Author: Regency

Title: Remember, Caesar

Spoilers: The entire show, but especially Here Today, Elections Day (Pts. I and II)

Summary: Toby thinks of the past and the good advice he forgot to take.

Author’s Notes: My entry for the Toby ficathon,

AN2: started December 2, 2005, ended December 29, 2006. I didn’t think it would be this hard.

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“Remember, Caesar,” uttered his praetorian guard, “Though art mortal.”

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“You’ve got to let him do it in his own time, Toby. This isn’t a guy you can push. Let him say that this is the right decision. Don’t dictate to him. In a world gone mad, you’ve got to let him maintain a little control. He needs that.”

~~~

Four years had passed since Leo had divested that sage bit of advice and somewhere between the abject joy of victory, the exhilarating shock of new fatherhood, and the accelerated crumbling of his world he had forgotten and now paid dearly. As did those he loved most.

Sitting on the edge of his bed, alienated from family and foe alike, he began to count the cost. Gained? Four lives, three of which were American. Lost? His honor, his closest friendships and quite possibly his freedom.

He might spend the next six years in prison for doing what he knew to be right, what he thought Jed Bartlet would have him do. And he would only regret part of it. He would regret missing the signs of a turning tide. That rush of freezing water on the inlet of the Med Sea that signaled the coming a storm. He should’ve seen them.

He should’ve waited to act and observed instead. He eventually would’ve realized that it was a strange new world he was living in and that he should tread lightly. For he was upon the shifting sands of God.

Those very sands had moved to swallow him whole, but had instead stranded him on the sharp rocks with no rescue in sight. He was lost, shipwrecked by the weight of his own “self-righteous superiority.”

For nearly a decade, Jed Bartlet had shared in that righteousness. For that long they’d held the same hopes and determination that they would change the world before they departed from it. They would make it better, he’d said, better for their children and their children’s children. And those great-grandchildren they would never meet. This was all that remained of that vow.

An ocean of blood, sweat, and tears later, Toby had kept his end of the deal. He’d pushed for social security, Medicare, and safe cars, and fewer guns on the streets. He’d demanded a more secure place them to live. It would be a shame for him to survive almost 50 years through Republican presidents, the two Bartlets, and atrocious grammar (see imagery) only to expire at the hands of a suicide bomber with a point to make.

He had lived too long. He had seen more than his share, and in the process of trying not to see more he had blinded himself. That hadn’t been his intention. He wasn’t narrow-minded. He was open to ideas, preferably good ones, but he was adaptable. He could usually make it work. He was that guy. He had been one of the guys Jed Bartlet counted on.

No, he wasn’t Leo McGarry or Josh Lyman. He didn’t buck the President up before speeches or high-five him when it was a slam dunk. He showed his support in other ways, by standing behind the Jed Bartlet and not making critiques. His silence was, at times, the best he had to offer and he offered it without hesitation -- once everything was right, anyway. He was perfectionist at heart. He knew better than anyone the weight of a first impression. With that single perception a nation had chosen Josiah Bartlet as their leader and with it they had chosen him again.

Toby couldn’t say it was unwise because there wasn’t another man breathing he would trust with the job. He could stand behind this man, like before and always.

Toby kicked around his brownstone, putting away Molly’s Barbie doll, Embeth -- who had already been decreed an attorney -- and Huck’s colors and paints, all well used and in need of replacement. The boy drew pictures that amazed his father. They weren’t Van Gogh or Picasso, but they expressed a constant understanding of his world. A word that he would not yet read or speak would appear haphazardly copied over the head of his mother’s depiction: Savior. When asked, he would point to the television tuned often to CNN. Savior, it read and so he drew.

Careless, as children did, he would discover something new and harp on it constantly. Another CNN broadcast, another new word or phrase. One day, he would put them together and they would become an idea.

Toby prayed that his son would be a man of ideas, a better one than he had dreamt of on foggy, cold nights. He would believe in cautious generous idealism. Huck would take that one trait with him, the only thing of his Toby wanted him to have.

He tightened his necktie an hour later, still not desiring this reality. A hop, a skip, and a jump would take him to his destination. He’d seen the news, the weather was appropriate for a funeral. He didn’t know if he would be in the distance or in the mass but he would remember his friend. He would not be denied this chance to mourn. It truly was a new world they were living in, made lesser because Leo McGarry would not be there to live with them.

He stopped to breathe with his hand on the doorknob and remembered when his daily destination used to be the best place in the Free World. Waiting didn’t ease his apprehension. He opened his front door and plunged into the day, hearing the fading echo of his cherished friend and the words that didn‘t save his soul.