someone blah blah

tell me everything about the AU where CJ and Andy never broke up after Berkeley :)

Send me an AU and I tell you five fun facts about it!

Oh my beloveds. They could be so happy!! And a little broken still!

The main thing here is that, instead of agreeing to break up because it’s easier and less complicated in the longrun (and because they disagree on what’s possible), they agree to keep their relationship going, and keep it a complete secret. This frustrates Andy sometimes, and scares the crap out of CJ sometimes, but oh the longer they do it the more committed they are, and they really do love each other so much. Andy’s still elected to Congress, just as a notably single woman; CJ still goes into political communications and running campaigns. The distance that causes is sometimes hard on them, but it also helps combat any potential suspicion.

1. Most likely scenario, no one gets married. But if someone does? CJ is the one who marries Toby, and only as a beard. I’m thinking about your lavender marriage concept, and I think there’s a way that could still work in a CJ/Andy world here. Andy, however, will literally never consider a lavender marriage; she’s not happy about CJ considering it, but she gets it, especially in the way it’s beneficial for Toby too. Most likely scenario, though, there’s no marriage at all. Toby is still a very important part of both their lives, and it honestly works out a lot better for the longterm that Andy and Toby never got married.

2. CJ never works in Hollywood. In my headcanon, a big reason she left politics for a while and was working in LA when Toby hired her, is a direct result of John Hoynes. In this AU, where CJ has a longterm partner from college onward? Now I still think the night with Hoynes could happen, it’s just as likely she still gets assaulted or raped that night, but she has a partner right in DC who is capable of helping CJ figure out a way to work through that trauma without leaving this career entirely. It helps that Andy is literally a Congresswoman who can’t just move out to LA or anywhere but Maryland and the DC area, giving CJ just a very stable place to Be even while figuring out what she can and can’t do right now. But CJ doesn’t leave town. She doesn’t leave this line of work.

3. Technically, CJ lives in downtown DC and Andy lives in her Maryland district. It just so happens that, to anyone else, CJ is a good friend who never minds when Andy just needs a place to stay after a long meeting so she doesn’t have to drive all the way back to Maryland. It’s convenient, it’s nice, nothing more. In practice, what this means, is that Andy’s own apartment stays empty a lot of the time, and any queer woman they know (and Toby) understands that they both live in CJ’s DC place.

4. There are still kids. This is still something that almost kills their relationship in the same way it did help end Toby and Andy’s marriage. Andy has always made it clear she wants to have children, and CJ does, too, with Andy, but is so worried about the optics of any potential way it could be pulled off. But what they end up doing is that Andy has the kids ‘herself’; she uses a donor (which is an anonymous donor the first attempts, and Toby during the later part of it, when it becomes clear her immune system is struggling and she needs to do this with someone whose blood she can also have for donations and treatments. Toby’s honored, and a better father in this arrangement frankly.

The frustrations come in the fact that Andy still miscarries a few times, and still feels like that’s something she’s left to handle mostly alone. Because to the public, she IS. To the public, she’s a single woman selfishly trying to have children with a donor, and CJ can’t always be there in the middle of the night when that’s really really difficult to face. CJ, in turn, feels so separate from this part of their relationship because of it, and it’s hard on them. The option of CJ carrying the kids instead is not a real option, because CJ doesn’t want to and because it would be impossible to explain to the press. That latter reasoning especially just hurts Andy enormously too.

5. But they have the twins. To the public, Andy had twins by herself and Toby controversially helped with a sperm donations. There are rumors that Andy and Toby had an affair. This gets to CJ, honestly; and she pushes the lines of how much she can be publicly involved with these kids without raising suspicion. For the most part, the narrative that CJ’s a good person helping out her friend who was dumb enough to choose single motherhood isn’t questioned too harshly. And that really gets to Andy. But oh they have the twins; and the twins have two mothers and a dad who love them so much.

Send me an AU and I give you five facts about it!

Well. Okay. (I love it; I love angst, but oh. Oh.) This came in like an hour after @muldxr sent me an AU prompt for “what if the fertility treatment worked earlier and the twins are born circa the start of the show” and the irony did in fact plague me all day. I’m answering this one first cause it’s gonna destroy me and hopefully you too (said with such love) and then the evening can only become brighter.

Heavy trigger warning here for child loss and mentions of suicide attempts.

1. Because really the fact of the matter is that there is a lot, and I do mean a lot, that Andy Wyatt can withstand without losing her sunshine, her positivity, her optimism, her fight. Without losing herself. The divorce, the infertility and the miscarriages, the leak, Gaza, sure. Any headcanons around suicide and alcoholsim and chronic illness, sure. Losing her dad, sure. If her mom died, sure. Hell, you could kill off Toby or CJ and Andy Wyatt would be going through Hell, but she would find a way to come out of that the other side. It’s who she is. There is so very little you can throw at her from which she does not recover. But losing the twins? She can’t come back from it. She just can’t do it. She doesn’t want to even try. If she finally has her rainbow babies, and then buries them? It’s just not something she can go through and come out the other side, it’s not.

Send me an AU and I give you five facts about it!

Ohhh I love this.

1. They don't get divorced when they did in canon. If Andy gets pregnant, and manages to stay pregnant, she's not thinking about divorce for a while. (Well. She is. But with more guilt to it. And a firm believe that whatever makes her think about it is going to pass.) Toby is married with newborn children by the time the show starts; Andy is a character from the beginning, and part of the initial fun of Toby's character is that in the pilot we see him be this grumpy old man at work and then come home to his gorgeous wife and their infant twins and laugh so sweetly.

2. But like. They still get divorced though. I think in this, Toby and Andy 'just' become part of the statistics around how many couples don't survive the first year of parenthood. And for them it's not about the kids, it's just about the way the kids, just like the infertility in canon, really pushed their existing problems to the foreground. Andy, instead of grieving, is newly postpartum at the start of the show, and Toby is getting more and more frustrated and busy at work. She leaves him; it plays out not that differently from Leo and Jenny, except the twins are just so small and Andy is such a public figure, and it's a big thing on CJ's plate for a few episodes.

3. Toby is Devastated. Andy is smeared in the press, and this frankly devastates Toby more. There's some talk about custody arrangements but they still kind of settle on the twins just living with Andy and Toby doing what he can. But they still maintain that bond they have in canon, too. And one thing I think happens is that when Rosslyn plays out, we see Toby calling Andy from the hospital, or we see a secret service agent bringing in Andy to the waiting room; they already have children now, she's even more of a Presence in Toby's life than she is in canon.

4. With the infertility not being blamed for the divorce and therefore there not being a twin pregnancy to revive the hope they'll get married, Toby and Andy's relationship is more stable. Which also means that both of them are in a better position to date other people, and notably I think Toby who's divorced and not As in love (but still in love) with his ex wife, but also a dad to two then three year olds, has a much stronger chance at making something work with Tabatha Fortis.

Send me an AU and I give you five fun facts about it!

1. Jed Bartlet and his press secretary Andrea Wyatt are a POWERFUL duo. While I think Andy as a person struggles with being someone else's voice like that, and having to disregard her own opinions on the podium (something she can do! But she hates it possibly more than CJ does), she is really great at pushing Jed and Leo to the left when she can. She cares less if they still like her or not. (They do. And they would've continued to love CJ, but CJ's less secure in her position; Andy cares less about that risk.)

2. CJ is a Congresswoman from Ohio and she's a fairly new face on the Hill; by the start of the show this is maybe her first term, or at most her second one. She likes the work she can do, she likes the speeches she can give and the people at home she reaches, but she finds the work quite frustrating too. She's very aware she's one of like 435 and very dependent on the whims of the Republican majority. But she can make her own agenda and pick her own fights and that's a breath of fresh air, too.

3. Toby and Andy are still married during the campaign and still get divorced during the first year in office. There's talk of favoritism and talk of Andy sleeping her way to the top. It's very tough to be divorced while she still technically works for him in their functions. Both of them still have a thing, one way or another, for Congresswoman Cregg from Ohio.

4. Given the headcanons around Andy and chronic illness, she Knows something is up with Jed's health. She, like CJ, witnessed Abbey giving him an injection; she, unlike CJ, has given herself many injections for her fertility treatments and has hidden plenty of medications on the campaign trail for her flares. She knows what it looks like when someone's hiding an illness. When the MS breaks, she's shocked and not surprised and very very aware of how her own condition could make this so much worse. She and Jed talk about it.

5. The most painful thing really is that CJ just doesn't get as close to the rest of the staff and the President. She doesn’t even know she'd ever have reason to want to. Jed and Leo still can develop a very fatherly relationship with Andy, but CJ and Josh are never going to be like siblings in this. CJ still loses Tal the way she does, but she doesn't even know that in another life, she'd have three whole father figures to lose over time.

Mingi + text posts (pt. 16/50)

bonus:

I DON'T WANT THIS

I DON'T NEED THIS

I WILL RISE TO THIS OCCASION

THE LAST DAY OF MY LIFE WILL BE SWEET

SOON ALL OF THIS WILL BE A MEMORY

thank you!

it's a grim theme for a road trip prompt, in my opinion, but i did my best (and it was the only idea that stuck!)

cold girls won't cry - liz bartlet/amy gardner - 777 words, chose not to warn, pre-canon, minor character death

“I just mean that on the drive over here, you peed yourself. Because traffic’s traffic and your body’s been through hell and back a handful of times. It’s what you plan for; it happened.”

She knows Toby’s going to say more. She can’t resist chiming in with “I’m aware. I was there, you know.”

He does her the kindness of pretending it’s funny.

Traffic or no traffic really wouldn’t have made the difference; she doesn’t correct him.

“And the only reason I know that is because you could walk through the door with our kids, get them settled inside, and tell me that it’d happened and you needed ten minutes to fix yourself up. Just to say it, just so I knew to wait with the coffee and change the trashcan later, and you didn’t have to feel like you were hiding something shameful while I made you that damn coffee.”

She can see where it’s going. She could’ve done without the reminder. “It’s not been that long, you know; I remember my entrance.”

“Andy.”

“Go on.”

Toby sighs. “I just think it’d be good for you if, when you come home tonight and CJ’s there, you don’t have to spend all night making yourself behave like you’re still hiding something shameful in your own home. I think it’d be good for you if you could come home and mention it like any other part of the drive.”

GILLIAN ANDERSON as Dana Scully