FF: Somebody's Daughter (1/1)
Title: Somebody's Daughter
Author: Leli
Prompt: #83 - Toby & Molly, water
Fandom: The West Wing
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Toby, Molly, a bit of Andy, mention of Huck
Warning: angst
Summary: (mostly) post-series
Disclaimer: I own nothing. I profit from nothing. All characters are the creation and/or property of Aaron Sorkin, John Wells, NBC and Warner Bros.
A/N: Thanks to caz963 for the beta.
Somebody’s Daughter
He isn’t prepared for the screaming.
Not true; he’s prepared for the existence of the screaming, has been made aware of the possibility, but he’s not prepared for the amount, the volume, the sheer magnitude of emotion. An epidural would have made things easier but the twins had been ready and they weren’t going to wait. Andy is happy, between howls; she’d been worried about a C-section.
When the first head appears, he can’t help but look. It’s frightening and jolting and… gooey. But it’s amazing, too - it stuns him and he’s knocked speechless as the reality of the situation hits him full force.
Nothing will ever be the same again.
Then there is a shoulder and another and a back and legs and toes, toes, toes. He’s counting them so intently that he doesn’t think to check which of his children this tiny being is. A squall sweeps through the room and he looks at the child’s face, pinched and red and beautiful. The doctor’s voice booms and Toby’s eyes widen at this, their first introduction, the most important of his life:
“It’s the girl, Mr. Zeigler. Your daughter.”
He places a hand on the bedside tray to steady himself and his weight tilts it dangerously; a plastic cup falls to the floor with a dull thud. Semi-melted ice chips spray across the room as the liquid soaks into the hospital booties on his feet… but Toby’s eyes never leave his daughter’s face.
* * *
The toddler wiggles in his arms as he strips the sweat-soaked pajamas from her chubby body, avoiding the flailing limbs and trying to tune out the screams. He can hear her mother in the other room, pacing with Huck in her arms, the melodic sound of her voice quickly calming his cries to feeble whimpers. Toby silently curses the fact that he is unable to soothe Molly the way that Andy is soothing Huck; his voice is neither as familiar nor as inherently reassuring.
Molly’s body is an angry map of red bumps, more bumps than months of life, and he feels sick at the sight of them. He wants to take them from her - wants to be the one who is nauseous and itching - but knows it doesn’t work that way. This is her battle - one of the first - and he can only watch and try to keep her from scratching clumsily.
He has to kneel beside the tub. The thin mat does little to spare his knees but he doesn’t mind because he knows that this will make her feel better. The water is warm and wet and sprinkled with oatmeal and she settles when he lowers her in. She loves bath-time.
He rubs her back, scooping handfuls of water and letting the trickles calm her angry skin as her sobs diminish to hitching breaths. He reaches to the side and grabs her rubber duck, holding it in front of her in a small offering of comfort. She glances at the toy but makes no move to take it from him.
“You don’t want your duck, Molly? You want a different toy?” he asks, smoothing her hair from her face. “What do you want?”
She looks at the duck for a moment before reaching out a tiny hand. He watches as her arm stretches out and her fingers - opening, closing, seeking - wrap around his thumb. Looking up, he finds her staring at him, her wide brown eyes full of trust and hope and as yet-unshed tears.
“Daddy,” Molly says and Toby envelops her hand with his, pulling her toward him to drop kisses on her feverish head; the duck, forgotten, falls into the tub with a splash.
* * *
Her arms are wrapped tightly around his neck, a weak strangle-hold, as he drags her weight behind him. She’s heavier than he expected - she’s sprouted up quite a bit in the four months since he’s seen her - and he knows it won’t be long before she’s grown out of this game, too.
The light shifts and staggers, drawing moving patterns across the bottom of the pool. One of his hands holds her forearms against his collar-bone; the other reaches and pulls rhythmically, moving them through the water at a snail’s pace. He’s from Brooklyn, after all - water used to come from hydrants - and he’ll never be quick. But she’s a water-baby, his baby, and he’ll swim for her. He’d move mountains for her.
He feels her wiggle against him and her hand squeezes his shoulder - a signal. He propels them up and they surface, her small body sliding off his back as he breaks through. She only stays above for a second, an instant, then lets herself drop again and - with a great, whooping breath - he follows. They face each other, sitting lazily underwater, and she reaches for him, her child’s hand tracing the shape of his beard against his face. He smiles at her when she tries to tickle his neck. Toby remains still for a moment, waiting until her attention wanes, drawn to the fleeting impressions of light cascading across her form. Then he grabs her hand, yanking her toward him and reaching for her stomach. Her air comes out in bursts of bubbles as he tickles and she pushes away to get a new breath, leaving him floating beneath the surface and watching her slender legs as they move her ever farther away from him.
* * *
Pulling his jacket close to his body, Toby steps out of his car and directly into a puddle. Perfect. An appropriate end to a series of setbacks that has brought him here, tired, annoyed and far later than is acceptable. Shaking a small ocean of water from his shoe, he turns up his collar against the still-falling rain and makes his way across the crowded parking lot. The roar of the spectators is audible as soon as he enters the school and he uses it like a compass point to navigate the unvarying, locker-lined hallways. Reaching the gym, he pulls the door open and is assaulted by a veritable wall of sound - crowd cheering, ball thumping, and feet pacing up and down the court with all the elegance of a herd of wild elephants.
It takes him two sweeps of the assembled audience to find her and even then, it's only because he spots her distinctive red hair poking out from under a team hat - Andy always did have spirit. Elbowing a path through throngs of excitable students and parents, Toby makes his way over to the bright orange bleachers, dropping down beside his ex-wife as she moves her coat from the seat beside her.
“Has she been on much?” he asks, leaning in to be heard over the cheers.
“Quite a bit, actually,” Andy says, glancing at him quickly before returning her eyes to the players as they race back and forth along the court. “Looks like you got caught in the storm.”
“One of my students had a problem with his exam schedule so I couldn’t get out of my office as early as I’d planned. And the damn rain has turned everyone into slower drivers than your mother. I’m surprised I made it at all,” he responds, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket and wiping the water from his head.
“You almost didn’t; we’re already into the fourth quarter. You missed a pretty basket on her free-throw.”
There’s no maliciousness in Andy’s tone; she’s merely passing on the information. His lateness isn’t something they fight about anymore.
“She was fouled?” Toby asks, watching as his daughter is called off by the coach and replaced for the time being with a tall, blonde classmate.
“In the first half. That big, curly-haired girl playing point-guard slammed Molly pretty hard,” Andy replies, offering Toby some of her popcorn.
“She’s okay?”
“She’s fine. Shook it off and hit the foul throw with nothing but net. She’ll be sorry you missed it.”
“She can tell me about it at dinner.”
“You can watch it on tape, later,” Andy says.
“Where’s the camera?” he asks, scanning the area around them to no avail.
“Since there are about fifty other parents taping the game, Mike took it over to Huck’s track meet. Thank God it’s indoors; Huck would’ve been pissed if they'd rescheduled again.”
“That was today?” Toby asks, cringing as Andy nods. “Dammit.”
Andy glances over at him. “Don’t worry about it, Toby. Huck knows you can’t be in two places at once - and he’s got his step-dad there. Besides, this is a semi-final; Huck’s still got months in his track season.”
Toby is about to reply when the opposing team scores a three-pointer, sending the audience into a cacophony of boos and stomping feet. As the noise dies down slightly, the coach signals for a line change and Molly jumps off the bench, charging onto the court with a look of fierce determination. Toby exchanges a smile with Andy and then shrugs.
“One benefit of making the championship - this place is packed; maybe Molly didn’t notice how late I was,” he says.
Andy’s smile fades. “That’s where you’re wrong, Toby; she always notices,” she says, her face becoming somber as she returns her attention to the game. “No matter who else is in the room… she always notices that you’re not.”
* * *
He catches Molly on her way to the Molecular Biology lab, confronts her in the hazy October sun as red-tinted leaves lose their fragile grip on life and fall slowly to the ground at their feet. She’s older now, a ‘legal adult’, and she no longer finds his sporadic visits charming - the excitement of new toys and intermittent days of undivided attention do not make the intervals between them forgivable.
It’s not a surprise, not really - he’s seen it coming for years. Her brother is more understanding, more willing to take what he can get, and Toby wonders if that’s because Huck has such a good relationship with his step-father. For Huck, Toby is just an added bonus - someone who visits on Yom Kippur and sends Yankees caps; Toby knows he’ll never be the boy’s first call if he’s in trouble. For a while, though, he was Molly’s.
Today, standing under the awning of the Biological Sciences building at Georgetown, she struggles to balance a pile of books and papers as she fidgets under his scrutiny. There’s anger in her face, of course, but there’s also sadness and resignation.
She’s tired, she says; tired of wondering whether or not he’ll make the effort to contact her instead of the other way around; tired of quarterly dinners to catch up on things he could have found out in real-time had he bothered to call; tired of watching her father pale in comparison to her step-father.
It’s hurting her, this hesitation to accept her mother’s husband, even after all these years as a ‘blended family’. It’s hurting her and it’s hurting her mother and it’s hurting her step-father. And for what? Misplaced loyalty? Occasional Sundays spent bakery hopping - searching for the perfect rugelach - and impassioned lectures about the beauty of the written word? It isn’t enough. Not anymore.
So she’ll send him an invitation. She hopes he’ll come. But she won’t be asking him to give her away - and that’s why she didn’t tell him sooner. She kisses his cheek fleetingly, her touch soft and brief, before heading into the building and toward her next class.
Toby stands for a moment, surprised that he can feel so shocked when he’s known where this was headed since this morning - since the moment Andy had tried to back-track after an off-hand comment about a caterer. He wonders if he’ll be able to manage it - being Molly’s father in name only while another man stands beside her.
He wonders if that’s what he’s been doing all along.
He’ll have to try. He can’t live without her any more than he’s ever been able to devote himself to her completely. Funny how, as a parent, he’s so middle-of-the-road when in all his other successes and failures he’s been a man of extremes.
Walking slowly across the busy campus, he resolves to find a way to be a better friend to Molly than he ever was a father - starting with her wedding. He’ll be congratulatory and calm. He’ll clap at the end of the father/daughter dance and graciously accept the next one. And when her step-father raises his glass, Toby will make sure that he doesn’t return the toast with water - the last thing he needs is to lose his soul on the same day that she breaks his heart.
End
Author: Leli
Prompt: #83 - Toby & Molly, water
Fandom: The West Wing
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Toby, Molly, a bit of Andy, mention of Huck
Warning: angst
Summary: (mostly) post-series
Disclaimer: I own nothing. I profit from nothing. All characters are the creation and/or property of Aaron Sorkin, John Wells, NBC and Warner Bros.
A/N: Thanks to caz963 for the beta.
Somebody’s Daughter
He isn’t prepared for the screaming.
Not true; he’s prepared for the existence of the screaming, has been made aware of the possibility, but he’s not prepared for the amount, the volume, the sheer magnitude of emotion. An epidural would have made things easier but the twins had been ready and they weren’t going to wait. Andy is happy, between howls; she’d been worried about a C-section.
When the first head appears, he can’t help but look. It’s frightening and jolting and… gooey. But it’s amazing, too - it stuns him and he’s knocked speechless as the reality of the situation hits him full force.
Nothing will ever be the same again.
Then there is a shoulder and another and a back and legs and toes, toes, toes. He’s counting them so intently that he doesn’t think to check which of his children this tiny being is. A squall sweeps through the room and he looks at the child’s face, pinched and red and beautiful. The doctor’s voice booms and Toby’s eyes widen at this, their first introduction, the most important of his life:
“It’s the girl, Mr. Zeigler. Your daughter.”
He places a hand on the bedside tray to steady himself and his weight tilts it dangerously; a plastic cup falls to the floor with a dull thud. Semi-melted ice chips spray across the room as the liquid soaks into the hospital booties on his feet… but Toby’s eyes never leave his daughter’s face.
* * *
The toddler wiggles in his arms as he strips the sweat-soaked pajamas from her chubby body, avoiding the flailing limbs and trying to tune out the screams. He can hear her mother in the other room, pacing with Huck in her arms, the melodic sound of her voice quickly calming his cries to feeble whimpers. Toby silently curses the fact that he is unable to soothe Molly the way that Andy is soothing Huck; his voice is neither as familiar nor as inherently reassuring.
Molly’s body is an angry map of red bumps, more bumps than months of life, and he feels sick at the sight of them. He wants to take them from her - wants to be the one who is nauseous and itching - but knows it doesn’t work that way. This is her battle - one of the first - and he can only watch and try to keep her from scratching clumsily.
He has to kneel beside the tub. The thin mat does little to spare his knees but he doesn’t mind because he knows that this will make her feel better. The water is warm and wet and sprinkled with oatmeal and she settles when he lowers her in. She loves bath-time.
He rubs her back, scooping handfuls of water and letting the trickles calm her angry skin as her sobs diminish to hitching breaths. He reaches to the side and grabs her rubber duck, holding it in front of her in a small offering of comfort. She glances at the toy but makes no move to take it from him.
“You don’t want your duck, Molly? You want a different toy?” he asks, smoothing her hair from her face. “What do you want?”
She looks at the duck for a moment before reaching out a tiny hand. He watches as her arm stretches out and her fingers - opening, closing, seeking - wrap around his thumb. Looking up, he finds her staring at him, her wide brown eyes full of trust and hope and as yet-unshed tears.
“Daddy,” Molly says and Toby envelops her hand with his, pulling her toward him to drop kisses on her feverish head; the duck, forgotten, falls into the tub with a splash.
* * *
Her arms are wrapped tightly around his neck, a weak strangle-hold, as he drags her weight behind him. She’s heavier than he expected - she’s sprouted up quite a bit in the four months since he’s seen her - and he knows it won’t be long before she’s grown out of this game, too.
The light shifts and staggers, drawing moving patterns across the bottom of the pool. One of his hands holds her forearms against his collar-bone; the other reaches and pulls rhythmically, moving them through the water at a snail’s pace. He’s from Brooklyn, after all - water used to come from hydrants - and he’ll never be quick. But she’s a water-baby, his baby, and he’ll swim for her. He’d move mountains for her.
He feels her wiggle against him and her hand squeezes his shoulder - a signal. He propels them up and they surface, her small body sliding off his back as he breaks through. She only stays above for a second, an instant, then lets herself drop again and - with a great, whooping breath - he follows. They face each other, sitting lazily underwater, and she reaches for him, her child’s hand tracing the shape of his beard against his face. He smiles at her when she tries to tickle his neck. Toby remains still for a moment, waiting until her attention wanes, drawn to the fleeting impressions of light cascading across her form. Then he grabs her hand, yanking her toward him and reaching for her stomach. Her air comes out in bursts of bubbles as he tickles and she pushes away to get a new breath, leaving him floating beneath the surface and watching her slender legs as they move her ever farther away from him.
* * *
Pulling his jacket close to his body, Toby steps out of his car and directly into a puddle. Perfect. An appropriate end to a series of setbacks that has brought him here, tired, annoyed and far later than is acceptable. Shaking a small ocean of water from his shoe, he turns up his collar against the still-falling rain and makes his way across the crowded parking lot. The roar of the spectators is audible as soon as he enters the school and he uses it like a compass point to navigate the unvarying, locker-lined hallways. Reaching the gym, he pulls the door open and is assaulted by a veritable wall of sound - crowd cheering, ball thumping, and feet pacing up and down the court with all the elegance of a herd of wild elephants.
It takes him two sweeps of the assembled audience to find her and even then, it's only because he spots her distinctive red hair poking out from under a team hat - Andy always did have spirit. Elbowing a path through throngs of excitable students and parents, Toby makes his way over to the bright orange bleachers, dropping down beside his ex-wife as she moves her coat from the seat beside her.
“Has she been on much?” he asks, leaning in to be heard over the cheers.
“Quite a bit, actually,” Andy says, glancing at him quickly before returning her eyes to the players as they race back and forth along the court. “Looks like you got caught in the storm.”
“One of my students had a problem with his exam schedule so I couldn’t get out of my office as early as I’d planned. And the damn rain has turned everyone into slower drivers than your mother. I’m surprised I made it at all,” he responds, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket and wiping the water from his head.
“You almost didn’t; we’re already into the fourth quarter. You missed a pretty basket on her free-throw.”
There’s no maliciousness in Andy’s tone; she’s merely passing on the information. His lateness isn’t something they fight about anymore.
“She was fouled?” Toby asks, watching as his daughter is called off by the coach and replaced for the time being with a tall, blonde classmate.
“In the first half. That big, curly-haired girl playing point-guard slammed Molly pretty hard,” Andy replies, offering Toby some of her popcorn.
“She’s okay?”
“She’s fine. Shook it off and hit the foul throw with nothing but net. She’ll be sorry you missed it.”
“She can tell me about it at dinner.”
“You can watch it on tape, later,” Andy says.
“Where’s the camera?” he asks, scanning the area around them to no avail.
“Since there are about fifty other parents taping the game, Mike took it over to Huck’s track meet. Thank God it’s indoors; Huck would’ve been pissed if they'd rescheduled again.”
“That was today?” Toby asks, cringing as Andy nods. “Dammit.”
Andy glances over at him. “Don’t worry about it, Toby. Huck knows you can’t be in two places at once - and he’s got his step-dad there. Besides, this is a semi-final; Huck’s still got months in his track season.”
Toby is about to reply when the opposing team scores a three-pointer, sending the audience into a cacophony of boos and stomping feet. As the noise dies down slightly, the coach signals for a line change and Molly jumps off the bench, charging onto the court with a look of fierce determination. Toby exchanges a smile with Andy and then shrugs.
“One benefit of making the championship - this place is packed; maybe Molly didn’t notice how late I was,” he says.
Andy’s smile fades. “That’s where you’re wrong, Toby; she always notices,” she says, her face becoming somber as she returns her attention to the game. “No matter who else is in the room… she always notices that you’re not.”
* * *
He catches Molly on her way to the Molecular Biology lab, confronts her in the hazy October sun as red-tinted leaves lose their fragile grip on life and fall slowly to the ground at their feet. She’s older now, a ‘legal adult’, and she no longer finds his sporadic visits charming - the excitement of new toys and intermittent days of undivided attention do not make the intervals between them forgivable.
It’s not a surprise, not really - he’s seen it coming for years. Her brother is more understanding, more willing to take what he can get, and Toby wonders if that’s because Huck has such a good relationship with his step-father. For Huck, Toby is just an added bonus - someone who visits on Yom Kippur and sends Yankees caps; Toby knows he’ll never be the boy’s first call if he’s in trouble. For a while, though, he was Molly’s.
Today, standing under the awning of the Biological Sciences building at Georgetown, she struggles to balance a pile of books and papers as she fidgets under his scrutiny. There’s anger in her face, of course, but there’s also sadness and resignation.
She’s tired, she says; tired of wondering whether or not he’ll make the effort to contact her instead of the other way around; tired of quarterly dinners to catch up on things he could have found out in real-time had he bothered to call; tired of watching her father pale in comparison to her step-father.
It’s hurting her, this hesitation to accept her mother’s husband, even after all these years as a ‘blended family’. It’s hurting her and it’s hurting her mother and it’s hurting her step-father. And for what? Misplaced loyalty? Occasional Sundays spent bakery hopping - searching for the perfect rugelach - and impassioned lectures about the beauty of the written word? It isn’t enough. Not anymore.
So she’ll send him an invitation. She hopes he’ll come. But she won’t be asking him to give her away - and that’s why she didn’t tell him sooner. She kisses his cheek fleetingly, her touch soft and brief, before heading into the building and toward her next class.
Toby stands for a moment, surprised that he can feel so shocked when he’s known where this was headed since this morning - since the moment Andy had tried to back-track after an off-hand comment about a caterer. He wonders if he’ll be able to manage it - being Molly’s father in name only while another man stands beside her.
He wonders if that’s what he’s been doing all along.
He’ll have to try. He can’t live without her any more than he’s ever been able to devote himself to her completely. Funny how, as a parent, he’s so middle-of-the-road when in all his other successes and failures he’s been a man of extremes.
Walking slowly across the busy campus, he resolves to find a way to be a better friend to Molly than he ever was a father - starting with her wedding. He’ll be congratulatory and calm. He’ll clap at the end of the father/daughter dance and graciously accept the next one. And when her step-father raises his glass, Toby will make sure that he doesn’t return the toast with water - the last thing he needs is to lose his soul on the same day that she breaks his heart.
End