Author: Regency

Title: There Goes The Evening

Spoilers: “Wake-up Call” post-ep

Rating: PG

Pairing: Jed/Abbey

Summary: Sometimes it takes extremes.

Disclaimer: I own nothing. No infringement intended.

Author’s Notes: Crap, maybe. Fun to write, basically.

~~~~

“I just want you to be safe. I want you whole and healthy. A year from now, I want you home with me. Doesn’t that mean anything to you? Don’t I mean anything to you?”

“Of course you do, but sometimes the greater good must and will--” She took a step towards him, looking far more hurt than angry.

“The greater good? I tell you that I’m afraid for you and you give me the greater good. What the hell is happ--You know what, never mind. You work yourself into an early grave if you absolutely must, but I’ll be damned if I’ll watch it.” To his nervous dismay, she started to tug on her wedding band. She muttered a few idle curses before pulling it completely off.

She weighed it in her hand, trying to adjust to this new lightness. Jed took a step towards her with his hands held up in surrender.

“Abbey--”

“No, no, this is what you need.” She gestured around the room with the ring in hand. “This, this place. This is your sanctuary.” She nodded to herself as if accepting these words. “Not me, not our marriage. Or even our love.” She snorted a little. Love was a word woefully inadequate to describe the blood that flowed through her veins and pushed her heart to go. “As long as you’re here, you don’t need me.” She sat the ring on the round table beside her. She’d had enough.

“I’ve fought you, fought *for* you, fought with you, but I can’t…I won’t fight *you* anymore. Not when it’s not my battle to lose.”

“Abbey, what are you saying?”

“I’m saying that I’m going to bed now. I know it’s early, but you’ve got an early start tomorrow. I may or may not be there. I’ll wait up until ten. By ten, I mean PM. Not ten-oh-one, ten-fifteen, or, and especially not, ten-thirty. Ten. If you’re not there, in the Residence then, I won’t be there whenever you do get there. Not a threat, not a promise, just something you should know.”

“Why the ring?”

“Give it back to me when you come to bed or…you can keep it.” She passed him on her way to the portico, her fingers just brushing the back of his hand. It was a final sign, a last sigh, he prayed not a bitter end.

“What if I’m not tired when I get there?” She stopped with her underweight hands folded in front of her.

“Then, we’ll have this talk. We’ll really have this talk. And if all goes well, tomorrow will be a new day.”

“If it doesn’t?”

“Tomorrow will still be a new day, we just won’t be together for it.”

“You’d really leave me?”

“To save myself? No. To make you see what your hardheadedness could cost you? Yes. I need you, but not this much.” He conceded this.

“What if I do need you this much?”

“Then you’ll come to bed tonight.”

“Ten o’clock?”

“On the dot.” She waited for him to say something more, but tension was the only sound she heard. “Well, maybe I’ll see you later.” He stopped her as she took a step into the wind.

“I do love you.”

“I know. But sometimes…” She shrugged helplessly. “Well, you’ve heard that before.”

“Tell me anyway.”

“Sometimes, love isn’t enough.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.” Realizing that this conversation had gone as far as it would, she made her exit. The soft clicking of her heels was soon lost in the wind as if she’d taken a step and vanished. He was moved to the door by some desperate desire to prove the fiction of that. Indeed, she walked in her quick, but graceful way, knowing all the while he’d come. But when she turned to see him, he’d already retreated behind the Resolute Desk.

All the things he could say, but somehow his actions simply fell short. She held her empty hand to her chest and tried to stifle the fog of fear that clouded what was left of her journey.

Back in his ‘sanctuary,’ he held a velvet box in his hand. In the other, was Abbey’s abandoned wedding band. Inside the box was a brand new ring, sparkling, shining, perfect set with an emerald that was only to her eyes compared, flanked by diamonds nearly as bright as her ne’er-seen smile. Tonight, at the opera, he had planned to give it to her. Subtly, toward the end, as she contrived his demise once she realized the plot. He would sit it on her lap and allow her to find it on her own. That was the evening he had planned and this was the rubble that remained of it.

He finally opened the card she had left for him.

“We’ve gone so far these last few years,” he read to himself, “We’ve won, and won again. We’ve suffered injuries, together and apart, that we never anticipated forty years ago. We’ve learned and lost, having not learned well. We’ve forgotten, and forgotten to remember. But, it’s gonna be different now. Our love has moved mountains, Jed. But tonight, I just need it to move you. Come home to me. I’m waiting.” Included with that note was a Polaroid of a very sexy First Lady from the shoulders up with a rich red ribbon hanging from a finger. Somehow, he knew what that meant.

He held the card close to his nose and smelt a whiff of Chanel No. 5 over her lean, but effusive words. “Are you still waiting for me?”

“Never stopped.” He jumped.

“I thought you…” She found him at a loss for a reaction.

“I left something.”

“What?”

“That.” She motioned to her ring in his hand. He crossed one hand over the other to hand it back to her. She noticed the tiny box in his other hand. “What’s that?”

“Oh, this?”

“Yes, that?” She reached over his shoulder for it. “What is it?” He immediately held it out of her reach.

“Nothing. Just a box.”

“Funny, lemme see.” He pressed a firm kiss to her cheek as she leaned over his shoulder in vain.

“Nope. This is for a good little girl I know.” She widened her eyes precociously.

“Me?”

“Did I say that?” She pouted. “Maybe it’s for you.” She wrapped her arms around him. “Okay, okay. Enough harassment. It was for you. I wanted to give it you tonight, for your birthday and for Valentine’s Day.”

“Yeah, how’d that work out for you?” A snort was his answer. “You can still give it to me. The sentiment would be the same.”

“I don’t think it would.”

“Okay, so what are you going to do with it?”

“Donate it to charity.”

“I’d rather have it.”

“You’re not a charity.”

“I’m the Abbey Loves Diamonds Foundation.”

“It’s an emerald.”

“And I couldn’t care less. A rock’s a rock.”

“And ‘diamonds are a girl’s best friend’?”

“Oh, yes.” Batting her eyelashes at him, she snagged the box from his hand and sauntered out of his reach. She plopped down on the couch and opened the box. Her gasp gave him his answer. She held her band up to the ring and sniffled.

“It doesn’t match.”

“I know. I was gonna replace that, too.” She looked up at him.

“When?”

“On some day in the near future, before our family and God. Maybe up in Manchester.”

“That sounds nice.”

“It did.” He sighed and clasped his hands straight in front of him. “Tonight was gonna be good.”

“It can still be good, Jed. Everyday can still be good.”

“Maybe.” Abbey rose and sat on the edge of the desk.

“No, maybe. Look, you and I have a common goal. You sticking around. You need to be around to finish setting your legacy and I need you around to grow old with. Well, to watch grow old, ‘cause I’m thirty and holding, but…” He snorted. “Hey, hey. I am thirty and holding. Problem?”

“No, thirty’s a good age.” She tapped his nose gently.

“I thought so. Now, we can both have what we want if you’re willing to do what I say.”

“Sounds like you get your way either way.”

“Basically, but that’s not the point. If you do what I’m recommending--Hear that, recommending--If you do what I’m recommending, we’ll have more time together. There won’t be any waiting. Everyday can be our day. I want everyday I can get with you. Every hour, every moment. So, come on, do what I say.”

“Okay.” She leaned away before reaching out to touch his forehead.

“Are you all right? Do you feel woozy?” He tugged her head away from his forehead, bringing it to his lips for a kiss.

“I feel fine, but there’s just one more thing I have to know.” She pursed her lips as she does and conceded.

“Okay, what?” He rose from his seat, walked around, and kneeled in front of Abbey. Her eyes widened until he could see his reflection in them. “Jed?” He squeezed her hand in his and smiled anxiously up at her.

“Abigail Ann Bartlet, will you marry me…again?” She couldn’t speak, but her face gave her answer. Her took the box from her lax hand and removed the ring. He kissed the bare finger of destination and shared her gaze to make sure she was agreeing. She nodded through silent tears and locked her eyes on his deft limbs as they completed their task.

The band slid easily onto her finger and seemed to immediately blend with her. It was apart of her now. “So, what do you say?” He had to hear it from her lips.

She knelt down with him. She framed his face in her hands and gifted him with a kiss that encompassed all the days of their lives. With their eyes still closed, they rested their foreheads together.

“Yes, I’ll marry you…again.” He cradled her close and rocked her with him. “And again. And again. I’ll marry you everyday as long as you want me.”

“I’ll always want you, and need you.”

“Ditto, babe. Ditto.”