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IN PARTING 
Classification: Post-administration. Character Death. Angst. 
Summary: "No one understood what it was like to be a Beatle 
except the other Beatles, and it's like that for us, too." 

*** 

2017 
  

"It's time." 

They get identical messages, all of them, and from near and far they 
answer the summons. 

CJ and Sam travel together from San Francisco. CJ watches Sam kiss his 
wife and kids goodbye, Wendy with her hair kept dazzlingly red after 
all these years, and the three kids who might as well have been 
parthenogenically derived from their father, two boys and a little 
girl with black, black hair and Sam's depthless, innocent blue eyes. 

For herself, CJ has kept up well with her health and her looks, her 
figure trim thanks to exercise and dancing, lines kept at bay with 
the best creams, and her hair long enough to cover the slight sag of 
her jawline. She kisses Wendy on each cheek and hugs the two kids who 
aren't too big to be hugged, then offers a jaunty salute to the 
eldest, who already has some of the Seaborn weariness around his eyes. 

"Love you," Sam and Wendy say to one another as they part. 

CJ and Sam sit on the plane side by side. "How's Josh taking it?" CJ 
asks. She doesn't talk to him enough, doesn't really see any of 
them except Sam, and even that is rare. 

"He sounded resigned. He was up there a few weeks ago and said he 
isn't surprised." And it's Sam's turn to ask about someone he doesn't 
see often. "Did you talk to Toby?" 

She did, and she turns away from Sam as sunlight streams through the 
window because the touch of gold makes her skin look sallow. "He 
sounded depressed." 

"Well hell, CJ, we're all depressed. I mean, we knew, but we didn't 
really..." 

"I know." 

They eat their first-class meal in silence except for the clinking of 
their silverware against the china. CJ drinks wine, more than she 
really needs, perhaps to fortify herself against the reason. 

"Toby and I fought the last time we talked, you know," she says idly 
to Sam, who nods. 

"Yeah, I heard about that." 

"I thought you hadn't talked to him." 

"I didn't, but he called Donna and yelled at her about it, so it got 
back to me." 

CJ smirks, imagining how little of Toby's egotistical bullshit Donna 
would take. She'd married into ego, knowing Josh needed his 
peacemaker as much as his pacemaker. Donna's as old now as CJ had 
been when the MS scandal broke, and the thought makes her both 
nostalgic and apprehensive. 

Josh meets them at the airport, Donna by his side. When had Josh 
started using a cane? And when had his hair turned the gray of steel 
wool? And how the hell did Donna's breasts stay way up there, no 
matter how thin she was? Dammit. 

They embrace, the four of them, Sam going first to Josh, hugging 
him gently but for a long time. "I'm sorry I didn't come out for the 
surgery," he says softly. "Maggie and Ethan both had chicken pox and 
I didn't know if you'd ever had it, so I couldn't risk infecting 
you." 

"It's okay. Abbey came, did you know that?" 

At the mention of Abbey's name, the four faces all turn solemn. CJ 
feels the narrow bones of Donna's ribs as they stand with their arms 
around each other's waists, taller than the men, unabashed by it, 
glorious women still amazing enough to turn heads. 

"Joshua," CJ says softly, and he opens his arms to her the way he 
always has. God, he's frail, he's too damn skinny, and he carries 
himself stiffly. For a moment she recalls Leo's odd gait and finds it 
ironic that Josh now has a distinctive walk as well. 

At least Sam doesn't mirror his counterpart. Disgustingly healthy, 
Sam is, even more beautiful in his fifties than in his childishly 
lovely thirties, more beautiful than Donna as he holds her tight 
against his blue-suited body, more beautiful than the sunlight in 
the eyes that are still as bright as the California sky. 

"Are we at the Hyatt?" Sam asks as he looks toward Donna's dove-gray 
suitcases. CJ spots Josh's latest backpack and grins when she sees 
that it's on wheels. Then she remembers why he can't lift anything 
heavy and the smile evaporates. 

"No, we're staying at their place. It's quite a compound. There's a 
carriage house, believe it or not, they've set aside for Donna and 
me, and the rest of you have the third floor guest rooms. I went ahead 
and got a limo for us." 

"Is Toby...?" 

He smirks at CJ and it erases fifteen years from his face and he's 
Josh again, Deputy Chief of Staff Joshua Lyman, the wonder boy, the 
phoenix rising from his own ashes to win the impossible second term. 
Their victory lap, or their last hurrah, depending on CJ's mood when 
she thinks about it. 

"Toby's in the bar," Josh says. "And I don't think it's the first bar 
he's been to today, either." 

Sam's face flushes and his mouth turns downward. On the plane with CJ 
he had told her about their last conversation, when he told Toby to go 
to AA or something but not to call him at three in the morning anymore 
because it was making him an enabler. 

"Goddammit, Sam," Toby had bellowed, his voice thick with scotch and 
anguish, "Did you learn nothing from me in all those years of 
speechwriting in the White House?" 

And Sam, best-selling author of a number of books on politics and the 
media, told CJ that he had hung up on his mentor and made slow, 
depressed love to Wendy. 

"I'll get him," CJ says, loping gracelessly in the direction of the 
bar. Her knees always ache after a long flight, and the high heels 
she wears with her best navy-blue suit exacerbate the pain. 

Toby's morose and overweight and his hair's the same iron gray as 
Josh's, but coarse and unkempt. His eyes are red, whether from 
alcohol or grief or fear she can't tell, but she comes up to him and 
puts her arms around the softness at his waist. 

"Hey," she murmurs into his nape, and when his arms enfold her she 
knows all is forgiven. 

"It's awful," he whispers, slurring the "s" a little. 

"I know, I know. But Sam's here, and Josh and Donna, and we're ready 
to go if you are." 

"Sam..." 

"Just go. Get off the bar stool and go." She fishes in her pocketbook 
for money, leaving a wad of bills on the bar because she knows Toby's 
an annoying drunk, and leads him by the hand to the baggage claim area. 

"He followed me home," CJ says, trying to sound relatively cheerful. 
"Can I keep him?" 

"You have to walk him and feed him," Josh says, pushing Sam forward. 

Sam, famous, powerful Sam, stares at his shoes, not looking Toby in 
the eye. 

"Oh, for the love of God," Donna groans, and she moves between the two 
men, grabbing each by the hand and joining them together. Toby's grip 
shakes but Sam's is steady, like the man himself, and he yanks hard 
enough to pull Toby into his arms. 

They don't speak, these men of words, they just hold one another, and 
Josh has tears in his eyes, and so does Donna, and CJ stares at them 
and wonders why they look kaleidoscopic until she realizes that she's 
seeing them through her own lens of salt water. 

"We gotta go," Donna reminds them, used to organization and schedules, 
and the five of them head for the sleek black limo. 

There used to be a dozen or more in their motorcade but today it's 
just one car. Donna looks happy to be between Sam and Josh. CJ always 
wondered if Donna had been between them in more ways than one, but 
Sam is ecstatically happy with Wendy and Josh would have died five 
times over had it not been for "his" Donna. 

Toby looks unenthusiastically at the landscape as Sam extols its 
virtues. "Bucolic. Fecund. Verdant," he says, pointing at fields of an
astonishing, impossible emerald green. 

"Verbose," Toby says back, but there's a glint of humor in those black 
eyes. 

Donna pats Sam on the arm. "Will Charlie be there, do you think?" 

It had ended badly, the relationship between Charlie and Zoey, in the 
manner of relationships begun in the flower of youth and tempered too 
soon by tragedy. Before the second term had ended, Charlie had gone to 
college full-time not so much out of a need to begin his education but 
to get away from Zoey's anger and her father's disappointment. 

"Abbey said she'd asked him. I think...surely they can put aside..." 
Josh has trouble speaking, leaning over the head of his cane with his 
forehead on his clasped hands. 

"We're about to find out," CJ says as they draw near to the guarded 
gates. "Oh, my God, it's Ellie!" 

She's standing at the gate, slim and slightly hunched over as if to 
avoid showing her vulnerability, even after becoming a highly 
respected cardiologist. It had been Ellie who had been called in the 
dead of night when Josh's heart began to fail, Ellie who had flown 
out to perform the implantation of the pacemaker, Ellie who had saved 
the life of the one man who had never treated her as the least of the 
three daughters. 

Ellie, prodigal daughter, welcomes the weary party. She grabs bags, 
asks Josh if he's taken his pills, and shows them to the carriage 
house. It's a pretty place, all light and windows and pale wood 
floors, and CJ wishes there were room for her there. But Ellie leads 
the rest of their party forward, to the gabled green house, past the 
reporters waiting on the patio in respectful silence, and takes them 
through the back entry. 

"You have this entrance just for yourselves. Steve, Mark, these are 
Sam Seaborn, CJ Cregg, and Toby Ziegler," she says to the two Secret 
Service men who stand guard. "They'll get pins for you sometime soon, 
and some for Josh and Donna. I'm so glad you could come." 

"I'm sorry about the circumstances," Sam says, his voice gentle. His 
is the first room on the floor, and CJ gets the big, airy room in the 
middle while Toby gets a dark-paneled corner suite filled with books. 
They're told to meet Abbey downstairs at six. 

CJ unpacks quickly, her array of professional clothes facing the same 
way on the hangers, her shoes paired up like beige soldiers. A part of 
her that hasn't been touched in far, far too long begins to ache, and 
she is too restless to wait around in her room. 

She goes down the back stairs and heads to the carriage house. As she 
lifts her hand to knock she sees Donna, arms high over her head, 
laughing at something Josh has just said. His back is to her, he's 
sitting down, and Donna deftly removes the pins holding her hair in 
its demure bun as she leans over her husband. The blonde waterfall 
cascades over Josh, a loving baptism, and CJ has to turn away from the 
sheer intimacy of the scene. 

On the way back she spots a green sedan coming through the gates. She 
peers into the window, shading her eyes from the glare of sunlight on 
tinted glass, and lets out a gasp. 

"Charlie!" she cries, even though his windows are rolled up and he 
can't hear her. He halts the car just a few feet from her and gets 
out, Charlie is all grown up and a lawyer and still so grave, but then 
they're all grave this weekend. 

"CJ," he says as if he's seen her every day for the past eleven years 
instead of once, three years ago, at Leo's funeral. He's a sleekly 
handsome man, as sober as the occasion warrants, his smile all too 
fleeting. He takes a single suitcase out of the car and follows her to 
the bedroom across the hall from Toby's. 

Sam spots him and smiles. "Look at you. My God, Charlie, you look 
great!" 

"Thanks, Sam," he says. His voice is stiff. "Did you have a good 
flight?" 

"Yeah, CJ and I came together, and we met Josh and Donna and Toby at 
the airport. I just wish..." His voice breaks and he lowers his head. 

"I know. Look, I'm gonna get settled and....what are we doing?" 

"We're talking to Abbey and the girls at six." 

"Have you seen...?" 

"Not yet. We just got here ourselves." 

"Ah." Charlie looks out of place. Startled, CJ realizes that it's 
because he's on a different plane than he was in the White House, that 
he's their equal, a man with education and success written in his 
proud posture. "I'll see you down there, then." He disappears into 
his room and Sam stares at the closed door. 

"Sam, he's had to swallow a lot of pride to come here today. Don't 
take it personally," CJ says. 

But Sam takes everything personally, always did. Got angry when he 
told her he was engaged to Wendy and CJ had laughed, calling him 
"Peter Pan." Got angry when he found out about Donna's miscarriage 
three weeks after the rest of them did. Got angry when Toby's book 
came out and he was third from the end of acknowledgements. 

"Boomeranger," Toby always called it, because it made Sam fly away 
from them and return, fly away and return. 

They all end up closing their doors. From next door CJ hears a shower 
running and Toby singing "Nessun Dorma" in a key Puccini never dreamed 
of. She doesn't even knock, just goes into his room and into his 
shower after shedding clothes like leaves in a high wind. His body 
responds to hers, hard where hers is yielding, the rhythm familiar 
even in this strange setting and after all these years. 

Her palms are flat against the shower wall and she bites into the soft 
flesh at the back of her wrist to keep from crying out. Toby hums his 
aria again, although he has trouble catching his breath, and at the 
end he moans her name so longingly that she almost comes from the joy 
of it. His fingers, calloused where he clutches a pen too many hours 
a day, stroke her until she really does come, spasms shaking her so 
hard that she loses her balance and falls in a graceless heap at his 
feet. 

He helps her up and kisses her once, twice, a third time, and breathes 
his love into her ear. She wants to believe him, needs to know that 
it's not the fumes of alcohol still in his system, not just a shared 
need to cheat death by this living act, aches to have him tell her 
again. Instead she gives him a rough kiss, full of promise and 
energy, and goes back to her room to dry her hair and change her 
clothes. 

Church bells chime the hour and like figures in a cuckoo clock they 
all emerge from their rooms, heading in an orderly line to where the 
women are waiting for them. 

They're already talking to Josh and Donna. Liz looks exactly like her 
mother. Ellie is hanging back and holding Josh's hand as if checking 
his pulse, and Zoey is standing at wary attention as she scans the 
group for Charlie's face. 

"Oh, look at you," Abbey says. In true grande dame fashion she's let 
her hair go an attractive silver and she's wearing the pearls her 
children had bought her on her sixtieth birthday. Her scent is still 
Shalimar. God knows where she's getting it since it's not made 
anymore. CJ kisses her cheek, then turns to embrace each of the 
daughters in turn. 

"I think he's scared," she whispers into Zoey's ear, and sure enough, 
Charlie is standing back behind Toby. 

Zoey's manners kick in and she walks right up to him. "I'm glad you're 
here, Charlie," she says, and with a pang CJ remembers the bitter 
fights that tore them apart, the nights Zoey wept in her office 
while Charlie roamed the halls like a ghost. Charlie manages a shy 
smile and a little hug, repeated for Liz and Ellie. It's Abbey he 
holds close, making her beam as she rocks him back and forth. 

Annie, crowding thirty now, joins the group. She's the image of her 
grandmother, elegant and worldly, planning to enter practice with her 
Aunt Ellie when she completes her residency. Third generation surgeon. 

CJ feels old, stiff. Toby slips her hand into the crook of his elbow 
and pats it. 

"It's time," Abbey says softly. 

The study is huge, a two-story library complete with fireplace. Where 
comfortable chairs would be there is instead a hospital bed, albeit a 
state-of-the-art model with cashmere throws for warmth. Monitors and 
wires and tubes are everywhere. CJ's heart thumps in an ominous 
tempo. It's what Sam had said earlier, about knowing but not really 
knowing, and from the hesitant footfall of her friends she can tell 
that everyone else feels the same way. 

"Father Michael gave him the last rites a few minutes ago. He can't 
talk," Liz warns them, "but he'll recognize you, and he can hear you." 

They stand in an awkward semicircle. CJ's gaze travels to a portrait 
of Leo standing among the family pictures at the bedside. How she's 
missed Leo these last three years, the glue that held them together, 
gone after an agonizing bout with liver cancer. 

Josh goes first, holding Donna's hand and leaning on the bed rail 
instead of his cane. CJ can't see them, her view blocked by Charlie 
and Toby, and she can't really make out their words, but she can hear 
Donna's little sob and the way Josh's voice quavers as he says 
farewell. 

She can't watch, can't listen, as Toby and Sam and Charlie each take 
their leave, Charlie lingering a little longer until Zoey wraps her 
arm around his slim waist and pulls him back. And then she has to go, 
has to look, has to come to grips with this newest, rawest reality. 

There's little of the man she knew in the wizened face, just the 
robin's-egg-blue of his eyes still gleaming out of the wreckage of his 
body. His mind, thank God, has remained intact, and there is still an 
intelligent spark behind the desperate longing for release. She sees 
him incline his head a little toward the picture of Leo, and she 
smiles tenderly at him. "Tell him we miss him," she murmurs, then she 
bends down to kiss the pale, wrinkled forehead. "Goodbye, sir," she 
manages to say, and when he frowns at her she realizes what he wants, 
what made the others weep, even Toby. 

So she corrects herself. "Goodbye, Jed," and at that his blue-gray 
lips turn upwards in a smile. 

CJ steps back, watching Zoey grasp Charlie's hand and lead him once 
more to her father's bedside. Liz shows the rest of them to the 
well-stocked dining room. They sit down, but no one can eat. No one 
even drinks. Donna puts her head down on her folded arms, her 
shoulders shaking, and Josh wraps himself around her like smoke. 

"We shouldn't be here for this," Sam says softly. He fingers the 
tassels at the corner of the tablecloth. 

"He wanted to see us," Toby replies, but he sounds as shaken as the 
rest of them. 

"No. I mean it shouldn't have taken this to get us all here, 
together." He drops the tassels and makes an expansive, sweeping 
gesture. "We're so distant from one another, so removed, and, 
frankly, we haven't been doing too well. Some worse than others," he 
says, looking directly at Toby. 

"Fuck you, Sam," Toby says, but that's not what he means. 

"We were the senior staff. We shaped the way America's policies were 
drawn for eight years. No one understands but us what it was like. 
Without each other..." He has to stop, and he runs his palms over the 
silver wings at his temples. 

Toby puts his hands on CJ's shoulders, kneading the tension away as 
he speaks. "No one understood what it was like to be a Beatle except 
the other Beatles, and it's like that for us, too." 

"So we were the Bartles," Josh quips, eliciting a hiccuping chuckle 
from Donna. "And Toby's Ringo." 

"You wanna step outside and say that?" Toby challenges. Even Sam 
smiles a little. 

"I'm just saying that we shouldn't see each other just because there's 
a trauma. That we can't let each other go through life alone." Sam 
pauses to clear his throat. His oratory skills aren't polished, 
but he speaks from the most affectionate of all their hearts. "We 
can't let this be the last time." 

They are silent. 

Josh begins to cry. Sam rushes to embrace him, his own tears 
falling and mingling with his old friend's. Toby wraps his arms 
around CJ's waist, her back against his chest, and they wait 
together. 

An hour passes, then Zoey comes to see them. Her eyes are bright 
but dry, and she is able to say the words. "He's gone." 

CJ crosses herself. 

"He was the best man I ever knew," Josh murmurs, drying his own tears 
before standing up to embrace Zoey. "The world's not going to be the 
same without him." 

"Thank you, Josh." Her voice climbs on his name, breaking like a soap 
bubble. Charlie comes in and takes her hands in his. 

"The First...Abbey...would like you to make the statement to the 
press, CJ." 

She nods, smoothing her skirt, and walks in front of her colleagues. 
Sam scribbles furiously in a note pad as CJ joins Abbey, pale but 
composed, on the porch. CJ puts on her glasses and takes the 
hastily-written page from Sam's fingers. 

"Ladies and gentlemen, I regret to inform you that former President 
Josiah Bartlet passed away at 7:24 this evening following a long 
battle with Multiple Sclerosis." She pauses for the sympathetic 
murmur from the reporters. "His was the finest mind and the noblest 
heart of his time. Those of us who had the honor...the privilege..." 

Her composure deserts her, but Toby does not. He steps to her side, 
beckoning Sam, Donna, and Josh to follow, and the five of them stand 
together. 

"...the privilege," CJ continues, "of serving at the pleasure of the 
President, join the First Family in their sorrow at losing a loved 
one, and in their joy that he is released from his suffering and has 
gone to be with God." 

"You said it right," comes the President's voice from somewhere just 
beyond the range of mortal hearing. CJ sees the others startle and 
she wonders what they heard, then she sees Abbey smile wistfully as 
color returns to her face. They'll talk about it later, over the tea 
and little sandwiches sitting out in the dining room, and promise to 
keep in touch. Maybe now, with Abbey's tears so fresh in their 
memories, it will not be the same vain pledge made for the past 
decade. 

She feels a warm breeze caress her cheek with the gentlest of touches, 
and she makes a promise to the departing soul, a vow as unbreakable, 
as unending, as his love. 

*** 
END