Title: Ghost
Author: juxtaposed
Rating: PG
Category: Romance/Angst, Vignette
Pairing: Toby/Andie, Toby/CJ
Spoilers: Sort of a loose pre-ep to “Debate Camp,” i guess.
Disclaimer: All characters are property of Aaron Sorkin, NBC and The West Wing, and are used without permission, without intent to profit. The lyrics are from the Indigo Girls’ song, “Ghost”.
Archiving: Yes, just let me know. You can find this and my other works online at www.geocities.com/juxtaposed666
Notes: This just kinda came out of nowhere. Take it for what you will.
Update - 11/18/02 - this story is first in the "Sex and Carefully Guarded Secrets" series.
Feedback: Appreciated at [email protected].
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and the mississippi's mighty
but it starts in minnesota
at a place that you could walk across
with five steps down
and i guess that's how you started
like a pinprick to my heart
but at this point you rush right through me
and i start to drown
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The darkness of his living room tightens around him. The air is a physical weight, as if gravity learned to defy physics, increased and is now slumping him down into the chair.
He drags his hand upward, brings the scotch to his lips, and it scorches down his throat to sit like a stone in his stomach. This new gravity is hell on scotch as well, apparently. The taste can’t erase the bitterness in his mouth, the dryness from hours of talking, only to get nowhere.
He can see her when he closes his eyes, sees the shake of her head, the crossed arms, the hardness in her eyes. She closes him out, refuses to listen to his pleas.
He can see her as he last saw her, in his living room, jacket crumpled on the couch, shoes on the floor, pacing on stocking feet. He talks and explains and gives options, asks her over and over, and she finally puts her hands over her ears and screams.
He grabs her arms, shakes her to make her listen. “I didn’t have a choice. Now I’m doing the best I can. But we can make this work.”
She looks at him wide-eyed, shakes off his hands. “You can’t have it both ways. It has to be me or her. But it never can be. She’s too much a part of you. I can’t share you, Toby.”
“What are you talking about? Why won’t you listen to me? Why can’t you see that this can work?”
“It can’t work.” She looks tired, defeated, and he wants to make her understand that he knows, despite how strange it all is, that it can be okay.
“Please…” The whispered word sounds fake to his own ears, but he knows it’s just because he’s unused to saying it.
“I can’t marry you, Toby,” she whispers. “I’m sorry. Marry her. Please. It will be easier, better, for all of us. She can…will make you happy. I’d just resent you after a while.” She slips on her shoes, snatches her jacket off his couch. He reaches for her shoulder and she avoids his touch one last time and slips out the door like a ghost.
Four glasses of scotch and five hours alone in the smothering dark, and he can’t escape her words, the sadness in her eyes when he showed her the ring, the sound of her screaming to make him stop asking.
He tried everything to get her to marry him, swore they could make it all work somehow, no matter how fucked up the situation seemed. But she was adament, and now he was alone with his scotch and a rejected wedding band.
So, he would do as she wanted. He would stop asking. He would swallow the bitterness, leave behind the woman he loved, and ask Andie to marry him again.
CJ will once again become his friend. When he announces the pregnancy, she will fake her delight. When the time comes, she will buy Andie baby clothes. She will announce the marriage of Toby Ziegler and Andrea Wyatt from the briefing room podium. She will sit in the front row at his wedding, and never tell anyone that the ring they are watching him slip onto Andie’s finger was offered to her first.
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this bitter pill i swallow
is the silence that i keep
it poisons me, i can't swim free
the river is too deep
though i'm baptized by your touch
i am no worse than most
in love with your ghost
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-FIN-
This stoy is continued in Escape Velocity
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