Work Text:
C.J. gives her second inaugural speech ten feet away from a wheelchair, her chest a constellation of small pinprick ink marks that help machines align. Her head is bare under a full lace wig. She’s never felt the January cold more deeply, but she white-knuckles her way through Will and Toby’s words with enough conviction that she believes them herself.
The warm hand immediately on her back as she steps away from the podium is reassuring. Kate is firm and steady behind her, just as she was firm and steady beside her just shortly before as C.J. was sworn into office for the second time by Chief Justice Lang. Joey had signed her oath of office, just as she had four years before, without Kenny’s interpretation. This year, the Chief Justice had done the same, signing as she read each line for the Vice President.
Her second inaugural speech is the first one her daughters have seen her deliver in person. The pride on their faces is everything.
As the crowd dispersed and the mist of warm breath in crisp air cleared from the National Mall, C.J. let herself settle back in the chair and maneuver it alongside her wife and her Chief of Staff, asking Donna plainly, “What’s next?”
Her fifth State of the Union has her steadily back on her feet, her hair out of its peach fuzz phase, redder and curlier than it had been since she was a small child.
The constellation still marks her chest and ribs; it always will. She finds that she does not mind. The ink under her skin does not scare her anymore. It steels her instead.
It reminds her of the fact that she defeated what her mother had not, that it spelled hope for her older daughter. It spells for her the alignment of the stars that had brought her children back to her in their early twenties.
Her wife traces the marks reverently, now that the worst has passed.
She sees the way the nearly four year ordeal shaped Kate’s focus as they moved into the last two years of her second term. Her key platforms as First Lady had been important to her, but held at arms length – Veterans, AIDS research and treatment domestically and abroad, women's treatment in the military. Her wife, the one who never bowed, never bent, never seemed to fear for herself, had been shaken. Now, the fight was more than personal. The moment she regained her footing was the moment she resolved to use her platform for something personal for once. There were countless meetings, fundraisers, and pushes for research to be refined and revitalized, Kate at the fore of it all. C.J. forgives herself for waiting until the battle was over to utter the words “breast cancer” in public, but her experience and her mother’s were enough to fuel a fire Kate would not let burn out while she had a say in it. Carol had had her work cut out for her, just to keep the scent of the White House Press Corps off the trail of C.J.’s years-long battle.
A stalemate has been called, and a treaty brokered in her body, but there is still peace she is struggling to find with the changes, the ways in which she will be forever or temporarily marked.
She works for that peace, every day, and has since the beginning.
It is near impossible not to contemplate the last year of her time as Chief of Staff, butting heads with the then-First Lady just to drag a struggling administration across the finish line while still accomplishing something with their time there, all while the President struggled with his own lack of control over his limits and capacity for governing.
She has been fortunate for her Vice President’s capability, and for the fact that she still has a full staff. Between Donna and Charlie, the West Wing is impeccably run, and Margaret handles her schedule like a Swiss watch even all these years later. The dynamite combination of Toby, Will, and Carol to round out Donna’s senior staff has meant that the buck could not possibly have been passed even if she tried, not that she ever wanted to.
The map of stars on her chest and ribs have charted some of the most fruitful years of her life, even if they have been some of the hardest to boot.
They remind her that she has, in fact, kept her promise to not widow Kate twice. They remind her each day that the most important promise she has left to keep is what she promised herself the day she saw her world fall apart in front of her as she lost her daughters one by one – there was work to do, and she had to be brave enough to do it because she could .
For her last State of the Union, there is no mincing words or biding their time. Joey is the heir apparent to the Democratic nomination entirely on her own merits, and the strength of their record can only bolster her chances. Toby reminds her of Leo, tells her the way he tore into the last last State of the Union he had written and critiqued it thoroughly for its lack of teeth, when he and Will send the first draft her way. They spend weeks sharpening it, preparing the policy onslaught and the stumping strategy that will follow in its wake, and they spend their last 365 days doing everything except biding out the clock.
When it comes time for her farewell address, Toby does what she never imagined he would ever do when she asked him to be the campaign Communications Director nine years ago – he passes the buck. Will backs him up, as do Donna and Charlie, though Carol staunchly claims Swiss neutrality on the matter.
The words are hers.
After all, these last eight years have been hers to make. She remembers when she claimed she was not from the world of politics. She remembers when she swallowed her tears, her throat hot and raw with shame. She remembers taking the plunge, then doing it again and again and again until she found herself in this office she was about to leave.
She ends the only speech she has ever written and given, certain as anything, with a clipped “What’s next?”
There is no senior staff meeting, no next big policy push or fight to broker. No executive secretary running her hectic days or blessed but brief oases of reprieve with her wife.
The oases are the whole of the landscape now, until they both go stir crazy. Just them, their girls, and the stars.