Ready For A Fall

'You sit there in my shadows...'

The darkness was a blessed relief and she slipped into it like a bather gliding into the ocean, allowing the solitude to wash over her with profound relief.

Safely inside the room CJ leaned back against her office door and reflected that whether she liked it or not, hiding in the darkened room was the most effective strategy for holding it together that she had tried to date.

A rapid walk around the building in the crisp night air had been a good idea, certainly worth the attempt. But it didn't have the same possibilities for solace that the stillness and the gloom did.

She was too weary and too worried to care that this was far from an ideal way to spend Christmas. In fact the day had ceased to be imbued with any special significance several hours earlier and had simply become just another 24 hours she needed to endure. She didn't think she was the only person feeling this way - the West Wing was almost as busy as it was on a normal business day and the faces of her colleagues showed their tiredness, their frustration. Even the decorations seemed to share the same tarnished, lacklustre quality.

Her gaze shifted and she fought back the tears she had been defending herself against all day. She would not cry. She curled her hand up into a fist and jammed her nails into her palm as a distraction. This wasn't about how she was feeling. Josh was a dear friend, and he was in trouble, racked by emotions and ghosts that separated him from the people who cared about him. He was so locked up in the guilt and the fear that she was beginning to think that even with help he would never entirely be free of it.

'CJ.' The darkness spoke her name. Or did the voice belong to the crumpled heap on her couch that she had failed to notice until now? Was it even possible to tell where the darkness ended and Toby began? Or were the two somehow inextricably linked like the shadows she sought refuge in and the darkness she was almost too tired to keep at bay - and why did she always get so fanciful when she was tired and upset?

She pushed herself away from the door, swaying slightly as the tiredness and the emotional cost of the day threatened to overwhelm her. But she fought back with tenacity and took a step towards the light switch, only hesitating when she realised that she might not want to illuminate this scene. Did she really want to make it easier for Toby to know how she was feeling right now? Surely the fact that he was sitting here, waiting for her, meant that she had every reason to still want to hide.

'Are you all right?'

Two more steps bought her to the desk and she bent over it, hiding her face from him since the reflected glow of the lights outside meant he might just be able to see her expression and recognise how much she was struggling with her composure right now. She took a steadying breath and managed to say

'I appreciate your concern, but at the moment I'd really like to be on my own.'

He made no move to heed her wishes, his gaze resting levelly on her as he waited and while he wasn't normally a patient man he was prepared to be patient about this. It had taken him some time to get here but now that he had completed his own journey towards healing he had no intention of abandoning someone he cared about as she struggled on. The guilt he felt at taking so long to realise that she was struggling, at not seeing until recently that she was tired and dispirited and unhappy, was a wasted emotion.

He could do nothing to change the fact that he had needed to work through some of his own demons before he could be of any use to anyone else. Nor could he change that even though he had known that she needed someone he had not come to her until after he had witnessed Josh's inability to cope alone. Now that he had seen a strong and brilliant man so desperately in pain Toby was determined that it would not happen again to anyone he cared for, and certainly not to the person who... He didn't finish that thought, it was caught up with too turbulent emotions and it was not the reason for his presence, or at least, not the only reason.

Instead he reminded himself that perhaps this timing was in some way fortuitous. While he had ranted and raged in the aftermath of the shooting CJ had thrown herself into work, concentrated on keeping the administration moving and guiding them away from trouble. She had been the constant in his life during those dark days, the only person who cared enough to try and pull him back from the brink, no mater how futile a task it had seemed. Now, when she needed him he was strong enough to be of real use to her. And like it or not, there was one thing he was certain of ... she did need him.

'I'm not going to do that CJ, not when you're like this.'

'I'm fine,' she turned towards him, raked her hair back from her face and fixed him with a steely gaze.

'No, you aren't!' There was too much worry in his voice, he couldn't quite hold it in check. The last thing he had meant to do was burden her with his emotions when she could scarcely bear the weight of her own. He watched her close her eyes, giving her the time she needed to wrest back some kind of control. When she looked at him again he tried once more, his tone more careful now, measured rather than anxious. 'CJ, you and I have known each other for a long time, long enough to realise when the other is unhappy. I think we need to find a quiet bar, get drunk together and talk about whatever is bothering you.'

'Toby, I swear, if you don't stop being nice to me...'

'I'm not going away and I am making a supreme effort here, which, incidentally you could be more appreciative of.' She tried another tact, finding the jaded wariness all too easily as she pointed out,

'Its Christmas day, there aren't any bars open.'

'I'm the White House Director of Communications, you want to see how fast I could get a bar to open for us?'

'The press,'

'I don't care about the press.' She looked up at him with such a shocked expression that he almost regretted adding as an afterthought, 'right now.' Tears gave way to exhaustion and she shook her head, laughing at him just a little.

'I'm glad to see you haven't entirely thrown caution to the winds and raced headlong to my rescue.'

'I had more of a casual saunter in mind.' She started to speak, to find another excuse but his voice was louder and stronger, overriding her objections with a stridency that was at once more irritating and considerably safer than the softness of his concern had been.

'Oh for God's sake CJ, I'm offering to help, it doesn't mean I think you can't cope, it doesn't mean I don't respect you or your ability to do your job and it doesn't mean that I'll treat you with kid gloves the next time we argue. I don't treat anyone that way if I think they can fight back and you should know that.'

He pushed himself to his feet and continued with the same amount of vehemence. 'Its just that its Christmas night and we've had a terrible day, I know you're exhausted, worried about Josh and I don't think hiding away in your office or refusing to acknowledge how upset you are is going to solve anything. I'm offering to be the kind of friend you've been to me and I don't know or care why it is you believe you don't deserve, or can't allow yourself, that. But I am not leaving you like this. So either we go to a bar or we sit here for the night, either way, you're stuck with me.'

Somewhere or other it seemed it had been decided, quite independently of her, that she should end this day with tears. She blinked back the first one, tilted her head back to stop the rest from falling, fighting what seemed to be a pointless battle until the darkness spoke her name again and she looked at Toby and found the edge of control she had been seeking.

'CJ, I'm not your enemy.' It was a seductive, strangely gentle voice - and she wanted so badly to let herself trust what it seemed to offer. But experience was a bitter friend - and she was hesitating even now, wondering if the tiredness was somehow about to impair her judgement.

It wasn't that she disputed his analysis, she knew she needed a friendly ear, some company, someone to share her hopes and fears with. It was Christmas night quite apart form anything else, a time for families and friends and sharing good memories. That she had sought out solitude and darkness instead told her that something was wrong.

What worried her was the person making the offer; needing Toby was not a situation she wanted to encourage. Needing Toby would place her on dangerous ground, not because she believed he would take advantage of that, but rather that it would be akin to offering a sip of water to someone thirsting for liquid. She knew it wouldn't be enough for her, and that vulnerability, that very susceptibility was something that scared her.

He didn't consider himself a perceptive man, especially when it came to other people's emotions, and certainly if he had thought for a moment he would very likely never have made his next statement. But he was as weary of sophistry and speciousness as she was.

'Is it because I'm the one who's offering? If Josh or Sam had been trying to help you would still you be so reluctant?' It was only when she turned away, when he felt rather than saw her sudden awkwardness, that he realised what he had actually asked her. 'CJ?'

When she started to move away his patience finally eluded him and he stepped towards her, catching her arm and the sudden flash of heat between them hit him with all the force of an explosion. His fingers curled around her arm, the stillness out of kilter with his racing pulse and the tortured breaths he took as she looked into his eyes. He hated this, the vulnerability of his heart, the mawkish sentimentality, hated that he had no way of expressing what he felt other than with words that had been used a hundred times already by poets, dramatists and cheap romance writers alike - that very lack of originality offended his pride.

Something in his expression altered, emotion flittering so rapidly across his features that she struggled to keep up with it. In a single moment he had gone from blazing honesty, his heart open for her to reach out and take if she so wished, to something that looked suspiciously like irascibility. She smiled, relaxing just a little at the recognition that he was simply Toby. Whatever lay between them, whatever was present in the uncharted country of their feelings, right now he was offering something simpler and most less complicated.

'I'll get my coat.'

He was letting her off the hook and while chastising himself for his cowardice he knew that it was the right thing for him to do and he tried to find some comfort in the knowledge that eventually there would be another such moment.

They stepped towards the door in a companionable silence, Toby pausing slightly to allow CJ to open the door and step out into the hallway first. And that was when fate took a hand, when they both learnt that they were but pawns in a larger and infinitely more complex game of chance.

CJ saw it first, it caught her eye as she took a step forwards, and she frowned, trying to remember if it had been there when she had entered the room. Toby, half a pace behind followed her gaze and realised what she was looking at.

The sprig of mistletoe hung gamely onto the top of the office door, like a limpet clinging to a rockface amidst the battering of the fiercest storm of winter. His shoulder brushed her arm, their bodies a fragment of an instant apart, their breathing slipping into an easy rhythm. Their mutual recognition of what they could see and what the plant implied at this time of year was a powerful one, and their eyes met as they both looked at it. Their gaze locked and held as possibilities ebbed and flowed between them.

The End