Rating: PG
Pairing: Intentionally withheld…you'll find out.
Spoilers: No specifics, but to end of season three to be safe.
Feedback: Is almost as nice as Leo's new season pic…
Disclaimer: If it was in the show, it's not mine. The song belongs to Deana Carter.
Archive: At my site The Band Gazebo (helsinkibaby.ahkay.net) Anywhere else please ask first.
Summary: ..We fell in love underneath a Michelangelo sky... We saw the same things in the shapes of the clouds rolling by..
Author's Note: I have no idea where this one came from, but there it was all the same. Fluffy as the clouds in a bright blue sky…

Today is my wedding day.

That's the first thought that comes into my mind when I open my eyes, and I allow myself some time to just lie in bed, the last time I'll ever lie here like this. I grew up in this house, in this room. I slept in this bed - well, not this bed all the time, but you know what I mean - almost every night until I moved away for college, and I know that I haven't really lived here since then. But whenever I came home to visit, or for holidays, this was the room that I came to. Mom's said that she's not going to refurbish it after the wedding, that she's going to leave it exactly the way it is. "That way," she told me, her eyes twinkling, "My grandkids can sleep in the same room that their mother did." I grinned at her, knowing that she was just teasing me, and if both of us noticed that Roger went chalk white and swallowed hard when he heard that, we didn't mention it.

This is the end of an era, the end of my old life. And while I'm sad about it, I can't deny that I'm looking forward to my new one.

With that thought in mind, I roll out of bed, pulling on my robe first before pulling the blinds, noting with satisfaction that it's a beautiful day. The sun is already shining, and the sky is a bright shade of blue, fluffy white clouds floating by.

And I smile, because that's just the kind of day that I wanted.

I make my way down the stairs, my footsteps echoing on the wooden floor. The house is silent, but that's the way that I like it - one of the advantages of being an only child I suppose. In a matter of hours, the place is going to turn into a madhouse, as family and friends and hairdressers and make-up artists converge on us, so I decide to enjoy the silence while I can. The kitchen, when I get there, is deserted, although the table is set for breakfast, and there's a pot of coffee ready. I pour myself a mug and turn towards the back door, knowing what I'm going to see once I get out there.

The back porch is my favourite place in the house. It's nice and roomy, and it looks out over our back garden. But best of all about it is the swing that's there. Big enough for three, we can all sit there, talking quietly to one another, looking out over the garden and up into the sky.

Mom's out there now, and she doesn't turn her head when the door opens, so I take the chance to study her, to see what she looks like, wanting to impress that onto my memory. For a woman in her sixties, she's still beautiful. Of course, as she's fond of reminding us all, she was only sixty last year, and in this day and age, that's not that old. Besides, since she's still a good deal younger than most of her and Dad's friends, she gets the last laugh on them. Her eyes are still as youthful as they were the day that she and Dad got married - I can see that from pictures of them, from videos that were made of them, and when she smiles, when she teases me, they dance with life. Her hair is still long, although she wears it mostly up now, and the blonde of years ago has faded into a soft grey. When she stands, when she walks, her bearing is as erect as a woman half her age, and her mind is just as sharp as it ever was.

My mom is my hero, and I want to be just like her.

"A tractor."

My words make her turn her head towards me, and she smiles, patting the seat beside her, an invitation that I'm not long in taking up. "Where?" she asks me.

"Right there," I tell her pointing out the cloud in question. "See? There's the seat, and the wheels…"

She tilts her head, brow wrinkling as she tries to make it out. "I'm not sure…. seems more like a truck to me."

I smile and shake my head, not knowing if she's being serious, or if she's just toying with me. It's often hard to tell with Mom. "What do you see?"

She points to her left. "Flowers…a nice bouquet." I squint up and have to agree with her, before pointing out something that I notice, to the right of the flowers.

"And look…" I tell her. "There's a ring."

Mom smiles as she sees the perfect circle of cloud. "Got to be a good omen."

I lean back in the seat, looking up at the sky, trying to pick out more patterns. This has been a family tradition of ours for as long as I can remember. It's one of the reasons that Mom and Dad chose to buy this house. Family lore has it that they hadn't seen anything they liked until Mom walked out our back door and saw the back porch. Good Southern Belle that she is, she instantly thought of putting a swing out here, telling Dad that she could picture them, and their kids, sitting on it, doing just what we're doing now, looking up at the clouds, seeing what we could see there. And Dad, who never could say no to Mom, saw exactly what she saw in their future and wrote a cheque on the spot.

Of course, they didn't have the brood of children that Mom envisioned. Just me. But some of my earliest memories are of sitting on this very swing with Mom or Dad or both, pointing up at the sky, seeing pictures there, and having the same pointed out to me. A Michelangelo Sky, Dad used to call it, and I remember asking him who Michelangelo was, and him telling me all about him. I also remember being the only kid in my fourth grade class who knew what the Sistine Chapel was, and who had painted it. I got a gold star for that, and I ran home to tell Dad all about it.

"This is how I fell in love with your father." Mom's voice breaks the silence of the morning, and I look over at her, a quiet smile on her face, her eyes and memories some thirty years away. And I feel myself smile too.

"I know," I say quietly, and I wait, because I know she's going to tell me the story that I already know by heart, and just like all good stories, I want to hear it again anyway.

"It was the height of the summer. And it was a quiet summer for once, the first summer of the second term. So we were relaxed and we were happy. Even me. The previous summer had been so hectic with the re-election campaign, and the summer before that was right after the MS disclosure, so this was the first summer in three years that everyone was stress-free. Well, as stress free as you can be when you're working in the White House. And President Bartlet decided to stage a retreat for the Senior Staff, to the farm in Manchester. He was so gung-ho about it when he told them all. 'A break' he said. 'A chance to get away from it all, to clear our heads.' And because he was the President, and because he could have ordered them, they all agreed, more or less enthusiastically. Although Toby wasn't too happy about it. He kept telling them that someone should stay at the White House, and the President reminded him that the farm had had some modifications since he'd been elected President, and that they could run a global war from the sun-porch if they so desired. And Toby saw how he felt about it, and came along, complaining all the while."

"I was surprised when he sent Nancy down, with a written note to ask me along. After all, I was hardly a member of the Senior Staff. An Associate White House Counsel, a Republican in a Democratic White House…I didn't hear from the President too often. And I asked Nancy if it was a mistake, but she shook her head and told me that the President wanted me there. And the rest of the Senior Staff agreed." Her cheeks grow red as they always do when she recounts the next part of the tale. "The President told me later, much later, that he invited me along that weekend purposely, because he'd noticed sparkage - and that was his word, sparkage - between your father and me for months, and he thought that getting us out of the White House might give us a chance to do something about it."

She pauses, and I laugh. "Well, he was right, wasn't he?"

"He certainly was." Her cheeks are blazing now, and she shakes her head. "But we did a pretty good job of hiding it. From ourselves, from everyone else. Even when we went to Manchester, we didn't spend that much time together. I was feeling a little on the outside, and I went for a walk one day, wanting to explore. Everyone else had been there before, on more than one occasion, but not me. And it was such a beautiful place, and a lovely day. Quite like this one actually. The sun was shining, and the clouds were just like this. So I found a nice open space, lay down on the grass and looked up at them, picking out the shapes."

She giggles suddenly. "I didn't realise he was there, that he'd been watching me, until he came up behind me and the cast of his shadow gave him away. And I was a little embarrassed at being caught like that, especially since he was looking down at me, that little smile on his face, and he asked me, 'What in the world are you doing?' So I told him - that I was looking at the clouds, trying to see what pictures were up there. He gave me this look like I was crazy, and I gave him my best glare - you know the one - and told him that it was very relaxing, and that he should try it. He just shrugged and shook his head, but he lay down beside me and stared up at the clouds with me. And I pointed out a tree , and a wheel. And then he pointed over and showed me what he thought was a dog. And I could see just what he meant."

"I don't know how long we were there like that, pointing out shapes to one another. And I remember thinking that I could have stayed like that forever, just lying there with him. The sun was warm, but it didn't burn us, and the breeze was just light enough to keep us cool, but not strong enough to make us too cold. And he said something, I don't even remember what now, and I turned my head to look at him, and the look in his eyes…" She breaks off, and when she speaks again, her voice is so low that even sitting beside her, I have to strain to hear her. "I could see forever in his eyes. Could see the rest of our lives together. That was the first time that he kissed me. And we were together after that."

"We got married the year that President Bartlet left the White House. And the year after that, you came along. The happiest years of my life." She shakes her head then, patting my hand. "And now my little girl is getting married." Tears come into her eyes, and I battle to keep my own back. I will not have red, puffy eyes in my wedding photos. "I'm so proud of you."

I reach over and give her a hug, and when we pull back, both of us are slightly more together. "You'd better get inside." Mom rubs the trace of an errant tear from my cheek. "Josh'll be here soon."

"With the rest of the gang," I smile, and Mom nods.

"You have his thing?"

I nod again. Mom thought that it would be a nice gesture to make to Josh, to give him a gift in thanks for giving me away. I got him a pen, a really nice one, with his name engraved on it. I know that he's going to make a big scene when I give it to him, telling me that I didn't have to and so on and so forth, and I'm going to have to tell him why I did it, and I'm really going to have to say my prayers then, because I don't know how I'll get through that conversation without tears. Josh has been like a father to me since I was twelve years old, and I'm so grateful to him for that. He's always been there for both of us since that day - he told me once that Dad asked him that if anything happened to him, that for some reason he wasn't around to take care of Mom and me, that he wanted Josh to take his place. Not literally of course, as Josh first thought, and I laughed when he told me that part of the story, wondering how Donna would have taken that particular request. But he wanted to know that someone would look out for the two of us, and since he'd always been so close to Josh, he couldn't think of anyone he'd trust more to do the job.

Josh has done a great job, there's no getting away from that. But he's not my Dad. He's not the man who told me about Michelangelo skies, he's not the man who helped me with my reading and my homework, not the man who let me curl up next to him on this seat and told me stories. He's not the man who chased the monsters from under the bed, who only had to smile at me to make me feel safe, who only had to take my hand in his to make the world a better place.

Dad died when I was twelve, and not a day has gone by since then that I haven't missed him. The only consolation to me has always been that he didn't suffer. He went to bed one night, kissed Mom on the cheek, told her he loved her and wrapped his arms around her, went to sleep and just didn't wake up. Mom was devastated, but she stayed strong for me, just like I was devastated but stayed strong for her. I keep telling myself that we were lucky to have him for as long as we did, and most days, I convince myself that I really believe that.

But what I wouldn't give to have him here today.

Mom's voice breaks through my thoughts. "He'd be so proud of you too," she tells me, and this time, tears roll down my cheeks, and hers, and neither of us even try to stop them. "Everything you've done, everything you'd become…you're everything he could have dreamed of."

I give her a hug again, holding onto her as tightly as I can. "Thanks Mom," I managed to whisper.

When we pull away this time, she wipes her own cheeks, leaving me to wipe mine. When I'm sure that I can speak, I stand, lifting up my coffee cup and looking down at her. "I'd better-" I point to the door.

"Yeah." She smiles up at me for a second, then goes back to staring at the sky, at the white clouds that continue to pass by overhead.

I nod, and do what I said I would, going to the door. When I get there, I turn back and look at her, my throat tightening as I do so. "I love you Mom," I tell her.

She doesn’t turn; in fact the only sign that she's heard me is the smile playing around the corners of her mouth. As I look at her, I can almost see him there beside her, arm around her, a sight I remember so well from my childhood. I can almost see the grin on his face, the sparkle from his eyes. Can almost hear his voice.

But it's Mom's voice I hear as I walk through the back door, into the house, ready to make a start on preparing for my new life. And those five little words that she said will sustain me through the day.

"I love you too Leona."