Title: Strong at the Broken Places
Fandom: The West Wing
Characters: Andrea Wyatt/Toby Ziegler
Prompt: fanfic100: #71 – Broken; un_love_you: #10 – I’m Broken
Word Count: 387
Rating: pg
Summary: Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation. ~Khalil Gibran
Author's Notes: Post-Toby’s pardon.



There’s whiskey in his voice over the phone, and whiskey on his breath when he shows up at her door.

Finally he’s free to tell it, and the story spills out, and it’s the most they’ve talked without yelling in years. He’s sober by the time he finishes, and she wants nothing more than to be drunk. Or dreaming.

She can’t take her eyes off of his, the way they’re shining with tears he won’t shed. He makes her promises that they both know won’t be kept. (He’ll take the shuttle every week to see the kids. He’ll call every day.)

When she leans in to hug him, she stays in his arms just a moment too long, and the air around them changes. When she pulls back, he kisses her hesitantly, and she melts against him. She can’t make him stay, and she can’t give him his job back, so she simply tries to alleviate the pain.

They break apart, and his voice is quiet when he speaks. “If we do this, I’ll never leave.”

She nods, not looking at him. “Go see the kids,” she says hoarsely, and he runs a thumb under her eye before he stands.

***

He doesn’t reappear after long minutes, and she finds him in their children’s bedroom, in the rocking chair he bought her a month before the twins were born, with Molly asleep on his lap.

“She woke up,” he whispers, and he drops a kiss on his daughter’s head, murmuring something inaudible against her hair before Andy lifts her up and tucks her limp, heavy body back in bed.

Toby’s standing next to Huck’s bed when Andy turns, and she stands behind him, her arm around his waist, her chin on his shoulder. His voice is just a little tortured. “This is what he did to me. I woke up one morning and he was gone.”

She can’t convince him that he’s not his father or that his kids will know that he loves them, and so she simply says, “Stay. Stay tonight and we’ll take you to the airport tomorrow.”

His nod is almost imperceptible, but she leads him to her bedroom, and they lie together, entwined, talking quietly, then not talking at all. There’s no easy solution, and never an easy way to walk away.