Title: "After the Morning Passes"

Author: CretKid aka Cal

Category: CJ/Danny

Rating: PG-13 for language

Spoilers: Manchester I, II - what if CJ did leave the administration at the end of Manchester II?

After Series

After Manchester

After the Rain

After All That Had Been Before

After a Time

After a Long Journey

After the Morning Passes

"After the Morning Passes"

====================

"CJ, do you want to go back?"

She sat motionless, head pressed against the headboard, fingers wrestling for dominance, eyes closed with two twin wet trails scouring the normally placid façade. It took effort not to lose control so completely, more so to just let it happen.

"CJ?"

Danny turned around so that he could face her, knees drawn up and arms resting on them. He watched as her shoulders shook with sobs or self-deprecating laughter, he couldn't tell. CJ kept her eyes tightly held shut, the only tell-tale sign of a chink in the armor the continual feeding of tears down her face.

"CJ? Why didn't you get on the plane? Why did you stay?"

Her breathing became wet and labored. He wanted to take her hands to ease the tortured tangle of fingers and t-shirt hems, but he felt any invasion would cause a retreat back to the professional woman who held her cards close to her chest. Deep breaths were supposed to be calming, cleansing. Neither was the case here.

Biting her lip as she took in needed oxygen and held it for a time, CJ relaxed her face and took a moment to wipe away the tears that had collected at her chin.

"There have been so many times in the past when I wanted to resign. I passed the average life time of a Press Secretary long ago."

Danny wanted to interject, let her know that she was one of the best damn Press Secretaries any administration could hope for, but he had a feeling any placating on his part would roll off like water on a duck's back. He dared to touch her hand and give it a firm squeeze. Her hands stopped their desperate dance at the hem of the t-shirt she was wearing.

"I'm not much good to anyone if I can't be trusted to do my job, you know."

Rubbing slow and soothing circles on the back of her hand with the pad of his thumb, Danny inched closer to her on the bed. The early morning rays of dawn were ascending on the city to battle with the artificial beams from the street lamps outside his bedroom window.

He sensed that her turmoil wasn't so much about not being able to do her job or trusted to do her job right. It was the betrayal of learning that much of what she had worked for and with had been a sham, that for the rest of this administration and hopefully into the next they would be fighting the specter left by the lie of omission. That any victory for them would be tainted by the knowledge that not all the cards were on the table the first time around.

"If we had known… Now we have to deal with the evil triumvirate… and I can remember the first time we rode on Air Force One and the simple awe of it all. It sounds so stupid to think that we thought M&M's with the Presidential Seal on them were the greatest thing in the universe. I want that wide-eyed innocence back. I want the campaign that we all dreamed of when we ran the first one. And that's not going to happen now."

Danny slowly turned her wrists upward and moved his hand over them, mimicking the same motions with his thumb just above her pulse. We wished she would open her eyes so that he could measure the torment seated behind them, see just how long this has bothered her and if there might still be that spark of life left to her soul.

He remained the silent listener. This was her time to talk, to let it all out and into the open. Playing the passive observer was what he did best wherever she was concerned.

"Toby said he was a good man," she continued, sniffling. "Josh wanted to work for the real thing. Sam dropped a partnership and 6 figure salary to work for him. I'd just been fired so I had nothing else to lose.

"And goddammit he told me that we were the reason he got elected in the first place! He was only in the race to keep Hoynes honest and then we started winning state primaries. For the briefest of moments, I almost felt guilty: we got him elected and now the world has to know he has MS."

"CJ, look at me." She shook her head, and he knew better than to argue with her. He gripped her wrists tightly to relay his point home. "This is not your fault. If you believe nothing else anyone ever says to you, please believe me when I say that this is NOT your fault."

She pulled her hands to herself, crossed her arms under her chest in a protective fashion. It was all Danny could do to not pull her into his arms and caress the worried expression from her face. He could tell that she didn’t like the thoughts running roughshod through her brain without even having to ask.

Taking another deep breath, she continued. "I've twisted his words around in my brain so many times that I can almost hear an accusation in his voice that I know, I KNOW, was not there. And I feel guilty all the same for doing so because I want to hate that man so much right now and I can't do it."

Roughly wiping the tears from her face with the back of her hand, she took a shuddering breath and opened her eyes. They were red and tired and so devoid of emotion now that Danny was sure she was existing purely on adrenaline and instinct and had been for quite some time. Her arms went back to their protective cradle.

"When people talk to me outside the Press Room, he's no longer The President but Your President and that drives me absolutely nuts. As if it is my fault that he's got this disease and it's my fault that it's only just coming out now instead of three years ago. I've already been vilified in the Press. Pundits are already calling me the fall guy, the spin mistress that let the web get out of hand.

"I can't even get a simple news cycle to ourselves because I've lost respect and foundation and latitude that I used to have to get things done the way they needed to be done. The only people that give me any room are the ones I've known for years and still hold some sort of trust in me. But they are few and far between. And I can't operate when I don't have the room to maneuver."

CJ paused, wiped at the tears that continued to fall. Danny reached across her to grab the box of tissues that were on the bed side table. Pulling one out he gently dried her face where wetness resided, letting his hand linger near her temple, feeling the heat of emotion radiate like a furnace from her face.

"Why did you stay, CJ?" he asked softly, brushing the sweat-dampened hair from her forehead.

Danny gently laid his charge against the pillows, careful to disengage her from his arms so that she wouldn't waken from the sleep she so desperately needed. With the output of tears came the drainage of whatever reserves she had been drawing upon to keep her going for the last five weeks. He had clutched her against his chest until he had felt her drift off and then held on to her with a desperation so keen if only to drain all the misery into his own body to save her from waking to it once again. Waiting until the sun shone through the bedroom windows had given him time to think about what he wanted, needed, to do for her so that she would no longer feel guilty for being human.

He closed the curtains to the bedroom so that light would not invade just yet. He needed to shower, he needed to change clothes, he needed to eat, he needed to sleep and not necessarily in that order. For once he was happy that he did not have a connecting door to the bathroom in his bedroom. The walls were thick enough that the sound of the shower would be drowned out and he needn't worry about waking her.

After starting the water running in the shower, he walked into the kitchen to fix a toasted english muffin and cheese sandwich for breakfast. Clothes that had been laundered before leaving for Manchester were still waiting to be folded in the laundry basket in his closet. He grabbed a clean change of clothes, his breakfast and headed for his shower.

CJ was still asleep, curled into the fetal position he had grown accustomed to finding her in since this odyssey began. Even in sleep she couldn't find any recourse from the tension she faced on a daily basis. The digital clock on his night stand read 6:18 AM. He hoped that she would sleep for a least a few hours to give him time to stop by her apartment to get a change of clothes and some of her personal effects so that she wouldn't feel the need to leave before it was absolutely necessary.

It wasn't every day that she allowed anyone to rescue the damsel in distress.

He left a quick note by the bed side lamp telling her where he had gone, along with the opened bottle of ibuprofen and water. There was nothing in his panty that even fell into the broadest categories of foodstuff and that needed to be remedied.

Bounding down the stairs of his apartment complex, he remembered that at some point he would have to return the rental car as well. Clicking the unlock button on the key chain, he decided first things first: CJ, food and to hell with the car.

The drive to CJ's apartment was fast that early in the morning. Given the relative short distance, he could have walked there in little time at all, but he didn’t know how much time he really had and he wanted to be back in his apartment before she woke up. As he pulled up along side the curb, the thought of making a fast getaway dispersed like the early morning fog on the Mall.

Josh was sitting on her stoop, his backpack tucked between his legs on the step below his body. When he saw Danny pull up to the curb, he jumped up and approached the car.

Danny didn't even have the door open when Josh demanded, "Where is she?"

"How long have you been sitting here?" Danny deflected. He had CJ's keys in his hand as he walked to the main door.

Josh followed close behind. "I got here just after we touched down at Andrews. Where is she?"

Not wanting to seem territorial, Danny tried to keep any anger out of his voice. Josh was worried about her. Hell, they all must have been to some degree. But she didn't call any of them from a bar in a Boston airport; she had called him. And he was going to protect her for as long as he could. "She's sleeping."

"Where?"

"My apartment."

Danny searched through the keys to find the one to her apartment door. He had no idea which one it was and he didn't want to wake CJ in order to find out. Josh saw that he was having trouble, grabbed the keys and thumbed through them until he found the right one. He held the bundle out by the apartment key for Danny.

"I need to see her," Josh said, following Danny into the apartment.

Danny noticed that Josh flipped on the overhead light in the living room and kitchen without looking for the switch. "Josh, you've obviously been in here before. I need to find a bag and get a couple changes of clothes for her, toiletries, stuff. Can you help me out here?"

"I need to see her," Josh reiterated. He opened the hall closet and pulled out an old duffel bag. "Please."

Danny slowly looked around the living room, finding it to be so like CJ in appearance. There were cat toys on the living room area rug and he vaguely recalled hearing about a cat in her life. "Josh, where's the cat?"

"Carol's taking care of him. Let me see her, Danny."

"You're asking me like it’s my choice. It's not up to me," Danny replied, walking down the hallway to where he suspected the bedroom was. "If I bring you back with me, it might seem like we're ambushing her and I'm not going to let her feel trapped. Okay?"

Josh didn’t appear to accept that as an option. "Is she all right? Please, Danny."

"She's pissed, Josh," Danny said, turning in the hallway so that he walked backward into the bedroom. "She's pissed and angry and upset and right now she's sleeping so leave her alone. Looks like you could use some sleep yourself."

"I've given up sleep for the remainder of this administration," Josh retorted. He instinctively went through CJ's closet and started pulling out trousers, pants and blouses to put in the bag. With equal familiarity he went through her dresser drawers to find camisoles, panties and bras, t-shirts, running shorts, socks and a pair of jeans. Danny stood momentarily aghast at the ease in which Josh moved through the bedroom and adjoining bath to find exactly what Danny came in search of.

"Do I want to know why it took you less than 5 minutes to find all this stuff?" Danny asked, staring at the bag that had just been presented to him.

"I lost a bet and had to clean her apartment, including the laundry." Josh held on to the straps of the bag with a fierce grip. "I need to see that she's all right, Danny. Please."