FF: This Is Not A Test
Title: This Is Not A Test
Rating: TEEN
Category: Post-Ep for Institutional Memory
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters or this show.
Archiving permission: Sure, just tell me first.
AN: This isn't a J/D fic!!! Ok... Yes, Josh and Donna are in it. I am still a Keytus Kid, after all! But it really is a CJ fic. Actually, it's a CJ/Toby fic... I hope that doesn't offend anyone. I love CJ and Danny together and I hope they live happily ever after, but there was just this stray vibe I picked up when I was watching the show and I wound up running with it.
Six years after the end of the Bartlet Administration…
You were behind the learning curve on this one. You all were. Sam, Josh, Donna, Will… Even Toby. Each of you fumbling with skills that most master in their twenties. But even within your close knit circle, you were the one lagging behind the others, still unable to navigate the intricacies of a committed partnership. It wasn’t your failed marriage that puts you in last place. It was the fact that it has taken you this long to gather enough courage to stand in front of door of the only man you could ever picture spending an eternity just talking to with the sole purpose of telling him just that.
Now if you could only bring yourself to knock.
A few years ago, you had gone to visit Donna when she was seven months pregnant with Leonora and discovered your friend practically in tears. She was sacred that she wasn’t going to be a good mother. Scared that she would want to stay home when the baby came. Scared that she wouldn’t. Just scared in general.
“How can I raise a child?” she had wailed. “I’m slow! It took me almost three years to realize I had fallen in love with Josh five minutes after meeting him. And then it took me another six to do anything about it!!! I can’t have a kid! By the time, I get the diaper thing down, she’ll be ready for college!”
You managed to soothe Donna with some reassuring words about the speed and efficiency she had demonstrated in the White House for over a decade, some chocolate and a discreet phone call to Josh who had dropped everything and raced over to the East Wing. (How the boy had gone from the remedial class with you to the honors program in a matter of months had always amazed you.) But, the entire time, part of your mind had been kicking yourself for your gut reaction to Donna’s rant.
-Ten years?- you had thought. -That’s nothing. Toby and I have known each other for almost thirty years!- But then you remembered Danny and Emma and you were nearly crushed under the weight of your guilt.
You feel guilty a lot. You feel guilty about being envious of Josh and Donna’s relationship from the moment they had returned from Hawaii, tanned and in love, because you had the same thing within your grasp. You felt guilty when you watched them talk in that strange condensed language of theirs, because you and Danny would never be able to communicate like that. You felt guilty because you loved Emma more. You felt guilty anytime you picked up the phone to talk to Toby. You felt guilty when you heard Donna and Josh joke about his old habit of stumbling into a relationship and waiting for whoever it was to break up with him because you did the exact same thing to Danny. And you will always feel guilty that Danny is your Amy Gardner.
But tonight for the first time in a long time, you had left the guilt behind. The time for training is over. (You never really needed any, if you are truthful with yourself. It was all just an excuse.) You are not going to make the same mistakes this time around. This is real and you do not want to mess this up. You will do whatever it takes, because the alternative is too horrible to contemplate. Which means you have to knock on that door.
It’s now or never, you finally decide and rap quickly before you can change your mind. He greets you gently when he opens the door. He always treated you so gently. And somehow under his gaze it’s suddenly very easy to say everything you need to.
“You asked me six years ago what I wanted. I told you I didn’t know. But I was lying. I knew. I was scarred, but I knew. I want to be here. With you. If you let me.”
There were those in Washington who would disbelieve that Toby Ziegler could ever smile like that. They are all fools.
“I’ve been waiting,” he replies as he let you in.