Rating: PG
Pairing: Leo/Ainsley
Spoilers: Most of season two to be on the safe side, Manchester.
Disclaimer: If it was in the show, it's not mine.
Archive: At my site The Band Gazebo (helsinkibaby.ahkay.net) Anywhere else please ask first.
Summary: Leo's thoughts after the speech.
Author's Note: Finally, the end of the Manchester sequence of stories… next stop, Ways and Means…fasten your seatbelts….

Almost three years ago, I walked down the streets of a town not unlike this one. I wasn't on my own like I am now. I was with my oldest friend. A man for whom I would gladly lay down my life. A man who has trusted me in spite of all the shit that's gone on in my life. My father, Vietnam, the booze, the pills - he knows it all. And he loves me anyway. There is nothing I wouldn't do for him.

We walked down that street together and he asked me why I wanted to get him elected President. And I told him that I was tired of the clowns that we voted on year in year out; that I wanted to get a good man elected President.

"This is the time of Jed Bartlet old friend," I told him. "You're gonna open your mouth and lift houses off the ground. Whole houses, clear off the ground."

I've seen him do that. These past two and a half years, he's been the kind of President that I knew he could be, knew he would be. And I've thrown myself into my work as Chief of Staff, sometimes to the detriment of other things in my life, my marriage being the chief casualty. But I knew, beyond all doubt, that this was the most important thing I would ever do in my life. And I loved it. Even with all the crap that came with it, I loved it. Things didn't go great in the first year; in fact, we got our asses kicked, but we were getting our act together. We were going places. We went up nine points in the poll that Joey Lucas did in May, we were just getting some momentum going.

Then the wheels came off the wagon.

We took a beating psychologically from Rosslyn, no-one more so than Josh. And it took us all a while to get over it. And I thought we might be getting back on track again, especially after the Family Wellness Act, and the sense of accomplishment that surrounded the place after the Stackhouse Filibuster.

And then the sides fell off the wagon.

Toby found out about the MS, Hoynes began to move himself into position for the nomination. We decided to make a public disclosure about the illness and face whatever the storm might be. And in the middle of all that, we lost Mrs Landingham. He decided not to run for re-election, then reversed his decision without telling anyone in advance, not that he knew himself that is. And we, as a Senior Staff, haven't exactly covered ourselves in glory with our decisions lately.

Understand that at this point, it's not so much that the wheels and sides are missing from the wagon as that the wagon is in pieces on the ground, inches away from being chopped up into firewood.

After the past few months, I didn't know if he had it in him to be the man that I knew he could be, the man I knew he was. I didn't know if I'd ever see it again, Jed Bartlet inspiring people, having them eating out of the palm of his hand.

But I saw it today.

Today, at a high school in Manchester, New Hampshire, I watched Jed Bartlet kick off his re-election campaign. I watched him take the first steps in restoring the trust that the American people, that the Senior Staff, once had in him. I watched him kiss Abbey as she introduced him and I realised that that was the closest I'd seen them in the last four weeks.

And just for a few minutes, when I was watching him give that speech, I began to believe that things were going to be all right. That we were going to make it.

The rest of the Senior Staff are at the bar right now, celebrating our victory. I should really join them.

Except I don't want to.

There's only one person that I want to share this with, I realise as I walk into the hotel. Unfortunately, she didn't come to New Hampshire with us. She's still in Washington. And if she were here, there's no doubt that she'd be disagreeing with Sam and Toby and Bruno over every nuance of the speech. She'd be reminding me how she's a Republican, how she's against everything that I'm for, not to mention how she campaigned very hard against the President the first time around.

Do you get the feeling that she's told me that before? Many, many times?

The thing is, half the time, I get the feeling that she's only going on like that to get a reaction out of me, to distract me from what's going on at the White House. The same way as she's taken to wearing an old "Bartlet for America" campaign T-shirt of mine around the house, because she knows that on a good day, I'll give her hell over it, and on a bad day, it'll still make me smile. Although how it got from my place to hers, I'm really not sure.

What I wouldn't give to see her in that shirt right now.

But that's kinda beside the point, isn't it? I seem to be taking up her habit of going off on tangents too.

That being said, I don't know how I'd have got through the last four weeks without her. We've been up to our eyes in the White House, what with dealing with the fallout from the announcement, educating the public on MS, looking at our polling numbers staying the same, which is still way too low. Add to that Haiti, Josh screwing up on the tobacco release, the press going after CJ at every briefing, not to mention trying to reconcile the staff to Bruno and his people - and don't think that I don't know the charming little sobriquet that's been bestowed collectively upon him, Connie and Doug. I'm not sure who it was who came up with The Three Little Pigs, but it's in widespread use around the West Wing. I will however admit to laughing heartily over it when I was alone in my office though.

In the last four weeks, I've been working pretty much around the clock. Sleep has been relegated way down on my list of priorities, not that it was ever that high. I've been snatching food here and there; mostly whatever nutritionally correct meal that Margaret places on my desk. And any other time that we were under siege like this, I'd be sleeping on my couch in my office.

But not this time.

This time, I'm dragging myself out of the office, albeit at crazy hours of the night, and I'm going to either my place or her place. And once I get there, she does her best to get me to eat, talking to me about anything and everything, and only sometimes about what went on in the West Wing that day. And after that, we might look at some television, anything but C-SPAN, and when one or other of us is falling asleep, we go to bed. And sometimes we sleep and sometimes we don't, but we stay together until morning, where we begin the whole hellish cycle all over again.

She's held me together over the last month, no doubt about it.

And there's a part of me that's so grateful that I've had her. So incredibly thankful that a woman like her would look at a man like me, knowing who I am, knowing all the baggage that I have, and still want to be with me.

Yet there's another part of me that's terrified, a part of me that's running from my demons, and not doing a good job of it. That's the part of me that's telling me that one of these days, she's going to look at me and know what I know. That I'm not worthy of her. That she deserves so much more than me.

I walked down the street with CJ this week, and told her to stop being pissed me with over Haiti. And she's been talking to me for weeks about not being so pissed with her over the way that the press are behaving during briefings. Relations between us have been severely strained, and it doesn't help that every time I look at her, I remember Ainsley's words to me the night after the announcement, remember the fight that we had over it. It wasn't a big fight as such, more of a spat, but it was the first time that there's ever been any real kind of cross words between us. And I know that it's not CJ's fault that the press are behaving like this, I know that she's doing her best.

It's just that we're swimming against the tide here, and it's making me crazy.

One of the other things I said to CJ came when she told me that she objected to me telling Toby what we talked about. And I said to her "When the time comes I'll tell anybody anything I damn well please."

Except that I won't.

I won't tell anybody anything I damn well please because I can't tell people about me and Ainsley. And there's no point in saying that the time hasn't come yet, and that's the reason why I haven't told them. The time hasn't come, nor will it, at least until November. We're in the fight of our political lives here, and we can't afford another scandal. And the White House Chief of Staff being involved with a much younger White House Associate Counsel has scandal written all over it.

I don't want her name dragged through the mud, so I can't tell anyone about us.

On the other hand, I want more for her than to be my little secret, for our relationship to be hidden in a corner somewhere. She doesn't deserve to have to run around and hide because of me. She deserves more than that.

Besides, I've spent most of my life hiding one thing or another. I covered for my dad when he was drinking. Hid my own addictions to booze and pills. Even last year, I hid the fact that my marriage had broken up for as long as I could before telling anyone. I'm real good at hiding stuff.

I don't want to hide this, any more than I want her to have to start hiding things herself.

But there's nothing else to do. Because frankly, as much as I want to protect her, as much as I don't want to drag her down with me, I'm selfish. I don't want to imagine my life without her, I've become too accustomed to her over the last year. It was easy when we were just friends, just people who talked to each other at the end of the day, who shared coffee with one another the odd night. At least, it was until these feelings began to build up, and they kinda sneaked up on me and knocked me out. But I still could've put some distance between us, if I'd really wanted to try. But even then I knew I didn't want to lose her.

And that terrible, wonderful night when she first kissed me, I knew that I was lost. That there was no way I was going to give her up, come what may.

No matter what the staff, the press, a House Committee, my friends and family might think. No matter what kind of issues I might have with this.

I'm not going to lose her.

And I'm pretty sure that she's tenacious enough to hang in there with me. After all, she's a Republican working in a Democratic White House. She's nothing if not stubborn.

Besides which, she feels the same way about me as I do about her. Which puts me in a pretty good position overall. Despite the upheaval at the White House, the imminent subpoenas and hearings, the uphill battle of a re-election campaign, I'm not doing too bad.

I'd be doing even better if I could walk into this room, put my arms around her and hold her. Talk about the day's events with her and fall asleep with her still in my arms, her head on my shoulder. But since she's in Washington, and since I'm here, we're going to have to make do with the next best thing. That's why I lie back on the bed and open my cell phone, speed-dialling her home number.

It takes a couple of rings before she answers. "Hayes Residence," I hear from the other end of the phone, and I stifle a smile. She doesn't sound like she had to run to answer the phone, and the formal tone of voice tells me that she doesn’t know who's on the other end.

"You really should learn how to use Caller ID," I tell her.

"And lose the thrill of a nice surprise?" she asks, and I have to hand it to her, that was a pretty good recovery.

"You saw the speech?"

"Live in the White House. And I'm living off the re-runs on C-SPAN now."

"What did you think?"

"I thought he did well."

"For a Democrat, right?"

"Well, I'm not saying that I'd vote for him, but…" She lets her voice trail off, and I find myself chuckling.

"But you're considering it, right?"

"I said no such thing." Her tone is light as well, and I can picture her now, curled up on her couch, some horrendous girly film playing on the television, muted and paused so that she can talk to me. "And I'm not about to discuss the merits and demerits of the campaign strategy at this hour of the night."

I stifle a groan at her words. "Good, because I've been re-hashing it all week." Memories of Toby and Doug doing verbal battle are all too fresh in my mind, and if this is what's in store for all of us over the next few months, then it's going to be a bumpier ride than I've ever anticipated.

"It was a good speech Leo," she tells me again.

"I know. But how much of the news cycle is it gonna get after the RU-486 story? And you gotta know that the first round of subpoenas is coming out soon…."

"Worry about it when it happens." Her voice is strong as she cuts across me, and she's got that Southern schoolmarm sense about her. "Enjoy the moment Leo. Where are you anyway?"

"The hotel. The rest of the staff are at the bar, celebrating."

"You should be there too."

"Nah. I wanted to talk to you."

"Leo…." She put about seven syllables into my name there. "That's sweet." I don't know what to say to that, so I don't say anything. "Are you ok?"

I take a deep breath, considering the question. "I'm gonna be," I finally decide, and for the first time in a long time, I actually believe it.

Because my best friend stood at a fence on his farm and told me that he was going to run for election, and that he was going to win.

And I believe him.

More importantly, I believe in him.

And I have good people around me, and a good woman to worry about me. A woman who believes in me too. She knows all about me, we don't have any secrets between us, and she stays anyway. More than that, she holds on tightly and won't let go for anything. She's everything I need right now, and far more than I deserve.

And maybe, just maybe, between all of us, we can rebuild the wagon again.

And maybe, just maybe, we can build it better.

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