Category:  Drama

Summary: Once upon a time you had resented having to hold their leashes. Short Toby POV on Sam and Josh.

Spoilers: Set sometime post Constituency of One.

Disclaimer: West Wing is not mine but remains the exclusive property of Aaron Sorkin et al.

A/N: Drabble really. A Toby musing on the changed state in the West Wing re: S1+2 that I couldn't get rid of. Reviews are always wonderful. If anyone would like to give any longer feedback, of a semi-beta variety, my e-mail address is in my profile and I'd love to hear from you.

*************

You had resented it once. You told Leo McGarry that you hadn't joined this campaign to hold the leashes of children. And they were children. Sam with his wide-eyed enthusiasm and Josh with his boundless energy. You learnt that Josh had left the winning campaign to join this one, that Sam had left a job and a fiancée. But all that proved was that they were reckless.

Later, much later, you learnt that behind Josh Lyman's manic tendencies lay one of the sharpest political minds you had ever known. Behind Sam Seaborn's idealism lay a potential to write words that could move even you. But that didn't stop your aggravation when they hugged gleefully at every win, as if believing that this meant it was done.

Your overwhelming memory of those first years in the White House is of you and Josh striding ahead down a hall, with Sam, the baby brother, behind you hurrying to keep up. Between the two of you, he was rescued from crises that surrounded call girls and speeches that wouldn't come right, and flirting with your Chief of Staff's wife.  You had saved Josh from Mary Marsh, and losing his job, a misaimed sniper bullet and all the consequences thereof. Sometimes they saved you, when Sam's writing melded with yours so perfectly it didn't matter, as much as you complained, who had written what. When he had grinned and worked out that your stock market problem wouldn't end up with you in jail. When Josh put that mind to work to reach solutions about strip-mining Big Sky and a hundred other tiny things that stopped you being on the losing side. But you were still the one that had to drag them back, holding their leashes to stop them running off on missions that couldn't be won.

Until, one day, Sam pulled away. He let the hope that had been driving him so long, that he had almost lost in this building, draw him down another path. Finally let himself tilt at his windmills, listened to his own voices and not yours. Suddenly you and Josh were off balance. Your triangle, so carefully cultivated, came apart at the seams. The novelty of being the one that he came to about his love life wore off. You could only encourage him to keep trying for so long, both in his manoeuvres with Amy Gardner, and with his Congressmen. He grew tired too, the voice of idealism was not his own, and it drained him. The others suffered, but it was the two of you who were unable to cope. In the troubles that refused to leave he grew reckless and you stopped caring. Then this came, and you watched the faith he had been trying to maintain collapse into hopelessness. He was a shadow of himself, that energy you had complained about for so long, disappeared.

Once upon a time you had complained about having to hold their leashes. Now one had broken free into the stars, the other fallen to earth with a crash, and you wished for a time when you had been forced to hold them back.

*************

A/N 2: Review please.