AU where Angela Blake became CJ's DCOS instead of Cliff? (Especially with angela/andy or angela/cj or cj/andy backgrounds to it, too? Any combinations?)
Oooooh I LOVE
It's CJ's idea, actually, not Leo's. But Leo absolutely loves it, when she takes it to him. He knows how Angela works, how her brain works (and how it works differently than CJ's, but how they're similar enough where it matters) He knows that they'll work great together. Jed trusts CJ's judgment.
Others are...skeptical. Josh is so skeptical that it's almost enough to make him come back to his old job...almost. It brings up the question of likability, of personalities, of the stereotype of the Angry Black Woman and whether Angela fits that, and it makes a lot of the characters examine their own biases. Which honestly, is not a bad thing, even if it's not the most comfortable.
Charlie has a hard time with this, only because it's a little awkward to suddenly work with someone who has known you since you still had baby teeth and has been witness to some embarrassing moments over the years, including when Charlie accidentally spilled an entire carafe of lemonade at church.
The Angela/Andy of it all! I think in this AU, they're slowly exploring the possibility of a relationship with each other, maybe have gone on a few dates, but trying to take things slow. Andy's kids still are very young, and she's looking at her re-election campaign and soon will have the leak to deal with. But I love the idea of Andy coming to pick Angela up for lunch, and CJ looking at them and just...oh. She knows. And that brings up a lot of complicated feelings.
You know who definitely gets along great with Angela? Annabeth. The two of them can drive Toby crazy together!
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Leashyyyyy, may you and Mrs Leashy feel well soon, for the AU game: B/T of course. One is a librarian and one keeps coming back with lists of references, many of which are unfindable. The answer as to why isn't the obvious AI hallucinations, what is it?
hi bea!! idk if you even remember sending this lol. there was a hot minute there where i thought this was gonna become an actual fic, but alas, the moment passed and i've been staring at the few little bits of it i wrote and feeling guilty since uhhh may. ANYWAY. here's a skeleton idea.
take my hand 🫴 we're talking parallel universes, we're talking dimension hopping, we're talking taking the multiverse apart piece by piece until it gives you back what it stole from you. call this the genre-bending over-ambitious version of my cherry blossoms fic which i'm still not willing to call abandoned.
world 0: tommy's been gone for three months. buck hasn't spoken to anyone he knew before the accident for two months. he's been bouncing from kooky weirdo to outright scammer to someone with actual potential and back again for the last eight weeks. but he knows he saw something in the moment before tommy's helicopter disappeared in a blinding flash. he knows there's more to it than an equipment malfunction. he knows he can't accept a world where tommy is just gone. so he hunts down leads and he books a plane ticket and he heads out.
world 1: tommy couldn't decide what to do after he got out of the army. part of him wanted to carry on flying, but the part of him that was riddled with panic attacks and the shakes and insomnia and a startle reflex off the fucking scale all the other fun ptsd souvenirs made that not a great idea. he goes to college instead. turns out, when he's not focused on Doing Masculinity via sports and having terrible friends and he's not distracted by the dumpster fire of his home life and has a little distance from his dad telling him how fucking stupid he is? tommy's pretty smart.
he never, not in a million years, would have thought dr. tommy kinard was in his future but here he is, eighteen months into his phd program in aerospace engineering, and happier than he ever thought was on the cards for him. he works in the library as one of the approximately seventeen things he does to try to have an income that keeps him afloat. it's there that he meets possibly the hottest guy he's ever seen in real life. he has a bunch of paper clutched in his hand and he's looking at tommy with an intensity that almost makes him wonder if they know each other. except he's sure he'd remember if he'd hooked up with this guy, or even just seen him around.
he introduces himself as buck and says he's looking for some sources, shows tommy a series of neatly written lists. he's weirdly charmed by the way they're written out - all caps, journal names underlined instead of in italics, page references in square brackets. several of them even have the doi written out by hand. they're a baffling mix of theoretical physics, aerospace engineering and fire science. they start well enough, and tommy locates a handful of sources before he hits a brick wall. the dois lead to the wrong source, the journal either flat-out doesn't exist, or was only launched three years after the source is dated.
buck swears up and down that he wrote them out right, and that he didn't get them from a fucking llm, and tommy's inclined to believe him. he looks way more upset about it than tommy thinks is really warranted. he tells himself that's why he offers for buck to leave the list with him and let him do some digging. buck blinks hard a couple of times and maybe it's just the air-con in the library, but he looks like he's holding back tears when he says no thanks.
"see you around," tommy says hopefully.
"yeah, maybe," buck says, his back already turned, his shoulders tight. "that'd be nice."
world 8: tommy didn't expect to end up at the galactic database. he thought he'd be a starpilot until he died. but sometimes the radiation leak doesn't kill you, and sometimes they don't fix you in time and you end up in this weird in-between. totally fine in almost every regard, but your reaction times? juuuust fucked up enough that no one is gonna let you at the console of a ship ever again. the database isn't the worst place he could have ended up, all things considered.
he meets people, checks for contraindications, gets them settled in one of the biochairs, makes sure the headset sits comfortably, hits the download buttons, gives them a glass of juice after, and a free cookie if it's been an especially intense download. it's not the most exciting way to fill his time, but it does fill his time.
and then the most beautiful man he's ever seen arrives at the help desk and asks for the wildest combination of downloads tommy's ever heard of. he finds a few of them - a crazy mix of ancient 21st century myths, advanced shielding technology theory, and chemistry so far out of tommy's area of expertise that he can feel his eyes glazing over just looking at it. but the majority are a mystery. and it's the galactic database, for crying out loud. if tommy can't find it, it doesn't exist. the guy (buck, he says. it does not match the name on his id chip, but tommy's not a cop, he really doesn't care) looks resigned and says, "whatever you have is fine."
he accepts the juice and the cookie with a smile that tommy thinks must break hearts from here to alpha centauri.
world 19: tommy's mother brought him to the citadel when he was twelve and since then he has spent his whole life in the same three rooms. one where he sleeps, one where he eats and exercises, and one where he works. only the second has a window, and he spends an hour each day looking out of it. far, far below at the base of the tower he can see people coming and going, living lives that aren't defined by the shape of the stone walls around them. he sees carts and animals, columns of soldiers, knights on horseback, and very occasionally, a wandering mage. he knows they're here for him. well. they're here for what he can produce.
tommy doesn't have magic, but he can read it and that's even rarer. it's why his rooms are so comfortable. why the food they bring him is so delicious. why the servants who see to his needs are so deferential. why he will be brought anything he requests from the citadel library. and it's why will never be able to leave.
one day, an unfamiliar man arrives at his door. he's carrying several of the scrolls from the citadel library, but he stays and talks to tommy, interested in him and not just in his translations. he asks about protective magics, about charms and spells. he comes twice more, leaving with some of tommy's translations, but also with a regretful look on his face that tommy can't quite understand.
buck pov interstitial: he's losing his mind. this is the worst thing that's ever happened to a person. so many versions of tommy, in so many different worlds, with so many different experiences, and they all have the same fucking smile, the same way of quirking an eyebrow that makes buck feel like he knows them. every few hops he thinks about just staying. he could make a life with the tommy who reads books to children in the tiny small-town library in illinois, or the tommy who's a pirate captain with a jealously guarded chest of scrolls, or the tommy who oversees the direct-to-cortex downloads, or the tommy with ink-stained fingers who spent his whole life making copies of old books of lore and mythology. but he's getting closer. he knows he is. he can go home to his tommy if he just keeps trying.
world 326: tommy wishes he could say he didn't know how he ended up here. but he does. it was a toss of a coin. a different day and some other dumb kid who joined up for lack of other options would have been piloting the chopper when the silver oval appeared from nowhere and matched pace with him for the most nerve-jangling ten minutes of his life. the suits had been waiting for him by the time he landed. the part of him that watched too many movies as a kid thought he was going to get black-bagged and...well. that's not a million miles away from what happened.
he'd expected to get disappeared in the shallow grave kind of way. instead, he'd gotten a crash course: aliens? yep. superheroes? sorta. magic? depends on your definition, private kinard. he'd asked hopefully about the memory wipe device from men in black, but no luck there. so now here he is, a decade later, earning decent money as a glorified receptionist at a black site. except instead of crimes against humanity, he's responsible for overseeing the security of Artefacts. it's always capitalised, in his own mind. Artefacts. it's the indiana jones warehouse, basically. he's not mad about it.
sometimes people show up to add to the collection. sometimes stuff gets removed. agents of various three letter agencies come and go. 10 year old tommy would have expected it to be a lot more exciting than it actually is.
he's working through his latest sudoku book when a guy arrives. it's not typical but it's also not unheard of for suits to show up alone. this one's new - new to the warehouse and unless tommy's much mistaken new to the kind of clearance level that would let him know about the warehouse. he has a hand-written list of the shelf references he's looking for and tommy raises his eyebrows. it's varied, to say the least. half of it is in the extra-terrestrial section, maybe another quarter in the terrestrial but extremely fucking classified section, and the rest just straight up doesn't exist.
tommy edges a little closer to the alarm as he points that out, but the guy just laughs and smiles a disarmingly pretty smile and says, "first trip. you know how they send the new guy out for a drill silencer and a long weight?"
"sure," tommy says, and lets himself return the smile.
the guy's back an hour later with his metal briefcase hanging a little heavier in his hand.
"see you around, agent buckley," tommy says.
"i sure hope so," the agent says.
world 0: buck holds his breath, counts the seconds, watches with aching, tired eyes for the very first wobble of the rotors on the helicopter. as soon as it lands he tosses the orb upwards and prays for the magic and the alien tech and the classified materials and the shielding technology from 2276 to work how he thinks it will.
the orb unfurls into a glimmering, glittering web of light that soars towards the helicopter and envelops it in a net made of buck's hopes and exhaustion and desperation. like a soap bubble, it's only visible from certain angles and like a soap bubble it floats down to the ground, tommy's helicopter held safe and secure within its grasp.
"what..." chim says.
"the hell..." hen adds.
buck is already running.
tommy is wide-eyed and baffled in the cockpit, his hands carefully held away from the cyclic.
"babe," he says. "you have got some explaining to do."
it'll take the rest of their lives to explain this, buck thinks. he's down for that.
For the a/u meme, if you are still doing it: The "sExual harassment lecture" of That Episode happens earlier and contains The Maid Revelation with Jing-Mei, Season 1 Susan, Mark, and Peter.
Oh, I LOVE this so much!
Below the cut for CSA discussion
The inciting incident is pretty much the same, only Carter is in more of the Gallant role--wrong place at the wrong time. Peter wants nothing to do with any of this, but curiosity does get the best of him when Carter hauls out that harness. Mark and Susan egg each other on in that playful way their early season banter did, and Jing-Mei is probably the most worried about getting caught, but she, like Abby, muses whether she should quit her day job. Kerry walks into all that, perhaps with Morgenstern in tow, if it's season 1. Maybe even Hicks, as well. Yes Kerry wasn't around in season 1 but I'm playing with timelines for funsies Carter did definitely have Kerry's locker previously, so that part of the prank plays out as in the episode. Doug was definitely there, but somehow escaped before getting caught, and no one's insistence that he was there and an instigator moves the Powers That Be to have him share the punishment. Everyone is sent to the sexual harrassment seminar.
It's cold, it's snowy, their instructor is nowhere in sight. Mark and Susan are being cozy in a corner (no weird fight putting everyone in a pissy mood already) Peter is glowering from above the newspaper he found to read. There's a lot of annoyance in the room because nobody wants to be there, but no weird tension from unresolved love triangles. Mark and Susan have Whatever They Have Going On, but for that matter, so do Peter and Carter. Jing-Mei and Susan get to talking, everyone talks about their childhoods. Mark talks about his dad being deployed with the Navy so often, and his childhood in San Diego and Hawaii. Jing-Mei opens up about her parents traveling overseas for work so much, often leaving her alone in the house for days at a time. Carter can relate to that. He opens up about how empty the house was when Bobby died and his parents would go on trips. Susan admits to needing to be the perfect child to contrast Chloe's wildness. Peter, finally opening up, talks about his niece and nephews, his brother-in-law and sister, and how he feels responsible for everyone in his family.
It's Susan who brings up the loss of virginity "contest", as before. She shares her story and then Mark, who has already been publicly humiliated via the camera in Trauma 2 or wherever it was, is quick to chime in. He figures the entire hospital, more or less, already knows that he lost his virginity to his (now ex) wife, so he's not exactly divulging new information here. Jing-Mei and Peter demure, until finally Jing-Mei admits that she lost her virginity at 19. Peter, certainly not waning to go last, says he was 18. And then it's Carter's turn.
Carter's dialogue is, more or less, the same as in the episode. His responses to their questions are the same. But instead of laughter and incredulity, there's shock, horror, anger. First from Peter, then from Susan, then Jing-Mei. Mark is largely quiet, at first. "You were eleven years old?" Susan asks, her voice ragged. She can't believe it. They work on patients like this. Jing-Mei looks sick. Just last week, she treated a 12 year old victim of sexual assault.
"How old was she?" Peter finally asks, and his voice is low, a warning if Carter has ever heard one. "How the fuck old was she, Carter?"
"I don't know, twenty-five--"
"Twenty-five?!" four voices cry out in unison. Carter jumps.
"That's assault," Mark says, his voice vehement.
"That's rape," Susan corrects. Jing-Mei is reaching out a hesitant hand to put on Carter's shoulder. He stiffens, but doesn't pull away.
"You're damn right it is," Peter growls. "That woman should be in jail."
"I don't know about that--"
"Yes, she should," Jing-Mei insists. "You were a child, Carter. What happened to you was wrong. It never should have happened. You know that, right?"
And finally, Carter nods.
AU meme, the one where Donna goes to work for Andy instead of the Russell campaign (alternatively, the one where Andy Wyatt is Jewish, or you can combine them!)
send me an au and i will give you five headcanons about it
After everything is signed. After the peace. Donna looks at where she wants to be and it is with Andy. Andy who gets it. Andy who is doing things that Donna really believes in (domestic and international) and where she knows she would get a chance.
So she goes to Andy on The Hill and Andy is like no, you are AMAZING let me make you a senior advisor actually (not to the White House if you don’t want to, I am so happy to do that for free). Because Donna is amazing.
Does Josh Handle This Well? Look signs point to…no but maybe better because Andy Wyatt can speak Josh Lyman and he might (fairly or not) be more inclined to accept that Donna left for a Cause (he is still Annoying About It).
Donna who discovers she loves this. Look I’m not saying in this AU it’s Donna converting to Judaism with Andy introducing her to her Rabbi but I’m not not either.
(I’m also not not saying that they didn’t at least make out - like late one night over terrible pizza and all alone in the office (also Andy does have a bed in her office))
Also; AU where CJ and Andy got back together circa season 5?
Oh I love this yes yes
It happens slowly, almost gradually. CJ brings over dinner after the twins are born, when she can get away from the extremely chaotic White House which is still dealing with the kidnapping and the Walken of it all. It's good to see Andy's mom again. She stays for dinner, even holds the babies. The next week, she brings over dinner a couple nights a week and they stay up talking. She meets Andy and the twins for outings, walks in the park, and gets better at trusting herself with holding and taking care of them.
They talk about everything, really. How CJ is handling the press in the aftermath of the kidnapping, how Toby is taking to being a dad, how much the twins' personalities are coming out even this early. They talk about their days in San Francisco and what projects Andy wants to work on when she comes back from leave, how much Andy adores motherhood even as it's harder than she ever thought it would be, but she wouldn't trade it for anything.
With all the time they're spending together, it's only a matter of time before CJ can't help herself and she kisses her for the first time since college. It's three in the morning, she's just finally gotten both twins to sleep at the same time, and Andy is pretty sure there is still spit-up on her shirt, but she's kissing CJ Cregg for the first time in over 15 years, and that's everything.
Even after the kiss, though, it takes a while for them to define what they're actually doing. Are they dating? Are they friends who kiss? How does Toby fit into all of this? Frankly, those are questions they are both content to put on the backburner, at least for a while.
Andy's maternity leave is over way too soon. She gets a nanny for the children and two of her first big projects when she returns to work are a childcare tax credit for working families and the congressional delegation to the Middle East. That phone call CJ got informing her of the car bomb in Gaza was the most scared she has ever been in her damn life.
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for the AU game, tossing you one i've Had In My Head but don't quite know what to do with... five fun facts for an AU where Liz does Not marry Doug when she finds out she's pregnant with Annie (their ages/the timeline on this is up to you, I know everyone kinda has their own Thoughts on how and when it happened)
Oh I LOVE
Liz had two major scholarships secured: a nearly full-ride to Boston College, and a full ride to Duke, where she would have just had to pay for her books and things. She was settled on Duke, buying things for her dorm room, when the pregnancy test came back positive.
Doug freaked out. He gave her $350 for an abortion, but said that if she wanted to keep it, he would be supportive but not involved. He had his own college scholarships on the line and he wasn't about to compromise them. Liz pocketed the 350 bucks and told him to take a hike, she'd figure it out herself.
The idea of abortion was...complicated for Liz. She liked church well enough for the community it offered, and if you asked her, she'd say she definitely believed in God, just not as devoutly as her father or even Zoey, who even at six liked to get into theological debates with their dad. As a fierce Democrat, Liz was pro-choice. But the choice was the important part to her, and after the initial shock wore off of seeing that little plus sign on the cheap home pregnancy test (after spending 30 minutes waiting for results, pacing, and being unable to look at it) she found that she couldn't do it. Or rather, she didn't want to do it. Her mother was going to scream and her father was going to have a heart attack but God help her, Liz wanted this baby.
Which isn't to say she didn't agonize over it. What would be worse, for her father's image and political career: a daughter who had a baby out of wedlock, or a daughter who had an abortion? One was certainly easier to keep secret for longer, but it would come out eventually. Her father had just won his second term in the House of Representatives last year. He was already looking at his re-election campaign, and there was buzz him running for Governor of New Hampshire, too. Which of Liz's options would be less damaging to him? Liz made a pros and cons list, but she couldn't ignore the fact that she wanted this baby, that she felt like a mother already. She angrily reached for the jewelry box that Doug had given her on their anniversary a few months back (probably, she thought bitterly, the night this had happened) and threw it at the wall. Ellie heard it shatter, and that's how Ellie became the first person that Liz told about the pregnancy.
When it came time to tell her parents, after she'd told Doug it was over, Ellie insisted on being with her to break the news. Liz had a plan in her head already. Duke was off the table. She couldn't raise a baby and go to school full time in North Carolina, away from any kind of family or support, a place where she knew nobody. She would go to community college for two years, then transfer to Boston College or the University of New Hampshire, where hopefully she could find another student who she could pay to babysit while Liz was busy with classes. She could make this work, she told herself. Telling her parents was the hardest thing she'd ever had to do in her life. Her father, as predicted, did scream so loud--railing against Doug, not Liz--that he rattled the windows and woke up Zoey. Abbey was more calm, asked if Liz had really thought through every option. Liz promised that she had. Jed threatened to drive to Doug's house and grab him by the hair, march him back here and make him do the right thing. "You will do no such thing," Abbey cautioned, before she opened her arms up to Liz. "Come here, honey. It's going to be alright."
Potential AU: Have I made you do Mercy Street peeps on the West Wing yet?
You have NOT and I love everything about it
Mary is in the Communications Director's office. I'm not sure if she has a Deputy role alongside Sam or some other role, but I need her to butt heads with Toby, and frequently. She also previously worked with Amy Gardner and CJ Cregg at EMILY's List.
Similarly, Josh and Jed Foster. Who has to deal with a lot of jokes because he works for Jed Bartlet, the President. I imagine Jed working as maybe the deputy secretary for HHS. White House adjacent, but there often enough. Josh sees him coming and grits his teeth and mumbles to Donna "I hate that guy."
Emma Green is a young, intrepid reporter in the White House Press Corps. Her parents are less than proud of this, but she's encouraged by both Press Secretary CJ Cregg and Henry Hopkins, correspondent for the Washington Post. Henry's coworker Danny is always pushing Henry to ask Emma out.
Retired army doctor Samuel Diggs is in the NSC. It just makes sense in my mind. He and Nancy McNally get along like a house on fire.
Byron Hale, Senator from Arkansas, has just had a litigious divorce from his English-born wife, Anne Hastings. He seems to be spending a good deal of time around Jed Foster's ex. It's awkward for all involved.
(Bonus) Jed Foster gets a lot of grief from Congresswoman Andy Wyatt because of his family's stance during the Civil War. His insistence that his namesake great-great-whatever great grandfather was a Union doctor only lessens this a little. Toby finally has to take him aside and let him know that Andy is just trying to get a rise out of him, she thinks his reactions to these jibes are hilarious.
