Rating: PG
Archive: Just ask me
Disclaimer: If you know it from the show, it's not mine. If you've never heard of something, I probably made it up.
Spoilers: General references to season one and two, specifically "The Midterms"
Summary: Ginger thinks about November.
Author's Notes: Response to the challenge on TWWWomen List - what ghosts haunt the women of the West Wing. Must include two lines from the Constitution and reference to a pint of mint choc chip ice cream and purple cabbage.

The Sculpture Garden is deserted tonight. Which is probably as it should be at the start of November. I mean, who in their right mind would be out here in cold like this, when they could be inside, listening to the Doobie Brothers - yes, Josh finally got his way on the celebratory music - and partaking of the alcohol that is flowing freely, both in cost and in quantity, in the centrally heated, partying West Wing?

Who in their right mind wouldn't rather be inside, listening to Sam lecture everyone on his favourite lines from the Constitution? Yes, only Sam could have favourite lines from the Constitution. In case you're wondering, he's torn between "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union," etc etc (except he quoted the whole thing to me) and "The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term, be elected, as follows." He would have told me the rest of it too, but I made an excuse about needing to powder my nose.

Who in their right mind wouldn't rather be inside, listening to Toby explain Electoral College to CJ? Who in their right mind would've believed a White House Press Secretary who doesn't understand that? Who wouldn't rather be inside, watching Josh and Donna studiously trying to not watch each other? Who wouldn't rather be inside, watching Margaret and Zoey trying to teach everyone, the President and Leo included, the Macarena?

I think of the people that I've spent the last four years working with, and I come to a surprising conclusion.

I love these people.

And yet, instead of partying with them - a right I've more than earned by the way; no-one gave us a chance in hell of getting nominated after Healthgate, then when we won the nomination, no-one gave us a chance of getting re-elected - I'm sitting on a cold bench in the Sculpture Garden, on my own.

Well, that's not really true. I've got a selection of ghosts to keep me company.

The Ghosts of Novembers Past.

The first ghost comes from my college years, good old West Virginia University. I was a wide-eyed freshman, shy as could be, the legacy of being the youngest of five children and the only girl. My brothers took their brotherly duties very seriously, with the result that most guys from our town were too scared to come by the house. Which curtailed my social life to a great extent. When I got to WVU, I was intimidated by nearly everything, kept a small circle of friends, did my course work, and went out a little, but not a lot. And I didn't expect to date much. I mean, seriously? Who'd be interested in a tall pale skinny redhead like me?

As it turned out, someone was.

I met him at a party the November of freshman year, but I knew him from sight before that. Alan O'Neill was tall dark and handsome, one of the bright freshman recruits on the football team, and a pretty smart guy, believe it or not. We were in some of the same poly-sci and journalism classes, and he was always one of the ones who debated with classmates, questioned the professors. Me, I sat wherever there was a spare seat, keeping my head down and my mouth shut and taking copious notes. So when he came up to me at that party, the party that my roommate had all but dragged me to, and told me that he'd noticed me, I didn't believe him. He had to describe the outfits that I'd had on in the last three classes before I believed him. He told me that he'd been trying to find out who I was, trying to come up with a scheme to engineer an introduction ever since the first week of school. We spent the entire party talking together, laughing together, dancing together. He was so nice, so interesting, so interested. Then at the end of the night, he walked me back to my dorm, gave me a kiss on the cheek and asked me out properly.

I hesitated for about an eighth of a second before saying yes.

We dated for the remainder of college, with the exception of three months in the middle there. But we were happy together, and all of our friends quickly accepted us as GingerandAlan. His family loved me, my family adored him. Even my brothers. It got so that he'd come home for a weekend with me, and they'd spend more time with him than I did.

I adored him.

He asked me to marry him the November of our senior year, and that brings up the second ghost tonight. We were walking across campus, my arm linked through his at the elbow, on our way to the library to research a term paper. We were talking about plans for Thanksgiving and if we were going home together or separately when he asked me what I was doing next November. I stopped, wondering briefly if he'd lost his mind. He got down on one knee, right there in the middle of the path, students walking all around us, stopping to get a better look, and produced a ring. He told me that he loved me, that he wanted us to spend the rest of our lives together, that the ring had been his grandmother's, and that he'd had it with him since we came back to college in the fall, just waiting for the right moment.

I hesitated for about an eighth of a second before saying yes.

Ghost number three is the memory of our wedding day. I didn't want a white dress; I've never been able to wear white, it always makes me look pale and washed out. So Mom and I picked out an ivory dress, with a beaded bodice and sleeves, complete with a long train. I knew it was the right dress when I tried it on in the shop and Mom burst into tears. My hair, which Alan always loved, was left down at his insistence, and Mom found the perfect beaded comb to clip it back with. She cried again when I walked down the aisle. I can still see Alan standing there at the altar, looking so handsome in his tuxedo. I wasn't nervous, but my hands started shaking when the music began to play, and I was so afraid that I was going to drop the bouquet, so afraid that Alan was going to come to his senses and realise that he couldn't go through with this.

But he didn't, and we walked back up the aisle together as Mr and Mrs O'Neill. Our wedding reception lasted until the early hours of the morning, with us dancing the night away. I danced with my father, and his father, and each of my brothers, and they all told me how beautiful I looked. My dad gave a speech telling me how I'd always be his little girl and made me cry. And when I danced with him, Alan's father welcomed me to the family officially, telling me that they'd done it unofficially long ago, and that made me cry again. And I looked at my new husband dancing with my bridesmaids, my childhood best friend and my college roommate, both dressed in pale blue, and I thanked my lucky stars that I'd gone to that party four years earlier.

The memory of that day brings a smile to my face, even now. I'm fond of ghost number three, but it never takes long until ghost number four floats up.

For our third anniversary, we went out for dinner. Alan wore the black suit that he looked so handsome in, and a white shirt. He'd forgotten to iron the shirt, so of course, dutiful wife that I was, I had to do it while he stood there and watched, teasing me all the while. I remember sticking my tongue out at him, telling him that I was going to make him pay for those comments, possibly with a night on the couch, or if I was feeling really evil, dinner centred around purple cabbage for a week. "Do you know how many ways there are to cook purple cabbage darling?" And he laughed and told me that I'd never do that to him because I knew how much he hated purple cabbage. I was wearing a pale green dress that was cut low at the back, and he came up behind me, and swept my hair off my back and began kissing my neck, and I had to tell him to quit it or I'd end up ruining his shirt. That was when he slipped a string of pearls around my neck. "I was going to give these to you later," he whispered, "But I couldn't wait." I turned around, after turning off the iron of course, and kissed him, and we very nearly missed our dinner reservation.

Why couldn't we have missed our dinner reservation?

It was late when we left the restaurant. We were walking to where we'd left the car, my arm linked through his at the elbow as we walked along the slippery path, talking, laughing, generally being a couple in love. I don't remember what we talked about.

I remember going to cross the street.

I remember the stoplight being in our favour.

I remember seeing a bright light out of the corner of my eye, and the sensation of hands on my back, and the feeling of flying through the air and landing hard.

I remember a high pitched scream, mine, and the sound of several thuds in succession and glass breaking.

I remember seeing my pearls bounce one by one all over the road.

I remember turning my head and the pain it caused, but that was nothing to the pain in my heart when I saw Alan lying face down on the road.

I remember crawling over to him.

I remember my pale green dress turning red as I gathered him to me and begged him to talk to me.

I remember waking up in hospital and thinking that it was another November and my mother was crying again.

Ghost number four is a hell of a bitch.

The next few months are something of a blur. My parents wanted me to sell the house, but I couldn't. I couldn't bear to lose another part of Alan, and I could remember all the plans we'd made in that little house, all the memories it stored. I hardly went out, hardly ate, hardly slept. My family, Alan's family, our friends, they all visited. They all tried to help me. I screamed, I cried, I sat in stony silence. The lively bubbly Ginger that had emerged with Alan's help vanished, and the shy Ginger returned worse than ever.

I was losing myself.

I knew that, and I didn't know how to stop it.

Until late one night when I was channel surfing. It was April, it was CNN, it was well past midnight. They were running programming on the candidates for the election in November. I watched the Republican nominees, and I could picture Alan, Mr Political, sitting beside me on the couch, giving me chapter and verse on all their shortcomings. He, having been born into an Irish-American family, was a Democrat through and through, his mother and grandmother both having thought that the Kennedys were the nearest thing to royalty that there was. I'd always been quite apolitical, but being married to Alan, there was no escape, and I knew what he would have been thinking. For the length of that program, I could pretend that he was there beside me. After the Republicans, there was a segment on Hoynes, and Alan-in-my-head wasn't too complimentary about him either, even if he was a Democrat. Then they started talking about Jed Bartlet. They showed clips of him, and talked with some of his staff, a serious looking grey haired man, and a bald man with a beard who frightened the living daylights out of me. And then they showed another clip of Bartlet giving a speech. And I remembered that Alan had talked about him and what he'd said. That Bartlet was the real thing.

And sitting in our house, on our couch with a pint of mint choc chip ice cream, in the wee hours of the morning, I made my decision.

My friends and family thought I'd finally cracked, gone delirious in my grief. But I knew I hadn't. I knew that I had to do something to break out of this endless darkness that I found myself in, and this was it.

So I packed up our life, rented out the house and hit the campaign trail.

Which is why ghost number five is four years old and comes from New Hampshire. Much like tonight, the party was in full swing when I needed to make my escape. Everyone had been on tenterhooks all day, televisions and radios were blaring, all available telephones were in use, and the noise was deafening. But it was silent in an instant when CNN announced that they were ready to call the election, only to erupt in raucous screaming when they called it for Bartlet. The champagne was flowing, as was any kind of drink you could mention, and if they played Kool and the Gang one more time, I was going to commit violence.

The garden outside was cold, but I didn't feel it.

I was so lost in my thoughts that I didn't hear him come up behind me until he spoke. "Ginger?"

I jumped and turned to see the bald man with a beard who had frightened the living daylights out of me seven months earlier. Except now I knew him as Toby Ziegler and he frightened me even more some days. To put it mildly, he was the last person I wanted to see me like this, and I quickly wiped the tears from my eyes and shoved the picture back into my pocket.

But I couldn't speak, and seeing that, he moved to stand beside me. "Just getting some air?" His voice was so soft I could hardly believe that this was the man who could reduce grown men to tears, and had.

"Yeah."

He was silent for a long time, shifting his cigar when the smoke blew into my face. "Is there anything I can do?" he asked eventually. I must've looked surprised because he continued, "I know that some people are in there, crying tears of joy. I'm pretty sure that's not what this is. Has someone upset you?" He took a sip of his drink and I shook my head.

"Do you know what today is Toby?" My voice was so bitter I hardly recognised it.

"Election day?" he asked lightly. Earlier on, I'd heard him refer to it as his "Day of Jubilee" and I was so thankful he didn't use that phrase again.

"And my wedding anniversary." I checked my watch and my mind flew back to what I was doing at that time on that day four years earlier. Probably dancing with Alan, or with any of the people who was there. It was late, it could've even been Timewarp time.

"I didn't know you were married." He didn't sound too surprised, just mildly curious. I could imagine what he was thinking. If it was my wedding anniversary, why was I here, at a hotel in New Hampshire, crying in the garden?

"I was." I took a deep breath. I hadn't told anyone about Alan, hadn't told them what brought me to the campaign. I'd even taken to wearing my wedding ring on a chain around my neck with Alan's, so that I didn't have to answer questions about it. "He died."

"I'm sorry." And he did sound sorry. "Was it sudden?"

"He was knocked down by a drunk driver."

"When?"

"On our third wedding anniversary."

All through the conversation, he hadn't looked at me, and I hadn't looked at him. That statement made him turn his head sharply. I saw it out of the corner of my eye and knew what his next question was going to be. So I answered it, looking at him as I did so.

"We would've been married for four years today."

He took a couple of deep breaths, and there was so much sympathy in his eyes that I couldn't look at him any longer. More tears burned my eyes and I looked down when I felt something cold touch my hand. A half-empty glass of amber liquid and a warm hand touched mine, and the words "You look like you need this more than I do," touched my heart. I took the glass and the scotch burned my throat as it went down.

I managed not to cough, but was able to say thank you.

He nodded, looking as awkward as I felt. "Yeah well…" He sighed. "You should come back inside."

I nodded. "In a few minutes."

He nodded again, making to leave. He'd only gone a few steps when he turned. "You'd better be quick. CJ's going to do 'The Jackal'."

I felt myself frowning. "What's 'The Jackal'?" I asked him, puzzled.

He smiled, and I felt the world tilt on its axis. A Toby Ziegler smile was a rare occurrence. "You've never seen 'The Jackal'?"

I shook my head, and against all the odds, I could feel myself starting to smile.

He laughed. Toby Ziegler actually laughed. "Come on." He looked at me expectantly and I found myself following him. "You're not going to want to miss this."

That night, that crazy night, that was the first time that I'd really felt alive in a year. I felt like I was doing something worthwhile with my life, that I had a life to look forward to. I wasn't sure that I'd have a job when the campaign finished up, but Leo McGarry made it clear to a select number of the volunteer staff that if we wanted a job, we pretty much had one, if we were prepared to relocate to Washington. So that's what I did. I sold the house, bought myself a smaller apartment, and began to work in the White House. I found myself in the communications bullpen, as one of Toby's staff, and eventually, after he'd gone through a half dozen other staffers, I ended up as his assistant. We never spoke of that night in New Hampshire and I settled into my new life, and tried to get over my old one. I did pretty well all things considered. Holidays, birthdays and the like weren't as bad as I expected. If I knew a big day like that was coming up, I spent days, weeks even, steeling myself, and ended up getting through the day relatively unscathed. It was the little things that were hard. Hearing a story that I knew Alan would've got a kick out of and wanting to tell him, to pick up the phone and call him but not being able to. Listening to the radio and hearing a song we liked, going to the movies on my own for the first time. When his beloved Denver Broncos won the Super Bowl, I cried all night, and the next day at work had to explain away my red eyes as being part of a Super Bowl hangover. And when Margaret told us one lunchtime that Leo was buying his wife a pearl choker, I had to excuse myself from the table so that I could find a quiet bathroom stall and sob in peace, and every time I closed my eyes for the rest of the day, all I could see was pearls bouncing along the road.

But as I said, I handled the big things fairly well, and working at the White House certainly afforded me some protection, some blessed distraction. The November of the Midterm Elections for example, happened to be the ten year anniversary of when Alan and I met. With all the madness following the shooting and preceding the elections, I didn't really have time to think, but for some reason the little fact of the anniversary hit me on Election Night. This is what I call ghost number six. I found myself out here in this Sculpture Garden, on this very bench I think, and since it was November, I thought I was all alone, and thought that it'd be safe enough to indulge in a few tears.

So predictably enough, I got caught, and by the First Daughter no less.

Who also looked suspiciously red around the eyes.

I looked at her, and she looked at me and held me out a tissue. I accepted it, and she sat down beside me without a word. "So," I asked her. "What brings you out here?"

"Charlie." The word was a sigh. "I think we're breaking up."

I was shocked to hear that. I'd seen them together, and thought they made the cutest couple. In fact, they reminded me a lot of Alan and me. "Is it because of-?" I couldn't quite bring myself to mention the shooting. It had been months ago and we were still all talking around it instead of about it.

"I don't know how he's handling it Ginger!" Zoey burst out, frustration evident in every syllable. "He won't talk to me, he'll won't return my phone calls…I know that there's this thing inside him that's tearing him apart and he won't talk to me! And I don't know what to do!" A single tear escaped and she pushed it away.

"He's afraid Zoey."

"So am I!"

I think Zoey had more to say, and First Daughter or not, I'm not ashamed to say that I interrupted her. "He's afraid of losing you Zoey. He's already lost both his parents young. And then he falls in love with you, and he nearly gets shot for it. But instead of him, they got the father of the girl he loves and the man who introduced them. That's a lot for anyone to handle."

Zoey let out a long breath. "I just don't know if I can do this. It shouldn't be this hard."

I found myself smiling, my thoughts rolling back to my own college years. "I was about your age when I met my husband," I told her.

Her eyes got wide with surprise. "I didn't think you were married Ginger."

I pulled the chain out from under my jumper and showed her the rings. "He died," I tell her softly.

"I'm sorry."

"We met when we were both freshmen in college. We got married right after we graduated, and he was killed three years later. He was smart and funny and handsome and I thought the sun rose and set on him. And I could never imagine what a guy like him saw in a girl like me. I lived in fear of losing him. So I did the stupidest thing you can imagine Zoey. I pushed him away. I broke up with him."

Zoey's a smart girl and she got the parallel that I was going for right away, and filled my pause with, "Just like Charlie's doing now."

"Yep. And you know what he did? He hung in there. He called me, he wrote me silly little letters. He got all my friends, my brothers, his sisters and brother, even my grandmother, he got all of them on my case, trying to tell me that I was out of my mind. He'd give my roommate little presents to slip under my pillow. Every week, I'd find a red rose taped to my door. Every week for three months. I'd see him around and he'd look so miserable, because even though he was doing all this stuff to win me back it wasn't working. And then one day, I realised that I was miserable too, that I was tired of missing him all the time, tired of not being able to sleep or eat. So I went to him and begged him to take me back."

"And he did?"

There were tears rolling down my cheeks as I nodded. "And we were happy Zoey. We were so happy. And I look back now…" My throat closes over momentarily. "The one thing I regret, the one thing that I'd want to take back, is those three months. We lost so much time because I was so stupid…." Sobs overwhelmed me, and I felt Zoey move closer to me on the bench and put her arms around me. When I'd calmed a little, I looked up at her. "Whatever Charlie's going through Zoey, you just have to be there for him. Wait for him, hang in there. What you two have…it's worth fighting for."

Zoey was crying too when she promised me that she would. We mopped up as best we could, and she went back to the Residence, something about a book she had to read for college. I stayed where I was for a few minutes, taking deep breaths, eyes closed. That was when I felt the presence of someone else there, felt the bench shift as someone sat down beside me. I didn't open my eyes; I didn't have to. When I smelled the scent of cigar smoke, I knew who it was.

"How long were you there?" I finally asked.

"Long enough." I opened my eyes to look at him. He was quieter than I'd seen him in the past few months, calmer somehow. He'd been running around like a man possessed, trying everything in his power to find license to go after the hate groups, he'd been shouting and snapping at everyone, even worse than usual. I hadn't talked to him about it, because that wasn't my place, and even if it was, he'd shot down everyone else who tried. "That was a good thing you did just there," he told me.

I shrugged. "Are they going to be ok?"

"They'll be fine." He sounded far from certain, and when he turned his head to look at me, I could see the pain in his eyes, the same pain that I'd seen in my own eyes three years earlier. "What about the rest of us?"

That was the first time that I'd heard him ask that question. "We'll be ok," I reassured him, shifting slightly on the bench so that my body was angled towards his.

"How do you know?" His voice was curious, and I felt as if the roles of two years earlier had been reversed. Then, he'd been strong for me, now it was my turn to reassure him. "How do you do it Ginger? How do you go on when your world feels like it's been torn asunder all around you?"

My hand, of its own volition, reached out and rested itself on his shoulder, and I said the only words I could think of. "You just do. And every day, it gets a little better, a little easier."

"I wish I could believe that."

I shrugged, standing up and offering him my hand. "I guess you'll just have to trust me." He stared up at me. "Coming? Sam's probably having a fit over the exit polls again."

He snorted. "You mean still." He sighed. "I have a meeting with the President. I was on my way to the Residence…"

I nodded, knowing that that was his way of refusing me. But still, I didn't like how he looked, so defeated, so dejected. Maybe that's why I made the offer I did. "You want me to walk over with you'?"

He paused, rubbing a hand across his forehead. I knew that meant that he was thinking it over. It seemed to take forever before a small smile appeared. "OK." We walked side by side along the path to the Residence.

Last November was pretty much ghost-free. Healthgate and the attendant hearings and research and general madness had pretty much my full attention.

But the ghosts are back tonight, demanding their share of my attention, taking up all my thoughts. Oh, I've had a little champagne, danced with my friends, done my share of whooping and hollering in celebration with everyone else. But some traditions must be observed.

I'm so lost in my thoughts that I don't hear him come up behind me until he speaks. "Ginger?"

I jump and turn to see Toby there. "I missed you inside," he tells me. "I figured you'd be out here." He comes around to the front of the bench and bends slightly, a full glass of what I presume to be scotch in each hand, a lit cigar billowing smoke in his right. "Take that would you?" He offer me the glass in his left hand and I take it as he sits down beside me, neatly transferring his glass from right to left hand as he does.

I do as I'm told, not even bothering to hide my confusion. "Toby, what…?"

He flashes me a quick grin. "I know that November is hard for you. And when I saw Bonnie and Donna and Margaret leading the Macarena, but no you, I guessed that you were out here getting some air."

"So you came looking for me."

"I remembered the last two Election Nights. And I thought that it would be a shame to break this little tradition we have going." He smiles at me, and I can't help but notice that he looks years younger than I've ever seen him. I remember his face four years ago, I remember his good mood after the Mendoza confirmation, but he's never looked more relaxed than he does right now as he leans back on the bench. "And I remember that the first time we did this, you took half my drink, so I decided that I'd bring one just for you."

I lift my glass, grinning. "So, what are we drinking to?"

He looks around him, then up at the stars. "Lady's choice."

I purse my lips in thought. "To Novembers past," I finally announce.

He raises an eyebrow, but raises his glass as well, tapping it against mine, making them clink lightly. We each take a sip, and he chuckles when he's done. "That's a pretty crappy toast there Ginger."

I pretend offence, his light-hearted mood infecting mine. "Well excuse me, Mr Speechwriter to the President of the United States! What do you have in mind?"

He ponders for a moment, then shakes his head. "I'm all out of speeches."

"Ha."

"How about this?" He leans towards me on the bench, offering his glass. "To Novembers future?"

There's something in his eyes that I've never seen there before, that I haven't seen in any man's eyes in a long time. The knowledge causes my heart to skip a beat, and the shiver that goes through me has nothing to do with the cold. He waits for me to respond, without ever taking his eyes off me. I feel myself smile and I touch my glass against his. "To Novembers future," I echo.

We drain our glasses this time, and when he smiles at me, a full smile, I find myself smiling back. We must look like idiots, just sitting there, smiling at each other, and I find myself speaking. "We should go back inside."

He nods. "We don't want to miss 'The Jackal'."

He stands first, holding out his hand, pulling me up. I expect him to drop my hand as we make our way back, but he keeps hold of it. I surprise myself by extracting it, and if the look on his face is any indication, he's surprised too. But his surprise turns to something else when I link my arm through his at the elbow and we continue along the path together.

I don't look back for ghosts.

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