Percepted Control
By Cappuccino Girl
Genre: Angst. CJ/Sam
Rating: PG-13 for subject matter
Disclaimer: They aren’t my characters. This isn’t my show. They belong
to Aaron Sorkin, John Wells Productions, and Warner Bros.
Notes: Many thanks to my beta readers (you know who you are) for putting up
with me and my crazy, angst-ridden world. You are brilliant. I don’t really
know where this story came from, I just started hearing the voices....
Summary: She never meant for him to know so much, but with star gazing came
the intimacy which she feared.
She touches the drops of water which are pearling on her forehead. It has been
raining outside, and now, at midnight, she yearns for nothing more than the
peace of her apartment. The cat is fast asleep on the bed, oblivious to her
entrance. She watches as her paws twitch, dreaming of fields overrun by tall
grass and mice.
A blanket is sticking out obtrusively from under the bed, and she reaches down
to move it. It is a little stubborn, so she pulls harder at it, until it it
is free from entanglement and unravels in front of her feet, unveiling not only
it’s rich blue color, but a familiar carton which tumbled out with it.
The cat has just woken and tries to seek comfort by brushing around the bed
post. She kneels down to pet the kitten, which rolls onto its back, purring
contentedly. The woman takes her place on the floor scratching the cat’s
furry stomach and proceeds to open the dark brown box.
Some years ago she secured the lid with two elastic bands. Now she grips them,
and slips one of her tired fingers underneath to remove their hold from the
container. The bands have turned grainy with time, and so they crumble and break
in her hands. She sighs, embracing the emotions of reliving and revealing the
past as best as she can by brushing a film of dust from the lid to delay opening
it. The box has little creases on the sides, and the top is sunk in a little
due to her storing it with far less care than she takes now when she clutches
the lid. She lifts the one corner and eventually opens it, like a child savoring
unwrapping a present.
The contents have faded, unlike her memories of the many people shown in the
photographs clustered inside the box.
She glances up at the mirror on the bedroom wall. There is the reflection of
a woman. Tired. Worn. Hurting. She doesn’t resemble the 25 year old in
the picture. Thoughtful, she wonders whether they ever were the same person.
Time should breed wisdom. She didn’t look worried then.
She strokes her index finger over the picture she is studying. It is Sam and
the President and the First Lady at the time when they were known as Jed and
Abbey. When she was known to everyone as CJ, and not the White House Press Secretary.
Sam is just Sam. He has stayed that to her through all these years, and silently
she prays that he will continue to be.
Her life has made friends and soul mates scarce. That which remains of them
is falling out of this carton and onto the smooth oak floor. Pictures, concert
tickets, a few addresses to which she has never sent anything in years. She
wasn’t trying to block these out, just attempting to place them in a hold
so that she could return to what once was. What she once had.
Everyone tells her that she has it all, yet she feels this secret wish to try
again, to go back and regain all things personal which she had. It would all
mean so much more then.
She has close friends. The closest of friends, and the deepest of loves. She
fears what she does, what she may have done. Can she keep everything together,
or will she continue to scar and fade until nothing remains but photographs
to remind her? Will they take their place in a faded box under her bed, only
to be opened by chance?
~* ~
11 hours earlier...
She has not spoken with him today. Avoided him deliberately for fear of what
he might tell her. While she would never admit to it, she is fragile and those
words which he said the night before caused those little cracks in the mirror
of her emotions to spread further inwards, weakening her whole outer frame.
Her not admitting is the problem, or so he told her.
She shivers gently at the thought, trying desperately to find some comforting
thought in her work. Its appealing distraction cause her to type frantically
as she can hide all manner of difficulties behind her work, for no one questions
her on that. They trust her incomparable ability in managing the media, and
know little of her failures elsewhere. She will never publicise those failures,
for none could be more damaging to her self-confidence and others’ perceptions
of her. What else is she to them than percepted control, eloquence and intellect?
She tries so hard to escape, yet he has found her. She removes her glasses so
that she can see him without straining her bloodshot eyes.
‘Samuel.’ She murmurs wistfully, recalling those nights on the back
lawn of his house when they used to talk about star formation and childhood
dreams. When she felt safe for the first time in her adult life.
He places a hand on her desk, nervously playing with the notepad upon it. She
hopes he will talk so she won’t have to, for she is afraid of talking again,
afraid of what might be said between the two of them. She has so little to hold
on to, so little which is sure and certain. And so she silently continues to
study him. She watches how he fiddles with the pen he is holding and stares
at his newly shined shoes.
They once talked of wishes until their tongues were without words and all that
was left was to kiss, for they knew so much about each other. Now he would not
even say her name, but rather ‘Have you been briefed on the President’s
plan for police financing?’
She tries to reply that she has, and she will try to make that her main focus,
but it wouldn’t be true, and if she can’t be honest with him then
there is no one.
‘Do I hurt you?’ She questions, fearing the answer, yet longing for
it to fix the cracks which are causing her to feel nauseous.
He takes a seat opposite her and she watches him as he waves his pen around.
He always does that when he wishes to delay a conversation so that he can script
it out in his brilliant mind before talking.
‘Just look at yourself. Smart. Loving. Unconventionally beautiful. Why
do you proceed to hurt yourself?’ He pleas, rubbing his hands to distract
himself from her painful gaze.
She wraps her arms around herself trying to find security in them. She knows
what he means. She never meant for him to know so much, but with star gazing
came the intimacy which she feared.
He knows how she punishs herself for failure with tablets to deprive herself
of sleep, sometimes for a week at a time. He had found her that night, shaking
on the steps to her apartment. Crying. He had never seen her crying before,
never known she was capable of it.
In his kindness he had taken a tissue from her purse with which to dry her face,
and offered her his coat while they walked inside. She had laid on the sofa
and cried until her stomach and chest hurt and all that came were sobs without
tears for there was nothing left to shed. He had held her and assured her that
she was beautiful and competent, while he felt her increasingly prominent shoulder
and collarbone. She assured him, as she did everyone that she was ok, that nothing
was wrong, but he didn’t believe her for he felt it in her spiritless limbs.
Rather than speak, he brushed the strands of damp hair from her face and traced
the line of her face with his finger, in adoration of her fragility.
He sits in the chair opposite her now. She studies the expression on his face,
for he can formulate no words. She drops her head, losing some of the artificial
pride which holds her public persona together. Her head hurts and it feels good,
because she has failed worse than she can cope with, and her talking could provide
no comfort to the one she cherishes.
Eventually he strains himself to speak, reaching out to her for security, but
finding nothing other than a fractured woman for support.
‘You are too precious for this. You should see how you look when you fall
asleep, with your tousled hair and expression of hopefulness. You cry in your
sleep, and shiver when you wake, and I know you don’t want me to know,
but I do.’
She places a hand in front of her mouth to subdue the emotion which might take
her over if she is not careful.
‘I’ve seen the medicine cabinet in your bathroom, with the pills you
use to force yourself into impossible success.’
She knows that he is right, that everyone fails, but inside she feels she shouldn’t.
She hears the voices of those who once taunted her when she was young. She proved
them wrong and outshone them with her academic success, because she couldn’t
beat them in any other way. It is their tongues which plague her dreams and
their words which deprive her of rest and inside she must continue to beat them.
It is they who throw the stones at her inner mirror and cause little shards
of glass to break off, which in turn pain the one she now loves. He knows all
this, even though she has never mentioned it to anyone, not even him, for her
face is honest to him alone.
He shifts to the left of the chair, trying to find hidden strength in the arm
rest. They cannot talk now, for he has said all that could be, and she has displayed
all the emotions she will permit herself to.
So he exits and she remains at her desk, swallowing another pink capsule, wondering
whether she will lock away a further personal relationship in order that she
can silence the sneering of those people she met so many years ago.
~ the end ~
__________________________________________________
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