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Category: Leo sadfic snippet Rating: PG/15 for topic Characters: Leo & Jen Series: No Spoilers: Anything from Season One onwards. Unintentionally post-eppy for War Crimes. Summary: Leo can’t sleep. Jen suffers from his insomnia. Archive: Just tell me where it’s going Additional ‘stuff’: This fic deals with Leo post-Viet Nam. Mainly Jen’s POV. Which is a first for me. Be nice please. Title: Following Orders It’s been weeks. Mallory’s too busy to either notice or be supportive. Jed and Abbey are busy campaigning. And Leo can’t sleep. Or rather he can, but only for a short time before the nightmares start. We don’t talk about it. We hardly ever manage to name it. And we certainly don’t talk about the lack of sleep we’ve both had since it. Viet Nam. Before Leo went there I’d have had trouble pointing it out on a globe. Now I feel like I know all about it. Every news broadcast, the papers, everywhere was full of it. Viet Nam this, Viet Nam that. I don’t care about any of it. I just care that Leo can’t sleep. Even very drunk, he wakes in the middle of the night. He’s asleep again within minutes, but it’s enough to disturb both of us. He dropped bombs. I know that much. I don’t know much else. Mainly because I made it clear I didn’t want him to go. And he went. And when he came back, he was different. The old Leo was gone. This new Leo has a self-confidence you couldn’t dent with a brick. But we both knew it was just for show. Underneath, you could dent him with a feather. Since he came back, we’ve talked about it a couple of times. When the nightmares have been particularly bad. But all I get is that he was ‘following orders’ and little else. But following orders doesn’t leave you sitting upright in bed, shaking so hard your teeth chatter, t-shirt and bedclothes so soaked in sweat you have to change before you can get back to sleep. Following orders doesn’t lead you to drink so much that you pass out in front of your own daughter’s friends at her birthday party. And twenty years later, Leo’s still drinking. And still having nightmares. I won’t go. It’s only twenty-eight days. He’ll be fine. I spin the globe and trace my finger across from Washington to Arizona. I leave my finger on the word covering the state where my husband’s in rehab. Maybe they’ll be able to stop the nightmares. Because if they can’t, I don’t see how we can go on. End Return to the X-Files Fic Index Return to the West Wing Fic Index
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