Title: Back East

Author: helsinkibaby

Rating: PG

Pairing: Sam/The Nameless Faceless Fiancée

Spoilers: Everything up to and including the Season 7 finale

Word Count: 273

Disclaimer: Not mine

Notes: For the writer’s choice prompt “east”

 

>*<*>*<

 

She’d always known that this would happen sooner or later.

 

Oh, he told her, time and time again, that he was through with life in Washington, that he was through with politics. An Orange County ass-whupping had been enough for him, and he was quite happy working in the law firm, doing good deeds, living in permanent summer.

 

He’d told her, but she hadn’t believed him.

 

Not when she saw the way that his attention always turned to the television when politics in general, or the Bartlet Administration in particular, were mentioned.

 

When he was literally unbearable for days when it was announced that Josh Lyman had resigned to run Matt Santos’s campaign for President – well, that’s not strictly true. His mood had been fine when he was waiting for the phone to ring. It was when it didn’t that things took a downward turn.

 

When he followed the primaries so closely that she knew she couldn’t talk to him when the results were being announced, or for a few minutes after, until he worked the analysis out of his system.

 

All in all, when he arrived home from work one fine November day and told her Josh Lyman had arrived at his office and offered him a job, it was almost a relief.

 

He’d told Josh that he had to think about it, talk it over with her, had asked him for some time. She doesn’t know why; he doesn’t need it. And neither does she.

 

She always knew that one day Sam Seaborn would head back east to Washington.

 

Just like she always knew that she wouldn’t let him go alone.