title: shadows that were sleeping
authors: ellen milholland & oro
emails: [email protected], [email protected]
rating: pg-13
coded: toby, cj
spoilers: season 4
disclaimers: we don't own 'em.
notes: a hanukkah fic. we're almost late, but not really. beta by wren arnold and sarapallas, proofread by saRa. we like our cj/toby kosher.
He counts shots, names them. One for each of his children, for the deputies he's lost, for the two words of the State of the Union he's written, one for Andi. He hasn't eaten all day, and the alcohol holds him with hot hands. He doesn't drink for her.
With the eighth shot comes the self-loathing.
Five newspapers for each day he hasn't read, forty newspapers altogether. CNN is on mute, footage of death and destruction next to (the second day of pointless reruns of) Christmas celebrations in New York City, or Nazareth, whichever. He stares into space, not breaking down his home into furniture and walls but seeing nothing at all.
It's a downward slope into an old, bitter version of himself, and he hasn't gotten to the worst part of it yet.
Toby hates Hanukkah, and it's far from a secret.
Not that it's well-understood. He takes his Judaism seriously, and if they don't know anything else, people know being Jewish means eight crazy, candle-lit nights. And maybe it'd been that way, once, back when he spun dreidels for pennies and hid gelt in his pillowcase so his brother didn't steal it, back when there were homemade latkes and still-warm doughnuts.
He takes another shot to try to put out that burning in his chest, in his throat, and he certainly doesn't call his brother.
The phone glares at him and another shot of Jager dulls the guilt into a distant, foreign light on a faraway Christmas tree. Maybe Andi's tree, or possibly the idiotic Hanukkah bush with the twinkling lights. His kids can't talk yet but their eyes speak volumes of Christmas and presents, and Daddy with his strange bush, and Daddy with his beard and the dark circles under his eyes.
He doesn't have the patience for baby toys that ring or packages with silvery paper. He doesn't know Goodnight, Moon from Goodnight, Gorilla, and these are the kinds of things a new daddy knows. So, Andi had taken the kids to her mother's house for Christmas, and they'd called and the babies had burbled pleasantly at him through the phone.
"Tell Daddy happy Hanukkah," he'd heard Andi say from somewhere far, somewhere impossibly far.
He is feeling like the worst family man, the worst father, possibly even worse than his; because he isn't a convict, and he isn't in prison, but he's still the same face he's been running away from. Give or take a few pounds, give or take his own sharper features and darker eyes, his father's black hat. Running, fast as he can, into old patterns set before he had any control over things. His fingers idly feel his beard for the tiny patches of skin underneath it. The scent of alcohol drips from his breath and, had he not been in his own home, he surely would've been another homeless guy on the streets of DC.
He should be better at what he does: a better writer, a better Jew. Always looking at the top from the bottom, Tobias, you haven't changed a bit these past twenty years, says his self-loathing. The thought is bitter in his mouth like adrenaline, like Rosslyn, like burnt potato latkes. He wants to say "what's next," but can't remember which words to say.
"Tell them I love them," he'd said to Andi, just before they hung up.
"You're their father," she'd said. "They know."
He laughs again, remembering. As if fatherhood and love were intimately related. A million deadbeat dads out there, and all a kid needs is one to ruin his entire life.
"Just tell them?"
"Sure. Yeah. Merry Christmas," she'd said and hung up. A whole day later, and the ringing silence of the broken connection still spins in Toby's stomach. Evening comes too early, but he doesn't get up to flip the light switch. He lets the darkness settle around him, thinks of disappearing.
Should be better; always the want, never the do. Another shot and the apartment is pitch dark, with blue streaks moving on the wall where the television light hits. Death and destruction, the world is falling and there's nothing anyone can do about it. He closes his eyes.
*
The Jager's warm and perfectly undrinkable, but that's never stopped Toby before. He rolls the shot glass between his palms and watches the light on the ceiling while the VCR clock flashes 12:00am.
He wants to feel drunk, to forget about Andi and David, just for a minute, but the more he drinks, the clearer his head feels, the sharper the contrast between black and white and dark and light. His head pounds with the precision of the moment, his hands against glass, his feet against wood, his head against the air.
There's a knock at the door and he doesn't even laugh.
She storms in like wind and rain in an odd, tall hurricane of a mix. CJ with boxes and a large suitcase, wearing a long leather jacket that ripples where her arms bend, invisible tears streaming from her eyes on her cheeks, pooling in those brown leather mortars. She smiles in the darkness, white teeth blue with the TV glow. With the flick of a switch, she turns on the light.
"Your face is wet," he says, inanely.
"Happy holidays to you, too, Toby," she says. She hands him her suitcase, pushes past him, leaves him swaying there under the weight of her things, the weight of her, the weight. After a long moment, he follows her, dropping her bag near the table.
"Jager?" she asks, examining the bottle, sniffing at it. "How far the mighty have fallen."
"Only Jews drink on Boxing Day," he says dryly. "I didn't want to be conspicuous. At the liquor store."
"Clearly you've never actually been to a Gentile's the day after Christmas," she snorts.
"You're not at your father's," he says, and the words fall to the table next to the bottle and the shot glass. She sits down, stares at them, opens her mouth to respond, reconsiders.
"I came back," she says, simply. Suddenly quiet, suddenly smaller than she is. "I brought him presents. I was there for a week, Toby," her tone stiffens, "just me and Dayton and the fucking lake, frozen." She pours Jager into his shot glass and swallows it at once, disgusting all the way down her throat. "I'm back now."
"Did he like the robe?" The expensive, monogrammed thing she ordered. A desperate daughter's gift.
"Yes," she says, then laughs sharp hard razors. "He liked it each of the fifteen times he realized he was wearing it, and that I'd given it to him, and that I was his child."
He's shocked by her. Her acid makes his teeth hurt. "It's worse, then." Not a question.
"It's worse." She cocks her head. "Is it still Hanukkah, Toby? I always get confused, with the dates."
"CJ," he warns. She's good at avoiding; she can turn around and be entirely gone. But the lights are on now, and neither of them can disappear for long.
She's still there when he opens his eyes.
"Your menorah isn't even out," she says, and stands, and turns her back to him. "Did you light candles with the kids?"
"No," he says, doesn't mention that he hasn't even seen them on Christmas day, that they're in fucking Maine or whatever the hell for Christmas. "I know there was a Hanukkah bush."
"What the -"
"I don't know, it's a thing that stands next to the tree. It's got bright lights, Huck and Molly like that." Only no, they really don't. Maybe they'll learn to admire it, years later, to make their father happy, but not yet.
"I didn't know real people had Hanukkah bushes. I thought that was a, an urban legend." CJ turns to him carefully.
"I don't know where Andi got the idea," he shrugs helplessly.
Her eyes narrow. "You didn't light candles at all," she says slowly.
He flinches. "No." He shifts his weight from one foot to the other. It's my choice, he thinks. It was my choice.
"Why not?" And she's the only one in the world he'd let ask.
Consider your words; play them on your lips. Dry and ink flavored like warm Jager, like rat poison only not as releasing. She can keep her eyes on him and still take another shot, if ever there was an admirable quality. He says, "I don't believe in miracles, CJ."
*
Inside the third drawer of his kitchen cabinet, all dusty wax and faded color, lay candles he doesn't remember ever buying. He doesn't say how it's the last day of Hanukkah and any holiday traditions he should've kept are already broken, or how eight candles can't fix him, not for her and not for anyone else. He doesn't say anything, just mirrors her smile when she says, "I found candles! I feel like a millionaire."
Like that's all it takes, like. Like they do exist, the miracles; he wants to believe her hands and her fingers as she tries, unsuccessfully, to put the candles inside their waxy, opaque silver menorah nests.
He helps her, his hands on hers, and that's almost everything. It takes a few tries, and the Shamash is shorter than any of the others, and the menorah leaves dusty smudges on their fingers. But…
He looks at her, but she says, "Hey, this is your department. I'm just here for moral support." There should be ritual, there should be grandeur, but there's just the war in his chest, the war between their eyes, the way he can feel her heartbeat there, next to her thumb. This isn't a Christian miracle, he almost says. We don't get rebirth. We get the barest sustenance when all hope is lost.
What we get is what I can't give, he doesn't say, never will; they get it right, melting the candles so they'll stick, burning his fingers in the process. One of them always gets burned, this time him. She blows cool air on his wounds. There should be more than just silence, but he can't offer children laughing and guests greeting; it's just them and the Jagermeister and horrible, horrible stillness just before she flickers fire out of a cheap blue lighter.
The Shamash is white and smooth between his index finger and his thumb. He's forgotten all of the words to prayers, an almost dead language in a forgotten tune he's unable to unearth. Her hand is over his, guiding it, and the dry wicks catch easily, and soon there's a small blaze, but this one is contained.
It's about maintaining control. Her hand guides his. Her pulse beats and beats. The candles light.
Neither of them makes a sound.
CJ takes a step back, and then the lights are out and there's just the flickering shadows of the TV and of the candles, blue and white on the walls and on her face.
"We get miracles," he says into the darkness, "just enough to get us by."
There are eight long strands of smoke, twisting and bending, thin and grey from white wicks burnt black. When all hope is lost, there's her hand in his, his fingers between her fingers, and he'd like to think that it's enough for her. Too disillusioned to believe that.
It's about the faith he always seems to lack, but he still looks straight at her when he says that. A little bit like bravery, maybe more like stupidity. She smiles, anyway.
*