In the press room, CJ was working her magic as only she knew how. The press should have been ripping her to shreds, hacking into the reputation of Joshua Lyman, the question of why his PTSD had been kept secret and who had known about it. Instead they were smiling at her quips, sympathising, leavening the tougher questions with some easy hits. Oh, part of it could no doubt be traced back to the young reporter Rick Maskey, whose piece on facing the gun had added a whole new slant to everyone's perception of Josh Lyman... but most of it was purely down to CJ herself. She knew the press, and she knew how to walk out into that room and make them her own.

Toby watched her admiringly on the monitor for a moment, and then glanced across at Sam. His deputy was focused on the briefing, looking more alert and alive than he had in months.

"She's doing fine," Toby observed.

"She's doing great!" Sam grinned, and Toby was struck by how long that bright, boyish side of his deputy had been absent. Much as it wasn't his style to give random praise, he felt he had to say something.

"It was a good statement."

"It was." He smiled again, but this time it was an older expression, filled with calm self-satisfaction. Sam had his touch back, and he knew it.

Toby hesitated, then cleared his throat. "You... got over your thing?"

Sam snorted in quiet amusement. "No," he said. "But I... I got some perspective. Got some balance. Decided to change a few things in my life."

Toby decided that was just about all he needed to know in that area. "Whatever. You found your writing - try not to lose it again, okay?"

Sam just smiled, and they went back to watching the briefing.

Leo felt something in him freeze as Donna stepped into his office. He could read right it there in her face.

She didn't say anything, simply slid a small crumpled envelope across the desk towards him. His name was written in the centre, in Josh's writing.

He tore his eyes away from the letter, and looked up at her. "Is that... what I think it is?"

"Josh is gone," she said simply.

"Gone? Gone where?" he demanded.

He wondered if Donna realised she was unconsciously hugging herself. "He didn't say. I... I didn't see him. He left me a letter, together with, with..." She nodded at the envelope on the table, as if she couldn't bear to name it and make her boss's resignation real. "He said he knew you weren't gonna let him resign, so he had to leave and do it like this."

Leo picked up the envelope, and regarded it for a long moment. He didn't tear it open. That would have felt too... final, somehow. "He can't do this," he said aloud. He didn't realise he wasn't angry until he heard his own voice. He sounded uncertain. He sounded old.

He'd known Josh would be pushing the self-sacrifice pedal to the limit, even after he'd seen the potential to sway public opinion of the Maskey piece. He just hadn't expected him to take things into his own hands.

He'd known Josh would be clamouring to be allowed to resign, and that he wasn't going to pay a damned bit of attention to it.

Apparently, Josh had known that too.

There was a long silence, and then, hesitantly, Donna began to speak. "You know, technically, if I got a little flustered and forgot to give that to you, he wouldn't have resigned."

Leo looked up at her. "That's true," he said slowly.

"It's been a stressful time for all concerned," she noted.

"It has."

"In fact, after a stressful incident like this, nobody would be surprised if certain people felt the need for a temporary leave of absence."

"Seems reasonable," he nodded.

"And you know, it would be a convenient time for that person's assistant to take some of her accumulated vacation, maybe go check out some of the spots her boss has always said he likes..."

The smile that had been lurking at the corners of his mouth finally broke free. "Go find your boss, Donna," he said warmly.

She beamed back. "Yes, sir."

As she left the office, Leo leaned back in his chair and looked thoughtfully at the envelope for a moment. Then, decisively, he consigned it to his desk drawer and slammed it shut.

So Josh thought he could get away this easily? He should be so lucky.

Leo raised his voice. "Margaret!"

She appeared quickly in the doorway. "Leo?" She looked worried, but whether that was down to current circumstances or just an essential Margaret-y character trait was difficult to say.

He leaned forward in his chair to look up at her. "Donna's gonna be handling something for me for a little while. Make sure any expenses she incurs get passed back to me."

The news was like watching a train crash. Zoey wanted to turn it off, but some sick fascination kept her watching, as if it was the only way to make herself believe it was really happening.

It seemed like Josh was getting shredded on every channel that existed. Every so often the news would flash back to CJ, cool, calm and collected in the press room, but every time she got ready to sit back and sigh with relief, they cut to yet another crazy Republican ranting and raving about deceit and mental instability.

The worst thing was when they brought her dad into it. Always, always, it came down to "Comparisons are being drawn with the shock revelation from two years ago..."

And how dare they say Josh was disturbed? How dare they insinuate that her father was ready to sink into mental decay at any moment? Her father was fine. He had MS, but he was fine. Sometimes he had attacks, but they got better, and he hadn't had one for years now in any case. He was fine and he was going to stay fine. Forever. End of discussion.

But the news went on and on and on. And now they were talking about uncle Leo, talking it up as if the administration was full of drunks and basket-cases. Completely ignoring the fact that Leo hadn't had a drink in forever.

She knew it was all lies, but it still hurt. It hurt to know that her father and his friends - her friends - had to listen to these lies about themselves. It hurt to think that there were people out there who would hear them and believe them.

Almost instinctively, her hand stole to the silver chain around her neck, and the engagement ring that hung on it. Although she had worn it for only a matter of days, it had already become like a charm, a security blanket - no. More mature than that. A symbol of faith, like the cross her father wore. A reminder that whatever happened in the world, she still had Charlie.

As she closed her fingers around the ring, Zoey smiled, remembering Charlie's words on the fateful night they had somehow, crazily, ended up engaged.

She was too busy with the television and her fond recollections to realise she was no longer alone in the room. In the doorway her roommate hesitated, and looked at the ring speculatively. Then she turned and left, without Zoey ever knowing she'd been there at all.

Jed sighed heavily. He mustered the ghost of a smile for Leo as he entered the room, but it was an effort.

"How's Josh?" was his first question.

"He's taking some time." Leo didn't meet his eyes as he spoke, and Jed thought he could guess at the source of the other man's discomfort. He stretched out in his chair and sighed again.

"Leo, have we been too hard on the boy?"

"You mean have I?" Leo corrected, snapping his head up.

"Yes, Leo, because I typically refer to you as 'we', the two of us being a gestalt entity."

"You've been waiting for a chance to use that word in conversation for years, haven't you?"

"That and 'contumacious'." He started to smile smugly as Leo wrestled with himself. "I'm willing to wait until you ask," he offered helpfully.

Leo glowered. "Okay, what?"

"Insubordinate," Jed recited, "stubbornly or wilfully disobedient, especially to a court order."

"Ah, yes. Talking of Josh..."

"Yeah." There was a brief silence.

Leo looked down at the floor. "I should have seen this coming," he said softly.

"We're only human, Leo," Jed reminded him. "You, me, Josh, all of us... all too human." He sighed. "I'd hoped that things would be... better, this time around, but it's all just the same." He fixed his old friend with a sharp look. "We're not doing what we came here to do, are we, Leo?"

Leo would never lie to his face. But Jed was unable to gauge how deeply he believed his own optimistic answer. "We've got a few years yet before we have to retire, Mr. President," he said firmly.

"Yes. Yes we do."

But when Leo was gone, and he settled back into his chair with a groan at the stiffness in his body, the words echoed in his mind.

A few years yet before we have to retire...

He only prayed that it was true.

TUESDAY:

Josh was conspicuous by his absence. It was far from unusual for him to be missing in action at the start of a staff meeting, but normally, he could be expected to come bounding in a few minutes late, hopelessly disorganised. Today, that wasn't going to happen, although Leo was the only who knew that for sure. So far as the others were concerned - even the president - Josh was on a temporary leave of absence, and probably against his will at that.

Leo had absolutely no intention of sharing the fact he'd handed in his resignation, at least not until they'd had a damn good try at dragging him back. He wasn't about to let Josh throw everything away for the sake of self-imposed martyrdom.

The fact that he would have done the same thing in a heartbeat when the truth about his rehab records came out was neither here nor there. After all, their situations were completely different.

The meeting got off to a bit of a stuttered start, everybody keenly aware of Josh's absence.

"The, um, the Maskey article's been a big help," CJ spoke up, glancing automatically at her notes though she obviously knew what they said. "It's helped shift the tide of public opinion, and some of the media are beginning to rally round. There are at least as many pushing the 'Josh Lyman; Government Hero' angle as are ripping into us for keeping him employed." She paused and pushed up her glasses. "However, the politicians..."

"Different matter," supplied Sam succinctly.

"Oh boy," CJ agreed. "The Republicans are having a field day, as are the not inconsiderable list of Democrats Josh has managed to piss off. Those of the - largely silent - group who are on our side are mostly of the opinion that he should be quietly retired for his own good."

"And theirs," added Toby snidely.

"On the contrary, Toby," CJ said dryly, "I can assure you that every one of them has made a point of prefacing their remarks with a note that they're thinking only of Josh Lyman's health and the political aspects have slid right by them unnoticed." She hesitated, then looked seriously at Leo. "Leo, his absence from work is damaging. Really damaging. We need him to be here, proving that there is nothing wrong with him and he can work."

There were murmurs of agreement from Sam and Toby, but Leo was having none of it. "Well then, we'll have to repair that damage, 'cause he's taking as much time as he needs and no less."

All three of them nodded, eyes taking on a new light of determination. It was their duty to be realists, but that didn't mean they didn't relish being given the chance to throw their weight behind Josh, guns blazing. If their political opponents were under the impression that this was the scandal that might topple the administration once and for all, they were in for a rude awakening. Nothing brought the Bartlet team together like going to bat for one of their own.

Of course, if they didn't get Josh to agree to come back to work, at would be an entirely different matter... but now was not the time to think of that. Now was the time to make it clear they were behind his deputy every step of the way.

He turned to Sam and Toby. "Do we have a draft on the president's statement of support?"

Sam handed it to him snappily. He seemed bright and alert, not a trace of the hangovers he'd been sporting all the previous week. Maybe this crisis had been just what he needed to snap him out of his dangerous lethargy.

Leo skimmed the statement, and then read more deeply as it drew him in. This was good. This was very good. And it had old-style Sam Seaborn fingerprints all over it. He looked up. "Did you write this?"

"I did," Sam nodded.

Leo smiled. "The president's gonna love it."

Sam beamed, looking almost embarrassed by the praise. Even Toby nodded. Whatever professional slump Sam had fallen into, he'd just come shooting out of it.

Leo straightened the papers on his desk. "Okay. We're gonna lay low for the moment, bolster our defences; we want to focus our resources on Josh, so let's not go biting off more than we can chew in any other directions." He spotted Toby looking decidedly unhappy with this plan of action. "Toby, you got something to say?" he demanded irritably.

"I think it's a mistake to draw back now," Toby insisted, shaking his head. "We can't afford to lose ground when we're this close to the edge already. We need to say damn the damage control and full speed ahead!"

"It's a nice idea, Toby, but welcome to the real world," Leo said sardonically. "What battle can we take on now that we could possibly hope to win?"

Toby thumped the desk angrily. "It's not about the winning, it's about taking the battles on! Sex education-"

"Later," Leo shut him down forcefully.

"Leo-"

"Later." He held Toby's gaze until the Communications Director looked down in defeat. Leo looked around the group. "I know you want to get out there and fight, but let's be realistic, people. We've got precious little support here as it is; let's not alienate the few friends we've got going out on a limb, okay?"

The others all nodded, but none of them looked satisfied. Leo couldn't blame them; he thought it pretty much stunk, too.

"Hey, Sam."

"Hey, CJ." He smiled brightly and leaned back in his chair. "What can I do for you?"

She offered him a smile in return. "I read your statement of support."

"Yeah?"

"I see you've got your cool back."

Sam smirked. "I was missing my cool?"

"You were missing something," she said, seriously. Sam let his smile fade.

"I know," he admitted.

"You're better now?"

He shrugged. "I got my head sorted out, got some perspective." He smiled again. "I'm ready for a righteous battle."

CJ regarded him curiously for a long moment. "You've changed," she observed.

"People do."

"Yeah. What happened?" She smirked playfully at him. "Samuel, did you get a girlfriend?"

His snort of laughter was entirely involuntary. Fortunately, CJ seemed entirely too happy to see him laughing to try and probe any further. "Okay, okay! Well, whatever you've done, keep doing it."

He hesitated, then said "I think I will."

If he was going to carry on seeing Steve, he needed to tell CJ. In any just world, there was no reason it should be a scandal, but he wasn't stupid, and he knew the score. CJ was supposed to be his first call; he had to give her the heads-up.

Just... not right now. He wanted to keep this to himself just for a little while before reality had to creep in.

CJ smiled, and turned to go. As she left, she tossed over her shoulder "Good to have you back, Spanky!"

"Thanks!" he called after her. He pulled his laptop towards him, and smiled as he felt the inspiration to write fizzling just under the surface.

Oh yeah, it was pretty good to be back.

"Mom! There's someone at the door!"

It felt strange to be here in this house in Florida, this place that would never be home no matter how many times he saw his mother in it. But he'd needed a quick escape from Washington, and this was the first place his emotional compass had pointed him.

Well, okay, second. After his emotional compass had been given a kickstart and reminded that his mother didn't live in Connecticut anymore.

She appeared in the doorway with a dishcloth draped over her arm; a little greyer than the last time he'd seen her, somehow seeming a little smaller, but still the same old mom. "Joshua, could you get that for me please?"

"Okay, mom." He rolled his eyes as he headed for the front hall. "Mom, are you still cooking? There's only one of me, how much do you think I'm gonna eat?"

She looked him over and tutted sternly. "Ech, you're as thin as a toast-rack. They don't feed you enough."

"I feed myself now, mom," he reminded her with a laugh.

"Well, that explains why my only son comes home looking like a famine victim. When was the last time you sat down and had good homecooked food?"

The automatic protest that he was a busy man failed to pass his lips as it hit the abrupt reminder that he no longer was. So far as the world of politics was concerned, he was now officially retired.

An old man, washed up, and he wasn't even forty-five.

"Mom, I gotta get the door." He made a quick escape.

"I'm coming!" he yelled at another impatient knock, though whoever was outside probably couldn't hear him. He fumbled with the chain - he'd insisted his mother have it put in, along with all the deadbolts, but he was beginning to see her point about how irritating it was - and yanked it open.

And stared.

"Gee, Josh, are you gonna leave me standing out here all day?" A travelling bag was thrust into his hands, and he took it automatically. He took a few startled steps backward.

"Donna?"

"No, it's the Welcome to Florida Fairy. Budge up, would you?" She squeezed past him to step inside, and consulted a sheet of paper. "Okay. You've got a message from Congressman Wooden, one from Roger Zantowsky, one from the whip's office... you were supposed to be in a meeting with Richardson this morning, but I had that reassigned to Sam-"

"I... What- how did you know I was here?" he demanded. Donna rolled her eyes.

"Oh, please. Not much of a process of deduction. I just called your mom."

Josh spun on his heel to see his mother standing behind him. She gave him a slightly guilty shrug and turned to Donna. "Ah, honey, I'm glad you got here. You're just in time for lunch."

"Mr. President? Leo."

Jed looked up from his desk guiltily. He was supposed to have been going over yet another finance report, but instead he'd been on the edge of dozing.

"Thank you, Charlie." He made an effort to sit up.

"Mr. President, I've got your statement of support from Sam." Leo was smiling; it had to be good. He scrabbled for his glasses and took the report.

"CJ's handling the press beautifully," Leo continued. "We're under attack from... a lot of sides, but we're holding up."

Jed squinted at the report. The letters all seemed to blur together. "Is this in a smaller font than usual?" he asked irritably.

Leo leaned over. "No, it's the regular size," he said with a frown.

He tugged his glasses off and polished them on his tie. "I think I need new glasses."

"Well, gee, I'm sure nobody would mind if you blew off a couple of budget meetings to see the optometrist."

Jed gave him a look. "What's happening with Josh?"

"Donna's taking care of it," said Leo simply.

"Okay," Jed nodded, satisfied. If Donna was on the case, he could rest assured it would be handled. Now all he had to worry about was his six billion other points of concern.

Not to mention his failing eyesight.

"I'm not coming back." Josh sat on the back step of his mother's house, gazing out into the distance. Donna sat beside him, an open file balanced on her knees. Despite the strangeness of their surroundings, they seemed to connect together as easily as ever.

"Okay, but we're gonna have trouble working from here. I guess you could get one of those video-conferencing things, but it's not really incredibly practical-"

"I..." Josh shook his head. "Donna, what are you doing here?" he demanded again.

She gave him a look as if he was the insane part of this equation. "I'm your assistant; I'm assisting. I had Bonnie pass your eleven-thirty on to Toby..."

"Whoa, whoa!" he held up a hand. "You're not my assistant anymore, Donna. I quit."

"Yes, but we have a strategy to deal with that."

"You have a strategy?"

"We're strategically ignoring you. Hold these." She handed him a set of page dividers which he took as she flipped through the pages of notes. Without even thinking about it, he handed them back one at a time as she needed to insert them.

"What are you doing there?" he asked.

"Indexing." Donna didn't look up.

"So I noticed."

"And yet you still asked."

"And yet you were not forthcoming," Josh accused.

"I forthcame."

"That you were indexing."

"Indeed."

"And what, exactly, are you indexing?"

"Stuff."

"Again with the forthcoming."

"I'm a veritable font of information," Donna shrugged.

"Most of it useless," he observed.

"Only to people who don't properly utilise resources."

He reached back for one of the many, many trivia snippets she saw fit to sprinkle his day with. "There'll come a time when I'll need to know that lemons contain more sugar than strawberries?"

"You could be diabetic one day, it could save your life."

Josh snorted. "Oh, like I don't have enough problems already, you've got to invent more for me?"

"Nothing wrong with you that wouldn't be cured by a brain transplant," Donna informed him archly. "Or failing that, a good swift kick up the-"

"Hey!"

"I'm just paraphrasing," she shrugged.

He scowled. "Paraphrasing who?"

"You know. People. CJ. Leo. The president."

"The president said I need a kick up the ass?"

"Well, you know. I read between the lines."

"I'll bet."

There was a discreet throat-clearing, and Josh looked up to see his mother standing behind them. His immediate instinct was to blush. Damn, my mom just heard me say 'ass'.

She looked down at him with a smile that was both fond and tinted with a sad resignation. "Joshua. Go back to work."

"Mom?" He pulled his mother aside as she and Donna made a scarily efficient team getting him packed up for the return to Washington.

His mother sighed, and then looked him in the eye. "Joshua, I know what you're going to say."

Josh smiled at her in faint puzzlement and shook his head. "Mom, you always... I know you always worried about me, off in Washington. You said that this job was gonna be the death of me, and now that it, now that I... why are you telling me to go back?"

"Josh." His mother took his face in her hands, the way she'd always done when he was a little boy and had needed to look up to her, not down at her. "I worry about you. I'm your mother, it's what I do." She sighed, and drew away from him. "I won't lie to you, Joshua, it's hard to see you go away, and it breaks my heart to see how hard you work yourself. But it's where you belong."

"Mom..." His voice trembled, and he felt closer to the edge of breaking down than he could ever let himself be with anybody else in the world but his mother. "Mom, I'm not sure I can do this. I'm not sure I can go back. What if I'm not strong enough? What if I can't cope? What if I..." He closed his eyes. "What if I let them down?"

A succession of faces flashed through his mind. Leo, the president, two men who in many ways were as much his fathers as Noah Lyman had ever been. CJ. Toby. And Sam...

His friend Sam, who he'd brought into this, dragged into the world of politics with the promise of the Real Thing. Sam, who he could barely stand to face anymore. It was he who'd sworn to Sam that this was the place he needed to be, this was the way they could change the world. But the world had kept on growing darker, and he'd seen disillusionment growing and innocence bleeding, and...

And it was easier not to look Sam in the eye anymore.

Josh had already let his best friend down, wounded him with promises he couldn't keep. It was better that he walked away while he could, before he hurt anybody else. Before he raised any more hopes and cruelly dashed them to the ground.

His mother kissed him, a feather-light touch on his forehead, and his eyes flickered open. "Oh, Joshua," she said softly. "You're strong. You're your father's son, and you're stronger than you know. And you need to be back where you belong."

"I'm scared that I might not make this, mama," he said quietly, slipping back into the childhood reference without even thinking of it. "I'm scared I... sometimes I don't like the person this is turning me into."

"You can do this, Joshua. And you'll never be anybody other than Noah Lyman's little boy." She smiled at him. "Even if I have to come up there and 'kick your ass' into shape myself."

"Mom!" he yelped, scandalised.

She laughed at him, and Donna appeared in the doorway, smiling tentatively at the sight of the two of them. "And if I can't," his mother added with a nod at her, "I'm sure Donna will be there to do it for me."

"Hey, don't give her any ideas," Josh said mock-sternly, feeling his face split into a grin for the first time in forever.

"I don't need any ideas, Joshua, I've got plenty," Donna informed him. She loaded both his and her bags into his arms, causing him to stagger slightly. "Carry those, big strong man, we've got a plane to catch."

His mother smiled at the two of them, and followed them out into the hall. Josh hung back to gave her a kiss on the cheek. "I love you, mom."

"You bring me joy, Joshua. I worry, but I love you, and I could never ask you to do anything other than you do." She watched him dump the bags into the waiting car. "Although grandchildren wouldn't go amiss, you know!" she called, from the doorway.

Josh turned to Donna. "Quick, let's get out of here!"

His mother blew him a kiss as he climbed into his seat, and he waved in reply. Beside him, Donna squirmed around to fumble with her safety belt. "Hey, at least your mom isn't trying to marry you off to some Republican Wisconsin gomer," she observed.

"That's only because she doesn't know any."

And then they were gone. Leaving Florida, heading back to Washington.

Heading home.

"Mr. President?"

"Toby."

Toby shuffled somewhat awkwardly inside the Oval Office. He knew Leo wouldn't approve of him going directly to the president with this, but Leo was thinking defensively, and Toby knew that if they were ever going to get anywhere, they needed to break out of that cycle. He only hoped that he could convince the president of the same.

"Sir, did you read my notes on the Sex-Ed thing?" he began.

"I did," the president nodded slowly, tapping the briefing paper. "And I agree with every word." He hesitated. "Toby, you know we can't do this right now."

"Mr. President-"

"Toby, we need all the friends we can get right now. We can't afford to offend the Christian right."

"The Christian right are not our friends," Toby pointed out.

"No, they're not," the president agreed with a hint of a smile. "But right now, they're busy being somebody else's enemies, and we need it to stay that way. We don't want to alienate anybody."

"Yes we do!" he had to blurt out. "Yes we do, because this is what we believe is right, and fair, and proper, and it's time we stopped ignoring that to bolster our approval ratings!"

"Toby, we need those approval ratings!" the president thundered. He pushed up out of his chair and started to pace. "Toby, I was elected by the American people, and I need the American people to support me." His tone changed, became almost pleading. "I need them to trust me."

Toby looked down at the carpet and marshalled his thoughts. "This..." He let out a sigh. "This is a good thing. It's not gonna be a popular thing, but it's a good thing. And that ought to be enough." He met the president's eyes.

"It ought to be," the president said softly. "But it isn't."

On the flight back to Washington - complete, of course, with stop-off in Atlanta - Josh had time to get worried. "I handed in my letter of resignation!" he remembered.

In the seat beside him, Donna gave a tiny smile. "It got mislaid."

He stared at her. "That was an official government communication, Donna! You could go to prison for... mutiny."

She raised a single fine eyebrow at him. "Mutiny, Josh?"

Josh ignored that. "Leo won't take me back."

"He will."

"How can you be sure?"

"Because I say so."

"You're the boss of Leo now?"

Donna smirked. "I have a direct line to Margaret. He'll do what I say, or his lunch will pay the consequences."

"That's quite the little dictatorship you've got going over there," he observed.

She grinned. "You didn't really think it was the president running the country, did you?"

"This all rather begs the question; why do you need me at all?"

"Oh, I don't. I'm just using you as a beard in case there's a possibility of jail time."

"Ah."

"Yeah."

They were silent for a while.

"So why are you doing this?" he asked suddenly.

"Two words? Blackmail material." Apparently the time for pandering to Josh's fragile emotional state was over.

Actually, he was somewhat relieved. Not that supportive-Donna wasn't a Very Good Thing, but it did rather tend to tilt his perception of the world off-balance.

"Is this leading up to a request for your birthday off work?" he asked.

"Hell no. I fully expect to be kept busy five AM. 'til midnight, Joshua."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." She pulled a face. "Some way of keeping my family out of state would also be good."

Josh cracked a grin. "Your family's coming to see you?"

"My mother. And probably at least one of my sisters. Plus brother-in-law." She couldn't have looked more disgusted if said sister was bringing along some daytime talk show guests.

"Family should always stick together, Donnatella," he preached loftily, secure in the knowledge that she couldn't call him on it when she'd just seen him spending quality time with his mother.

Donna glared at him. "Would you like to be shipped back to Florida zipped inside your own suitcase?"

Actually, when contrasted with the thought of what might be awaiting him back in Washington, that really didn't sound like such a bad deal.

"Sam." Steve's face lit up with a smile as he approached.

"Can we talk?" Sam suddenly felt overly self-conscious, newly aware of the number of eyes in the bar that had been there all along.

Steve's expression suddenly tightened, but he drained the last of his beer, and straightened up. "Sure. Come on." Sam fought a ridiculous urge to glance around to see if anyone was watching them.

Way to act un-suspicious, Samuel.

They got out into the street, fairly quiet at this time of night. "Is this okay?" Steve asked a little sharply. "Can we talk here? Or would you like to sweep the area for bugs?"

"No, this is- we can- can we start walking?" It was as much a way to marshal his thoughts as any desire to be inconspicuous.

"Oh, good idea. That'll fool the CIA and their gay-detectors," Steve snarked. He ran a hand through his hair, something Sam had already picked up was a defensive gesture. "Listen, Sam, if you-"

"No," Sam cut him off quickly. "No, I just- I wanted to- Give me a minute, okay?"

Steve stopped him walking with a hand to the centre of the chest and gave him a twisted smile. "Sam. If you're breaking up with me just... do it a bit faster, okay?"

"No!" he protested quickly. "I'm not, I'm just-"

Steve nodded slowly, sticking his hands into his pocket. "You just want to keep it a secret." From the wry twist to his mouth, it was a line he'd heard before. Living in Washington, he probably had.

But Sam didn't want to take that line. He didn't want to be that guy. "No! I don't want to do that either." He looked Steve in the eye. "I hate secrets," he said earnestly. "But I'm saying, my job, it could get, it could get-"

Steve rolled his eyes. "I'm not totally naïve, Sam. I've seen what the newspapers do to people." They started walking again.

"Yeah. But it looks even worse from the inside." He wasn't sure Steve quite understood the magnitude of this. Sam had told him that he was in politics, quite high up in politics, but he hadn't spilled exactly how close he was to the president. He'd been trying to avoid his work, not talk about it. "And I'm just, you know... If you'd rather not have to go through that with me, I totally understand."

Steve smiled at him. "Sam. You're a great guy. And you know what? That usually goes 'You're a great guy, but'... I have no buts. You're a great guy with no buts. Well, a great guy with one butt, and, indeed, a guy with one great butt... and now I'm beginning to sense that we're wandering away from the original topic of conversation."

Sam couldn't help smiling back. "So you don't want to break up with me."

"No, Sam," Steve grinned. "I want to chain you to the doorpost so nobody can steal you."

"I think they'd probably miss me at work."

"They'd get over it." He smiled quietly. "Sam. You're worth it. I know that. The only question here is whether you think I am."

Sam looked him in the eye. "I just... all I know is, everything at work's going to hell, and for the first time in a long time I don't feel like I'm going with it. I want this. I think I need this."

"Well, okay then," Steve said quietly.

"Steve, I-" he burst out.

Steve stopped him again, this time covering his mouth to stop him speaking. "Shh. It's okay, Sam," he said earnestly. "Really."

Sam sighed. He wanted that to be true, he really did, but... He struggled to explain. "I just want... I just want to live, and have people find out... when they find out. It ought to be that simple."

Steve shrugged. "Let's make it that simple. Hell, if they come after us, we can take 'em."

He raised an eyebrow. "Can we?"

"I can take anyone. I hold the comprehensibility of their computer instruction manuals in my hands."

"You're just drunk on the power there, aren't you?"

"Hell, yeah." Steve smirked. "So can I tell everyone I'm dating a big shot politician?"

Sam hesitated for a fraction longer than he wanted to, and covered it by talking fast. "Yeah. Yeah, sure."

Steve rolled his eyes. "Sam. I'm not gonna get a magic marker and write your name all over the bathroom wall. We're grown-ups, okay? We're dating. I don't need to jump you in the middle of the street to prove it."

"Okay."

"Yeah."

There was a brief pause, during which he couldn't help noticing that their walk had somewhere along the line started heading them in the direction of his home. "So you're not gonna jump me on the way back, then?" he asked.

Steve grinned wolfishly. "Well now, that depends just depends on how fast you start walking."

WEDNESDAY:

"Okay, everybody." Leo nodded to CJ, Toby and Sam as he took his place at his desk. "We're gonna start by-" He was interrupted by a knock; oddly enough, from the door to Margaret's area, not the president's passage from the Oval Office. He raised his voice. "Yes?"

The door opened, and a slightly abashed Josh appeared in the doorway. He gave them all a tentative smile. "Hi."

"Josh!" CJ ran over to give him a hug, her place taken by a grinning Sam the moment he let go. Leo felt a huge smile split his own face, whilst Toby restrained himself to a nod.

Initial hugging over, Leo rearranged his face into a mock-stern expression. "What time d'you call this?" he demanded.

"It's Donna's fault," Josh insisted quickly.

"Oh, yes?" he asked sardonically. "And how did Donna delay you this time?"

"She... exuded late vibes."

CJ giggled, and hugged him again. "You had us worried, Joshua," she told him sternly.

"I know. I'm sorry," he said seriously. "I needed to sort my head out."

"You mean you needed someone to sort it out for you," Leo interjected pointedly, and Josh smiled in acknowledgement. In that moment, Leo knew that neither of them would ever mention the still unopened letter burning a hole in his desk drawer.

It would be going through the shredder the moment this meeting was over.

"Are you gonna be okay, Josh?" Sam asked him softly.

Josh met his eyes. "I'm fine," he nodded. And unlike most of the times he said those words, Leo believed it. "But I've been watching the news, and I see some people out there have been saying nasty - not to mention fundamentally untrue - things about me." Josh straightened up, and smiled. "Let's go to war."

Everybody in the room smiled back, Toby included. Leo looked to his team.

"CJ, what's our next move?"

"Talk to the press," she said without hesitation. "Get it out there that Josh is back at work, he's here to stay, and all cylinders are firing."

"As much as they usually do," Toby interjected, and they laughed. Leo felt a strange kind of excitement rising. There was an energy in the room that had been missing for too long. The staff were meshing, joining back together into the indivisible wall they'd always used to present to the outside world. What had Jed called it the other day? A gestalt entity. Greater than the sum of its parts.

The Bartlet team were back.

Sam leaned forward. "Okay. So far as I can see, our best tactic with the press is to-"

"Let me talk to them," Josh interrupted, quiet but forceful.

"Okay, if that was meant to be anticipating what I was gonna say, you're way off," Sam informed him.

Josh smiled and tiredly rubbed his face. "I... I want it to be me who talks to the press. I want to explain... I want it to be me who talks about this."

CJ was shaking her head emphatically before he got halfway into the first sentence. Leo peered at his deputy over his glasses. "Josh, do you recall a ban being placed on you getting within twenty feet of the press room? 'Cause-"

"This isn't a briefing," Josh reminded him. "This is about me."

"They'll be asking you questions, Josh, and you're not gonna like most of them," Sam pointed out.

"You'll get hostile," CJ agreed.

"I won't get hostile!"

"You always get hostile," she snapped.

Josh turned pleading his eyes to his boss. "Leo... I need to do this. It's important. It's something I need to do, like... like therapy."

"Which is what I'm gonna need before this is over," CJ muttered despairingly.

Leo hesitated. But unlike the others, he knew exactly how seriously Josh had been considering resigning over this... and perhaps he did need to do this. "Okay," he nodded. "But if I hear we've got a secret plan to do anything-"

"Hey!"

"-I'm changing our story back to you're mentally unstable. Clear?"

Josh smiled. "Clear."

Zoey dashed around the kitchen, trying to eat toast, pack a bag, and do her makeup all at the same time. Her roommate Kelly was frustratingly calm as she sat at the table, leafing through her newspaper. But then, Kelly didn't have an early-morning class.

An early-morning class that she'd had every Wednesday for the whole semester and still managed to be late for every single time.

"I can't believe we're nearly done with college," Zoey admitted, checking her face in the mirror for smudges too bad to get away with.

"You're nearly done, honey, I've still got another year, remember?" Kelly pointed out, flipping to the next page. "Hey, do you know this Josh Lyman guy?"

"Yeah." She pulled a face at herself in the mirror. "I hope he's okay. I got to know him pretty well on the campaign, the first time? He was kind of my special friend out of all the- euw! Not like that!" she objected, at Kelly's raised eyebrow. "No, I just mean... he was always really nice. Didn't treat me like a six-year-old."

"Talking of special friends..." Kelly began teasingly.

Zoey shot her a mock-exasperated glare. "Aw, Kelly! I am not telling you anything about Charlie!"

"Oh, come on! I'm your friend, you won't even tell me the saucy details?"

"There are no saucy details!" she objected, turning red despite herself.

"Still?" Kelly demanded. "Honestly, Zoey, what is this guy, a monk?"

Zoey giggled. "No! He's just really really scared of my dad."

Kelly smiled, and said more softly "But you guys are getting pretty serious, aren't you?"

Zoey blushed shyly. "Yeah." She was barely conscious of the way she automatically patted her chest to make sure the ring was still there. Kelly, on the other hand, saw the gesture just fine; a confirmation of what she'd been suspecting ever since she'd seen what her roommate had on a silver chain the previous night.

When Zoey was out the door, she could only restrain herself a matter of moments before rushing to the nearest phone. "Hey, Melissa," she drawled as her friend picked up on the other end. "You'll never guess who's just got engaged..."

This was a bad idea. In fact, on a scale of bright ideas, it - to borrow from one ex-roommate's occasionally useful vocabulary - pretty much sucked the big one.

"Josh, don't do this," she pleaded, absently straightening the lapels of his suit jacket.

Josh smiled at her. "Why not, Donna?" he asked, looking to the ceiling as if she was the exasperating one.

"Because - no offence - when it comes to press conferences? You're pretty much a big dork."

He gave her a look. "'Kay, Donna? Which part of that, exactly, was the inoffensive part?"

"The part where I said 'no offence'?"

"Donna, I'll be fine."

"'Fine' fine, or 'I've got a secret plan to fight inflation' fine?"

Josh abruptly pulled away from her endeavours to make him look presentable and scowled. "Why does everybody keep bringing that up?"

"Because it proves a point."

"What point?"

"Mostly, that when it comes to press conferences, you're pretty much a great big dork."

"Okay, but I was only a 'big dork' a moment ago."

"Trust me, Josh, by the time this is over you'll be a bigger dork than ever." She was teasing, but her eyes communicated her very real worry. Don't embarrass yourself out there, Josh. Don't lose it in front of the press. Please.

Josh surprised her by stepping back into her personal space to give her a quick hug. "I'll be fine, Donna. Trust me."

"Not much chance of that," she said automatically, and he smiled. He pulled away as CJ appeared in the doorway.

"Okay, Josh, I've got-"

Josh breezed past her. "I'm ready for this, CJ." He ran his hands down his jacket, theoretically smoothing it, but in fact unsmoothing all the smoothing she'd just done for him. "Let's go."

They walked towards the press room.

Jed looked up at his Chief of Staff. "Josh is going out there?"

"Yeah." Leo's expression looked as if he wasn't quite sure whether to be going for fatherly pride or extreme terror.

A sudden thought struck him. "Leo, he'd better not be going out there to deliver a public resignation," he said warningly.

For a moment Leo looked worried, and then he set his jaw. "He's not," he said, with only the barest flicker of uncertainty. He cracked a grin. "We had Donna beat the martyr instinct out of him."

"Good, good," Jed nodded. They both watched the screen as Carol talked to the press in preparation for Josh's statement. He considered ordering Leo to take a seat, but knew it would have little effect. Whether he admitted it or not, he was jittery with nerves, and Jed himself felt his stomach tighten as Josh took the podium. They'd both promised to stand by him, but this press conference could make or break Josh's career in ways they had no control over.

He glanced up at Leo again. "Just tell me I'm not coming out of this with any top secret strategies."

Leo's eyes stayed fixed on the screen. "Oh, he knows that if we do we're going with the 'mentally unstable' story."

"Okay."

His fingers tightened on the arms of the chair as Josh began to speak.

Cameras flashed as he took the podium. Josh took several deep, slow breaths, willing the automatic panic to die down. His window on the world still shaky; it was all too easy for the flashes to stir recollections of flashing lights on police cars, the painful artificial lights of the hospital... But that was all they were. Recollections. Remembering, not reliving.

In control.

"Good morning." He risked a flicker of a grin. "I guess you're all here to take me to task for playing hookey from work these past few days."

He was rewarded with a small rumble of amusement from the crowd, and on CJ's advice he sought the eyes of Rick Maskey, the young journalist who'd leapt to his defence after his own unsettling encounter with a gunman just last week. The reporter gave him a subtle nod and an encouraging smile.

He could do this.

He took another breath. "Three years ago, I was shot. All of you know it. Most of you reported on it, and many of you were there. I'm sure any of you who were remember it well."

Josh looked down for a moment. "I didn't really remember anything. Not at first. I was in surgery for fourteen hours - I'm pretty glad I don't remember that, I can tell you - and then I woke up with the president standing over me. Fortunately he was in a magnanimous mood - or possibly still on painkillers - and didn't take it personally when I failed to stand up."

The press were smiling with him. This wasn't so bad. Like giving a lecture; he knew how to do that.

Of course, the question and answer session at the end was going to be a killer.

"The doctors sewed me back up, apparently without leaving out anything vitally important, and after a period of convalescence-" he glanced at Donna on the sidelines, "-a long and torturous period of convalescence, during which people who will remain nameless denied me visitors, phone messages and work - I returned to my duties as Deputy Chief of Staff. Aside from a little stiffness, and a hell of a backlog in my in-tray, I was as good as new."

He hesitated, and looked up to face the press head on. "Except I wasn't. It took everybody a long time to realise it, and I think I was last in line for a clue." This was it. He had to keep going. "I was moody, irrational, aggressive and short with people. Naturally, nobody realised there was anything wrong."

Okay, the press seemed a little too amused at that one. He glanced again at Donna, who gave him a soft smile. Apparently he was doing well.

"You see, after a while, what happened that night in May did start to come back to me. Except I wasn't remembering it. I was reliving it." Thank you, Stanley. "Something would happen, something would send me back there... And I would relive it. I was getting shot, in my head, over and over again, and I couldn't make it stop." The jokes were gone now, but the words were flowing, more clearly than he would have thought possible

"I couldn't make it stop, and I was throwing every bit of energy I had into trying, and it... it wasn't leaving me much space to be a human being. I could work, because work was a place to hide. But just being me... that was the difficult bit. I didn't know how to be Josh Lyman, because I was too busy being the guy who got shot."

Josh smiled. "Fortunately, I wasn't alone. The people who I have to stop me being an idiot began to notice I was being a bigger idiot than usual. And they did what they usually do, which is to ignore me. They ignored me when I told them I was fine. They ignored me when I tried to block them out and run away from them. And they ignored me when I decided it was easier to rant and rage and drive people away instead of try to deal with them on top of being shot."

Now came the big revelation. Put a name to your demons, and make them real. "Christmas of that year, I was dragged, pretty much kicking and screaming, to sit with a counsellor from the American Trauma Victims Association." On this much, at least, he'd listened to CJ; 'counsellor' sounded a hell of a lot softer than 'psychologist'. "Being somewhat experienced with idiots like me, he was able to tell me what was wrong before I'd finished telling him there wasn't anything."

A long breath of silence.

"I was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder."

In the whole room, nobody moved.

"The reason I'd been stuck in that same hell of being shot for so long was because I wasn't accepting it. I wasn't willing to remember it, so I was forcing myself to live it over and over again. It was like... it was like I was trying to build a dam in my mind, block all the memories in, but there was so much of it that it just kept busting down the dam and rushing out all at once. I was never gonna fix it like that, but I kept trying, and that was what was tearing me up. He forced me to go over it in my mind, to remember all the things I was fighting so hard to try and force back." Josh gave a small, self-depreciating smile. "And then he pretty much told me to get over it. At which point, I asked for my money back."

A wave of quiet laughter rippled through the room like a breeze, driving out the tension.

"Needless to say, I didn't get it. Because he was right. I asked him if I was going to have to live the rest of my life running away from the things that might trigger me off, might send me back into a flashback, and he said no. Because we get better. I might never be cured, but I get better every day."

Josh took another breath. "Last Saturday was the first attack I've had in a long, long time. I was having a bad day, I was under stress... some people might say it was the fireworks, but personally I think it was the crab puffs. Anyway, something triggered me off, and there I was, back again."

He ran his eyes over the press corps, meeting everybody's gaze without flinching. "I won't lie to you. I can't tell you Saturday was the last time I'll ever have an attack - hell, I could have one tomorrow. But I can promise you that whatever happens, I'll do my job... and if there ever comes I time when I can't, there are people there who'll catch it before I do."

He looked again to the side, where Donna was looking suspiciously moist-eyed. He smiled, and extended a hand. "Donna. C'm'ere."

She pulled a 'what the hell, Josh?' face, but he didn't retract his hand. "Come on up here," he repeated. Someone, probably CJ, gave her a surreptitious shove.

Josh reached out to pull her up to the podium beside him, and gave her a reassuring smile. An instant of silent communication passed.

Don't worry, it's nothing embarrassing.

Hah, yeah. Forgive me if I don't like your track record being the judge of that.

Hey! I'm wounded!

Deal with it.

Relax, Donna, it'll be fine.

Sure. As soon as we get away from these cameras, you're a dead man.

Josh turned back to the press. "Ladies and gentlemen, this is Donnatella Moss. Some of you here may know her. Most of you out there," he spoke to the cameras, "won't. Donna here is the Senior Assistant to the Deputy Chief of Staff for Strategic Planning - or, perhaps more accurately, the Deputy Deputy Chief of Staff. I help run the country; Donna runs me. I think we all know which of us has the harder job. I can honestly say that I wouldn't still be here if it wasn't for her."

A storm of flashbulbs caught the brilliant smile that passed between the two of them. Then Donna lightly touched his hand in a show of silent support, and quickly fled the podium. Josh turned back to the waiting media.

"Okay," he said softly. "Any questions?"

"Who da man?" Josh demanded. He strode out of the pressroom, arms held high.

Sam slapped him on the shoulder manfully, then laughed and pulled him into a tight hug. He was quickly passed down the chain to be squeezed by CJ, Carol, Bonnie and Ginger. At the end of the row was Donna, who punched him in the arm.

"Josh! How could you do that to me?"

"No need to thank me," he said magnanimously, rubbing his injured shoulder.

"Not bad," Toby pronounced, about as ringing an endorsement as he was about to get. However, he spoilt his impassive aura by flashing a quick grin when he thought nobody was looking.

"I saw that smile, Toby!" Josh pointed at him accusingly. "You're happy!"

"I'm delirious with relief that you didn't manage to get us at war with Beirut," he quickly covered.

"Beirut?" Sam frowned at him.

"Anything's possible when Josh is in the press room," Toby pointed out. That reminded Sam of the reason for celebration, and he spun back to Josh.

"You did it, man!" he cheered, giving him another triumphant thump on the arm. Josh winced and retreated, clutching his upper arm protectively.

"Can everybody just, you know, leave the shoulder alone, okay?" He turned to CJ and grinned. "So what's cooking, Claudia Jean? Did I do good?"

CJ put on her stern press secretary face. "It's entirely possible you in fact managed to not make the situation worse." Then she giggled, and gave him another hug. "You did great, mi amor!"

"Hey!" Sam objected. "How come he gets to be your amor and I'm stuck with being Spanky?"

Toby turned to blink at him. "I think you just look like a Spanky."

They all dissolved into laughter. When was the last time they'd all giggled together like this? Reelection? No, Josh remembered, even then the laughter had possessed a kind of frantic quality, a whiff of desperation. Not the good, genuine, healing laughter of the group coming back together, the way they were meant to be.

He pulled free of an impromptu huddle involving CJ, Donna and Sam to see Leo smiling at him. For a moment something in his heart did a somersault, as he recognised a look that he'd seen more than once on the face of his father. Then Leo rearranged his face into his normal look of firm-jawed authority, and the moment was gone.

"Okay, everybody," he said loudly, "get back to work."

"Josh Lyman's office," Donna answered automatically. The phone had been ringing off the hook all morning, mostly with calls that she deflected with a resolute no 'comment'.

"Donnatella."

Out of the handful of people who called her by that name, this particular voice was a surprise. "Alexia," she said neutrally. Her oldest sister hardly ever spoke to her when they were in the same room, let alone in different states.

"We all saw you on the television this morning."

"Really?" Donna couldn't help smirking. Take that, check-out-my-oh-so-perfect-life girl.

"Yes. Mother's terribly upset. Why must you always make such a spectacle of yourself?"

"What?" she demanded incredulously.

"Fawning over your ridiculous boss like that! Honestly, the man's obviously got psychological problems."

"I was not fawning!" she exploded, outraged. "And there's nothing wrong with Josh!"

Her sister gave a heavy, long-suffering sigh that made her wish they were in the same room - so she could give Alexia a well-deserved slapping. "Honestly, Donna, you always make such a fool of yourself over the most unsuitable men. The man's a failure, and of course you'll go down clinging to him to the very end. Come home, Donnatella."

'Up yours!' was the reaction that first sprang to mind, but unfortunately even five years of Lymanesque diplomacy wasn't enough to counteract the role her family had trained her into. She was supposed to be ditzy Donnatella, who got herself into terrible messes and then had to bailed out by her long-suffering sensible family.

Well, screw that. "I'm not coming home. I'm not leaving my job. And if mom's got something to say to me, she can call me up it tell it to me herself! Goodbye." She slammed the phone down, and growled at it. Then she looked up, aware of a shadow over her.

Sam hurriedly threw up his hands. "Hey, don't shoot!"

Donna smiled and shook her head. "Oh, it's just... grrr. Sisters!" She was the youngest of three girls, and they all had their assigned roles. Donna was the 'flighty' one, Alexia was the sensible one, and Joletta in the middle was the mousy, quiet one who barely opened her mouth except to apologise or offer to wait on people. And to make matters worse, both of her older sisters had married young and produced lots of little neat blonde children, which was apparently the only criteria on which her mother judged success.

"Your family giving you grief?" Sam smiled sympathetically.

Donna rolled her eyes. "That was my older sister, trying to get me to leave my job and come home to Wisconsin - again. My mom and my other sister are flying in for my birthday Thursday night, and I'm going to get thirty-six hours of 'Donna, why won't you come home?' 'Donna, why must you insist on working with all those dreadful politicians?' 'Donna, why aren't you married?'" She shook her head, and looked up at the by now amused-looking Sam. "You think this is funny?"

"Maybe a little," he admitted, grinning.

She sighed, and then straightened up. "Okay, Sam, I wouldn't normally do this, but desperate times call for desperate measures. You gotta marry me."

He blinked. "Uh, Donna-"

"Seriously, Sam, my family's never gonna get off my back until I marry somebody."

He chuckled faintly to himself. "Well, Donna, you know, much as I'm flattered to be your, uh, desperate last-chance marriage option..."

"Oh, come on," she pleaded. "We can get married Thursday, meet my mom and sister and my godawful brother-in-law, and then we can get divorced Saturday afternoon. C'mon, what do you say?"

Sam smiled at her, and fiddled with his tie. "Well, you know, I'd love to, but... actually I'm kind of seeing somebody."

"Really?" she demanded delightedly. The assistant chain was so right. Bonnie had announced at their last morning coffee meeting that Sam's attitude change had to be the result of getting laid. She grinned. "So who's the lucky girl? Anyone I know?"

Sam hesitated for a fraction of an instant longer than she'd expect him to. "Well, actually-"

"Sam." Toby appeared in the doorway, tapping a sheaf of papers impatiently. "Walk with me," he commanded.

"Okay," he nodded. He turned back to Donna, shrugged and smiled apologetically. Then he followed after Toby.

Donna watched him go, smiling. At least somebody was happy. After how depressed he'd been lately, she couldn't bring herself to begrudge him finding somebody when her life was still depressingly romance-free.

What? No. That was her sisters talking. She was happy, dammit. Single and enjoying it!

Or at least she would be, as soon as her birthday was over and done with and her family safely packed off back to Wisconsin.

"Toby," Sam nodded at his boss. He wasn't sure whether to be relieved or mildly irritated that Toby had interrupted before he'd had the chance to share his... unexpected relationship circumstances... with Donna.

He'd meant what he'd said to Steve about hating secrets. Whatever happened, he wasn't prepared to be that guy. He didn't want to be his father - he wasn't like his father, never would be like his father - but he didn't want to be like the president or Josh either, caught out after too long hiding something which should never have had to be hidden.

He wasn't going to keep this a secret. If anyone flat-out asked him, he would tell the truth without hesitation.

It was figuring out how to volunteer the truth when nobody was asking him that was the difficult bit.

His depression might have started to lift, but that didn't mean he'd gone back to any childish age of innocence. He knew this was going to be a thing, and people needed to know about it. It was just that... it was going to be a thing. And he'd like, just maybe, just for a little while, a little bit of a chance to just enjoy it before it became a thing.

That wasn't too much to ask, right?

Toby beside him was oblivious to all this reflection, or at least disinterested in what it might be about. "Sam. The Sex-Ed thing."

"Leo shot you down," Sam reminded him.

"Leo's wrong."

"Did you take it to the president?"

"Yes."

"He shot you down too?"

"They're both wrong," Toby pronounced flatly. "This isn't about, it isn't about hot button issues or religious debate. It's about-"

"Education," Sam completed, and Toby gave him an appraising look.

"Yes. Education."

"We need..." Sam thought for a moment, probing around the edges of the issue. Remembering the way he'd used to be able to think about things, before the fog of despair had settled over everything. "We have a duty to educate our children as best as we are able. It's not about promoting or proscribing sex; it's about understanding it."

"Yes!" Toby agreed forcefully. Probably thinking it was about damn time somebody got around to satisfying the Ziegler definition of showing intelligence, which largely involved agreeing with Toby.

Sam hesitated. "Toby... you know there's not much chance of us winning this one."

"When did we start caring about that?"

Now there was a good question. "I don't know."

"We should stop doing that."

"We should."

They continued on to their offices. Outside, Toby stopped momentarily and threw him a look. "Sam. You're happy again, aren't you?"

Sam blinked, and then slowly smiled. "Yes. Yes I am," he admitted.

Toby nodded slowly. "Well, stop it. It's disconcerting."

He disappeared back into his office.

"Mr. President? Josh."

"Thank you." Josh took Charlie's place in the doorway, hovering uncertainly. Jed stood up. "Josh. How are you?"

"Mr. President, I feel fine," he answered without hesitation. Having given more than a few such replies in his time, Jed considered himself something of an expert on 'I feel fine'. This one, happily, seemed to be genuine enough. "You're gonna be okay?" he asked.

"Seriously, sir?" Josh smiled faintly. "I don't know. I hope so."

"Ah, well," he waved it off. "Close enough for government work." Josh grinned, and there was a moment of comfortable silence. Then the president pointed an accusing finger at him. "You'd better not be working yourself too hard." He ignored Abbey's voice in the back of his mind as it said scornful things about glass houses.

"I'm on my way out," Josh said quickly. "Donna wants me to buy her dinner as an apology for embarrassing her on national TV," he explained.

"You don't deserve that girl, you know," Jed told him mock-sternly.

"I know," agreed Josh seriously.

He smiled. "Take her somewhere nice."

"Yeah." Josh hung back. "She also wants me to close the airports to keep her family out of town."

Jed looked at him. "Yeah. Okay. I don't think we'll be doing that," he said dryly.

"Okay." Josh left.

"CJ."

CJ looked up from her notes. "Katie. If you're looking for Josh, he's already gone. And he won't be giving-"

"I don't want to talk about Josh," the reporter reassured her hurriedly.

"Okay." CJ put her papers down and leaned back expectantly.

Katie perched on the edge of her desk. "So I met this guy in a bar a couple of weeks ago. His name was Steve. He was cute, he was smart, he was funny, he was single..."

"He turned out to be gay?" CJ guessed, and Katie grinned.

"Yup."

"Typical." CJ hesitated for a moment. "Okay, so-"

"So I was in this bar again the other day," Katie quickly continued. "And I couldn't help noticing dear old Steve hanging around there. I was gonna go over, say hi, but it turned out he'd already got himself another drinking buddy. They were looking pretty cosy."

CJ could feel a headache coming on. "Who?"

"Sam Seaborn."

CJ slowly pulled her glasses off and stared at her. "Oh, come on-"

"I'm just-"

"Katie!"

"I just wanted you to-"

"Sam," she said forcefully, "is a people person. You're telling me he can't even have a friendly conversation with a gay guy? What possible-?"

"I'm just saying." Katie held up her hands defensively as she turned to go. "I'm not trolling for news here, CJ. Just thought I'd give you a heads up."

"Yeah, well, if you think this is anything, I'm not sure what your head's up."

Katie just smiled and shrugged as she left. CJ stared at the wall for a moment.

No.

No.

No?

THURSDAY:

Sam practically bounced into Leo's office. Josh was back at work and apparently well, he had a social life, and he and Toby were working on something he could believe in. Life was good.

CJ was giving him a bit of a funny look as he breezed in; probably wondering why he was so cheerful all of a sudden. He flashed her a bright grin, and she smiled back almost involuntarily.

In fact, everybody in the room seemed more alert, more full of life than they had been in a long time. In reality, nothing had changed, everything was still as bad as it had been when the Healthcare Bill crashed and burned on Friday. But somehow there was a different vibe in the air. Josh's crisis had brought them all together, knitting them back into the team they'd once used to be.

"Settle down, folks," Leo said, but he said it with a smile. "Okay; CJ?"

"We're riding out the media cycle pretty well on this one," CJ nodded. "Josh's speech yesterday pretty much turned the tide on all but our biggest detractors. He's proved himself to be about as compos mentis as he's getting."

Josh pumped his fists triumphantly, ignoring the jibe.

"Okay," Leo nodded. "Good. Toby, you had a thing?"

He nodded. "Yeah. Capitol Beat want Josh on tonight so they can talk about the failure of the Healthcare Bill."

CJ arched an eyebrow. "You mean they want Josh on so they can steer the conversation around to Saturday night."

"Yeah."

"I'll take it," Sam offered.

"Sam can take it," Leo agreed.

"I want to take it," said Josh. They all looked at him.

"Josh..." CJ groaned.

"No, seriously. Let me take it," Josh insisted. "You just said I did good yesterday. I can do good today!"

"Yesterday was the press. Today is Republicans," Toby pointed out.

"Who've they got on?" Sam asked.

Toby rolled his eyes. "Melissa Berrington."

"Berrington?" Sam snorted. "She hasn't been within shouting distance of the Healthcare debate!"

"And yet, by some strange coincidence, she's spent the last three days telling every news organisation that'll slow down long enough that I'm mentally incompetent," Josh noted.

"Seriously, Josh, you can't take this one," CJ warned him. "It's going to be twenty-four minutes of 'let's bait Josh' time."

"I can handle it."

"You can not handle it," CJ laughed. "You'll explode before you go twenty-four seconds!"

"Then let me explode!" Josh shook his head. "CJ, I can't sit on the sidelines on this. I can't wait it out until the other kids decide to stop picking on me, 'cause if I do it's never gonna happen. You gotta let me off the leash."

They all exchanged glances. "He's right," nodded Toby.

"He is," Sam agreed.

"Okay," said Leo. "Josh does Capitol Beat tonight. Now, all of you, get working."

CJ snagged Sam on the way out. "Sam?"

"Yeah?"

"When you've got a couple of minutes later, can you drop by my office?"

"Sure." He frowned for a moment, but shrugged it off. He'd find out soon enough what that was all about.

"Donna." Josh sauntered back into the bullpen, grinning brightly. "I'm gonna be on Capitol Beat tonight."

"Oh God." She thumped her head against the desk in despair. "Who against?"

"Melissa Berrington."

"I repeat; oh God. In fact, oh celestial pantheon."

"It'll be fine," Josh shrugged easily.

Donna felt that was best answered with a highly expressive snorting noise.

"Little bit of sinus trouble there, Donna?"

"Yeah, my boss keeps getting right up my nose." She pulled a face. "Melissa Berrington?"

Josh shrugged again. "Hey, it's cool; Leo's given me permission to do a number."

"How high a number?" she demanded warily.

He leaned his elbows on her desk and smiled at her. "I really will be fine, Donna," he laughed. "Come with me, if you want."

"I can't. I have to pick my mom and sister up from the airport."

"What time?"

"Eight o'clock. And yes, already, I'll make up the time on-"

"No, I was just, I was just..." he shrugged. "You've got time; come with me," he insisted.

"Josh." She rolled her eyes. "If I go with you I've got to go to the studio, come home, drive to the airport..."

"No you don't. I'll give you a ride," he suggested airily.

Donna blinked at him a few times. "Okay, pod person, step away from the desk and keep your mandibles where I can see them," she said sharply. "What are you, and what have you done with the real Josh Lyman?"

"Hey, I can't do something nice for my assistant?" he said, pretending to be wounded.

"In a word? No."

He straightened up and headed towards his office. "Come with me, Donna, and I will prove to you that I can handle Melissa Berrington without going off the rails. And then I will drive you up to the airport, and ferry you and your Republican relatives to whatever destination you so desire. And you can have the rest of the evening off."

The door closed behind him, and Donna stared at it for a while.

"Wow. Weird."

She made a mental note to phone Josh's mother and ask her if he'd picked up any kind of prescription medication while he was out there in Florida.

"Hey, Bonnie."

"Hey, Sam." She gave the Deputy Communications Director a bright grin. It was such a huge relief to see Sam back to his old self again - confirmation that the world was indeed still spinning in the right direction. Sam was cheerful, and Toby was better than he had been the previous week, whilst still being just grumpy enough to not be scary. A happy Toby was downright terrifying.

But a happy Sam was the way things were meant to be.

She'd checked with Ginger to make sure she wasn't hallucinating, and then done a quick survey of the rest of the assistant chain. Yup, there had been a definite attitude change, and it had happened somewhere between Friday night and Sunday morning. That, to Bonnie, spoke volumes.

She'd presented her evidence to the girls at Tuesday's early morning coffee and bagel meeting. Item one; Sam's change of attitude had taken place over a period encompassing both Friday and Saturday evening. Item two; Donna had reported difficulty in contacting Sam by cell phone Saturday, which was later revealed to be the result of at some point visiting a movie theatre. Item three; Ginger had reported traces of an unfamiliar aftershave clinging to Sam early one morning. Confirmation on the third was still pending, owing to the difficulty in finding a good enough excuse to get close enough to sniff him without arousing suspicions. Nonetheless, it suggested that Sam was making an effort to impress somebody.

Movies. Aftershave. Cheerfulness.

It all led to one inescapable conclusion; Sam was getting laid.

The evidence was considerable, but she wouldn't have needed it. As Bonnie had often told her girlfriends - usually just after the giggly stage of getting drunk - she had an eye for the 'I'm so getting some' look. And Sam was definitely displaying it.

That said, then, it was an effort not to snigger as he grinned and said "I need you to get me some information on sex."

She arched her eyebrows at him. "Looking for some tips?"

Tellingly, he didn't make the usual 'What? Working in this place?' jokes, just smiled. "I need some stats on Sex-Ed in other countries. Policies vs. teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, that sort of thing."

"Sure." She noted it down on her day-planner as 'Get Sex For Sam', just for the hell of it. When you worked a job for hours and pay like hers, you had to make the most of the intangible benefits.

"Thanks." Sam straightened up. "I'll be back. I just have to go talk to CJ."

"What about?"

He shrugged. "I'll find out when I get there. Thanks!"

"No problem."

When he was gone, Ginger leaned over from the next desk. "He's getting some," she said authoritatively.

"Hell yeah."

They went back to their work.

"CJ, you wanted to see me?" Sam stepped inside her office.

"Yeah. Close the door."

He closed it behind him and hovered awkwardly, suddenly inexplicably nervous. "CJ?"

CJ got up from behind her desk and walked towards him. She regarded him in silence, and tapped her pen against her cheek thoughtfully. He was a quarter of an inch away from cracking and confessing every possible crime he could remember ever committing when she put the pen down and folded her arms.

"Sam..." He could hear how carefully she was picking her words. "Is it... at all possible that you have... a boyfriend?"

He blinked. Whoa. "You know, I honesty never thought about it that way before? But, um, yeah. I guess I do, at that." He couldn't help smiling.

"Okay. First." CJ stepped forward and enveloped him in a warm, comforting hug. "That's great, Sam. I'm really happy for you. That's wonderful." She pulled back. "Second." She raised her voice to a shout. "What the hell were you thinking?"

"I wasn't thinking anything, CJ!" he retorted loudly. "It's not like I woke up one morning and said, 'hey, what I really need right now is a homosexual relationship'. It just... happened," he shrugged.

CJ let out a slow breath. "Okay. Okay. Where did you meet him?"

"In a bar."

"All right, we've really got to ban you from talking to people in bars, okay?"

"CJ-"

"Sam."

He shrugged aggressively. "No, what, CJ? I just... I just met him, okay? His name is Steven Radcliffe, he's thirty-two years old, and he's... great," he finished, with a quiet little smile that he couldn't quite suppress.

CJ's expression softened a little. "Great?"

He blushed shyly. "Yeah."

She sighed. "Sam..."

"CJ, it's not-"

She gave him a warning glare. "Sam, don't say it's not a big deal, because whether any of us like it or not, it is a big deal. I found this out because one reporter already knows, and she doesn't think it should be a big deal either. But others are gonna find out, and they will think it's a big deal, and they will decide it's news."

"I'm not doing anything wrong," he said defensively.

She gave him a heartbreaking smile. "Of course you're not. But you're gonna get attention, you're gonna get hate mail, and you're gonna get a lot of scrutiny. There are gonna be questions about why the Deputy Director of Communications for an administration that's a huge proponent of gay rights felt it necessary to disguise his sexuality."

"I haven't been disguising anything, CJ," Sam insisted, shaking his head. "I always dated girls before, I met a guy I liked, end of story."

"End of story?"

"Yes."

CJ gave him a look. "Most people would not find themselves in this story."

"I'm not most people, CJ."

"You're really not, are you?"

Sam shook his head again and walked a few paces before turning back to face her. "CJ, I'm not- I'm not stupid. I knew this was gonna see me hit with a whole lot of crap that has nothing to do with anything, and it wasn't gonna be pretty. I went into this with my eyes open."

She gave him an appraising look. "You think he's worth it?"

"I'm sure he is."

"Okay."

"Okay?"

CJ nodded. "You should have called me, Sam," she said.

"I know," he admitted. "I... I think I was afraid if I called you too early, you might talk me out of it."

"I would hate to do that, Sam."

"I know." He believed her. "But you'd've done it."

"It's too late to do that now?" she pressed, ever hopeful.

"Definitely."

"Okay." She was silent for a beat. "Sam, you know I'm only-"

"Yeah."

"This could be tough for you. It could be tough for your guy, as well. Does he know what you do?"

"He knows I'm in politics."

"You need to tell him, Sam."

He did. "Yeah."

"You probably need to talk to Leo, as well."

Sam winced. "Yeah. I can only imagine how that might go." 'I accidentally slept with a call-girl' was one thing, 'I not-particularly-accidentally acquired a boyfriend, and I'm keeping him, too' was really quite another.

"You want me to-?" CJ offered.

"No. Maybe. I don't know. Can I think about it?" This all seemed to be spinning out of control way too fast.

"Sure," she nodded kindly. "But not for too long, Sam. Nothing stays quiet for long in this town, and I'd rather-"

"Yeah."

"Okay?"

"Okay."

He turned to leave, and she called out to him. "Sam." He looked back. "He's not a male prostitute, is he?"

Sam had to laugh. "He's a technical writer."

"Well, okay then."

As he was leaving, CJ called him back again. "Sam." She gave him a slow smile. "You do look happy."

"I am," he agreed.

"I'm glad."

"Thank you."

He left.

Lunch with Leo wasn't quite the same as lunch with Abbey, but it definitely beat dining with whatever group was mewling for presidential attention this particular day. The downside, of course, was that he didn't get to switch his brain off and zone out as he sometimes wanted to.

"How are we coming along with the fallout from the Healthcare Bill?" he asked, as he forked up the last of his salmon.

"Surprisingly well," Leo nodded, taking a sip from his glass of water. "Bizarrely enough, this business with Josh actually helped sweep it under the carpet. Everybody's much more concerned with talking about what's happening with his PTSD than what actually sparked the attack."

Jed nodded slowly. "What about this thing tonight? Is it a good idea to put him on TV this soon?"

Leo hesitated, then shrugged. "Maybe not, but we've got to do it. Josh is right; Berrington's gonna be baiting him all the way, but we can't afford to run away from this. The public needs to see him in debate. They need to see that whatever his condition, he's capable of doing his job to the best of his ability. If we can't show them that, how are we supposed to justify allowing him to still do it?"

Leo was right.

Leo was right. They were all public servants here; they owed it to the people they served to perform that service as best as possible. It wasn't just what they were paid for, it was their duty.

Something that had been lurking in the depths of his mind for too long floated up to the surface, and resolutely refused to be pushed back down into some place he could ignore it. It was time to do something he really didn't want to do.

Jed stood up, and Leo, caught off guard, scrambled to echo the motion. "Mr. President?" he asked, with a frown. For a moment Jed ached for the simpler days when his oldest friend could have sat whenever he damn well pleased and called him whatever he felt like. And then he reminded himself to be careful what he wished for.

"I just remembered I need to call Abbey," he explained, and Leo obligingly allowed himself to be ushered towards the door. However, he was as always attuned to Jed's body-language, and he looked at his old friend with concern.

"Something I should know about?"

"Just a few things I want to get straight," Jed said quickly.

When Leo was gone, he hesitated for a long time, and then finally picked up the phone.

This wasn't going to be the easiest conversation in the world.

Sam glanced again over at Toby. His boss seemed utterly absorbed in the words on the screen of his laptop; no surprise. Sam had been waiting for some hours now for exactly the right time.

It had recently occurred to him that with Toby, he quite possibly wouldn't recognise a right time when he saw it. How, exactly, did you pinpoint a moment when Toby Ziegler was most approachable? He supposed the fact that he wasn't currently being at screamed at would almost qualify...

Toby abruptly stood up, walked over to the door and shut it. He leaned his back against it and raised an eyebrow at his deputy. "Sam. Speak."

Okay. This would appear to be... a moment of some sort, if not necessarily the right one.

Um.

"I, uh-" he stuttered, searching for words.

Toby looked unimpressed. "You were waiting to talk to me all morning. You then proceeded to wait to talk to me all through lunch. It is now afternoon. Either talk to me or, you know, find some way to cease to exist."

Sam hesitated. "I just wanted to tell you that I, um, I'm... in a relationship, and-"

Toby's response was immediate and to the point. "Better or worse than a call-girl?"

Well, obviously better. Apart from the bit where it could technically be considered worse. "Well, um, the thing is- I'd say... Uh, well, you see-"

Toby looked him directly in the eye and spoke flatly. "Sam, do you have a boyfriend?"

"Um- yes." He blinked at his boss in confusion. "Did you... did CJ talk to you?"

"No. It was a logical guess."

Sam looked at Toby. Toby was looking... expressionless and Toby-like. It was decidedly unnerving. "You could at least try to sound surprised."

"I'm not."

He frowned. "Why not?"

Toby shrugged. "I always knew you were the type."

"Type-?" A flare of disbelieving anger sparked at the insinuation. "The type to be gay?" he demanded furiously.

"The type to not care."

Well, that shut him down. Toby was unsurprised by him having a boyfriend because he knew Sam wasn't the kind who would automatically rule out having a boyfriend.

Suddenly, his head hurt.

"You know what? I'm gonna- I'm gonna just, you know, go be in my office." He got up and scurried for the door.

"Sam." He turned. Toby gave him a small nod. "Try not to get caught publicly having sex, and make sure to ask your boyfriend if he's a prostitute."

Apparently this was all the relationship advice he was getting from Toby. He stopped in the doorway smiled hesitantly. "So, um, you're okay?" he had to ask.

Toby indicated his still-impassive expression. "Look at this face. Is this the face of a man who gives a damn?"

Point taken. Sam couldn't help smiling as he returned to his office.

Okay. Two down.

"Toby." CJ acknowledged his presence before she looked up from the reports she was poring over.

"CJ." He came in and closed the door behind him. She peered over her glasses to regard him with a slight smirk.

"So... do you want to talk about sex again?"

Toby gave a slight shrug. "Yes and no."

"Well, give a girl mixed signals, Toby." She stretched out her legs and leaned back in her chair.

"I spoke to Sam," he told her.

"Yeah?" She met his eyes, and then nodded slowly. "Yeah."

"He called you?" Toby asked with a single raised eyebrow.

"I called him out," CJ corrected.

He guessed what that meant. "Who?"

"Katie Jackson."

"And?"

"She's solid." Katie had only vague suspicions, and CJ thought she knew her well enough to be sure she wouldn't try too hard to verify them. This wasn't her kind of news.

Toby nodded slowly, respecting her judgement, or perhaps agreeing with it. But they were both smart enough to know that Katie's willing silence would only buy them so much time. "We need information," he said, running a hand through the remains of his hair. "Republicans, the news media, Democratic enemies... everything with the faintest whiff of homophobia."

CJ smiled, and spread her hands to indicate the reports she was reading through. "Operation Pre-emptive Homophobe Identification already underway." When this story broke, everybody and his brother were going to be all over Sam Seaborn. Nobody but the most rabid members of the Christian right would actually openly attack him for having a gay relationship - so they'd have to go the more insidious route of claiming he must have been in the closet the whole time, a betrayal of the administration's gay supporters.

She for one believed without hesitation what Sam had told her about a chance meeting with this Steven Radcliffe - but the allegations could and would get some attention. The best way to counteract that was to throw doubt on the true motives of the people who made them.

Hence, Operation PHI. They couldn't stop this story breaking, but they could make damn sure that when it did, they had every bit of ammunition they could find to take down Sam's detractors.

Toby nodded, and gave her a quiet smile of acknowledgement. "This is gonna get nasty," he said aloud.

CJ shrugged. "We've seen nasty before." She'd got it all out of her system talking to Sam; now she was geared up for the fight.

"Sam doesn't have to."

She gave Toby a smile that made him look down at the floor before he could blush. He would die before admitting it, but Toby was Sam's self-appointed older brother, and operated on the unwritten brother's code that he was the only one allowed to give him any crap. Oh, Sam was no hopelessly naïve little boy, needing to be protected, but he had... something. Something that had been missing from his eyes for far too long, and that CJ had seen a glimpse of when he she'd spoken to him that morning.

Sam Seaborn was an innocent in the truest sense of the word; not someone who hadn't seen enough of the world's evils to be jaded, but someone who'd seen them and expected good to triumph anyway. And there was something about that utter faith in the world that made cynical people like her and Toby want to shuffle around behind the scenes, surreptitiously kicking people in the kneecaps to make sure they didn't get in the way of that.

It wasn't about protecting Sam, it was about giving him the kind of world he deserved to live in. She grinned at Toby. "They come after Sam? We're kicking their asses."

Toby gave her one of his rare smiles back. He turned to go, but then hesitated in the doorway and hung back. "Operation Pre-emptive Homophobe Identification?" he asked, with a raised eyebrow.

"Operation PHI," CJ elaborated.

"Ah."

"It's a Greek letter."

"Yes."

"Plus it makes for a really cool codename."

"Which we will not, under any circumstances, be using."

"No."

Toby left.

Well, this was a turn-up for the books. Josh was parrying a continual stream of barbed remarks with wit, charm, and - shock of all shocks - a remarkably cool head.

Donna, on the other hand, was this close to leaping to the front of the studio, cameras be damned, and ripping Melissa Berrington's oh-so-neatly-made-up head off.

It had started as soon as Josh sat down, even before the cameras were rolling. Snide remarks about whether he'd be okay, would they need to dim the lights for him, should they take extra breaks and talk softly so as not to startle him. Donna's teeth had been set on edge, but Josh had just smirked and been... polite.

Scary.

And she'd been the same all through the program. Sly, smirking, sneaky remarks, never coming out and stating anything but always insinuating it. It should have driven Josh crazy - Lord knew it was working on Donna - but he just refused to be baited.

Joshua Lyman was exercising self-control. In the face of a woman with a cruel smirk, a moral code out of the Victorian era, far too much make-up, and the world's biggest helping of smug.

Okay, so smug wasn't always bad. On Josh, 'smug' was natural. He wore it like a suit of armour. But on Melissa Berrington, it was pure, unadulterated evil.

And she had Republican hair.

That was one of Josh's observations, the kind that she slapped him round the head for but secretly filed away to giggle over when he was out of earshot. Republican hair, he had explained, was a very specific type of hair, worn by a very specific type of woman. It was hairsprayed within an inch of its life, and then twisted around itself into a style Princess Leia would have rejected as too unnatural-looking. And it never moved, not one strand of it, not even in a gale-force wind. Josh's pet theory was that these women pulled their hairstyles together so tightly it squeezed their brains, thus explaining why they didn't have room for anything but the most narrow-minded worldview.

Her sister Alexia had hair like that.

So did Melissa Berrington. And she had just the narrow, vicious, Rottweiler of a mind to go underneath it. Even Mark Gottfried was beginning to look embarrassed to be sitting next to her.

So far, the only thing keeping Donna sane was contemplating whether, if she was to slap Berrington hard enough, the immobile hair would get left behind.

When they broke for commercials, Donna rushed to Josh's side, giving his opponent the most evil glare she could muster as she disappeared off. Probably to touch up her make-up again. "Okay, Icy McFrosticle," she demanded, "what drugs are you on?"

Josh smirked at her. "Icy McFrosticle?" he mocked.

"You are not Josh Lyman," she frowned. "And the reason I can tell, see, is because we have yet to be yanked off the air for breaking the rules for obscenities in a live broadcast."

Josh shrugged, and leaned back in his chair. "I'm fine, Donna. She's just a Republican blowhard. She's not even worth getting angry over."

Donna stared and him, and then very slowly straightened up and backed away. "The earth is flat," she said in tones of fear.

"Huh?"

"The earth is flat. The sun is falling. Oceans are rising. Oh my God, it's the apocalypse!"

And Josh just laughed. "It's not the apocalypse, Donna. It's just the new, more relaxed, more mature, more self-aware me."

Donna wasn't sure that explanation was any less scary.

"Okay, again I must ask - who are you?"

"Donna." Josh rolled his eyes.

Donna watched her boss's face, illuminated by the streetlights as they drove toward the airport. "Josh. You're being calm, you're being restrained around Republicans, you're being... nice." She wasn't sure how much more of this weirdness she could take.

He gave her a quick sideways glance. "I'm not nice?" he demanded, amused.

"Not usually!"

"I think I'm wounded."

"I think you're possessed!"

"Donna..." Josh sighed, and was silent for a moment. As they came to a stop at a junction, he half-turned to look at her. "I just, I feel like... It's all spinning away from me, Donna. What happened last week, I realised... I don't have anything. All I am is what I do. I'm just a politician."

"Josh-" she began, but he talked over her as they pulled out into the traffic.

"I'm just a politician, Donna, and I don't like it. I don't want to be that guy. I need to be better than that. I need..." He shrugged, as if angry at his own inability to articulate it. "I need to be a good guy."

Donna snorted. "Josh," she laughed affectionately. "Newsflash - you are a good guy! You just need to, you know, learn to act like it a bit more often."

"I'm changing, Donna," he insisted earnestly. "I'm gonna learn to be better. I'm gonna be nicer."

"Well, not that I don't applaud you, but it's not gonna last very long," she informed him. Josh shot her a look, and even in the dimness she could see genuine injury in his eyes.

"You think it's something inherent in me?" he asked quietly. "You think I'm never gonna be able to change like that?"

Donna gave him a wry smile. "Mostly? I think it's something inherent in the fact that you're about to meet my mother."

The Moss family deputation were not hard to miss. Both Donna's mother and her sister - Joletta, the middle sister, Donna had explained - had the same shockingly white-blonde hair. Both of them wore it as long as Donna did, although Mrs. Moss had hers up in a neatly practical bun.

There, any resemblance between his assistant and her family came to an end.

Joletta was certainly, at least superficially, a very pretty woman, if perhaps not quite as stunning as her younger sister. However, there was something missing; no spark to her, none of the bright perkiness that he immediately associated with Donnatella Moss. She dressed like a much older woman, and appeared to be happier studying the floor than looking anyone in the eye. She trailed behind her mother and her husband.

The husband was not hard to identify as the Republican Wisconsin gomer Donna had pegged him as. He wore a cheap suit and an obnoxious expression, and he strutted.

Josh Lyman had, at times in his life - and usually by his assistant - been accused of walking with a swagger. However, he was damn sure he'd never strutted like this guy. Josh decided he had to be some kind of minor official - a bank manager or the boss of an insurance company or something equally banal. He walked as if he was used to expecting the littler people to scurry about and do his bidding.

Josh couldn't help feeling extremely smug about his own, infinitely higher position of authority. There weren't many steps beyond Deputy Chief of Staff you could go.

His first gut reaction to the sight of Mrs. Moss striding towards him, however, was extreme nervousness. She had a light of stubborn determination in her eye that he would forever associate with Donnatella Moss, laying down the Rules when he was recovering from the shooting.

And this was the woman with whom she could not argue.

Help.

The Moss matriarch bore down on the pair of them like some kind of battlecruiser coming in to dock. "Donnatella," she barked imperiously. Josh felt an embarrassing urge to straighten up and tuck his shirt in.

"Hi, mom. Hi, Joletta." The tight smile she'd pasted into place wavered a little. "Mike."

Donna's mother sniffed loudly. "Really, Donnatella, did you iron those clothes this morning? Look at the state of you."

Donna automatically started to smooth out her blouse. "I came right from work, mom," she excused herself, while Josh wondered if there truly were people in the world who ironed clothes in the morning before they put them on. But then, he'd never quite seen the point of this desire to press out wrinkles which were only going to reappear as soon as you put the clothes on.

"Still working at this hour?" Mrs. Moss tutted disapprovingly.

"We were at the Capitol Beat studio for the live broadcast," Donna explained. "Josh drove me over."

That sounded like his cue to be his usual charming self. He smiled politely as Donna made the introductions. "Josh, this is my mother, my sister Joletta, and her husband Mike Vincent. Mom, Jo, Mike, this is Joshua Lyman."

Mrs. Moss inclined her head slightly and shook hands as if she'd like to wash her hand afterwards. Gomer brother-in-law had the kind of limp handshake he despised, and Donna's sister hung back as if it would never occur to her that she was important enough to be officially greeted. He gave her a flash of his best grin - the one which showed off those mythical 'dimples' both Donna and his mother seemed to be convinced he possessed - and was rewarded with a shy smile in return. In that, at least, he could see something of Donna.

Mike scowled at him, apparently objecting to the idea of his wife being smiled at. "Ah, yes, you're the Deputy Chief of Staff," he said, heavily accenting the 'deputy' part as if Josh should somehow be ashamed of being only second-in-command. Considering that he knew that the next step up was Leo McGarry, it was pretty hard to feel bad about himself. Mike gave him a self-satisfied smirk. "I see you've been in the news."

"Yes, that tends to happen when you work in the White House," Josh agreed pleasantly. "The smallest little thing gets blown all out of proportion."

Mrs. Moss fixed him with a laserbeam glare. "I'd hardly call anything 'small' when you work in such close proximity to our country's seat of government."

Apparently light-hearted easy charm was not winning the crowd over. He let the smile fade, and said earnestly "Well, Mrs. Moss, I do agree that in my position I'm entrusted with a lot of responsibility. But I do the job to the best of my ability, and I know I couldn't do that without your daughter there to help me."

He was rewarded with a grateful smile from Donna for that, but Mrs. Moss looked unimpressed, and Mike gave a 'yeah, right' eye-roll that made Josh want to punch him. He'd played some tough crowds - many of them over the past couple of days - but this one was going to be murder. He found he wasn't even so bothered by the jabs at his position as by the way they seemed determined to be unimpressed with Donna. He wondered how she'd ever escaped becoming a black-hole of self-esteem like her middle sister.

But still, these were Donna's family, Republicans or not, and this was the new unflappable nice-guy him. He smiled again. "My car's just outside, I'll drive you to your hotel. Would you like me to help you with your baggage?"

From the brusque way Mrs. Moss handed it over to him, he was left with the impression that he was supposed to have made this generous offer much earlier.

As they walked towards his car, Donna made an overly cheerful attempt to start a conversation in the frigid atmosphere. "So, Joletta, how are the kids?"

"Oh, they're-"

"They're doing very well at school," Mike immediately overrode her. "Thomas came top in the class in maths last term, and Susie's learning to play the piano. Her teacher thinks she may be a child prodigy."

"I used to play the flute," Donna offered.

"Ah, but you didn't stick at it, did you?" said her mother darkly. "You never stick at anything."

"I stuck at politics," Donna pointed out.

"Dreadful occupation." Josh decided to tactfully pretend not to hear that part. "And besides, Donnatella, you're a secretary. There's no reason why you couldn't find secretarial work at home if you really must persist in such a common line of work."

Okay, he definitely heard that part.

"Mrs. Moss, Donna does a great deal more than 'secretarial work'," he told her, struggling to remain civil as he lifted suitcases into the trunk of the car. Heavy suitcases. Ow. "She's my senior assistant, and she's an integral part of all my work. She goes above and beyond the call of duty to keep my office functioning."

Reflected in the car window, he caught the gomer brother-in-law's smirk which clearly spelt out his opinion of what that 'going above and beyond' must entail. Josh took a certain amount of pleasure in very deliberately stepping back on his foot.

"Oh, sorry, Mike - guess I didn't see you there."

The drive to the hotel was even more hellish. Beside him in the passenger seat, Donna kept shooting him apologetic glances at each of her mother's imperious remarks or Mike's snide comments. He learned on the way to the hotel that Mrs. Moss disapproved of: politics, politicians, Democrats in particular, him as both an employer and a person, Donna's choice of job, Donna's choice of living area, Donna's choice of lifestyle, Donna's lack of a husband, and Donna's lack of children.

On the short list of things she approved appeared to be her two other daughters, and the fact that they'd done their very best to squeeze themselves into the mould of 'perfect wife and mother' their husbands had desired for them.

On the drive home, when his car was finally, blessedly, free of all but the regular helping of Moss presence, he turned to look at her.

"So... you take after your dad?"

Donna started to giggled uncontrollably, and then leaned her head against his shoulder as they drove. And suddenly it didn't seem like such a hellish evening after all.

FRIDAY:

This was going to be the day from hell.

Forget the aftermath of Josh's most recent PTSD attack, or how worried she'd been when he disappeared after the vote went wrong. Forget days when Josh was on the rampage, the dark times surrounding the president's MS coming out, forget even that hideous period when she'd narrowly scraped past perjury charges.

Today, her family were coming to see her at work.

Happy birthday to me.

All her frantic arguments this morning had counted for nothing. Mrs. Moss had decided she was coming to Washington, and here she was. Mrs. Moss had decided she was coming to the White House, and here she would be. Might as well try and hold back the tide.

She wasn't sure what was worse; the thought of all her friends getting to see the horrible truth of where she came from, or her mother being given free reign to pick the whole of her life apart. And pick she would.

Josh deserved some kind of a medal for not running screaming from what he'd witnessed last night, and he'd only got the beginning of it. Donna herself had received a much longer lecture over the phone that night, and this morning.

Her mother appeared to have some kind of weird mental split going on when it came to Josh. On the one hand, he was Donna's boss, and she should: be more respectful, not be so dreadfully over-familiar, and not be so undignified as to 'fawn over him'. Donna still wasn't exactly sure how her mother had arrived at the word 'fawning' as a suitable label for her interactions with Josh. On the other hand, he was a scruffy, uncouth, untrustworthy, mentally suspect liar of a politician, and she ought to be wary of him.

In conclusion, her mother believed that her boss was a scumbag, but that it was Donna's place in this world to bow and scrape and be respectful to scumbags - especially male scumbags - because they were 'more important' than she was.

It wasn't hard to see where her self-esteem issues had come from.

But, no, she wasn't that weak-willed girl anymore. She was Donnatella Moss, Deputy Deputy Chief of Staff, speaker with presidents - well, one president - maker of government policy (occasionally) and all-round impressively successful human being. She could do anything she put her mind to.

Apart from win an argument with her mother.

She stomped into the office in a foul mood, what little birthday joy she might have been feeling completely squashed by the looming prospect of Mama Moss invading the White House.

Maybe she could go out to a payphone and anonymously call in a terrorist alert...

"Donna!" Josh bounced out of his office to grin at her.

She glared at him suspiciously. "Okay, you've got to stop with this being bright and cheerful early in the morning. It's scary."

He beamed at her, and whipped a package out from behind his back. "Happy birthday, Donna!"

Bad mood. Bad mood. Bad mood. Nope, dammit, it was slipping away.

Josh made her extend her hands and pressed his present into them. Flat. Rectangular. Hard. Another book?

Josh bobbed impatiently. "'Kay, are you gonna open that, or are you intending to absorb it by osmosis?"

Donna pulled a disappointed face. "Okay, it's not a stereo, a car or a package holiday..."

"Open it!" he commanded. She rolled her eyes at him, and did as ordered. It seemed to be a picture frame... Was she relying on Josh's eye for art? Uh-oh. She turned it over to look at the picture.

Awww...

Okay, she was going all misty-eyed. Beside her, Josh grinned. "It made me think of you," he said softly.

It was a cute framed illustration, like something from a children's book or a greetings card, of a rumpled-looking teddybear. It sat in a sad and lost-looking heap amidst piles of books, whilst another bear watched from the corner with one hand - paw? - covering an amused smile. Beneath the picture was written 'Hopelessly lost without you'.

And it was... it was completely... awww.

She gave Josh a hug. "Happy birthday, Donnatella," he said gently.

Donna smiled up at him. "Ban my mother from the White House?" she asked optimistically.

Josh laughed, and squeezed her before letting go. "Alas, some things are beyond even my powers."

"Many, many things," she agreed, regaining her composure.

CJ appeared in the doorway. "Donna!" The press secretary charged over to give her a quick hug. "Happy birthday! Did Josh give you his present yet?"

"Yeah," Donna nodded, shooting her boss a quick smile.

"Massively inappropriate?" CJ asked, with a pointed eyebrow.

"Cute." Donna tilted the picture towards her, and CJ smiled at it. She gave Josh a quick pat on the head.

"Good boy."

Josh quickly ran a hand through his hair, as if it was possible for CJ to have made it more mussed than it usually was. "Well, thanks, and now I think I'll go get my chew-toy," he said dryly.

"You can do that after staff. Come on." CJ hauled him away. She turned back to Donna as they left. "Have a great day!"

Small chance of that. Still, Donna couldn't help sneaking another look at the picture and smiling to herself.

She wasn't sure how long this 'I wanna be a nice guy' epiphany of Josh's was going to last, but she was certainly gonna make the most of it while it did.

Leo straightened up as Josh and CJ entered the room. "Okay," he said without preamble. "Healthcare is dead. It's over, it's done, and we're moving on." He glanced at CJ. "The best way to get rid of this bad news is to make more news."

"Yeah, that's what I'm afraid of," she quipped. Sam gave her an almost imperceptible look, and she flashed a gentle smile his way.

Either not noticing or ignoring this byplay, Leo said "We're turning our attention to the Peterson thing."

"Single parent families," Sam supplied quickly, back on top of his game at last.

Leo nodded. "Josh, I want you to take some meetings. This thing's still in the development stages, and they want to make it more palatable to Congress. See what you can get them to take about child healthcare benefits."

Josh clicked to it immediately. "From the old bill?"

Leo nodded. "CJ, emphasise to the press that we don't give a damn about losing the healthcare package, we care about getting legislation enacted. One way or another, we're getting these changes through."

CJ nodded and made a quick note. "Want me to blame Congress again while I'm at it?" she smirked.

"Tell them Congress is like a cranky child," Toby supplied. "If they won't swallow it whole, we cut it up into smaller pieces."

"Hopefully avoiding any temper tantrums," CJ agreed.

Leo nodded, satisfied. "Anything else?"

"It's Donna's birthday," Josh informed the room. "And I should warn you, her Republican family are gonna be invading the White House."

Leo raised an eyebrow. "How many of them are there?"

"Three."

"We can take 'em," he said dryly.

"Oh, you say that now. Wait 'til you meet Donna's mother," Josh said.

"Idiot boy." CJ whapped him lightly about the head. He blinked at her.

"Okay, but I expect you to retract that after you've met her."

"Everybody out," Leo ordered. "Josh, say hey to Donna for me."

"I will."

Sam hung back. "Leo, can I have a minute later?"

"Grab Margaret, find a space," Leo shrugged, already focused on the work on his desk.

"Thanks." Sam followed Toby out, and Josh looked after him curiously. He turned to CJ.

"Is there something going on with Sam that I should know about?"

CJ could only give him a noncommittal shrug. "I'm sure Sam'll fill you in in good time."

"Yeah." But Josh still looked faintly pensive.

"Donnatella!"

Why couldn't the earth swallow you up when you wanted it to?

"Hi, mom!" she smiled falsely. "Welcome to the White House."

Her mother seemed typically disgusted with the level of bustling activity going on all around them, and Joletta was wide-eyed with intimidation. Donna took some measure of satisfaction from the knowledge that her sister would probably collapse with a nervous breakdown after five minutes of doing her job, but only a small amount. It was her snooty older sister, Alexia, who needed taking down a few pegs. Joletta was just... sad. Donna wished she could find some way to imbue her middle sister with a backbone, but it had taken her long enough to wake up and find her own.

I could've ended up like that...

If she'd caved to her mother's wishes years ago, it might have been her and the infamous Dr. Freeride locked together in the same sort of parasitical relationship her sister had with the awful Mike.

If she held onto that thought, maybe, just maybe, she could make it through the day with her soul intact.

She led her family to the area where she worked. "Okay, this is my desk, that's Josh's bullpen, that's Ed and that's Larry-"

"Hi, Donna."

"Hey, Donna."

"-Or possibly the other way round," she admitted with a shrug. "This is Josh's office-"

Mike stuck his head inside, and sneered. "My office back at the company is much bigger than this."

Donna rolled her eyes. "This is the West Wing, Mike. Other than the one up the hall that's big and Oval, they're pretty much all like this."

Her mother sniffed, loudly. "Disgraceful state the man keeps his desk in. Honestly, how can he possibly find anything in that chaos?"

That was one of Donna's own favourite refrains, but right now she'd die before she admitted it. "Josh is a very busy man, mom. He knows where to find things when he needs them."

Okay, now she was lying through her teeth. Her family were turning her into a moral vacuum.

And there was no end in sight. Donna prayed hastily for Josh to return from his meetings with something vitally urgent for her to do.

Or, failing that, a quick and painless death would do in a pinch.

"Sam. You wanted to see me?" Leo nodded at the young Deputy Communications Director, his attention still largely focused on his work.

Sam hovered awkwardly. "Um, yeah," he said.

After a few moments of silence, Leo abruptly straightened up and put his glasses aside. "What is it, Sam?" he asked, slightly impatient.

"I, um, I just wanted to give you a heads up on-"

"Spit it out, Sam," he suggested, feeling the beginnings of a headache coming on. What now?

Sam brushed his hair back from his forehead nervously. "Okay. Yeah. I just wanted you to know that I'm in, I'm in a relationship which could possibly be, um, construed as-"

Leo gave him a sharp look. "Is this Mallory?" he said dangerously. He thought that little bad idea had been blown out of the water long ago.

Not that the idea of Sam Seaborn dating his only daughter was necessarily such a terrible thing. In theory. Sam was a good kid.

In practise, however... hell, no. Not on his watch.

But the excessive amount of foot-shuffling going on suggested that this was a bigger thing for him to swallow than even that. Not the call-girl? No, not even Sam would... "Then who?" he demanded.

Sam gulped, and looked at the floor. Then he made himself straighten up and look Leo in the eye, almost challengingly. "His name is Steven Radcliffe," he said firmly.

Aw, hell.

Leo heaved a very heavy sigh, and rested his head in his hands. It was gonna be one of those days.

"Leo?" Sam said hesitantly, after a moment. He raised his head.

"Who knows about this?" he asked briskly.

"Me, Steve, CJ, Toby," Sam answered promptly. "Also possibly Katie Jackson."

"Katie- the reporter Katie Jackson?" His headache was suddenly a hell of a lot larger.

"She happened to know Steve personally and saw me with him, so she asked CJ if I was dating him."

"And what did CJ say?"

"CJ said she had no idea, 'cause at the time, CJ had no idea."

"And what happens when-"

"Katie's not gonna make this a thing," Sam said firmly.

"Maybe not, Sam, but somebody's gonna make this a thing," Leo said pointedly.

"I understand that, Leo, but-"

"Do you?" he snapped. Then he rubbed his forehead, and sighed. "Sam..."

"Leo, I understand that this could get nasty," Sam said softly. "Steve understands that this could get nasty. But this is... I'm not prepared to give this up."

"Okay." Leo had made plenty of personal sacrifices for his job; but he could not, in good conscience, ever ask anybody else to do the same. Sam stood before him, head held high, the picture of the white knight ready to go into battle for what he thought was right.

You couldn't knock that. In times like these, you just couldn't knock that. It was something too precious to smash, no matter what nightmare political consequences it might bring.

Sam was young, single and unattached, and it was okay to be gay. There was absolutely no reason why this should be a thing.

But what did reason ever have to do with it?

"We can't take another coverup, Sam," Leo told him. "Whatever else happens... we can't take that."

"There's not gonna be a coverup," Sam said firmly. He nodded his head slowly, and added "I'm taking my cue from Toby."

Leo gave him a sardonic look. "Toby has a boyfriend now?"

Sam gave him a small smile in return. "Toby says we've gotta stop caring about what things look like, and just do what we know is right."

He nodded. "Okay."

"Okay?"

"Okay." Leo slid his glasses back on and contemplated for a beat. "You don't lie, you don't hide, you don't sneak around. But you don't make any announcement, and you don't go around telling everybody who'll stand still long enough."

"Don't ask, don't tell?" said Sam dryly, raising an eyebrow.

"They ask, you tell," Leo said firmly. "And they will ask, sooner or later." 'The truth will out', so they said, and never was that truer than in a town full of politicians and reporters. "But until then, you just... do what you do."

Sam nodded, and then shrugged at him. "Leo, I just... I just have to be who I am."

Leo glared at him over the top of his glasses. "What is this, a Broadway musical? Get out," he ordered. Sam smirked, and did as commanded.

But when he was at the door, Leo had to call him back. "Sam?" The younger man turned to look at him, and he gave a single, pointed nod. "Okay."

Sam flashed him a brilliant grin in return. "Okay."

The president appeared in Leo's doorway. "You were talking with Sam?"

"Yeah," he nodded, shuffling paperwork on his desk.

The president gave him a sharp look. "Anything I should know about?"

Leo looked up and met his eyes. "Sam'll tell you, if and when," he assured him.

"Okay."

The president hovered, seemingly at a loose end for something to do. Leo watched him for a few moments, then put his glasses aside and folded his arms. "Are you nervous about the First Lady coming home this afternoon?" he demanded.

"No!" said the president, too defensively, slipping his hands into his pockets. Leo rolled his eyes.

"Okay, what did you do?"

"Nothing!" He quickly and blatantly changed the subject. "Is there anything happening? Something I should be doing?"

"Running the country, possibly?" The president gave him a look, and Leo shrugged. "Seriously, there's not a lot we need your input on right now. Josh is taking some meetings about the Peterson thing, Sam and Toby are cutting an early draft for this thing in two weeks' time, and CJ's getting our new mission statement out to the press."

"We have a new mission?"

"Yeah."

"And nobody thought to inform me?"

"We didn't think you needed to know," Leo said. "Oh, and it's Donna's birthday," he added. The president tilted his head.

"Our Donna?"

"Yeah."

He nodded slowly. "Okay, I'm gonna go-"

"Embarrass her hugely in front of her friends and family?" he guessed.

"Her family are here? Bonus!" said the president cheerfully. Leo watched him go, shaking his head.

Josh, come back. Please come back. Please come back.

She was beginning to have flashbacks to a week ago, when she'd been praying for Josh's safe return after he'd disappeared in the wake of the lost vote. Only this time, it was her own sanity she was worried about.

This was a nightmare. She'd hoped that the impressive nature of their surroundings would at least cow her family into being better behaved, but apparently it wasn't so.

"Donna, we worry about you." Her mother was giving her the guilt-voice. Hah, and Josh thought she was good at laying it on. "Out here all alone, no family-"

"I have friends here, mom," she insisted, vaguely indicating the rest of the West Wing. "These people; they're my friends."

"Donna, why won't you come back to Wisconsin?" her mother continued, relentless. "I know you want your independence-" she made it sound like a dirty word - "but we can find you another job, and you can be close to home. And that nice Alec Johnson was asking about you just the other day; remember when you used to date him?"

"Mom, that was high school!" Donna rolled her eyes. Alec was a vaguely remembered blob in her memory, a few dates - nothing hellish, nothing incredibly spectacular either. And she wasn't anywhere near the wide-eyed and innocent young girl she'd been back then, believing that any boy who'd look twice had to be better than none at all.

The phone at her desk rang, rescuing her for a few precious moments. She diverted the caller, and looked up to see her mother shaking her head. "So this is the 'vitally important' job you do all day? You answer the phones?"

Oh how she wished that had been the Vice President or Nancy McNally or somebody equally important, instead of some nobody Congressional aide.

"Mom, I do a lot more for Josh than that."

"Oh, of course you do." Mike leered at her, and she entertained briefly a fantasy of the look on her mother's face if she leaped across the desk and punched him in the centre of his ratty little smirk.

Of course, she'd probably get dragged away by the Secret Service.

Talking of... She was suddenly aware of a certain dark-suited presence in the bullpen, and then-

"Ah, Donna!"

"Mr. President!" Donna flew to her feet as her family suddenly gaped. "If you're looking for Josh, he's in a meeting with-"

"No, actually, I just came by to see you," he waved her away.

"Sir?"

He smiled at her. "Am I given to understand that today would happen to be your birthday?"

"It would," she admitted, smiling shyly. "How did you know?"

"Would you believe I remembered from last year?" he tried.

"In a word, sir? No." President Bartlet's inability to remember dates was only surpassed by his legendary lack of success with names.

He laughed. "Okay, okay, Leo told me." He pointed sharply. "And I'll have you know he didn't remember either, it was Josh who reminded him."

"And he only knows because I bugged him for a week." Donna rolled her eyes exaggeratedly. "It amazes me they let you people run a country."

"I often think so," he agreed dryly.

"Sir, you didn't come all the way down here just to wish me a happy birthday?" she asked disbelievingly. She'd grown a lot more comfortable being in the presence of their great leader over the last few years, but even so...

"I did," he nodded. "In fact, I was thinking of ordering the bullpen to give you a rousing chorus of 'Happy Birthday'..."

"Oh no." She buried her face in her hands.

The president smirked at her. "They have to do what I tell them, you know."

"Sir, I could still tell the First Lady how you threw away all your vegetables last time we were on Air Force One," Donna told him.

He gave her a mock-angry glare, and nudged the Secret Service agent beside him. "She's threatening me here, aren't you supposed to do something about that?" The agent remained impassive, and Donna smiled. The president rolled his eyes, then turned to her flabbergasted family. "Ah, you must be Mrs. Moss?" He shook her mother's hand enthusiastically. "It's an honour to meet you, you've raised a fine young lady here. I can't imagine what we'd do without her."

Her mother, for once, appeared to be mercifully speechless. Oblivious, the president turned to Joletta. "And you must be Donna's sister. What's your name, young lady?"

"Joletta, Mr. President," she said shyly, blushing furiously. Mike immediately pushed in front of her.

"And I'm her husband, Michael Vincent," he said, puffing out his chest. The president gave him a look as if he was trying quite hard not to laugh at him.

"Yes, yes, nice to meet you," he said dismissively, turning back to Donna's sister. "Joletta, is it? That's a beautiful name. It means violet, doesn't it?"

"Yes sir," she said, still blushing. Donna smiled at him.

"Sir, is there anything you don't know?"

The president looked shifty. "Maybe one or two things, but don't let it get around."

She laughed, as Charlie came into the bullpen. "Ah, Mr. President, there you are. You have a meeting with the Swedish Ambassador in the Oval Office in four minutes."

"Thank you, Charlie," he nodded. He turned back to Donna and patted her on the arm. "Well, Donna, you have a great day now. And tell Josh I gave you the power to fire him if he misbehaves."

"Yes sir," she smiled as he left the bullpen, his Secret Service escort trailing after him.

She turned back to her open-mouthed mother, and gave her a slight smile. "I'm sorry, mom, what were you saying-?"

Her mother worked her jaw silently for a moment, and then finally gathered enough momentum to speak. At that point Josh appeared, followed by a trio of Congressmen. "Donna!"

"Joshua." She efficiently fell into step beside him as he crossed the bullpen.

"Happy birthday, Donna," said one of the Congressmen, and the others all chimed in with their good wishes. They'd all had plenty of dealings with her in the course of their work with Josh.

"Thank you. Josh?" She looked at her boss expectantly.

"Okay, I need-" She handed him a folder. "Thanks. And the notes on-" She added a sheaf of paper on top of that. "And you included-?"

"Page fifteen." He quickly flipped to it, scanned it and nodded.

"When's my next meeting?"

"Twenty minutes. Mural room. And Cal Robinson wants to talk to you."

He looked at her. "Can you take that?"

Normally she'd argue about getting dumped in at the deep end, but with her family looking on? Hell no. "Sure."

"If he starts blowing steam, threaten to choke off his funding."

"I'm on it."

"Great." Josh headed towards his office, nodding at her mother in passing. "Oh, hi, Mrs. Moss. You'll have to excuse me. Matters of national importance."

Professional cool still fixed in place, Donna rotated on her heels to face her family. "Okay, mom? I'm sorry, but I'm gonna have to show you guys out. I have to take a meeting."

Her mother's gape, Mike's bulging eyes, and Joletta's look of delighted wonder made this whole morning seem more than worth it.

It was a considerably more subdued Clan Moss that Donna led out of the White House. On their way, Sam fell in beside her. "Hey there, Donna."

"Hey, Sam." She turned to her mother. "Mom, Joletta, Mike? This is Sam Seaborn, the Deputy Communications Director for the White House."

"Pleased to meet you," he said cheerfully, shaking hands with all of them.

Her mother recovered a little more of her equilibrium, and ran an appraising eye over the neatly-turned out Sam. "You're a friend of Donna's?"

"Yes ma'am," he said politely. "And may I just say that it's honestly a great pleasure to work with your daughter."

"Well, aren't you a charming young man?" she observed. "Are you single?" she asked sharply.

"Mom!" Donna went bright red with embarrassment, but Sam just laughed.

"Sadly, no," he admitted with a grin.

"Hmm, pity," tutted her mother. She looked at Donna. "You could do worse."

"Okay, mom, I'm really gonna have to leave you here now," she laughed. She breathed a heavy sigh of relief after her family were finally out of earshot. Disaster averted.

Donna turned back to Sam as they walked, and fixed him with a determined look. "Okay, Samuel 'I'm Not Single', spill your guts," she commanded.

Sam smiled slightly, and ran a hand through his hair. "You know, I seem to have been having this conversation a lot, lately..."

"CJ."

The press secretary looked up as Sam appeared in her doorway. "You've spoken to Leo?"

"Yeah. I've been..." He shrugged. "Telling people."

"Okay." Best to track the progress of that, though she somehow suspected that if the news of Sam's romantic entanglement was going to spread from anywhere, it wouldn't be the West Wing. "Who?"

"You. Toby. Leo. Donna."

She frowned. "You haven't spoken to Josh yet?"

Sam looked awkward. "No," he said to his shoes.

CJ set aside the paperwork she was looking at. "Sam. You don't seriously think he's gonna be-?"

"No," Sam cut her off quickly. "No," he repeated, running a hand though his hair. "It's not that- I just... It's gonna be weird. I've known him forever, and it's gonna be... weird."

She offered him a sympathetic smile. "Josh'll be fine. You know he will."

"Yeah." Sam sighed, and leaned back against the wall. "It's just that I... I feel like we don't know each other very well anymore. It seems like we barely... There was this whole time when we didn't, we didn't talk, and there wasn't even any reason for it."

CJ nodded slowly and sighed. "Yeah."

He flashed a quiet smile. "But things are better now." He snorted sudden laughter at his own words. "Which is... really stupid, what with... everything... but I think it's true."

"It is," she agreed. They were still in the middle of a season in hell but somehow, after all this time, they'd managed to all link up and start facing the same direction. Suddenly it felt like they were back in the days when 'bring it on' was more than just a bitter joke.

"Yeah," said Sam softly, and for a moment they were both silent. Then CJ straightened up the papers on her desk with a brisk movement.

"Okay." She looked up at him. "Sam, you need to tell Josh. And the president."

"I know," he said, with a marked lack of enthusiasm, and CJ felt a twang of sympathy. Of course the president wouldn't react badly, but still... Talking to Leo and then the president had to be like coming out to your parents twice... and so far as she knew, Sam hadn't even spoken to his real parents yet.

"I'm just saying, one day that phone right there is gonna ring, and-"

That phone right there suddenly started ringing. They exchanged a look.

"Let me just get that." She picked up the receiver. "CJ Cregg." A few moments later, as the news on the other end sank in, her eyes grew immeasurably wider. "Okay, you know what? I'm gonna have to get back to you on that."

"What is it?" asked Sam nervously, as she carefully set the phone back down as if it was a poisonous viper.

CJ met his eyes. "I just got asked if the White House is prepared to comment on the news that Charlie Young and Zoey Bartlet have been hiding the fact that they're engaged."

Sam's eyebrows shot up. "Okay. Um." He cleared his throat. "You know what?"

"What?"

"I think talking to the president about my thing can probably stand to wait a little while."

"You think?"

"Yeah."

"Yeah."

"Is this for real?" Leo demanded.

"Looks like it," said CJ tightly.

"Is this for real?" he repeated furiously.

"Carol's got the wire piece," she nodded. "Whether it's true or not, the story's definitely out there."

Leo took a deep breath. "Okay. Where are Charlie and Zoey?"

"At a basketball game."

"Basketball?" he said disbelievingly.

"Charlie's kid sister's playing," Sam supplied.

"Can we get 'em out of there?" Josh wanted to know.

"Not without making a thing of it," CJ shook her head.

Josh rubbed his forehead. "Okay, I don't... why would they keep getting engaged a secret?"

"Several billion good reasons," Toby pointed out dryly. "Most of them named Jed Bartlet."

They all looked at Leo. "What's he doing now?" CJ asked.

Leo pulled a face. "Trying to convince the Secret Service to let him invade the game."

Everybody winced.

"Oh, it gets better," he added. "The First Lady's plane is practically on the tarmac. She'll be touching down in a matter of minutes."

"Does she know?" asked CJ warily.

"No, and you're about to tell her." CJ looked less than thrilled, and Leo gave her a sharp look. "You'd rather have the president do it?"

Point taken.

"How bad is this?" Sam asked.

"If the press thinks she's hiding from her father, we're in a whole heap of trouble," CJ answered.

"Is she?" Josh wondered aloud.

"I think they're both hiding from a whole lot of people who wouldn't like it for no good reason," Sam said quietly. They were all silent and sober for a moment, remembering all too well the events of several years ago.

Sam met Leo's eyes. "We've gotta give them our full support, Leo. Nothing less."

Leo shrugged at him. "It's the president we've got to worry about," he reminded them.

"Rick Weston married Liz, and he's still alive," Josh pointed out. Leo gave him a sharp look.

"Rick Weston didn't work in the same state as the president, Josh, let alone the same office."

"What's our first move?" CJ asked him.

Leo hesitated for a long moment, then made a decision. "We alert Zoey's detail." He cracked a smile, without much amusement. "If nothing else, it'll give Charlie a chance to flee the country."

"Abbey." Leo met the First Lady as she came powering through the White House corridors, at speed.

"Leo," she nodded briskly in acknowledgement.

"CJ spoke to you on the phone?"

"She did." Abbey came to a stop, and turned to face him. "I don't need to ask you what the president's doing, because I know exactly what he's doing."

"Can you make him calm down?" Leo asked, not particularly optimistically. She shot him a wry look.

"Not soon enough to help Charlie."

"You gotta make him sleep on it," Leo told her, and she nodded slowly.

"I can do that."

"In the morning..."

"Oh, he'll still be mad."

"Yeah," Leo agreed. "But hopefully, a little less homicidal."

"I'll see what I can do," she nodded. Abbey started walking again, and then abruptly turned, and gave him a bright smile. "I think it's about damn time," she added as an afterthought.

Political complications be damned, Leo grinned right back. "Yeah."

Her husband was ranting and raging, pacing the length and breadth of the bedroom as she entered. He didn't look surprised as he turned and saw who had interrupted him - who else would dare walk in right now?

"What were they thinking?" he demanded hotly. "Abbey, in God's name, what were they thinking?"

"They were scared, Jed," she reminded him softly.

"They're just kids!" he fumed, throwing out a hand in anger. "They shouldn't be getting married!"

She moved in closer. "We were younger."

"And circumstances were very different." His voice grew softer as she stepped into him, flattening her hands on his shoulders. He tilted his forehead down to meet hers. "They're going to crucify him, Abbey," he said quietly. "They're going to tear him apart, and there's not a damn thing any of us can do about it."

"I know," she said, relieved to see that he still had it in him to be concerned for Charlie.

But the anger was far from spent, and a moment later he pulled away from her and stormed across the room. "I can't believe they would do this! I can't believe they would be so stupid as to do this!"

"They're young, Jed," she said, with a tired smile. "Young and in love."

"Too young!" he bellowed. He turned towards her. "She's just a little girl," he said quietly, and for a moment he looked so lost that he seemed barely more than a boy himself.

"You know that's not true," she said, though it was hard enough to feel the truth of it herself. Their children were grown, even their granddaughter was not so far away from turning eighteen. So why was it that she could still peel back the years and see Jed as a shy twenty-year-old, peering at her furtively with bluer than blue eyes behind long lashes? She could still see the boy as clearly as she did the man who'd taken his place, each a part of her life too precious to take back a single part of, good or bad.

What more could a mother wish her daughters, than that they find a second soul as she had done? Could Charlie be that to Zoey?

She thought so. She really did think so.

And she knew, underneath it all, that Jed believed it too. But Zoey was still his baby girl, and he didn't want to let her go.

Jed let all the air flow out of him in a heavy sigh, and Abbey thought he looked as tired as she'd ever seen him. She sighed herself, and moved in to touch his cheek. "Come to bed, Jed," she suggested gently.

He smiled, and kissed the palm of her hand, but didn't bother to make even a token joke about her trying to jump his bones. "I'm waiting up," he said. "For Zoey and Charlie." His face darkened, and she could see the storm-clouds under the surface. He might be still and quiet now, but if either of them entered this room any time soon, there'd be a shouting match to end all shouting matches.

And it was as much for Jed's own protection as for Charlie's or Zoey's that she couldn't let that happen. "No you're not," she told him gently.

"I want to talk to them," he said firmly, and she smiled at him wryly.

"It's not happening, honey, so get used to it. They're not coming to the White House, not tonight."

"I'm the President of the United States," he said sharply. "They'll come if I say so."

"If you talk to them now, you'll say something you'll regret."

"I won't do that in the morning?" he asked her, with a quirk of an eyebrow. She kissed his cheek, and pulled him against her into a close hug.

"I won't sleep," he murmured against her neck.

"We both will," she told him firmly, and led him over to sit down on the bed. With a resigned smile, he began loosening his tie. This battle was over, at least for tonight.

Later, however, as they lay against each other in the darkness, she found sleep not so quick to steal over them as she'd hoped. After a long moment she sat up, and looked at her husband's shape in shadow. "What did you want to talk to me about, Jed?" she finally asked.

His eyes were twin gleams in the darkness, and she was conscious the slight movement of his jaw that she didn't have to see to know for a soft smile. "It's not important," he told her.

And she accepted that, and curled up against him, though she knew from the way his voice had sounded Thursday afternoon it wasn't true.

But... not tonight. Whatever it was, it could wait.

The crowd had pretty much dispersed, but Charlie stayed, waiting for Deena - whoops, sorry, that should be 'Deanna'. Apparently the way she'd used to shorten her name was no longer cool enough or grown-up enough or something for her. She insisted that everybody call her by her full name now, sounding out all the syllables carefully instead of blurring it all together. Except when she forgot, which was quite a lot of the time.

Well, his sister might be under the impression that she was a grown-up now, but he was still her big brother, and it was still his duty to protect her. Of course, if anything actually happened, it was likely that it would be his girlfriend's Secret Service detail who ended up doing the actual protecting, but still... it was the principle of the thing.

Talking of... he glanced across to where Zoey's agents had requested she wait with them. They didn't like her being alone here in the dark – although, to be fair, they'd been a long way from thrilled when she'd been here in a crowd in the dark. At least they'd let her come. He'd been afraid they wouldn't, and this was a big match for Deanna. Of course, he could have - would have - come alone if he'd had to, but it wouldn't have been the same.

He'd sworn his life away to Zoey a week ago, and he didn't regret it. He wanted her to be in all of it, to share all the things that were important to him. And this was only a basketball match, but it mattered to Deanna, and so it mattered to him.

He frowned as one of Zoey's agents leaned in to speak to her, and her face suddenly paled. With one quick glance to make sure his sister wasn't yet emerging from the building, he quickly jogged over to meet her.

"Zoey, what's wrong? Did something happen to your father?" He couldn't think what other news could be coming through the Secret Service radio, although it surely couldn't be that serious if they weren't already hustling her towards the car...

Zoey turned wide, suddenly frightened eyes on him. "Yes," she said quietly. "We did."

"We-?"

"He knows, Charlie." She clutched at the chain around her neck. "I don't know how, but... he knows. And the press know."

Charlie swallowed slowly. The president knew about their engagement. Knew that he, Charlie Young, had asked Zoey Bartlet to marry him. Knew that the two of them had decided - for reasons which had seemed so clear mere moments ago, and now seemed so hard to remember - that it would be okay provided they just didn't tell anybody. The engagement would be safe and sacred provided it was only known between the two of them.

Oops.

It must have been the rings. Stupid, stupid, stupid. It had seemed so important, so vital to the spirit of the pact they'd made. Why hadn't he got them... charm bracelets or watches or... matching lapel-pins or something? Anything, anything, that didn't have 'secret engagement' written all over it.

Zoey was looking steadily more panicked at his silence. He reached out quickly, and covered her hand with his own. "It'll be okay," he said softly. And somehow, in saying it to her, he made himself believe it.

They could do this. They could get through this.

Deanna came bounding up on her long legs, sports bag slung over her shoulder. "Hey, what's up?" She came to a halt as she saw their sober faces. "Okay, seriously. What's up?"

He exchanged a look with Zoey, and then softly squeezed his hand in hers. He turned to face his sister. "Zoey and I just got engaged."

Deanna, apparently forgetting that she was a mature and adult human being now, squealed loudly. She threw her arms around Charlie, and then did the same to Zoey. "Really? You guys, that's great! What took you so long?"

"Just stupid, I guess," Charlie shrugged. But he and Zoey both knew that this was a lot more serious than his little sister realised.

When Deanna had finished throwing herself at the two of them, he held her off and turned back to Zoey. "Does your father want to see us?"

"In the morning," she said, in tones of dread. That was a meeting neither of them were looking forward to.

Zoey was the love of his life. They were engaged, and no matter what happened or how long it took, one day he would marry her. He was ready for the disapproval, he was ready for the media barrage, he was ready for the hate-mail.

He just wasn't sure he was ready for Jed Bartlet.

They all got into Zoey's car, and the driver took them back to his and Deanna's apartment. He pushed his sister out of the door and turned back to Zoey.

"Are you gonna be okay?"

"Sure," she shrugged, with false bravado. He leaned down to kiss her on the cheek.

"I love you."

"I love you too." She hesitated, and then reached for the clasp at the back of her neck. She pulled off the ring, and dangled it from its chain for a long moment. Then she tugged it free. Charlie held out his hand, and she placed it in his palm.

With a smile, he knelt down beside the car, paying no mind to what he might be kneeling in, and slid the ring onto her waiting finger. "Zoey Patricia Bartlet, will you marry me?"

"Didn't we do this already?" she giggled. Charlie gave her a loving squeeze.

"You're hopeless, you know that?" he murmured into her hair.

"Gimme!" she said, clapping her hands together, and with a snort he handed her the ring from around his own neck. She pulled a mock-serious expression. "Charles Young, will you marry me?"

He leaned back on his heels. "Well, I don't know," he pretended to deliberate.

Zoey closed her hand around the ring. "Then you're not getting your ring back," she told him smugly. He rolled his eyes.

"Okay, I'll marry you."

"Too late, you're not having it back." Charlie leaned into the car and kissed her on the lips, then grabbed for her hand. She giggled as he prised her fingers apart. "Okay, okay! Let me put it on you."

"All right." He held out his hand, and she slid the ring into place. When she looked up at him, the laughter was gone, replaced with something that made his heart tighten in his chest.

"I love you, Charlie," she said softly.

"And I love you," he answered sincerely.

"Goodnight." Reluctantly, he pulled back, and let the door close and the limousine pull away. He couldn't see through the tinted windows, but he knew she was waving furiously anyway.

He turned back towards the apartment building, and saw Deanna standing in the doorway, watching him. "Hey, what're you looking at?" he demanded with a smile.

They went inside.

SATURDAY:

The phone rang, and she jumped. Did she dare to answer it?

Get a grip on yourself, Zoey! Of course she dared to! So what if it turned out to be some idiot reporter? She loved Charlie, and they were engaged. She didn't have anything to be ashamed of.

She just hoped it wasn't her dad.

Zoey picked up the phone. "Hello?" she asked tentatively.

"Morning, sweetheart."

"Mom," she breathed in some relief. At least her mother wasn't out to rip her head off.

Hopefully.

"I hear you've got some news you've been a little slow to share with us," the First Lady observed pointedly.

"Mom, I-"

"I understand, honey," she said, and Zoey let out her relief in a rush of air.

"I'm so sorry, mom," she babbled, "we never meant to-"

"It's okay, it's okay," her mother reassured her. "I know, sweetheart, I know."

"Is dad really mad?" she asked in a little-girl voice.

It was her mother's turn to sigh. "He's calmed down a little since last night, but still-"

"I want to be with Charlie when he goes to see him," she said firmly.

"Zoey, that's not a good idea."

"Mom-"

"I know you want to, but it's not a good idea. You need to give your father a chance to see Charlie as the boy he adores. If you go in there together, he'll only see him as the man who's stealing his daughter."

"You think that'll work?" she asked quietly.

She could picture her mother's wry smile. "Give him time, Zoey, give him time."

"Yeah."

The only problem was, when you were the daughter of the president and your engagement was making the international news, exactly how long could you afford to wait?

Donna gave her boss a sideways glance as they stepped out of the car. "I can't believe you're doing this voluntarily."

He shrugged and smiled. "I keep telling you, it's the new me."

"The new you needs his head examined."

"So did the old me."

"Well, at least you're consistent."

They both turned to flash twin smiles at Donna's mother as she got out of the car with excessive dignity. Josh walked around to open his trunk, and this time picked up the bulging suitcases without bothering to verbalise the offer. Donna noted that Mike made no effort to assist him, so it was left to her and Joletta to grab the two lighter cases.

Her mother had been... quieter, after the events of Friday morning. She'd been shaken rather forcibly out of her favourite position that Donna's job wasn't classy or important enough to justify keeping it. Still, she supposed it had been too much to hope for a complete personality transformation overnight. And besides, her mother still had her second favourite point to fall back on.

"Surely, Donnatella, if you see all these people from day to day there must be some eligible bachelors among them." Apparently politicians were now fair dating game once her mother had realised there was no prising her daughter away from the White House.

"I'm not really looking-"

"Really, Donna, how are you ever going to find yourself a man if you won't make an effort? There must be plenty of young men with good prospects, if you would only take the time to introduce yourself and let them know you're available..."

It was going to be an unbearable wait for the flight to touch down.

Donna eagerly and gratefully accepted the opportunity to duck off into the restroom with Joletta a few moments later. There was a momentary stab of guilt at the idea of leaving Josh to the not-so-tender mercies of Mike and her mother, but she killed it with the thought that he'd only had to put up with her family for a few - admittedly voluntary - hours. She'd been stuck with them her whole life.

She realised as she and Joletta stood side-by-side in front of the mirror that it was the first time in this whole visit that they'd actually been alone together. It was as if her middle sister was barely allowed to exist outside of being an extension of her husband or mother.

Donna knew that if she'd stayed in Wisconsin with her family, the exact same fate would have awaited her. She shot her sister a sideways glance in the mirror. "So how're things going?" she asked softly.

Joletta gave her a smile that had a sad edge to it, but still in some way seemed a little brighter than her expression when she was with Mike. "Oh, you know, the same. Always the same," she said, a little wistfully. "You're so lucky. Doing what you do, meeting all these people..." She shook her head. "I still can't believe my baby sister spends her days running round the White House, giving back talk to the president!"

Donna laughed. "Oh, it's not usually like that," she explained hastily. "I guess the president was just in a playful mood. He gets that way sometimes."

Joletta barked a disbelieving laugh. "Donna, don't you get it? You know him well enough to say what he's usually like!"

She shrugged, embarrassed. "Well, you know, I joined back in the first campaign, and he was just the governor then. And he can be a little scary sometimes, but he's... he's really nice. And so's the First Lady."

"He seemed really friendly," Joletta agreed, and then blushed. "I can't believe he talked to me!"

Donna smiled at her. "Why shouldn't he talk to you, Jo?"

"Because I'm..." she shrugged. "I'm nobody."

"Oh, don't say that-"

"No, it's true." Joletta flipped back her hair from her forehead and sighed. "You went out there and did what you wanted, Donna, and look at you now, taking over the world. And I just stayed at home and got married to Mike." There was a bitter twist to her mouth as she said her husband's name.

"But you've got Tommy and Susie," Donna pointed out.

"Yeah." Joletta sighed. "I just hope... I look at Tommy some days, and I worry he's just growing up into a mini-Mike. Isn't that terrible? To look at your kids and just find yourself praying they don't turn out anything like their dad?"

"I don't think it's terrible," she said, shaking her head. Joletta shot her a look.

"No, of course you don't. Because you told me right from the start that I should never have married Mike." She sighed. "He think's he's so... he's so important. But you know... I come here, I meet all these people you work with, and they're... they're really important. And they're nothing like Mike, nothing at all."

Donna gave her a cautious smile, unsure of what to say. After a moment, Joletta smiled back.

"Maybe I should give him the boot," she said reflectively, and grinned, suddenly girlish. "Wouldn't that give him a shock?"

"And mom," Donna agreed. Joletta laughed.

"Maybe," she said wistfully. "Maybe..." And for the first time in a long while, Donna allowed herself to be hopeful about her middle sister. Maybe this trip had been just what she needed to open her eyes to what her life was really like.

"We should get back out there and rescue Josh," she said, after a moment.

"Yeah. I like your boss. He seems really nice too," Joletta observed. Donna rolled her eyes as they left the restroom.

"Trust me, I'm as surprised as you are."

She would not have been incredibly surprised to come out and find said boss attempting to throttle Mike, but he was just standing listening to her mother, smiling. Politely, rather than out of any actual enjoyment, but still... for Josh, that was really something.

Oh, God, her mother was still going. "...She needs to find herself a nice young man and settle down. Do you know anyone suitable?"

"I'll get right on that," Josh said wryly.

"Okay, mom, please tell me you're not encouraging my boss to pimp me out to politicians?" she groaned.

Her mother looked disapproving. "Donnatella, must you be so crass?" Josh just laughed.

"This is our flight coming up," Joletta observed. Mike immediately took charge.

"Right, it's-"

"I know where I'm going, Mike," his wife cut him off. She grinned at his startled expression, and Donna gave her a surreptitious thumbs up.

Donna exchanged kisses with her mother and sister, and studiously avoided giving one to her brother-in-law. Hopefully, soon-to-be ex-brother-in-law. She only prayed Joletta would have the confidence to go through with it.

"Call me," she ordered her sister as they waved goodbye. She knew she wouldn't need to extend the invitation to her mother. Still, when your family were in a different state, you could avail yourself of the wonder of technology that was call-screening.

As always, it was Mama Moss who had to get in the last word. "Are you sure that nice Sam Seaborn isn't available?"

Donna just laughed, and waved her family off. Finally, they were out of sight. Thank God.

Josh turned to look at her with a frown. "Sam's not single? When did he get... un-single?"

Oh, boy. How was she supposed to answer that one?

She shifted uncomfortably. "You don't... you don't talk very much to Sam anymore, do you?" she evaded.

Josh looked puzzled for a moment, and then saddened. "Yeah, you're right," he realised. "We haven't really... I should do something about that. I should be a friend."

"You're a great friend, Josh," she said, and meant it. She didn't even want to think about what hell this family visit might have been without him putting himself out to help her.

He smiled, and they shared a brief hug right there in the middle of the airport.

"Family, huh?" Josh said with a smile.

"Yeah. I love 'em to bits... from a distance." Donna gave a relieved grin.

"Apart from your brothers-in-law."

"Would you be scared if I told you Mike is the nice one?" Josh pulled a horrified face, and Donna giggled. "I feel less bad about Derek, though. He and Alexia deserve each other."

"Joletta's a lot like you, kinda," Josh observed.

"Yeah. That's who I would've been, if I'd settled down with a gomer like I nearly did." She sighed. "Still, I'm hoping... I think Jo's beginning to see what she's been missing."

"How could she not?" Josh smiled fondly at her. "When she's got a sister like you to look to for an example?"

Donna pulled away and gave him a sharp look. "'Kay, Josh? There's 'making an effort', and then there's 'freaking the hell out of me'."

He just laughed, and laid a hand on the small of her back as he steered her towards the car. "Come on. Let's get back."

"I hope Charlie's doing okay," she worried, as they headed back to the White House.

"Yeah." Josh looked pensive for a moment, and then shrugged. "Ah, what are we worried about? Zoey and Charlie are perfect for each other. The president might be blowing his stack about it, but he knows it's true."

"Yeah." They drove on in comfortable silence.

The West Wing fell sympathetically silent as he passed. Nobody met his eyes, and the friendly greetings that usually met him were noticeably absent. Everybody was holding their breath.

CJ and Sam approached, and he cracked a hesitant smile. "I feel like I'm walking to my execution."

CJ gave him a stern look. "You've caused me a major-league headache." Then she smiled, and gave him a hug. "But congratulations, anyway."

"Congratulations, Charlie." Sam shook his hand with a bright smile.

Charlie was finding it a bit difficult to muster a smile of his own. "Is he-?"

"He's in his office."

"Yeah." Not what he'd been going to ask, but hey. He wasn't sure he would have liked to have heard the answer anyway.

CJ gave him a quick grin. "Relax, Charlie. I can handle the media on this. And if it gets too bad, I've got a handy little back-up scandal to throw them."

"Huh?" he frowned.

"I'll fill you in later," Sam said. He indicated vaguely in the direction of the Oval Office. "In fact, I could fill in the president too, if it'd help."

"Thanks, but I think it's gonna be too late to save my life," Charlie said sincerely.

He walked on.

"Charlie!" The young man jumped out of his skin as she intercepted him, and Abbey couldn't help smiling.

"Relax, Charlie, I'm not gonna bite your head off," she promised.

"And why would you need to, when you've got the president to do that?" he observed dryly.

She smiled and clapped him on the shoulder, then figured what the hell, and leaned in to give him a kiss on the cheek. "He'll come around," she promised.

"But how soon?" Charlie wanted to know.

That, she couldn't answer. "Want me to walk you in to the Oval Office?" she asked instead.

Charlie shook his head. "Thanks, but I think I've got to do this alone."

"Good luck," she said softly.

The look on his face as he approached the Oval was nothing short of dread, but he set his shoulders and kept walking. Brave, and determined; yes, he was definitely good future son-in-law material.

Provided Jed didn't kill him first.

Charlie took a long, deep breath. And then another one. And then he wondered how long it took for hyperventilating to knock you unconscious. And whether the president would still attack him if he was collapsed, out cold, on the floor.

No. No, dammit, he was going to do this properly. He was going to march right in there, look the president in the eye, and say loudly and proudly "Sir, I'm marrying your daughter."

Of course, that approach might have gone down better if he'd followed it before that fact had hit the national newspapers.

Oh my God, I'm gonna die.

It was funny that he could be totally light-headed at the same time as his limbs felt too heavy to drag. He didn't think he'd even been this terrified at Rosslyn. Then it had all happened too fast to register much of anything, and besides; a bullet to the chest would be one thing, but the choking fear of the president's disappointment was quite another.

The president must know he was here. Every second he lingered must be reinforcing the impression that he was a coward, a man who didn't even have the courage to admit to his proposal to his future father-in-law, let alone the world.

No, it wasn't like that-

He hadn't wanted this. Really, he and Zoey hadn't wanted this. They'd just wanted to be able to be in love, in a world that wouldn't let them. They'd both known that it was ridiculous to even contemplate getting married while Josiah Bartlet remained in the White House, but they'd wanted it so badly, they'd believed that if they kept it a secret they could still hold onto that hope.

And now it had all come crashing down around their ears.

No. Not all. Charlie looked down at the engagement ring, at last on his finger where it belonged instead of on a chain around his neck. He closed his fingers around it. Something solid, something tangible, a proof of his promise. Maybe it wasn't particularly usual for the guy to wear an engagement ring as well, but he'd wanted to carry the twin of Zoey's, the way their wedding bands would one day be. A symbol that his promise was just as real for the both of them.

He loved Zoey. He was going to marry her. And he couldn't let her down.

He opened the door, and stepped inside the Oval Office.

The president's eyes were laser-beams, ice-blue and perfectly cold. He stood stock-still, outlined against the windows, and Charlie didn't think he'd ever been more afraid of him. His employer could rant and rave with the best of them, but this was a different thing, his real anger, the kind that he turned only on those who had hurt him too deeply to forgive.

"So. You came," he said tightly.

"Sir, I-"

"No!" He knew the president could roar, but it still made him flinch. "Don't you stand there and 'sir' me! I took you in, I gave you this job, I gave you and Zoey my blessing! And this is how you repay me?"

There had been words, once, hadn't he had words that he was going to say? Under the force of the president's fury, they melted and streamed away like butter under a blowtorch.

"I trusted you, Charlie!" he bellowed. "I trusted you with my daughter, and you lied to me!"

Now was not the time to point out the difference between a lie and a sin of omission. Now was definitely not the time to point out the hypocrisy inherent in forgetting that fact now and remembering it full-well when it came to the revelation of the president's MS.

The president's voice grew lower now, and somehow even more menacing. He stepped closer to Charlie, and it took every fragment of willpower he had not to back away. "I trusted you, and in return you sneak around behind my back. And when would you have told me? Were you ever going to tell me? Or were you planning to run away together? Get married without telling me?"

Charlie was shaking his head adamantly, but his voice felt like it had been choked off somewhere down in his throat. "Sir, we didn't-"

"You didn't what? Think, Charlie, you didn't think!"

"Mr. President-" His voice broke. "We only wanted- We never meant- I'm sorry," he said miserably.

"Oh you're sorry? You're sorry?" The president's expression grew even more wild, and for one crazy moment Charlie actually feared he was going to hit him.

And then from somewhere, maybe from the ring on his finger or just from somewhere deep down in his heart, came the will to shout right back. "Yes, I'm sorry! I'm sorry that we hid the fact we wanted to get married, I'm sorry that we had to! I'm sorry that here we are in the twenty-first century and it's still not okay for me to be in love with your daughter! I'm sorry that we can't walk down the street together without worrying somebody's gonna shoot us! I'm sorry that I can't hold her hand without a new truck full of hate-mail arriving at the White House. I'm sorry that here, in the land of the free, I cannot say I want to marry your daughter because there are people who would rather die than let that happen!"

He straightened up and set his jaw. "But I'm not sorry that I love her, and I'm not sorry that I want to marry her." His breathing was coming raggedly now, but his voice was firmer and steadier than it had ever been. "And if you're gonna hit me, Mr. President, then you just go right ahead, because I don't care what you think and I don't care what you say. I love your daughter, and whatever happens, I am going to marry her. Are you gonna hit me?"

"No." The president was quiet for a long moment, all the anger bleeding out of his face until he looked shrunken and tired and old beyond his years. Then he looked up, and met Charlie's eyes. "No, never. You're my son. I love you." He pulled Charlie into his arms and held him close against his chest.

Charlie laid his head against the president's shoulder and tried to hold back the tears that were threatening to spill over. They stood that way for what felt like forever, and then the president said softly "I'm sorry, Charlie. Everything's changing, I... sometimes it scares me. Sometimes I don't know how to be sure it'll all work out in the end."

Charlie pulled back and looked at him with confidence. "It will, Mr. President. It always does."

The president smiled faintly, and then shook his head. "I don't want to hear that from you, Charlie," he said forcefully. "Not now."

He didn't understand. "Sir, I-"

"I don't want you to call me that." The president reached up and took Charlie's face between his hands. "You don't call me that. Not when we're alone. You call me dad."

Okay, and now he was crying. "Okay."

The president smiled, and kissed his forehead. "Come on now, son." He led the younger man over to the couch and they sat down together, as father and son.

"Hey."

"Hey." Sam smiled and sat back as Josh appeared in his doorway. The Deputy Chief of Staff hovered awkwardly, seeming uncomfortable.

"So... Charlie still alive?"

Sam hesitated. "There was... shouting. But now it's all gone quiet."

"Ah."

"Yeah." Good or bad sign, who could say?

"So... you wanna go grab some lunch or something?" Josh shrugged.

"Sure." He laid aside his work and stood up. It was funny, but he had much more of an appetite lately. There'd been a period when it was difficult to muster any enthusiasm for eating at all.

He felt about thirteen years old trying to pin all the sudden changes in his attitude on one new relationship, but the fact was that having Steve was a big part of it. It was like having an anchor, somebody there for him outside of work to stop him getting swept up in a tide of depression and carried away. The fact that Steve was a guy was immaterial, or should be. It was the fact that Steve was his that mattered.

They walked down to the White House mess and picked up their food. "So, what did you want to talk to me about? Peterson? Sex-Ed?"

"No- no," Josh cut him awkwardly. "I, um, I just..." He hesitated. "Donna mentioned that you were seeing somebody."

"Oh." Oh. "Um, yeah. About that, I..." Josh cut him off with an upraised hand.

"No, let me finish," he said quickly. "Anyway, Donna mentioned that, and I just realised that, you know, she knew and I didn't. I... We..." He threw up his hands. "We don't talk anymore, Sam! Why is that? What happened? When did we stop being friends?"

Okay, apparently this conversation wasn't about what he'd expected it to be about. Sam sighed heavily, and looked at Josh seriously. "I don't know," he admitted. "We just... I don't know, maybe it's my fault, I've been so-"

"No," Josh refuted firmly. "No, it's me. I've had my head up my ass for so long, I've forgotten how to be a friend."

"Josh..." Sam ran a hand through his hair and shrugged. "Seriously, I, it's as much me as it is you. I've been... depressed, I guess. I was feeling so bad, I just didn't want to talk to anybody." He offered his old friend a bright smile. "But I'm better now. I feel a lot better."

Josh nodded slowly, and focused on his meal. After a moment, he spoke up suddenly "So, uh, you're seeing somebody?"

"I..." He laughed nervously. "Okay. Okay. This could be a little-"

"You can tell me anything," Josh insisted earnestly, looking him in the eye.

Sam hesitated, and then blurted. "I'm dating a guy."

Josh choked on his coffee. He coughed for a moment, and then met Sam's eyes. "Okay. Would this be by way of getting me back for being inattentive, or-?"

"This would be by way of being reality," he admitted.

Josh blinked for a few moments. "Ah... okay, have I been way more detached than I thought, or is this, you know, new?"

"It's new," Sam confirmed with a quick nod. He hesitated for a long moment. "Are we, you know... okay?"

"Sure," said Josh, too quickly. But then he smiled, and laughed at himself, and shrugged. "We're okay," he agreed.

A moment later, they were back to talking policies and strategy. And Sam decided maybe they were okay, at that.

"Daddy?" Zoey hesitated in the doorway. As her father smiled and held his hands out to her, she rushed forward in relief.

"It's okay, sweetheart, I'm not mad at you," he promised, kissing her hair affectionately.

"I'm sorry, daddy," she choked. "We just didn't want to- we didn't want-"

"I know, honey, I know."

As Zoey pulled away from her father's arms and ran to embrace Charlie, Abbey reached out and squeezed her husband's hand. He smiled gently at her, anger broken as she'd known it would be. By all accounts the shouting from the Oval Office had terrified passing staffers, but when she'd earned eternal admiration by daring to step inside, she'd found her husband and future son-in-law sitting quietly together. They'd both looked a little tearful, and not from anger or distress, either.

"You're a wonderful father, Jed," she told him softly, pressing a kiss to his cheek. He smiled and cocked an eyebrow.

"I'm not a wonderful husband too?" he demanded lightly.

She pretended to look him up and down. "Oh, I think there's still room for improvement."

Before he could summon a playful rejoinder, Charlie and Zoey turned to face them, hands still entwined. Looking at them together, Abbey was at a loss as to how anybody could see Charlie's dark fingers wrapped around Zoey's light ones as anything other than beautiful.

Jed smiled at the two of them. "And I guess now you're gonna be thinking about setting a wedding date? About twenty years in the future sounds about right," he added, with a definite growl back in his voice. Just because he'd resigned himself to giving away his little girl didn't mean he was going to do so easily.

"We're willing to wait until after the end of your term in office," Charlie told him quickly. "We were going to anyway," he explained, with a rueful glance at Zoey. Abbey couldn't imagine how hard it must be for them, wanting so desperately to be able to promise themselves to each other and constrained by politics and prejudice. No wonder they'd felt the need to make some kind of secret pact.

As if reading her mind, Zoey piped up "Mom, dad, I'm so sorry we kept this as a secret. We just didn't... we didn't want all this fuss to happen."

Abbey smiled and gave her a quick hug. "Sweetheart, I understand why you did it. But I wish you could at least have told your father and I." She sympathised completely, but the fact was that 'First Daughter hides engagement from parents' made for even messier headlines than if it had been publicly announced.

"I know," Zoey said miserably. She looked at the floor for a moment. "Is all this publicity gonna be a really bad thing?" she asked quietly.

Her father smiled fondly, and clapped her on the shoulder. "Well, that's what I've got a press secretary for," he said comfortingly.

"Okay. What do we do now?" Charlie asked, still clasping Zoey's hand.

Jed smiled. "We have an engagement party." Abbey shot him a look. "Just a small, private affair," he said quickly. "We'll have it tomorrow night - why wait? Just us, a few of the staff - and, Charlie, bring your sister. This should be about family."

"Okay," Charlie said, beaming. Abbey wasn't sure what had transpired between the two men after their shouting match, but the absolute devotion the young man displayed to her husband was shining stronger than ever.

Jed was still in paternal mode. "Now, the two of you won't be able to go out together for the moment, I'm afraid." They both nodded soberly. "But if, you know, somebody should happen to have asked the White House stewards to set up a lunch table for two in one of the-" Zoey cut him off by launching another big hug.

"Thanks, dad!" she said delightedly.

He smiled down at her. "You two go on and celebrate now." He kissed her on the forehead.

"Come on, Charlie!" She grabbed her fiancé by the hand and practically dragged him out of there.

Abbey smiled, and leaned against her husband's shoulder. "Young love is so beautiful."

"And it only gets more beautiful with time." He kissed her, gently, and when they finally parted, she laid her head against his chest to look up at him.

"I love you, Jed."

"I love you too." He took a deep breath, and for a moment seemed sad.

"Jed?" she asked softly. That one syllable, the name that could mean so many different things, just as hers could when he said it in return, was enough of a question.

Jed closed his hands around her own, and led her over to the couch to sit down. "Okay," he said quietly. "Abbey, I have something that I probably should have told you much sooner than this..."

Leo stopped as he saw the First Lady coming towards him. "Abbey." His automatic smile twisted into a frown as he noticed that she looked slightly tearful. "Is everything okay?"

"Oh, I'm fine," she brushed him off with a smile. "It's just..." She took a deep breath. "My little girl's getting married."

"Yeah." Leo grinned back. "Is he-?"

"Oh, he's cooled off, like we knew he would."

"Still, wouldn't want to be in Charlie's shoes for a while."

"No." She shook her head slowly in wonder. "It's all so... so hard to believe. Is it really so long ago that they were all toddling around the farmyard falling over their feet?"

"It's really not," Leo said, thinking of Mallory. His little girl, that he'd missed so much of growing up. The Bartlets were lucky.

No, not lucky. They deserved everything they had with their children; Jed Bartlet knew how to be a good father. He was the lucky one - lucky that Mallory had still managed to turn out all right despite his best efforts to screw up her childhood, lucky that she was even still prepared to talk to him.

Abbey sighed heavily, perhaps caught up in reminiscing as much as he was. "I just wish..." She shook her head. "Sometimes I just wish things could stay the same."

"I know what you mean," Leo sighed in agreement. "Yeah, I know what you mean."

Everybody looked up as Leo entered the room. It was Josh who first plucked up the bravery to ask. "Leo, is he-?"

"Charlie is alive and well," he reported. Even though they all knew that the president wouldn't really do anything to his young aide, the sigh of relief that rippled through the room was in no way feigned.

CJ leaned forward in her chair. "How are we gonna handle this?"

"Nobody has anything to be ashamed of," Sam spoke up.

They all exchanged brief glances, and then Toby gave a single, brisk nod. "All above board. They've been dating four years and America knows it, now they're getting married."

"Problem is the impression that they wanted to keep it a secret," CJ pointed out.

"Waiting for the right moment," Josh shrugged.

"To announce to the public, sure," she shrugged back. "Waiting to tell her parents... not good."

"People are gonna think the president doesn't approve," Sam surmised.

"The president... does approve, right?" Josh asked Leo.

"Beyond the initial objection that Charlie is A; male and B; intending to marry his daughter? Sure."

"We should sell the press that," Toby spoke up. Leo rolled his eyes.

"That the president's behind the engagement? Well, thank you for that advanced lesson in public relations, Toby."

"No, what you said," Toby corrected. "The president's an overprotective dad, and the press have occasion to know it."

"I can work with that," CJ nodded. "Family values on both sides; the young people wanting to marry and the father looking out for his daughters. Plus we point the press at the 'Charlie must be brave as hell' angle."

"And boy, does that need emphasising," Leo agreed, raising his eyebrows. Not even he, with his long association with the president, would relish confronting him on such a touchy subject. He shuffled papers as the others grinned. "Okay, is that all?"

"One more thing," CJ added, pulling a face. "Inevitably, there are gonna be rumours."

"Rumours?" asked Josh. They all frowned at her in puzzlement, and she rolled her eyes.

"Okay, I sense you boys have never stuck around a wedding discussion long enough to hear the inevitable gossip. The first item on the agenda is almost always the question of whether the blushing bride... has good reason to be blushing."

"They're gonna think Zoey's... in the family way?" Sam asked delicately, as if even thinking about attaching the word 'pregnant' to one of the First Daughters' names might bring presidential retribution.

"Yeah."

"She's not," said Leo, without a shred of doubt. Paternal protectiveness or not, he was more than positive that Zoey Bartlet would tell her parents if that was the case.

"Amazingly enough, that's not likely to be a major factor in the discussion," CJ said dryly.

"How to we kill that before it leaves the ground?" Josh wanted to know. Unfounded rumours in gossip columns would probably never go any further than that, but still, none of them wanted Charlie and Zoey to have to put up with that kind of nastiness. They were going to have a rough enough time of it as it was - no matter how well CJ controlled the spin, there were sections of society who would never see the president's daughter engaged to a black man in anything other than a prejudiced light.

"Well, the most obvious thing is to keep Zoey on display. I really wouldn't blame her if she wanted to hide away in the Residence for the next six months until the press attention looks like dying down a little, but we really can't afford the way that might look. Second, and perhaps more importantly, it can't be a hasty wedding. This is gonna have to be a nice, unhurried, respectably long engagement."

"Believe me when I assure you we will have no trouble selling the president that," said Leo dryly.

"It would be better if they didn't get married until the end of our second term," Josh pointed out hesitantly.

Leo nodded slowly. "It would - but nobody here is gonna decide that," he said firmly. His conversation with Abbey earlier had led him to dwelling on Mallory and his own family life. He'd made some terrible choices in his time - he sure as hell wasn't prepared to press such important decisions on anybody else. "We have to think about the administration, but not at the expense of what's right for the people in it." Sam rewarded him with a brilliant smile for that.

Josh shifted in his seat awkwardly. "Okay - and I acknowledge I'm getting a little ahead of ourselves here - but how's it gonna look if we end up with the president's son-in-law working for him?"

Leo shrugged. "He had the job before the romantic involvement - screw it."

"I'll write that down," said CJ dryly.

There was a sudden knock, and they all scrambled hastily to their feet as the president entered. "Sir," Leo nodded.

There was no trace of the towering rage he'd been showing that morning, but the president's jaw was set with a firm determination as he swept his gaze across them all. "Well?" he asked pointedly.

"We're handling it," Leo assured him.

The president apparently wanted a little more detail than that. "CJ?"

To her credit, CJ didn't hesitate. "Mr. President, there are gonna be some questions about why Zoey didn't announce her engagement as soon as it was made."

The president shrugged. "Tell them we were waiting to have the party."

They all exchanged puzzled glances. "Sir?" Leo questioned.

He smiled at them. "The engagement party we're having tomorrow night."

"Sir, it's a little short notice-" CJ observed carefully.

"Ah, it's strictly informal," the president waved off her concerns. "Just a little private gathering to celebrate before we let the whole world in." To listen to him, no one would have known that he was ranting and raging about the engagement scant hours ago. "Family and friends; you're all invited."

He turned to go, and Sam straightened up. "Mr. President? I was wondering if I could have a word?"

His brow wrinkled, but then he shrugged. "Sure, Sam. Come on through."

Sam turned to Leo for permission, and he nodded the younger man on. "Go ahead, Sam."

As he left the others exchanged glances, all suspecting what the speechwriter wanted to tell him about. "Boy, the president's gonna be wondering what universe he woke up in this weekend," Josh observed quietly.

"What was it you wanted, Sam?" The president smiled brightly at him as he settled into the couch. Behind the smile he seemed a little drained, though, and Sam felt momentarily guilty about burdening him with yet another complication. Hadn't he seen enough of those recently?

Still, the important thing was to get it out in the open.

"Sir, I... I wanted to tell you that I'm in a... potentially problematic relationship."

"Well, this would seem to be the week for it," the president said dryly. "Who is she?"

He took a breath. "Well, actually, sir, she is a he, and his name is Steven Radcliffe."

The president just nodded. "Okay."

"Sir?" he had to query, and the president casually waved a hand.

"Bring him along to this thing tomorrow night," he suggested.

Sam had to smile in disbelief. "Uh, Mr. President-"

The president looked up at him. "It's a party, Sam, you can bring a date. Does everybody know?"

"Um, pretty much," he agreed, thinking that he'd have to tell Charlie at some point. And Bonnie and Ginger - that should be an interesting experience.

"Well, there you go then," said the president, with a cheerful lack of concern. "Bring him along, I'm sure everyone's dying to meet him."

And that would appear to be the end of the discussion. Sam left the Oval Office, shaking his head and smiling quietly to himself.

Late that night, Jed lay curled in bed beside his wife, trying to sleep. He knew it would take more than a single night to banish the aching weariness that seemed to creep up on him sooner every day. It felt as if he was caught up in a neverending cycle; he could never rest quite long enough to reduce the weight of hovering fatigue, and every night that he missed sleep it grew a little larger.

Still, he couldn't deny that he'd felt some kind of weight shift off his shoulders when he'd finally spilled everything to Abbey.

As if she was attuned to his thoughts - something he'd often been convinced of - she stirred beside him, and turned to look at him. "Still awake, honey?" she asked, and he heard a slight quiver in her voice that she might have hidden better at another time of day.

"Yeah," he admitted softly, wishing he had some foolproof way to banish that shred of fear, but the only way was lying and it was too late for that now.

"You should have told me sooner," she said gently, reaching out to touch his hair. Not accusing, only concerned.

"I-" I was scared. I wanted it to go away. "I thought it wasn't- It still might be nothing."

"And it might not be."

"I know." And that was it, that was the crux of the matter, the part that it was easier to step around and pretend didn't exist. What if it wasn't nothing?

What if it wasn't nothing?

Even now he almost wished he could take back his honesty, pretend a little longer so he didn't have to contemplate the answer to that question.

Abbey snuggled closer against him in the dark. "Whatever happens, you've still got Liz and Ellie and Zoey," she reminded him. "And now you've got Charlie too." Yes. His family, his children. Whatever else was taken from him, he could never lose that. The light that kept him going.

"And I've still got you," he said softly, and pressed a kiss to her lips.

And for a while, at least, there was no room for being afraid.

SUNDAY:

"Okay, this is... I don't mind admitting I'm a little nervous." Steve tied and untied his bowtie several times.

Sam smiled at him. "You have an invitation. We're dating; I'm bringing you as my date."

"Yeah." He frowned at his reflection, and yanked the tie loose again. "I can't help noticing we went from 'I want people to find out when they find out' to 'hey, come and meet my boss and all my friends' kinda fast."

"I move fast when I know I'm in the right."

Steve had to smile back. "Well, okay. But I know what you said about your job and everything, so-"

"My friends are cool," Sam reassured him. "Probably rolling their eyes and wondering what the hell I'm gonna get up to next, but... they're cool. And they're dying to meet you."

He pulled a face. "Well-"

"And I'm dying to show you off," Sam added. "And that bowtie is tied already, so can we go?"

Steve rolled his eyes and allowed himself to be led towards the door. "I've known you like two weeks and it's like being married, already."

"I know." Sam gave him a slow smile. "I kinda like it."

They didn't hold hands as they headed out to Sam's car, but they didn't conspicuously not hold hands, either. People could figure it out when they figured it out.

"Mr. President."

"Ah, Toby." The president stood up, and Leo copied the motion.

"Hey, Toby. Did you need something?" It was a while yet before the scheduled start of the engagement party.

"I wanted to talk about the Sex-Ed package." Toby caught the face Leo immediately started making, but ignored it. "Sam and I have put together some material, and-"

"Toby, is this the best time for this?" Leo scowled pointedly.

"Will there ever be a better time?" he demanded forcefully. There was always an excuse for not committing; be it their slump in popularity, the loss of the bill, the revelation of Josh's PTSD, the unexpected news about Charlie and Zoey... maybe next time it would be Sam's personal life, and by then there was sure to be something else looming on the radar...

Talking with his old professor had been a forceful reminder of just how far he'd wandered from the revolutionary he'd once been. In the beginning, the whole Bartlet administration had been a pack of educated rebels, ready to take on the system and change it from within instead of without. But they'd been hit by difficulty after scandal after harsh blow, and like every other political entity since the beginning of government, they'd folded in on themselves for defence, put survival over reaching for the stars.

Well, it was time that they stopped. If they didn't remember who they were supposed to be, why should they survive?

"Leo, we can't pull back on our goals. We can't walk around them or run away from them. Yeah, we're in a tough spot, but the tough spots aren't going anywhere."

He could see that his words stirred a response in the Chief of Staff, but Leo slowly shook his head. "Sex-Ed's an impossible sell, Toby."

"We don't have to make the sale," he insisted, "we just have to get out there and let everybody know we're hawking it. Leo, this is a battle that we have to suit up for. This isn't about intangibles. This isn't about 'our way' and 'their way'. This is about teaching our children what they need to know. The only possible reason not to do this is because we're afraid to."

He took a breath, and turned his attention to the president. "The best way to be anti-abortion is to be pro-education. We can't force people to teach these things but by God, we owe it to the public to get that debate out there. If nothing else, then let it be our legacy that we left the American people better educated than when we came into office."

The president met his fiery gaze for a long moment, and then slowly nodded. Leo looked to him for guidance. "Mr. President?"

"Toby's right," the president said heavily. "We can't sit around on our asses waiting for things to get better. If this last two weeks taught me anything, it's that we don't know what's coming round the next corner. We have to make our mark now, before we lose our chance."

Toby thought for a second he read something troubling in the tone of the president's voice, but he let it slide as he straightened up under his leader's gaze.

"Go after this one, Toby," the president ordered. "We might not be able to hit it out of the ballpark, but we're gonna let everybody in the bleachers see us take a damn good swing at it."

Even Leo, doubts and misgivings aside, couldn't stop a wide grin from splitting his features.

"Yes, sir!" Toby agreed, with military fervour.

The Bartlet administration was back in the game.

"Okay, Sam?" Steve said slowly. "I can't help noticing, forgive me if I'm being a little presumptuous here, but this would appear to be... the White House."

Sam smiled to himself. "Yes."

"Ah. And when you said 'Steve, I work in politics', you couldn't perhaps have gone into a little bit more detail?"

"This way." Sam nodded at a few people in the lobby and led his companion into the West Wing.

Steve shook his head. "Jesus, Sam, when you were talking about getting your name splashed all over the newspapers, I thought you were just-"

"Being melodramatic?"

"Worrying about something a little smaller than- Sam, this is the White House," he said urgently.

"Yeah," Sam led him through the communications bullpen, standing empty at this time on a Sunday. "And this is my office."

"Whoa, wait." Steve stopped dead. "You have an office?"

"And it has a door and everything." Sam tapped his fingers against said door to make his point.

"Sam-" He pulled Steve into his office and closed the door behind them. "Who are you?" the younger man demanded.

"I'm just-" He shrugged. "I'm just a guy who works here. That's all. I'm just a guy."

"Who works here."

Sam smiled, and tugged him closer. "Just relax, okay? This is just... a place I work. It's just a thing I do. It's not the most important thing about me."

That, right there; that was the centre of it. That was the truth that he'd almost forgotten, and nearly sunk without trace because of it. He'd forgotten that he wasn't wholly the Deputy Communications Director, mouthpiece of the administration, living and breathing politics and condemned to choke on it when the parts of it that were pure and simple started to twist or disappear. He needed a life outside that, a place where he could just be Sam Seaborn. Of course, in political terms he hadn't chosen the most convenient place to find it... but that wasn't the important thing.

That shouldn't be the important thing.

"Okay." Steve reluctantly returned his smile. "It's just a little-"

"It's just a job," Sam insisted. He gave Steve a brief hug. "Take it easy, okay?"

"Okay," he agreed, and pressed a quick kiss to Sam's temple.

The office door flew open.

"Well, I hope very much you're Steven Radcliffe."

"Yah!" Steve jumped as if he'd been shot, and Sam couldn't help laughing.

"Good evening, Mr. President."

The president smirked, and extended a hand to the still shell-shocked Steve. "Pleased to meet you, son. I'm Jed Bartlet."

"I... actually knew that, sir," Steve pointed out dazedly, shaking his hand nervously as if the president might decide to crush his fingers at any moment. The president was obviously amused by his overwhelmed demeanour.

Sam gave his country's leader a sharp look. "Okay, this is just the whole reason you asked me to bring my date along, isn't it?"

"I'm not allowed to have a little fun?" he demanded innocently. Steve made a slightly strangled noise, and the president patted him on the arm amiably. "You're doing fine, son," he reassured him. "Now, come along and join the others, I'm sure they're all dying to meet you."

He left, and Steve stared after him. Sam grinned at him. "Hey. How're you doing there?"

"Your... boss's... daughter's engagement party?" Steve said slowly, remembering how Sam had described this little gathering to him. Sam patted him on the shoulder.

"Welcome to my life," he shrugged. "It's not too late to run away," he added. Joking - but still, perhaps, a little nervous...

Steve took a deep breath. "I don't know. Maybe I'll stick around a while."

Sam smiled, and threaded his fingers through Steve's.

They went out to join the others.

"Hey, mom."

"Hey, sweetheart." Abbey smiled as her daughter came over to join her. "Shouldn't you be with Charlie?"

Zoey rolled her eyes exaggeratedly. "We got engaged, mom, not superglued together. Besides, it's not like we're used to spending every last second of the day together."

"All the more reason to make the most of it while you can," Abbey advised. Trite, motherly advice, but true all the same. She hadn't really realised quite how ever-present her husband had been until his job had stopped him being so.

Zoey sat down beside her and gave her a worried look. "Mom, is something wrong?" she asked tentatively. "You seem a little... I don't know."

"Mother's prerogative, honey." She gave her daughter a quick squeeze. "You all grow up so fast - sometimes it doesn't seem real."

"Mom." Zoey gave a long-suffering sigh, but then grew more serious. "It is happening fast," she admitted. "Everything's changing. It's a little bit scary." She hesitated, her eyes seeking out Charlie across the room and a grin crossing her face as she found him. "It's good... but it's still a little scary."

"I know," Abbey agreed, wishing that all changes they were facing could be as good and clean as a long-overdue engagement. "But we're family. Whatever's coming up, we're all in this together."

"Yeah." Zoey beamed. "And now Charlie's part of the family too."

She hopped down from her seat and scurried across to join him. Abbey watched fondly as Charlie absently slipped his arm around her and she pillowed her head against his shoulder.

Family.

Deciding she'd stood alone for long enough, she went searching for Jed.

"Hey." Donna gave Josh a quick smile.

"Hi. Did you meet Steve?"

"Yeah."

Josh took a sip of his drink. "He seems nice," he said thoughtfully.

"He does." She eyed him cautiously. "But I'm surprised you're not bouncing off the walls worrying about media attention."

"Yeah." Josh gave her a half-smile. "But no. It's... it's good. We should all have more than politics."

"Really? Wow." Donna blinked. Josh smiled.

"Yeah, I know. Shock, horror, check my coffee for hallucinatory drugs."

"Check your coffee for caffeine," Donna corrected, "I think somebody's switched you to decaf while you weren't looking."

"I'm... reassessing my priorities," he said thoughtfully.

"Didn't know you had any."

"Neither did I. I'm just full of surprises."

"You really are," she said sincerely. "Josh." She called him back as he turned away.

"Yeah?"

"The new you?" She smiled. "He seems pretty nice, too."

Josh flashed her a quick, dimpled grin of acknowledgement.

CJ gave Toby a smile, and tilted her wine glass in his direction. "I hear congratulations are in order."

"Baby steps." Toby refused to be openly cheered by being given the green light, but CJ could see the fire of determination smouldering underneath. Keeping to safe ground had never been the Ziegler MO. Sex-Ed was a subject that had to be approached with kid gloves and careful steps if you didn't want to offend anybody; Toby was about to stomp out there and kick up a storm that no amount of public relations and feather-smoothing would gloss over.

She was rather looking forward to it.

CJ looked across the room, and saw Sam smiling over something with his... well, boyfriend. Whoa, mental adjustment. The two young men stood un-selfconsciously close together, Steve casually snagging the speechwriter's sleeve as he made some point or other.

She nudged Toby. "Look at them. Aren't they cute?"

Toby refused to be drawn into commenting on their cuteness. But she was sure he was with her in spirit.

"I wonder if it'll last?" she reflected sombrely. The press secretary in her was half-hoping that it would fizzle out and be gone before it could ever hit the nation's consciousness, but the friend in her was stronger.

Toby shrugged. "Maybe. He's Sam. He's the least screwed up out of any of us."

CJ let that pass, partly because a few glasses of red wine went a long way towards making her mellow, but mostly because she suspected he had a point.

A few glasses of red wine also made her go embarrassingly fuzzy and emotional. "They're gonna have a tough time of it when it hits the papers," she said sadly.

"When that fight comes, we'll fight it," said Toby, eyes still on the two men. CJ gave him a knowing smile.

"You just adore that boy, don't you?"

He gave her an inscrutable look. "I think you should probably stop drinking that wine now."

"You do! Admit it."

"I admit nothing," he said calmly over his shoulder, as he walked away.

"I'll tell him!" she threatened.

"I'll categorically deny it!" he called back.

But she still saw the tiny hint of a smile that flickered behind his beard before he turned away.

Not basking in the same alcohol and/or engagement induced glow that the rest of the party was sharing, it didn't take Leo long to notice that the president had disappeared. Instinct guided him outside to where his old friend sat quietly smoking.

"You left the party," he noted, taking a seat beside him.

"They won't let me smoke inside."

Leo knew full-well that it was reasons for sneaking out that made Jed take a smoke, not the other way round, but he didn't call him on it. "Zoey looks happy," he observed.

"Yeah. That won't last." Jed tapped ash from the end of his cigarette, and Leo questioned him with a look. "Tomorrow morning, Charlie takes up his new posting in Reykjavik."

Leo just smiled.

"Did you meet Steve?" he asked after a moment.

"I did." He took a reflective puff of his cigarette. "Nice kid. Little jumpy."

"Can't imagine why," said Leo dryly.

The president looked at him, and his eyes were troubled. "You realise that sooner or later, this is going to come out?"

"You can take that to the bank."

"And I could possibly have phrased that in a different way."

"Yeah." Leo cracked a grin. "It's just as well you don't have the kind of job where a lot of people listen to you."

The president didn't smile back, just studied the lit end of his cigarette. "When it does... See if we can get the Secret Service to do their thing with his mail, okay? I don't want him to have to see that stuff."

"Sure." Leo hesitated. "You know, I'm not entirely sure that's technically legal."

"Withholding his mail?"

"Yeah."

"We're not withholding it. He comes up to me and says 'please Mr. President, can I have my hate mail back?', he can have it."

"Can he?"

"No."

"Okay."

They both fell into silence, watching weak puffs of smoke coil up to disappear into the night air. Jed continued to look at the ground.

After a time, he spoke. "I called Abbey home to tell her I want to see a doctor. I think my MS may be progressing."

Later, there would be time for thoughts of presidents and the intricacies of government, of procedures and publicity. But in this moment, there was time for only one thought, as simple as it was heartfelt.

"Oh, Jed." Leo McGarry, not the most casually demonstrative of men, moved forward without a second's thought to capture his long-time friend in a fierce embrace. "Oh, Jed, I'm so sorry."

The president gave him a bittersweet smile and stood up, grinding the cigarette beneath his heel. "What's coming is coming, Leo. I've got my family, I've got my friends. We'll face it."

Side by side, the two old friends walked back into the White House to rejoin the celebrations.