author: aj (another_juxtaposition@hotmail.com)
codes: cj/toby, post-TFGTKY
rating: pg-13
disclaimer: disillusionment can never be beautiful, but denial sure is fun. They aren't mine.
thanks: kat, for late night advice, cgb, for shredding and stitching, and laura, for asking all the right questions.

summary: "She thinks of stars, pinned to the velvet blanket of the night sky, and wonders if they are ever afraid of falling."

for cgb, who desperately wanted just one more post-TFGKTY story, and for rachel, who didn't laugh.

*

It begins with rock, ironically. Below the loose, constantly moving dirt is the unrelenting crust of the Earth's surface, and then you discover metal. All these contribute to the belief in stability, a stability that doesn't exist. Because the farther you go in, the further you travel down, the hotter things become. And heat causes things to break, fall, split - apart, creating chaos at the core. The earth, our world, is founded on liquid, constant fluidity of form.

Chaos.

*

She had known something was up, six days before. She knew he was lying to her almost instantly, and she felt betrayed, as if she were back on the campaign and still out of the loop, still without the control she needed. She wanted to yell, "Don't fucking mess with me Toby! Don't treat me like I'm twelve years old." But that sounded petty and childish, and so she resorted to silent screams and vicious glares.

He avoided her. She found herself looking for him in hallways, strangely missing his anger, a fact which rattled her perhaps even more than the possibilities of what he was keeping hidden.

She was in his office arguing, when Leo approached her. She turned to follow him, unaware that anything might be amiss until Toby, dropping his eyes, gave that seemingly innocuous statement, "I'll be right here in my office when you're done."

The Earth is constantly shifting, and sometimes things (and people) fall through.

There is no possible preparation for the moment when the ground drops beneath your feet. She was caught off balance, her world spiraling downward, perhaps because somewhere she had convinced herself that this could never be true. Because Bartlet was the real thing, and that meant honesty and candor and everything she had grown to love about the man that couldn't remember her name three years ago.

Her perception changed after they told her, though even now the full impact hasn't registered as she walks the streets of DC in the shadows of celestial light.

She left Josh on the corner, knowing that his mind was already discovering ways to put the satellites back in the sky, to take the broken and fallen and give it life anew. She is far from that place, experiencing earthquakes at the core.

She had been irritated with Babish because she was scared, because the gravitational constants in her universe were disrupted. She lied, lied in the face of truth without thinking. Was that loyalty, or the greatest betrayal?

*

The universe began in an explosion of chaos. A spinning mass of particles growing so large it collapsed on itself in an astronomical act of hubris committed against the laws of physics. As punishment, the Earth and its sister rotating bodies were forced to regulate, spinning on a designated path at specific speeds.

Humanity grew out of this natural regulation of the system. But something, or someone, always cracks and assumed constants topple, like Ptolemy's world map or the Romanovs. Revolution becomes inevitable, for celestial spheres as well.

Her universe began in California when she fell into a pool, an experience that proved the laws of gravity and surface tension with textbook precision. In a parallel relation to the Earth, she moved along her specified path, soon forgetting that gravity kept her there and chaos could break her apart.

CJ is walking alone, and she hears Leo telling her what a stupid thing she is doing but she is far beyond worrying about safety. She is beyond worrying. She is tired from trying instead to comprehend these constants in her life that have deviated from their given coordinates. There is the President, of course, and this thing, this illness and this deception, she doesn't want to believe. But there is also Toby, who lied to her and avoided her eyes.

She is afraid of tomorrow, afraid of entering her apartment and hearing nothing but the silence of an empty room, and her slow breath. There have been too many nights like that, where she has wrapped herself tightly in sheets as if she could close off all the terror, all the worry.

So instead of thinking about the sacrifice she fears will be asked to make for the sake of this administration, for her friends, she thinks of how his mouth manages to communicate volumes without words when it traces the outline of her neck and travels down her spine. His insecurities and fears have been written into her skin. She is the paper on which his secrets are scribbled, scrawled in the language of his soul.

In the stuttering light of the street lamp, she's afraid water will wash the words away, leaving her naked, erased, and alone.

She thinks of stars, pinned to the velvet blanket of the night sky, and wonders if they are ever afraid of falling.

*

Gravity keeps the planets in motion and on their strict paths. Distance between the two rotating points is constant though the pull to come together is strong. She ends up on his street, her feet migrating toward his apartment.

He is waiting for her, the light on his stoop the give-away. As she slowly climbs the stairs the door opens and he stands on the threshold.

It happens like this, when the cosmic home in the space they inhabit screams. She finds him waiting in the hours when the moon begins to set and leaves are dancing down the street, uninhibited and unobserved. It is never intentional, but she's starting to think that this is dangerous because she is relying on something unstable. But the Earth itself is unstable, classified by man in order to create a semblance of stability. She knows that there is liquid at the core, fluid, molten, burning - and sometimes exploding.

She is on the verge of exploding herself, unnerved and unraveling before his eyes, and so she begins to exclaim, covering the terrified silence with loud words and large gestures. "How did this happen Toby? How did they - how could we not know? And you! You knew all along! And Abbey!"

She stops suddenly, realizing the futility of it all. Her voice slows and drops, the magnitude of her knowledge beginning to sink in. "But the lies are hard to stop, aren't they?"

"I thought we were different. I thought we were changing these things . . . I thought we were better than this." He is watching her throughout and she knows he doesn't know what to do or where to put his hands. The thought cracks her control and she begins to laugh.

"I feel like I'm laughing at a funeral," she manages to gasp out, before the laughter dissolves into hysterical sobs, and he reaches out for her, letting her wipe her nose on his sleeve.

He is a step higher than she is, and on this unequal footing she finds herself having to look up at him. Her head rests on his shoulder and he strokes her hair, holding her together, refusing to let the pieces fall apart. "There's something, um, you should know CJ." Toby's words are nothing more than a mumbled whisper.

"Should know?" She laughs bitterly. "Oh Toby." A hollow smile slips across her lips as she says simply, "It's never should."

She leads him inside.

*

They move together, in a rhythm long forgotten but never erased. Consequences have been removed from context and CJ finds herself moaning as his fingers circle. He watches her, memorizing these moments where she forgets to look the part.

She heals his betrayal with her thin fingers that dance delicately across his bare back, and he kisses the despair out of her skin. There is desperation and beauty in their movements, fundamentally human in a time when the aftershocks are more deadly than the initial quake. They are two beings sharing secrets and insecurities in intimacy, boarding up glass windows in preparation for the coming storm. In the morning there will be questions and tenuous existences, but for now in these moments stolen from the early hours of the morning, they are simply alive.

She wonders if this fusion of desire has the potential to destroy it all, but realizes her universe, begun not so long ago in southern California, is already revolting. They are creatures of chaos, born out of it and living through it. Despite that knowledge, they retain a childish optimism by believing that they can find laws to harness it. They think they can understand it, and by understanding, begin to control. But she is learning that the language of the universe isn't translatable.

He rests gently beside her, breathing in the contented rhythm she expects. She shifts, careful not to disturb him, slips out of bed into her clothes, and down the stairs to meet the waiting cab. She will beat him to the office like she always does, and he will enter the building in a fury, daring anyone to cross his path. Eventually he will find his way to her office, and their eyes will say the thanks their mouths can't form, because that is their routine and that is what is safe.

The center of the earth is unregulated and unfettered. The human body reflects its home, created with heat and water and passion. There are revolts. Tempers break, fevers pitch, hearts stop. The earth shakes, reminding humanity of its reliance on the uncontrollable and the unknown. But it keeps spinning, refusing to give in to the power of the sun's gravitational pull and continues on its path through space.

A curt nod later, life will return to normal in the West Wing.

As normal as that can be when revolutions are inevitable, and worlds are constructed with a trust in stability that doesn't exist. All because the universe, and the life that exists within its broad borders, share a foundational chaos.

*

the end.
  . send a flower .
    . back to the garden .