon briony
ellie's daemon mathias
leo's daemon
the president's daemon
characters: ensemble
rating: pg
summary: in which everyone gets a daemon; no really.
author's notes: every fandom should have a daemon AU/His Dark Materials fusion. you get a daemon and you get a daemon, everyone gets a daemon! This runs through Season Two basically from the top to the end; my only regret is that we have no Amy Gardner in this season.
Ainsley's daemon bids you enter:
Something was wrong.
A stupid statement considering the sirens and the police and the secret service crawling all over the place, the press pushing forward and being repelled back, and the few civilians that remained watching with curious eyes.
Something else was wrong, other than all of that, and Toby could taste it in the back of his throat.
A noise cut through the cacophony of all the other sounds, and Esir's talons pricked his neck where she rode on his shoulder. He knew what that sound was: a daemon's howl of injury and pain. He turned, loafers crunching the small stones underneath his feet.
Esir twisted her small body, rising to look on her hind legs. "There,” she said, urging him on, her voice rising in tone.
Toby moved quickly, feet carrying him down the steps and closer to the noise that was growing louder and louder, and then there-
He stopped, heart jack-hammering in his chest. Esir made a pitiful noise, as pitiful of a noise that a bearded dragon could make.
Olesia lifted her head where she lay against Josh's side, brown eyes, the same shade as her owner’s, lidded and heavy. She tipped her muzzle towards the sky and howled again in time with the silent gasps her owner made.
"Josh," Toby moved forward, feeling Esir crawl from his shoulder to his arm and then the ground to rush to the collie's side; claws ran through the normally luscious fur, now dank and matted.
"Josh," he repeated again, hand going to the blood that covered Josh's suit. So much blood, too much blood, and how long had he been here? Why had no one else heard Olesia's cries?
The answer was the sirens and the ambulances and the police and everything else going on. Hard to hear over the chaos of what was already going on unless you were listening for it. And the President had been the first priority.
"Okay," Toby said softly, noticing that Josh's eyes at least flickered somewhat in recognition when he touched his chest. And then louder, behind him, voice raising to a scream that he normally would never let forth. "Help! Someone!"
---
Josh blinked, struggling to keep his eyes open. Where was he? He couldn’t remember, and his body was perpendicular. He was moving too, but he wasn’t doing the moving. No, he was rolling, somewhere. And then an explosion of pain all over, his skin feeling stretched and tight simultaneously. Why did he hurt so much?
Olesia, where was Olesia?
A whine and a familiar wet nose pressed against his hand, or what he thought might be his hand. He felt so disconnected. He struggled to feel their bond, to reach for the one who had always been with him, and found it, weak but there, attached to the pressure on his could-be-hand.
Josh tried to move his lips, attempted to talk, rolled his eyelids again to see whiteness above.
“Josh, Josh.”
He was Josh, yes; who was saying his name?
“I’m here, Josh. Right here.”
He knew that voice, but it was too hard to put a name to it.
The wetness against his hand pressed again, and he chose to focus on that instead.
---
Galian might have been smaller, but he bared his teeth in a hiss at Olesia all the same. The collie daemon moved her head on the bed so that her snout was hidden in the green comforter and only one eye showed.
Donna matched her daemon’s stance, hands on her hips as she stood at the end of the bed.
“Donna,” Josh whined, looking nothing like the man who went head to head with Congressmen day after day. But then, no, this was Joshua Lyman in full reality here in the bed. Whining, sometimes childish Joshua Lyman.
“No,” Donna bit out behind gritted teeth. She thought of how she’d cried when Toby had told her it was Josh in the hospital, how her hands had shook as she covered her mouth to keep the sounds from escaping, how the harsh glare of the lights above had made her blink, how she’d thought it all a lie or a dream; how she’d wished it was something like that, anything but the reality. “No,” her voice went quieter, dropped in tone and inflection till it was nothing short of a statement of finality. “You nearly died.”
Josh had no quick retort to that.
On the bed, Olesia made a half-whining noise, moving her head forward towards Donna’s daemon.
Galian lifted one tanned paw to tap the collie daemon’s nose. A soft purr erupted from his throat, his tail swishing on the bed near her.
Donna shifted her eyes away from the two daemons, biting her lip at their behavior.
Josh blinked, a slow, friendly smile creeping over his face. He settled back down against the headboard and pillows, seeming to abandon his request for her to bring him work from the West Wing. “Okay,” he said.
She turned away and tried to ease the thickness in her throat.
---
The street in front of Josh’s apartment was quiet for the most part. Only a few cars that drifted down ever so often, and then their conversation on the steps. Somewhere above CJ could hear someone’s radio through their open window, the soft hum of a country song whose lyrics she didn’t know; or particularly care to know.
The atmosphere as they lounged like lizards in a group on the stone stairs was in contrast to their own general mood over the recent congressional results.
Nolan shifted from his perch on her shoulder, rustling his wings, the feathers brushing against her cheek and neck. He echoed her feelings, all of their feelings really, and she could find no blame for him or them there.
CJ reached up and ran the tips of her fingers over his head, his sharply curved beak, and the spotted feathers on his head.
“Tomorrow,” he whispered into her ear. “Tomorrow we can fight again.”
She smiled, her fingers closing around her beer bottle. A reply was not necessary, and he hopped from her shoulder in a smooth movement to land near Esir, leaning down to talk with Toby’s daemon. Satisfied, she turned herself back to the conversation of the others, sliding back in as if she hadn’t left to begin with.
---
Ainsley smoothed her fingers over the ends of her hair, trying to hide the fact that the digits were shaking, adrenaline pumping through her.
Mazrim nipped her chin from his usual perch on her shoulder, where he liked to curl his small body in the indention between her neck and clavicle. “Stop,” he said, claws brushing over her earring. “Don’t fidget so. We only have to be nice, say what we came up with before. They wanted us here, remember. They asked for us.”
That they did, and she nodded.
She looked up as the other two men entered. Watching her opponent, she let her eyes drift from Sam Seaborn’s pressed suit to the ocelot daemon that prowled at his feet, ears flicking backwards and forward, long tail sweeping out behind her. Mazrim sat up on her shoulder, claws dropping from her earring to dig into her jawline. His nose twitched at the other daemon, and she watched the ocelot bare her teeth in a crooked sort of smile at them.
Her attention was diverted to Gottfried who pressed a hand to her back, leaning down to say, “And don’t overreach yourself.”
Ainsley’s smile dropped and Mazrim squeaked in indignation. “Destroy them,” he growled, teeth gnashing together.
Later, she leaned forward and said, “Did I overreach too much?” with such fake sincerity that her mother would have been proud.
Against her neck, it was Mazrim who bared his teeth in a mocking grin at the ocelot daemon whose ears slunk to her head, whiskers bent back in defeat.
---
Toby shook his head. “No.”
Josh leaned forward on the couch in Toby’s office, running his palms over his pants, causing more wrinkles to form. Olesia leaned her head against his knee, eyeing where Esir curled around her owner’s pen holder, dark eyes slitted, her scaled tail swiping back and forth across the desk. “You don’t think I could do it? Win? That it’s a good idea?”
“Do I think you could win?” Toby asks softly, drumming his fingers on the desk. “Yes, eventually, maybe. Do I think it’s a good idea? No.”
Josh nodded, exhaling and rubbed Olesia’s silky ears. “Yeah.”
“You deserve better. More than what happened and what you’ve got now.” Toby’s face was serious, his eyes hard with anger, not at him, for him; he remembered that it’d been Toby that found him. “But suing these groups won’t make anything better.”
“Yeah,” Josh sank back against the couch, the tension leaving his body. He felt better, lighter. “You’re right.”
---
Sam followed Ainsley down the stairs, not heeding when she'd told him to just leave her be. He was angry, could feel the tension leeching underneath his skin, making his shoulders seize up. How dare she, he thought, just what did she think she was doing. He watched the sway of her blonde hair as it whipped around the corner of the basement level.
Aesina wove between his feet, a growl thick in her throat. "Sam," she said.
He ignored her, bottom foot hitting the floor and turned sharply to the left where the newest addition to the White House Counsel's office was. They'd stuck her in the basement, and part of him registered the disgrace of that.
Her back was to him in the dimly lit office. He barreled through the open door, feet propelling him forward. "Look, I don't know what--"
The words died in his throat as he came to stand behind her, hovering over her shoulder. She was shorter than him, but even without the difference he could read what was on her desk.
Aesina bit him on the leg through his pants, teeth sharp, drawing him back into focus. He hadn’t realized that he’d zoned out to begin with.
"Ainsley," he started again. "Who did this?"
The handwriting was blockish, black ink that spelled out five letters in one horrific word atop a bouquet of dead flowers. His anger from before fizzled and then morphed, taking new shape at someone else. He had been mad at her, but to dare to think he'd ever call her a bitch. He thought of the woman who'd beaten him on TV, how she'd not spoken from malice but from intelligence, and how after she'd looked so happy and pleased at winning her argument.
"It's nothing, Sam." Her fingers trembled, the fine line of her shoulders under her suit jacket doing the same.
Aesina growled again at his feet, and Sam watched as Ainsley's daemon darted from the desk to her arm, traveling quickly up to curve under her neck, head pushing against his human's jaw and cheek. The ermine daemon squeaked, attempting to console her.
Everything could be read in that gesture despite her steely insistence that she was fine. Sam knew it and his daemon knew it as his side.
He repeated himself. "Who did this?"
She inhaled, a wet noise that probably escaped without her permission. Involuntary, a show of weakness when weak was anything this woman was. Shame suddenly hit him in his gut for how she had been treated; he hadn’t sent the flowers, but was he any better with what he’d allowed, how he’d spoken to her, how others had spoken about her?
He knew then the gift givers and turned away, feet pushing him forward of their own volition. He needed no guide, sure of whom he needed to find.
"Sam!" Ainsley called after him, but he was already gone.
Aesina darted up the steps in front of him, the spotted fur on her neck raised, teeth bared. She matched him in his anger, and when they burst through into the bullpen they made a formidable and impressive pair.
---
“Why not offer incentives?”
Heads swiveled around to look at Charlie, and Briony arched her back at his feet under their scrutiny. Her furry ears twitched and her paw tapped the top of his shoe.
Charlie shrugged. “Tuition incentives. Why not?”
There was silence, and then a flurry of movement and noise as the senior staffers and the President went back to discussing.
Charlie looked down and grinned. Briony echoed with a smile of her own, a purr in her throat.
---
Josh rocked backwards on his heels. “You look good in that dress tonight, Donna.”
Olesia whuffed from his side, darting forward to stick her nose into the fur of Galian’s neck. It only lasted a moment and then she retreated, loping back to circle around Josh’s legs to his side.
Donna looked at him, leaning down to scoop Galian into her arms. She bit her lip, a tiny smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.
---
Nolan clacked his sharp beak, feathers ruffled and puffed up, his talons digging into her shoulder.
The two turkeys on the floor drew his displeasure, and CJ found herself matching his ire. She stared at them, noting the feathers that littered the floor of her office. This was a problem, to say the least.
She exhaled, one hand on her hip, the other carefully dropping her folder onto her desk, mindful of the large bird that was eyeing her next to her keyboard. “Who?”
Nolan shifted on her shoulder, inclining his head to better look at the common birds. “You know who would.”
CJ huffed, grinding her teeth. “Of course they would. Men, more like boys.”
Her daemon laughed, a dry sound that involved him exhaling and clicking his beak together. He sobered after a moment, turning his head to her. “How will we choose?”
That was a better question.
---
Charlie held the knife in his hand, tilting it so that he could read the initials that served as its marking. Briony placed her paws on his leg, rising up so the initials would be seen by her too. The knife gleamed in his hands, and he held it lightly, reverently almost.
“Sir,” Charlie looked up from the knife. “PR?”
The President smiled and on his shoulder his raven daemon ruffled her glossy blue-black wings, looking as calm as ever. “It was made for the Bartlet family by a silversmith.”
“A silversmith?” His voice held disbelief at its age.
A knowing look, one that said he knew more than what Charlie did, and that Charlie was going to regret this. “By the name of Paul Revere.”
Briony reacted before he could, her ears flattening against her head, a shocked noise escaping her throat.
The raven daemon cawed in laughter from the President’s shoulder.
---
The hallways was empty except for them, and Josh knew that he wouldn’t be able to pass by Leo without ignoring him completely. It wouldn’t work, and he didn’t want to at any rate. He slowed down and stopped.
Leo tilted his head away from the Christmas decorations. “How’d it go?”
Olesia sat at his side, sliding out a paw in greeting to Leo’s daemon. The wild dog daemon gave a yip of acknowledgement, choosing to remain standing; the lights from the tree and above played off the spots of her fur, turning the red into an amber brown.
Josh ignored the two of them. He schooled his face into something resembling lightheartedness. “You waited around for me?”
Leo gave him a look, unobliging to Josh’s want to avoid, and repeated his question.
He shrugged, reached down and put his hand on Olesia’s head. He liked having a hand on her, had always been more touchier than others with their daemons, in contrast to Leo whose daemon usually walked right in step with him instead of against him like Olesia. “He thinks I might have an eating disorder.” He goes for levity again.
“Josh,” Leo’s voice sounded bemused, but his face was anything but.
One last time, he tried to divert, and found he couldn’t. Finally, he sighed and confessed, “I didn’t cut my hand on a glass. I broke a window in my apartment.”
Olesia bumped her head, nudging his fingers with her nose, trying to comfort him as she felt how hard it had been to admit what he just did.
Instead, Josh found comfort in Leo’s next words. Story really, and he found his chest loosening and the weight on his shoulders lifting, decompressing, his body becoming lighter.
"Yeah, but I've been down here before, and I know the way out." Leo paused, holding his gaze, his eyes serious and heavy. His daemon stared too, her amber eyes unwavering; she paid attention to humans more than daemons. “Long as I got a job, you got a job, you understand?”
Josh swallowed, his throat tight. He nodded, no words able to convey what he really wanted. He swore that Leo’s daemon was smiling at him, tongue lolling behind sharp teeth.
---
Ellie leaned forward in her seat, settling her arms so that they held her weight. From this close her nose picked up the familiar smells of her father that had been staples of her childhood: ink, the staleness of an old book, and the aftershave that her mother had gotten him one Christmas that he’d never replaced with something new.
She was tired of fighting, of whatever this was they were doing. Feelings of inadequacy and anger, and she didn’t regret what she’d said. She’d meant, in a way that wasn’t trying to use her father’s position, or speaking out against him just to do so, but because she’d believed that it was wrong.
Mathias hopped from her shoulder, his tiny sparrow feet clutching at the theater seats. Sometimes she thought it wondrous that both her father and she had birds for their daemons; it was a fact she held close to herself.
She sighed, moving her fingers, plucking at the cloth. “I don’t know how to make you happy, dad. For that you’ve got to talk to Zoey or Liz.”
A pause, and then his answer while she waited in trepidation for an answer she was sure would upset her. “The only thing you ever had to do to make me happy was come home at the end of the day.”
She smiled, and settled her head so she leaned against his shoulder, breathing in the scent of him, and she didn’t bother to fight the wetness that crept into her eyes.
---
The solitaire reflection gave him away to CJ, and Sam knew that but ignored it. The ambivalence that had settled over him wouldn’t shake, and he didn’t know if he wanted it to. He was calm on the outside and a wreck on the inside; anger and betrayal, and how was he supposed to deal with this revelation about his father and his infidelity?
Aesina sat in the chair next to him, her fur bristled and her teeth gnashing at empty air.
CJ’s face was sympathetic, and she opened her mouth to probably try and assuage him. Instead, she closed her lips and then reopened to ask, “Who’s your favorite writer, Sam?”
The question needed no longer than a second for the answer to rise on his tongue. Aesina quieted beside him, turning her eyes to the hawk daemon on CJ’s shoulder.
“Toby.”
---
Donna held the book tightly in her hands, her excitement making her want to yell at the top of her lungs to gain their attention. Galian wound his way between her legs, nearly tripping her up. She held the answer in her hands to their filibuster problem, and she wondered how no one else had seen it before her.
“It’s his grandson,” she finally blurted out.
Josh’s head swung towards her, and Galian paused in his movement at her feet.
She handed over the the papers, letting him look at them, seeing what she’d found and put together.
Josh turned away from her, already moving and crying out for “grandfathers” and needing every one of them in the Senate right now.
Donna didn’t mind though, didn’t fault him, things moved so fast around him, and besides the look he sent back over his shoulder to her, full of gratitude and pride, was enough.
---
The ball made a steady noise against the wall.
Thud. Thud. Thud. Back to his hand. Thud.
Esir clicked her nails on his desk in time.
Toby rolled his neck, let his thoughts lull themselves to the rhythm of his daemon and the ball in his hand. It was here. The answer, somewhere in all of this with Hoynes, all of it was here, waiting for him to put it all together.
He didn’t need to look at the files and information he’d pulled that littered his desk. They were all there in his mind.
Waiting.
Thud. Thud. Thud. Back to his hand. And...
...Stop.
Esir stilled on the desk.
Simultaneously it came to them.
He stood, reaching for her, his palm up to catch her as she met him off the desk, lifting her up to his shoulder.
The walk to Leo’s office was the quickest he’d ever made.
---
The figure walking through the Communications bullpen made his mind go blank, and Sam found himself at a loss for words; a rare occassion, but one he didn’t mind with the view in front of him.
Ainsley Hayes swaggered towards him, a smile on her red lips. Around her neck lay her ermine daemon like a stole -Mazrim his name, Aesina had told him- all white fur and a bright contrast to the black dress she wore.
“Sam,” she said, happiness in her voice despite the fact that he’d called her back from her event.
Aesina purred at his feet, stepping forward to meet her daemon as the ermine slipped from her neck to the floor.
Sam watched as the two daemons touched, the ermine running claws through the fur at Aesina’s neck.
“Hayes,” he breathed out, warmness spreading in his chest, making himself, dare he say, giddy. “You could make a good dog break his leash.”
---
CJ barked out a laugh, and Nolan shifts his wings menacingly, spreading them wide and arcing them upward. "You guys are like Butch and Sundance peering over the edge of a cliff to the boulder-filled rapids 300 feet below, thinking you better not jump 'cause there's a chance you might drown.”
Josh’s face scrunched in confusion, and he opened his mouth to speak.
She beat him though, continuing on. She thought of how Babish had grilled her over, how she’d only learned yesterday of the President’s MS, how Sam would know soon and would feel just as reeled as she did.
She went on, filling in the gaps, completing her comparison. “The President has this disease and has been lying about it, and you guys are worried that the polling might make us look bad? It's the fall that's gonna kill ya.”
---
Joey’s hands moved rapidly as she relayed the polling numbers, but somehow they didn’t need a translation to know what she was saying.
It could be read in the slump of Josh’s shoulders, the way his daemon’s tail drooped to the floor, the way Toby clenched his hands, the way they all reacted as if the air in the room had deflated them.
“Bad news,” Josh tried to joke, extending a hand for the polling.
Joey gave it over, and they listened half-hearted as Kenny translated: Americans weren’t going to like that the President had lied.
Tell them something they hadn’t already figured out.
---
He stood in the aisle, held the cigarette to his lips and inhaled one long pull, and then blew out. Smoke drifted up towards the ceiling of the church.
A stir of wind by his face and she was off, circling high, her glossy wings catching the light from the stained glass windows, colors like gems on her blue-black feathers.
Angry, he was so angry, and he let it loose.
The words tumbled forward, sarcastic in the beginning and his formed his speech. “Gratias tibi ago, domine.” His voice rose, louder and louder till the church echoed and returned his vitriol. “Haec credam a deo pio, a deo justo, a deo scito?”
He threw his hands outward, disgusted.
“Cruciatus in crucem.”
Bared his teeth, snarled at the front dais, towards the pulpit, as if he was speaking to God standing there at the pew.
“Tuus in terra servus, nuntius fui. Officium perfeci.”
Two steps forward.
“Cruciatus in crucem,” he waved his hand, turned away. “Eas in crucem.”
She cawed loudly, swooping down towards him as he walked away. She landed on his shoulder, a familiar weight, the dry rustling of her wings as she settled.
“You get Hoynes!”
toby's daemon esir
josh's daemon olesia
donna's daemon galian
cj's daemon nolan
ainsley's daemon mazrim
sam's daemon aesina
charlie's daemon briony
ellie's daemon mathias
leo's daemon
the president's daemon
