a u . r e v o i r . n o t . g o o d b y e

Au Revoir, Not Goodbye
[by victoria p.]

Rating: G

Summary: Everyone has their day, and Josh knows his is coming.

Notes: Thanks as always to Jen, Pete/Melissa, Dot, and Meg. Written for Annie Grayston for the Isn't It Iconic Ficlet-a-thon. My assignment was this icon:

Date: April 28, 2004

Josh looks over the office one last time.

Everything is packed in boxes, eight years of his life banished to cardboard storage, sealed away with packing tape and carefully labeled in Donna's illegible handwriting.

She still hasn't said she's coming with him, and he's not sure he'll be able to find anything without her, though he'd never admit it out loud. He knows she has a system and he's never really bothered to learn it, because he figured she'd always be there. Now, she talks of going back to school, or going home to Wisconsin, or working in the non-profit sector. He encourages her, because she deserves it, and he knows she'll succeed at whatever she does, but he panics slightly whenever he imagines breaking in a new assistant, because they've been together so very long, and with mostly good results.

He remembers the day they moved into the west wing, his body humming with nervous energy and the belief that they were about to change the world.

He's older now, and tired. He hadn't thought he was naïve then, but now he knows the true cost of change, and how all the forces of politics and human nature stack up against it.

They all bear the scars of that naïveté, and he's not just thinking of the pale pink line bisecting his chest.

But he knows he'll be back, that these first hesitant steps away from the place he's thought of as home, temple, cage and sanctuary will lead him back again, because while his time as Deputy Chief of Staff is over, his time as Chief of Staff in the Seaborn White House is yet to come.

Sam's already out on that road, his first steps taken when he ran in the California forty-seventh. Josh knows he's got the makings of a good candidate, a great president, the Real Thing, just like Bartlet was all those years ago in Nashua.

So he's not quite as broken up as he should be, because he knows he'll be back someday.

fin

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Disclaimer: All West Wing characters belong Aaron Sorkin, John Wells and others who aren't me, etc. This piece of fan-written fiction intends no infringement on any copyrights.