Parallax
by Shaye
snortgirl@earthlink.net

DISCLAIMER: Aaron Sorkin is da man.
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: The Women of Qumar, refs to Ellie and ItSoTG
SUMMARY: Gender politics and personal entanglements begin to mesh. CJ/T,
post-TWoQ.
ARCHIVAL: Anyone's welcome, but please let me know where.
NOTES: Parallax, n: The apparent displacement, or difference of position,
of an object, as seen from two different stations, or points of view.
[Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary] Much thanks to Penelopody for the
feedback.

~*~

"The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence; not in silence, but
restraint."
-Marianne Moore, "Silence"

~*~

He used to write poetry for his wife, and he thinks CJ doesn't know about
it. Andrea was awed at first, would show her the poems scratched on
cocktail napkins and legal paper, ask her if they were anything like the
poems he used to write, 'back when they first met.'

She didn't know. She didn't even know he wrote poetry. He certainly never
wrote any for her, presenting it to her as a gift done in paper and ink. It
didn't surprise her to know that he waxed poetic for Andrea, because so much
about that whole affair was unusual. When Andi finally realized that he
never wrote for CJ, she stopped showing her the poetry. The two of them
were never close, but they have their secrets.

It hurts her the way he looks right past her whenever Andi's in the room.
Something about the two of them, Toby and Andrea, was nuclear from the
start; disastrous, but strangely beautiful while it lasted. He wrote her
poetry and took her to dimly lit restaurants and bought her jewelry. But it
was all just a little too sweet, and a little too right, and after the
white-hot brightness faded, there was nothing but a hazy afterburn in which
he cast her admiring glances from afar.

With CJ, it was never like that. CJ burned low, but steady in his memory.
He never wrote her poetry, but then he never signed his name to her divorce
papers either. There was nothing too sweet about Toby and CJ, and for her,
that always ended up being all too right. Because that meant they could
disagree without the world going metastatic. She liked it that way, liked
being able to disagree with him almost as much as she liked the opposite,
and after ten years admitted that she wouldn't have wanted to be Andrea, not
even for all the poetry in the world.

Even with all that history, something tore at her insides this afternoon
when, in the middle of her press briefing, he clasped his hands over his
heart so that only she could see. It wasn't too sweet, but it touched her
in a way she couldn't describe. She thinks maybe even he would be loathe to
articulate it, except in the poetry he doesn't write. Though the world's
not a better place for it, she thinks they might be better people.

*

"Apartheid, CJ?"

His voice at the door of her office makes her look up, holding his gaze a
long moment before she replies. "Yeah, what about it?" They try to say
something to one another in the space between them, but perhaps it's too
difficult when they're alone. Her eyes return to her work, making marks on
reports in red ink, but it's he who holds her attention.

"It's a bad analogy."

"Funny," she smirks, "Nancy said the same thing about Nazis." Her voice is
not nearly as hard as she thinks it should be.

He sighs, pushing off from the doorway and sprawling into one of her guest
chairs. "This is bigger than you, CJ. It's bigger than me."

The pen clatters to her desk, and she crosses her arms, slumping back in her
chair. "I just wanted to make you understand," she tells the ceiling.

He narrows his eyes, his chin jutting out, as if he's trying to get a better
look at her, or at something inside her. His hands fold together in his
lap, and he turns his gaze down at them, not looking at her as he speaks.
"What is this, CJ? Are you...afraid, or something?"

Toby continues looking at his hands, except for a brief glance at her from
under his eyebrows, and CJ reaches for a mug of cold coffee on her desk,
spinning her chair to look out the window. They sit like that, silently,
for several minutes. Life continues outside her office; they can hear Carol
talking on the phone, and someone using the copier in the bullpen. But
they're frozen in a dysfunctional tableau.

She takes a sip of her bitter coffee, swallowing loudly and speaking softly.
"You can't know what it's like. You didn't grow up having to prove yourself
just because you were a girl. I did. And now my job is the news, and to
betray these women, who aren't even allowed prove themselves...and beyond
that, how can they ever even feel safe?" CJ drinks again, just to listen
for a moment to Toby's reaction. She can't even hear him breathe, and when
he speaks, it surprises her.

"I think everyone here know something about not feeling safe."

"Yeah. Exactly, Toby." The silence stretches the walls of the room, and CJ
wonders how the rest of them cannot see what is so obvious to her.
"'Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.' I'm sure you know
the quote, Toby, you were around when Dr. King said it. We turn a blind eye
on this, and what comes next? Even in this country, the places you think
are safe...all it takes is one time, and it's not safe anymore. I hate that
I am, Toby, but sometimes...I am afraid. Sometimes I still get spooked
walking to my car at night, and maybe I shouldn't be ashamed of that."

CJ takes a deep breath, twisting her head over her shoulder to get a look at
Toby when he says nothing. His palm is over his mouth, thoughtfully, and he
meets her eyes. "It occurs to me to worry, sometimes," he admits, and she
can see that the admission costs him.

Her brow wrinkles, and she sets her coffee cup down. Before he can say
anything else, CJ is out of her chair and perched on the edge of her desk
near him. "I understand fear. But it's not just fear for those women, it's
reality," she murmurs. "And I made a joke out of it just now, because it's
my *job*." 

He falters. "You can't--"

"I can," she says, and she really can, even though she knows it's not
exactly the same thing. "Do you honestly think I'm naive enough to assume
that you and I can do something about this? I'm not, Toby, I haven't been
for years. But is it too much to ask you to *care*? Think about it, Toby.
What if it were me. What if it were one of your sisters. What if it were
Andi. Think about that, and then tell me this is bigger than you."

She reaches up to brush a strand of hair out of her face, standing. He
catches her wrist and holds her in place. "I'm sorry," he says, and his
tone is almost too honest. She fleetingly wishes he'd just put his hand
over his heart again, but he doesn't, and she knows it's for the best.

Even though she tried to show him, he can't know what it's like, and they
stand in the only places they can.

*

It's well past dark the next time he comes into her office. "Hey."

She's still sifting through briefings, despite the full lid. "Hey," she
answers. Her glasses are perched on the end of her nose, and she looks at
him over the top of them. "What's up?"

Toby shrugs, pursing his mouth. "Nothing." He's carrying his briefcase and
topcoat, and his tie is undone. As he sinks into her sofa, his knees creak.
"I never..." he begins quietly.

"Hm?"

"Nothing. You have plans for the weekend?"

She pauses a moment before answering, "Throw out all the beef in my
freezer." She's not sure if that's a joke.

"Ah. Right."

She eyes him a moment before returning to work, gathering up the last of her
papers and putting them into a file. She marks on the file tab in black
ink, and tosses it into the corner of her desk. "So really, what's up?"

As Toby shuffles his coat around and clears his throat, his eyes flick away
for a second. "Uh, Sam and Ainsley are arguing in his office. I'm going
home to finish this stuff." He gestures lightly to his briefcase.

CJ nods, ruffling a fresh pile of papers on her desk before sighing and
pushing them aside. "It's late."

"Yeah."

"Today has been seven kinds of hell."

"Yeah. You going home?"

Looking around her desk, she lifts her glasses and rubs her eyes. The last
of her mascara comes off on her fingers, but she doesn't much notice.
"Yeah," she decides, spinning around to grab her briefcase and standing in
one motion. She moves to put on her coat, and notices that Toby is still
just sitting there on her couch, vibrating with nervous energy. "Seriously,
what is it?" she prompts again.

"Oh, uh, it's nothing. I just thought..." He stands, scratching the back
of his neck. "I thought you might want a ride home."

CJ stands still, biting her lip. "I brought my car," she says, voice full
of molasses and gravel.

"Yeah, but I thought..."

"Are you coming on to me, Toby?" she jokes, her words edged with suspicion.

"No. I, I just..." He casts about himself, his gestures
uncharacteristically out of control.

He stops when CJ drops her briefcase on the floor, throwing her hands in the
air abruptly. "I knew, I knew it!"

"Knew what?"

"I knew I shouldn't have told you about...I just knew I shouldn't have.
You'd do this, and then I'd have to get angry, and I would feel bad, and it
would be your fault."

"My fault?" Toby swallows, still trying to understand where this went awry.
"Do what, what am I doing?"

"THIS!" She gestures between them, and he looks even more lost. "Since
when have you acted protectively of me, Toby? My God, I'm a grown woman, I
don't need you to hold my hand! In case you hadn't noticed, I'm pretty
tall, and I scare people a little bit."

He laughs, then. "You're scaring *me*, CJ."

A frustrated growl sounds deep in her throat. She holds an emphatic gesture
frozen in the air, and takes a deep breath. "What I told you, about--"

"Yeah," he says when she seems at a loss.

Barely nodding, CJ goes on. "That was...something I shared with you. As a
friend. It wasn't supposed to be something you'd use against me. I
should've known."

His mouth drops open. "I'm not, I'd never - how am I using that against
you? How could I possibly use that against you?"

Her arms cross tightly over her body, and she says nothing. After several
seconds, she retrieves her briefcase from the floor and makes for the door.

His hand on her arm stops her. "I meant what I said," he tells her gently.
"I just worry sometimes, about you, and I don't know what that means."

For some reason, the idea that he worries about her makes her want to smile,
even if it never meant anything. It doesn't quite make up for earlier, when
they sat in her office and had two different conversations about the same
thing, but maybe that's okay. Maybe something has changed between them.
"Okay. But it's not - that's not what today was about." There's another
silence, and somewhere in the building, a vacuum in the hands of a custodian
roars to life. They listen to its rhythm gratefully. CJ takes a deep
breath, using it to force her next words out. "Some of the things I said
earlier, they were inappropriate," she says, then slips past him, through
Carol's office and into the hall. It's not an apology, but it seems like
one.

He stands confounded for a moment, then follows. He can see her back as she
strides purposefully through the empty building. "CJ!" he calls after her.
She stops, turns to look at him expectantly. "It never occurred to me, to
worry about Andi. She always seemed untouchable, so..."

CJ has to maneuver her words around a sudden thickness in her throat. "You
realize that doesn't impress me, right? That you never worried about your
wife?"

"Yeah," he sighs, passing a hand over his head.

Her mouth twists as she considers her next words. "I don't need a savior,
nor do I want one. As long as you understand that." She pauses, and when
he doesn't answer, she turns away. "As long as you understand that." The
click of her heels echoes as she passes from carpet to hardwood.

Toby swallows a too-eloquent response and begins to jog toward her. This,
them, they have never been about poetry. "CJ, wait."

And she does.

*

END


-- 
All my fanfiction, across four fandoms, can be found at
http://www.skywithoutstars.net/candles