FRIDAY:

Jed spared his Chief of Staff a smile as he walked into the Oval Office.

"Hey, Leo."

"Good morning, Mr. President."

"How's today looking?"

Leo sat down on the edge of the nearest chair and straightened his jacket. "Well, barring any unforeseen international incidents, we're looking at a pretty light day."

Jed nodded to himself for a moment, and then looked up to meet Leo's eyes. "So. How are you doing?"

He rolled his eyes, although it was only a flimsy pretence at the sarcastic looks he was capable of; his old friend's concern was still too precious to him on the slippery slope he'd been climbing laboriously back up. "I'm fine."

"Mm-hmm," Jed nodded. He got up and approached Leo, beckoning him closer as he did. "Hey, c'm'ere," he urged softly.

"Oh, hey. Hey!" Leo protested, as Jed hugged him, and then planted a brief kiss of his temple for good measure. He'd been making an effort lately to make more physical contact with his old friend; he worried about Leo in his isolated world, forever shuttling between the formality of the White House and his empty, lonely hotel room.

It had been two months since Leo had finally come to him and admitted to his slide back into his drinking ways. Since then he'd gone right back to being tee-total, but Jed knew full well it was a far harder struggle than his Chief of Staff made it look. Still, at least the whole of the senior staff knew now. He knew it made Leo deeply uncomfortable to have his private struggles on display, but a loving support network around him could only be a good thing.

However much he might protest it.

"I wish you'd stop doing that," he said wryly, as Jed pulled away from him.

"Ah, you're just worried Abbey'll get jealous and beat you up," he jibed playfully.

"It occupies my waking thoughts," said Leo dryly.

"It should; she's got a mean right-hook."

Leo smiled, and looked down, embarrassed as he always was by any display of affection. "So, um... Ellie and Liz are already in New Hampshire?" he asked, transparently changing the subject. Jed let it ride.

"Yeah," he nodded reflectively, and sighed. It would be the first time they'd all been together since... well, since re-election. He shook his head; had it really been that long? What had happened to his family, drifting away from him? Liz had been gone from him for a long long time... Ellie had never truly been his at all. And now even his baby Zoey was leaving the family nest...

"You're a little maudlin this morning," Leo observed.

"My baby girl's getting married tomorrow," Jed reminded him.

"Yeah."

Leo fell silent, perhaps thinking of his own little girl - not so little anymore, was she? Where had the time gone?

And when had he turned into the kind of old man who thought things like 'where had the time gone'?

He looked sideways at Leo.

"You know Mallory and Jenny are gonna be at the wedding?"

"Yeah."

He hesitated. "Is Mallory-?"

"I've spoken to Mallory," said Leo shortly.

"Okay," he nodded. There was a brief silence, and Leo stood up.

"I'll be in my office," he said with a businesslike nod.

"It's a light day," Jed protested. Leo gave him a baleful look.

"Are we doing this again?"

"You work too hard," he said sternly.

"I work just fine."

Jed folded his arms and gave Leo a petulant look. "Why won't you listen to me when I tell you these things?"

"Because - contrary to all appearances - you are not, in actual fact, my mom?"

He tried to hold the look, but it broke into a smile. "Go," he sighed, rolling his eyes.

"Well, thank God for that, Mr. President," Leo smirked, and departed with speed. Jed slipped his hands into his pockets thoughtfully, and watched him go.

Rustle.

Rustle, rustle, rustle.

Silence.

Rustle.

Rustle, rustle.

Silence... Long silence. Long, blessed, blissful silence...

Rustle.

"Josh!"

He appeared in the doorway of his office, affecting to look innocent.

"What?"

Donna glared at him. "Will you quit that?"

"Working?"

She narrowed her eyes. "You are not working."

Josh pouted. "I'm the Deputy Chief of Staff, Donna, I have-"

"A specially cleared schedule, on account of the fact that you have a wedding tomorrow."

"I'm getting married?" he smirked.

Donna snorted expressively.

He gave her an injured look. "It wasn't that funny."

"It really was. Josh; the president's youngest daughter is getting married in less than thirty-six hours, the entire senior staff has had its workload shifted, shunted, accelerated and otherwise dumped in order take the weekend off, and shuffling pieces of paper around your desk does not count as work."

Josh visibly deflated. "I'm organising," he tried. Donna snorted again, louder.

"Yeah," she said, elongating the sound into one long syllable of sarcasm.

Josh bounced on the balls of his feet. "Donna, I have nothing to do," he said helplessly.

She placed her hands on her hips. "You're the best man. You know what you have to do."

He grinned. "Just be myself?"

"You have to finish writing your speech."

Josh slipped his hands into his pockets, and bounced some more. "When you say 'finish'... am I right in thinking that would imply me having actually, you know, started it?"

"It's not done?" she demanded incredulously.

"I'm a busy man," he said defensively.

Donna gave him an accusing look. "You said you were working on it."

"I may have overstated the case a little," Josh allowed.

"Josh, have you done anything?"

"I'm thinking it will probably involve Zoey, Charlie... possibly some good wishes of some kind..." he suggested dryly.

"Get Sam and Toby to help you," she commanded.

"I can do it!" he insisted.

"Get them to help you!"

"I think I can write my own speech, Donnatella," Josh said, placing his hands on his hips and striking a self-satisfied pose.

Donna just sighed, and lowered her face despairingly against the desk.

It was going to be one of those days.

Toby, predictably, was tapping away at his laptop when she entered. CJ leaned against the doorway for a moment, smiling slightly as she watched him. He didn't look round.

"Everybody else is slacking, you know, Toby."

He answered her with a minuscule movement of his shoulders that was too indifferent to be called a shrug.

CJ grinned and walked around the table to perch beside him. "Toby, it's a wedding," she teased. "Show a little excitement."

Toby slowly looked up, and blinked at her. "I'm excited," he said impassively, and returned to his typing.

She tapped out a little tattoo on the top edge of his screen and peered down at him. "It's the president's daughter, Toby! Zoey? Charlie? Is this ringing any bells?"

He looked at her. "It's a wedding. There will be a bride. There will be a groom. There will be drunken people making speeches. One of them will be the president, for whom I am ordinarily employed to ensure the coherency of the words that come out of his mouth. Fortunately for the sake of my continued mental wellbeing, by this point in the evening I fully intend to be inebriated beyond the point of all comprehension."

The expression on his face was enough to make her rock back on the table and laugh. "Oh, Toby," she sighed, shaking her head. "Toby, Toby, Toby." She flicked up the ends of his collar. He ignored her, and continued to frown over his words on the screen.

"Talking of marital bliss..." she added playfully, "I hear that a certain US Congresswoman has a place on the invitation list?"

That did make Toby look up at her, and he held her gaze with a long and inscrutable look.

This one, however, she elected not to mock. Straightening up, CJ patted him briefly on the shoulder, and went to look for whatever work might be available in a White House light-headed with wedding fever.

Margaret stood up and smiled at him as he approached. The red-headed secretary hadn't always had a friendly gaze for him, protective as she was of her boss, but right now his presence was a courtesy, not a precursor of conflict, and she knew it.

"Good morning, Mr. Vice President."

"Good morning, Margaret." He spared her a smile that was genuine as much as it was polite. It was always good to see loyalty; especially to somebody like Leo, who considering current circumstances was inarguably in need of it.

His conversation with the president about two months ago had been one of the most disorienting experiences this White House had yet hit him with. He'd come up here ready to spew fire over being summoned like a schoolboy, compiling lists of all the political decisions that President Bartlet could possibly have found to make an issue of. Instead, he'd found a quietly reflective president, whose concern was not for his Vice President's actions at all.

Thrown out of gear by the president's sombre face, he could remember how his stomach had dropped when Leo's name had first come up. He'd known - had hated himself for even suspecting, but still known - what was coming next. It was what had come after that which completely knocked him off his feet.

Leo was drinking again. He'd seen it in the president's eyes, and he'd thought for sure that this was to be some painful, terrible discussion about replacement and scandals and God only knew what else.

But the president had only looked him in the eye and said "It's going to be tough for him for a while. And I'd appreciate very much any support you could give him through this."

And he hadn't known what to say. He hadn't-

John had always known - although the grace with which he admitted it varied - that Josiah Bartlet was a good man, perhaps in some ways a great man; and yes, blessed with powers of leadership and oratory that made it extraordinarily difficult to resent him his position. But it had always been something of a minor mystery what there could be in his oddball charisma to inspire such devotion in a pragmatist like Leo.

He wasn't sure he'd realised, until that moment, exactly how fully that devotion was returned. It wasn't even that the president had chosen to stand by Leo... it was that everything in his voice and his eyes and his stance had said that his world had never contained any alternative option.

If Leo's lapse should come out... if it should be learned that the Chief of Staff of the White House had not just fallen back into the depths of alcoholism but continued in his job for months without anybody finding out...

The Bartlet administration had already maxed out its credit limit on scandals, and this one was by no stretch of the imagination small enough to slip under the radar. If it should ever come out that this had gone on and Leo not been fired the moment the president knew... Well, such things the ends of presidencies were made of. Firing Leo, or even quietly accepting his resignation, would have been the safety route, the last chance for a clean and clear escape.

And Jed Bartlet hadn't even considered it. And somehow John Hoynes knew that if it ever did come out, he wouldn't go scurrying to hide behind lies or legal technicalities; he would stand right up there in front of the world, and fight to defend Leo's right to keep his job.

It was almost frightening to wonder if there was anybody in the world who would take that kind of risk for him. Was there? And how could he ever truly know, unless it actually came right down to it?

Leo stood up as he entered, and John knew it would be a waste of time to tell him he didn't have to. "Mr. Vice President."

"Good morning, Leo," he nodded with a smile. They were on first name terms - how could they not be, with the layer of openness and intimacy their shared struggle had laid upon them? - but Leo always liked to greet him by his formal title, even when they were alone. A strange set of contradictions, Leo McGarry; such a rigid structure of formality over such a plainspoken manner. But then, it was a matter of control... and Leo was all about control.

Even looking at him now, knowing what he knew, it was almost impossible to believe that he could ever have lost his grip on that incredible self-control.

The door swung closed behind him, and he let relax as much of the political mask as he ever did. "How are you doing, Leo?" he asked softly.

Leo shrugged, although his face registered anything but indifference. "It goes a day at a time."

"Yeah."

A day at a time. Even now, even decades on, he was still taking it a day at a time. The thought of trying to start it all over again, take it from those first, hellish months when the tang of alcohol had been all too quick to rise in the back of his throat...

Even now, he could taste it; a ghost, an echo of a flavour. But it would only take on tiny drop, the merest hint of a fraction of a drink, for it to rise up and consume him utterly, like a match to so much deadwood soaked in oil.

But these were things that it was hard to speak of however many times you tried, and Leo was never comfortable with them intruding on times when he should be doing his job. "You'll see the president before he leaves?" he asked, before the blanket of silence became too heavy.

John nodded. "We've got a few minutes at the end of the day." The president would be in New Hampshire for his daughter's wedding less than forty-eight hours straight, but he still seemed to feel some form of ceremonial handing over of the country was in order. The idea was simultaneously touching and exasperating, an honour and unbearably patronising. Fairly well par for the course for his interactions with Josiah Bartlet, then. "How is he?" he asked.

Leo smiled sardonically. "His youngest daughter's getting married tomorrow. How do you think?"

"Yeah."

The president adored Charlie Young, everybody knew it. Even so, John was definitely glad not to be in his shoes right about now.

"Hey Charlie."

"Hey."

He suspected every random person who passed him in the corridors could clearly see the zombie-like look of near petrifaction stamped across his features.

He was getting married tomorrow. Married. Married. He was getting up there and saying his vows up in front of the entire world.

Literally. With the number of cameras that would be trained on him, his bride-to-be, and prospective father-in-law... What if he fainted? What if he forgot what to say? What if he tripped over? What if he accidentally said something mind-bendingly stupid?

Thinking of the end result - of actually being Zoey Bartlet's husband - was just about the only thing keeping his brain from exploding completely. His proximity to the president sure as hell wasn't doing anything to calm him.

He was fairly sure the leader of the free world was as fond of him as it was possible to ask him to be. However, when it came to the prospect of 'stealing' his baby daughter, Charlie wasn't at all sure any level of affection could be enough. He was spending as much time away from his desk as humanly possible this morning, dashing in and out of the Oval Office fast enough to hopefully stop the president from dwelling on his presence too deeply.

"Charlie!" Josh grinned widely at him as he approached. "Looking forward to tomorrow?"

"I think I'm gonna die," he answered honestly.

Josh, tower of sensitivity and sympathy that he was, just snickered. "Hey, relax, Charlie, it's just a wedding, you'll be fine," he said, clapping him on the shoulder. Charlie gave him a look.

"And how many times have you been married?"

That silenced him, and Josh's brow wrinkled as he continued on his way. "Okay, but it can't be that difficult, right?" he said uncertainly. "Even stupid people do it."

Charlie ignored that, and called after him. "Do you have a speech yet?"

"Almost!" Josh retorted defensively, as he rounded the corner.

Oh, God. This was going to be a disaster from start to finish.

He just knew it.

"Hey, S- Hey!" Josh retorted indignantly, as a paper aeroplane bounced off his shoulder. Sam grinned innocently up at him from where he was lounging on one of the tables in the communications bullpen. "Don't you have work to do?" he demanded.

"We should be so lucky," Bonnie observed wryly in passing.

Sam shrugged. "They cleared our schedules for the wedding."

"Yeah, but... the country still exists, right?"

"It does, I just don't have to care about it until Monday."

"So you're making paper aeroplanes?"

"Bonnie gave him the paper," Ginger explained. "We thought if we gave him something to play with he might stop back-seat typing."

"You couldn't get one of Toby's rubber balls?" Josh smirked.

"I asked him, but he growled at me," Sam admitted. He stretched and dropped down from the table. "What's up, Josh? Have you got your speech done yet?"

"Almost," he replied automatically. Sam gave him a sceptical look.

"Josh, you have got to let me tackle it."

"I can do it!" he insisted.

"The wedding's tomorrow!"

"It's almost done!" 'Almost', in the sense of, well, he had some of it, right? Sort of.

Nearly.

Toby arrived and walked through the bullpen without bothering to acknowledge any of them.

"He hasn't written his speech yet," Sam blurted, exactly like a fourth-grader tattling to teacher.

Toby gave Josh a look. "Let Sam write it."

"I can do it!"

"Let Toby write it," Sam shrugged as a counter-offer.

"No!"

"Exactly when did I volunteer?" Toby demanded. He disappeared into his office and closed the door behind him.

"He's in kind of a funny mood," Ginger supplied. "I think it's what with Andy being at the wedding and everything."

"That was a funny mood?" Josh wondered. "'Cause that looked pretty much like regular Toby to me."

"So if you don't want help on your speech, why are you here?" Sam asked, absently winding strips of paper around his fingers.

"Come work with me on the land-use thing over lunch," Josh urged.

"I can't," Sam shook his head.

"Oh, 'cause you're so busy now?"

"I promised Steve I'd go home to help him with the last-minute packing."

Josh gave him a disbelieving look. "Sam... you are perfectly clear that we're going to be in New Hampshire all of a day and a half?"

He smiled and shrugged. "Yeah, well, somebody needs to tell that to Steve."

Josh rolled his eyes, and stomped off to badger Donna instead.

Zoey was bouncing off the walls. She couldn't eat or sit still, she was so nervous. And if it was this bad today, how much worse she was going to be tomorrow? On her w-

No. No. Bad idea. Avoid the W-word. It wouldn't do to start thinking about the ceremony and the dress and the crowds and all the cameras, and-

Help.

"Hey Zoey!"

"Hi, Zoey!" Deanna and Annie came bounding in. Her niece and her future sister-in-law - ack, don't go there, scary thoughts - had met a couple of times at various gatherings, but spending the last few days together in the New Hampshire hotel, they'd bonded as only a pair of giggly teenagers could.

God, the age gap between them suddenly seemed scarily huge. She was getting married tomorrow. She wasn't a kid anymore. She wasn't a girl. She was going to be a wife. And wife, sooner or later, tended to lead to mother, and- red alert. Red alert. Abandon thoughts. Panic attack!

The two girls didn't seem to notice her sudden deer-in-the-headlights look, or else they'd just grown resigned to the fact that she was going to be wearing it for the foreseeable future. They squirmed over to sit to either side of her.

"Are you nervous?" asked Annie brightly, and Zoey gave her a disbelieving look.

Deanna wrinkled her nose. "It's only Charlie," she shrugged.

"Yeah, but I've got to marry him in front of all those people."

"Yeah, well, it's only the cameras in the back," Annie shrugged with the indifference of somebody who'd been in the glare of the media spotlight since she was eleven. "Other than that it's mostly family." That, to the Bartlet brood, encompassed close friends as well as simply blood relatives.

"Oh, and that makes it easier?" Zoey demanded.

"Hey, you'll have us between you and them. Any trouble, and the bridesmaids are kicking ass." They all giggled, while Zoey reflected that it was most probably true. Between these two, CJ and Donna Moss, a more tough-as-nails cadre of bridesmaids had probably never been seen.

"Didn't Ellie want to be a bridesmaid?" Deanna wondered, perhaps following the same train of thought. Annie and Zoey snorted in tandem.

"Ellie, doing girly wedding stuff? Forget it," Zoey explained. "Anyway, she'd've hated it if I'd even asked her. She hates getting dragged into family stuff."

Damn it, why did her middle sister always have to make things difficult all the time? This was supposed to be her and Charlie's wedding, not 'Ellie vs. Dad Chapter 432'.

"I think Ellie's boyfriend's kind of a jerk," Deanna admitted tentatively.

"Oh, is he ever," Annie agreed instantly. "Did you hear him last night, bitching about everything? Why would she bring a guy like that?"

"I know exactly why," Zoey said darkly. She scowled. "She's trying to pick a fight with dad again."

Deanna frowned in disgust. "That really sucks. This is supposed to be your special day!"

"I know." Zoey brightened up. "Which is why I'm putting you two on Ellie duty. She looks like starting trouble? Beat her up."

"Okay."

"Sure."

They answered in cheerful stereo, and then exchanged a look and burst into peals of giggles again. Zoey joined them, and the anxious constriction in her chest eased just a little.

This wasn't so bad. She could do this. Getting married wasn't the hardest thing in the world, was it?

She could do this.

CJ hopped smartly up to the podium, grinning at the sea of eager faces. "Howdy folks! All right, as I'm sure you're aware, the big news item today is going to be the figures on crop subsidies in-"

"CJ!" The howl of protest was universal.

"Okay, okay," she relented, laughing. "Wedding news. Okay, as you know, Zoey Bartlet and her sisters are already in New Hampshire with the First Lady and the sister of the groom. The president will be flying out at the end of today, along with those members of the senior staff who are attending. The Vice President will be in DC during the ceremony, and he'll have a direct line to the president at all times, although hopefully that won't have to be used - you know how embarrassing it is if your pager goes off in the middle of a church."

They all chuckled easily with her. This weekend, the press had other ways to make their living than baying for blood.

"The full wedding schedule will be available tomorrow morning; it's no good begging for advance copies, folks, the security team are keeping it under wraps. And may I take this moment to remind you that the media guidelines have already been laid down." She swept the room with a stern gaze. "Let's not have anybody going Rambo for an exclusive, please? The president loves Charlie Young dearly, but that doesn't mean he wouldn't be happy for an excuse to rip somebody's head off."

The ripple of amusement that passed through the room at that had a slightly more nervous edge to it. The president's protection of his family from media intrusion was well-documented, and nobody was ready to take him on when he was already antsy from giving away his youngest daughter in marriage.

"Okay guys, that's the bare bones of it, but let me guess... you've got questions."

The forest of hands that sprang up didn't disappoint.

It was hard to tell whether to smirk or frown at the wide-eyed look of fear his young aide gave him as he emerged from the Oval Office. "Hey, Charlie."

"Mr. President," he squeaked, almost excessively formal.

Jed could have played around with him a little... but that seemed too cruel, even for the boy who was marrying his youngest daughter. "How are you doing, Charlie?" he asked. Kindly, although with enough paternal steel in his voice that Charlie might not have been able to tell so.

"I'm fine," he nodded. And kept nodding, beyond the point where on a less anxious day he would have known to stop. "Fine," he repeated, not sounding like he meant it.

Yes, it would definitely be cruel to play around with him right now.

Still...

"You're not having second thoughts about marrying my daughter, I hope?" he demanded sternly.

"No, sir!" Charlie blurted, alarmed, and Jed had to chuckle.

"I know, I know." He squeezed his armed companionably. "Nervous?"

"I think my brain's about to explode and run out of my left ear at any moment," Charlie admittedly candidly.

"Well, just you make sure you keep that side away from the photographers." He smiled, and rested his hands on Charlie's shoulders to look him in the eye. "Son. Turn up at the church, wear your tuxedo, try not to faint. You'll do fine."

"Yes, sir." He didn't look at all convinced.

"Hey, I'm home!" Sam called out as he opened the door.

"Hi, Sam." Steve shuffled out of the next room, and Sam poorly concealed a startled snort of amusement at the sight of what he was wearing. Ignoring this, Steve struck a few catalogue model poses. "So, what do you think?"

Sam took in the ridiculously puffy ski-jacket and matching stupid hat. "Well, the whole 'gay men have fashion sense' myth? Pretty much exploded."

"Hey, it's cold up in New Hampshire." Steve shrugged, although the motion was barely visible under the lines of the coat. "I want to be prepared."

Sam gave him a look. "Steve, it's August. And you look like the Staypuft Marshmallow Man."

Steve grinned playfully. "Sweet enough to eat?"

"Something like that." Sam smiled back, and leaned across to give him a quick kiss. He collapsed into giggles as he practically sank into Steve's coat. "For God's sake, would you take that thing off?" he pleaded.

"Okay." Steve shrugged out of it with such speed that Sam was sure he must have put it on solely for the reaction shot - not even Steve would be crazy enough to try on a ski jacket in midsummer.

"And the hat," he directed.

He pouted. "I like the hat."

"It's geeky."

"But it has charm."

"Much like yourself."

"Indeed." Steve reluctantly peeled it off. "I'm still bringing it with me, though," he warned. "Just in case." He looked around the room full of bags and cases, trying to find some small gap in which to shove it.

Sam shook his head and sighed. "Steve. Have you heard of travelling light?"

"Wasn't that a song by Cliff Richard?"

He picked up the nearest bag and peeked inside to find various snack foods. He rolled his eyes. "Steve, it's the president's daughter's wedding. I'm willing to bet they'll spring for feeding us."

"Ah, but will they have this specific brand of chocolate chip cookies? 'Cause these are the only ones I eat. And you know how I get cranky if-"

Sam silenced him by pulling him into a fond hug. "Steve," he sighed pointedly, when they were eye to eye.

"I like to be prepared," he shrugged defensively.

"You're a regular boy scout, aren't you?" They kissed.

"I'll try and pare it down a little," Steve allowed as they pulled apart, in the tones of one agreeing to part with a kidney.

"Well good. 'Cause I don't really want to get there and hear we had to leave the president behind to make room for your carry-on luggage."

"Ah, he's only little, I'm sure we can fit him in somewhere," he shrugged.

"I'll tell him you said that," Sam said dryly. He slipped out of his suit jacket. "Listen, I'm gonna have to head back to the office for the afternoon, but before I go I'm gonna take you through here, and demonstrate how it's possible to pack for forty-eight hours using exactly fourteen minutes and one medium-sized suitcase."

"Oh, well, that's just not natural," Steve said, trailing after him. Sam paused in the doorway to give him a sudden sharp look.

"You listen to Cliff Richard?"

He shrugged. "I'm gay. I don't have to come up with excuses for these things."

Sam raised an eyebrow. "And the '1950's Crooners Collection'?"

"Those, I'm just holding for a friend."

"I'm sure you are," he accepted dryly. Steve just grinned, and laced his fingers through Sam's. Sam grinned back.

"Need help?"

"No."

"Sure?"

"Positive."

"'Cause-"

"Donna." He glared at her. She shrugged defensively.

"Well, I know you have trouble with that whole 'stringing words together' thing, and so-"

"It's a wedding speech," Josh growled. "It's not rocket science."

"Well, that's a pity. 'Cause if it was rocket science, I could tell you some interesting facts."

"I'll bet you could," he sighed, glaring at the page. Stupid speech. Deceiving him with its aura of easiness. It was supposed to have been done by now. Instead he had the words "We're here today to-" subsequently heavily crossed out. But he wasn't telling Donna that.

Fortunately, she was far too busy dredging up space travel factoids to pay attention to him now. "For instance, an astronaut's heart shrinks when he's in space," she offered.

"Mine's doing it right now," Josh said dryly.

"If you tried to count all the stars in the galaxy at the rate of one a second, it would take you three thousand years."

"Why don't you go give it a try?" he suggested.

Donna dropped easily down from her perch on his desk and smiled smugly. Other people might deny that Donna could be smug; it was an expression she saved up for him when nobody else was looking, like some kind of... sneaky stealth thing.

"Want me to leave?" she asked sweetly.

"Whatever gave you that impression?"

"I'll be outside. Yell when you concede defeat."

He grinned sharply at her, and waited for her to leave. Then looked down at the frustratingly blank sheet of paper. It was only a wedding speech. There would be no conceding of defeat.

Unfortunately, there might not be any celebration of victory anytime soon, either.

"Hi, CJ."

"Sam." She smiled at him, and shook her head slowly. "Is anybody working today?"

He shrugged. "Josh's still working on his speech," he offered.

She groaned loudly. "You couldn't, you know, bludgeon him with a heavy object and take over the writing?"

"Believe me, I've tried."

"Objects not heavy enough?"

"It appears no mere piece of office furniture can conquer the Lyman skull." He twisted around to look over his shoulder as Carol appeared in the doorway.

"CJ? The publisher's on the line."

"Oh, right." She made an apologetic face at Sam and picked up the phone. "Hi, CJ Cregg. Okay. Yeah, so it'll be- Uh-huh. Is that the final date? Okay, thanks. Thank you."

She hung up, and Sam raised an inquisitive eyebrow.

"Selling your memoirs?" he joked. She smiled distractedly in reply, and scribbled something on the edge of a sheet of paper. Sam hesitated until she looked up at him. "Something I should know about?" he asked softly.

CJ waited for a beat longer than he was comfortable with, and then sighed. "There's a book. It doesn't directly concern the administration, but... it's gonna raise some stuff." She nodded slowly to herself, and then met his eyes. "But it's not for a couple of months, so... Charlie and Zoey are getting married tomorrow. So let's not-"

"Yeah." He nodded his understanding, but paused in the doorway on his way out. "You'll let me know when...?" He hated the pleading edge to his voice, but... there were too many painful secrets in this administration's history to let another one slip by him like a silent shark in the water.

CJ herself was no stranger to being on the wrong side of a highly exclusive loop. She met his gaze levelly. "When you need to know, you'll know."

"Okay."

He left her office, and let the conversation drift gradually to the back of his mind. Secrets and political concerns were for another time. This weekend was for celebration.

"Mr. President." Stanley stood up as he entered the study.

"Stanley," he nodded, politely, if distractedly. He waved the psychologist back into his seat as he poured himself a glass of water. "Drink?" he offered.

"No thank you, sir."

"Okay." The president observed the crystal glass with a grimace, perhaps wishing it could be something a little stronger than water. Most of his usual avenues of stress-relief had been cut off by his new stricter health regime, designed to put as little burden as possible on his compromised immune system. Hence, perhaps, the break in his usual reluctance to turn to Stanley in anything but the most dire circumstances.

"So... how are things?" he asked open-endedly. For a man so obviously eloquent, it was surprisingly difficult to get Jed Bartlet talking. Or perhaps it wasn't so surprising; President Bartlet was sharp as a knife and not at all impressed with the science of psychotherapy. If it suited him, he could keep you talking round in circles without throwing out a single useful answer - and he knew it, too.

Stanley always found himself in an unusual position in these sessions. He felt more like a sounding board than an advisor or confidante; he wasn't the dispenser of wisdom here, more like a conveniently neutral place for Bartlet to bounce his ideas. And, fair play to him, the man was certainly smart enough to analyse himself if it so suited him; the problem lay in the fact that there were certain ideas he was highly reluctant to bounce.

The president shrugged. "My daughter's getting married tomorrow. I'm pretty much how you'd expect."

Stanley was always struck how he could shift from his dynamic public persona to having the body-language of a teenager. Not so much in terms of maturity levels - although he could certainly be sulky and petulant from time to time - but in terms of casual indifference, as if he wasn't really paying attention at all. And then all of a sudden he would snap out of it and be pinning you to your chair with a laser gaze while he fired off cuttingly well-aimed remarks.

Disconcerting really didn't begin to cover it.

He adjusted his position and kept his face neutral. "You're okay with your daughter getting married to Charlie Young?" he asked.

"Of course I am," he snapped irritably. Before muttering more quietly "They're still just babies."

"Mr. President, twenty-three isn't at all an unusual age for a young lady to be getting married," Stanley pointed out. The president glared at him.

"Stanley, do you have any children?"

"I have a little girl," he offered. As the analyst he was supposed to be a neutral presence, fairly devoid of characteristics or anything that shifted him from a non-judgemental voice into the form of a human being with his own life and feelings. Somehow, in these sessions it never seemed to quite work that way. He always came away with the unsettling feeling that Jed Bartlet was learning as much about Stanley Keyworth as he was about himself, if not more so.

"How old is she?"

"Six."

The president smiled wryly. "And what do you plan to be doing on her wedding day?"

"I plan to be dead by then," he admitted.

He chuckled appreciatively. "Quite."

There was a silence; not a particularly awkward one, but still, one that the president was paying for. "Is Zoey nervous about the wedding?" he asked, to keep the conversation going.

The president shrugged minutely. "Girls get nervous about these things."

"So do boys," Stanley pointed out.

He smiled slightly, perhaps thinking fondly of the decidedly antsy personal aide who'd ushered him in a few minutes earlier. "Yeah."

"Your other daughters are going to be there?"

The president gave him a sharp look. "We're not talking about my daughters," he said warningly.

"Okay," he agreed, careful not to sound accusing. The president remained on his guard.

"It's a rule," he said. "I talk about a lot of things; I don't talk about my daughters. That's off limits."

"I'm not the press," Stanley reminded him.

"It's not relevant."

"Okay," he accepted. From what he'd seen, the president had a healthy enough relationship with his three daughters, but with what he knew about Jed's relationship with his own father... the president surely had some issues about fatherhood, and Zoey, Ellie and Elizabeth might represent a safer, more productive avenue of attack.

However, if the president said the subject was closed, it was closed. He wasn't about to fall into any of the conversational pit-traps Stanley might place before a less self-aware subject, and trying was only going to dent any good impression he might have so far succeeded in making.

Still, there were reasons why the 'bury it and pretend it never happened' strategy couldn't be continued indefinitely. "Do you want to talk about the book?" Stanley asked mildly.

The president gave him a steely-eyed look. "No," he said simply.

Stanley shifted in his chair. "It might-"

"I'm giving away my daughter's hand in marriage tomorrow afternoon," President Bartlet reminded him. "Let's not do this now."

He nodded slowly. "Okay."

Fair enough... if only it had been the only reason the president was putting off this topic of discussion. He was still too much in denial about the events of his childhood, and in a few months time, some dark insinuations in a presidential biography were going to expose them for all the world to see. Stanley thought he very desperately needed to confront them for himself before other people started trying to do it for him. He had only the sketchiest idea of what had truly gone on between the president and his father, but he knew and could see enough to know that the president's desire to love and honour the man who'd sired him was being stretched to cover events it really shouldn't have to take on.

He was a trained psychotherapist, and childhood trauma was far closer to his area of expertise than the murky moral issues the president sometimes had to wrestle with. Bartlet might not be happy about it, but Stanley was the best person to talk him through this. The media, once they got the story in their teeth, were not going to be nearly so respectful of the emotional minefield the issue represented.

The president needed to be pressed on this... but perhaps he was right, now was not the time. Stanley sat up straighter. "Okay. Then let's talk about your health plan for a while."

He didn't so much see the president move as feel the abrupt change in his demeanour. This was a subject he was more than happy to expound on at length.

Stanley knew that, even deflected to such a relatively minor issue, he was still helping the president to handle the many stresses and strains of his hectic life. He just wished it didn't feel so much like he was bailing water with a coffee cup while the president refused to let him plug the gaping hole below decks.

"Hey, CJ... Toby," Josh added. He paused, as they both broke up whatever conversation they'd been having to look up at him. "What's happening?"

"My departure from this office," Toby supplied, leaving. Josh sat on the edge of CJ's desk and frowned at her.

"Something I should be in the loop on?"

CJ pulled a face. "There might be a thing. But not a today thing."

He raised an eyebrow, beginning to smirk. "Not a today thing?"

"A sometime in the future thing." CJ looked briefly pained, but today was a day for letting things slide, and he made no comment when she changed the subject. "Written your speech yet?"

"Okay, do I need to get myself a sandwich-board and walk the halls wearing the words 'It's nearly done'?" he wondered.

CJ gave him a very CJ look. "How nearly is nearly?" she sighed.

"About ninety percent," he shrugged casually.

"Done or to do?" she asked immediately.

Damn. Foiled. His expression obviously gave her enough of an answer.

"Josh!" she shouted.

"It's a wedding speech!" he retorted defensively. "How hard can it be?"

"Have Sam and Toby take a look at it," she advised. "Do it now."

"I can write my own speech, CJ."

"And yet there's been no evidence of it so far."

"I have an outline! It's not like I even need to fully flesh it out right now-"

"Oh, God."

"-I mean, I know what I'm going to say, so-"

"Oh, God."

"-Even if I just went out there without any notes at all and said, you know, what's in my head, what's the worst that could happen?"

"Charlie and Zoey start their marriage blessed with a secret plan to fight inflation?"

"That only happened once!"

"Because we were smart enough to never let you speak in front of, you know, people, ever again!"

"That's not true," he said softly. CJ met his eyes, quieting as she remembered the press conference after his very public PTSD attack a few months ago. He'd gone out there without a script, and he'd handled it just fine. When it counted, he could handle it just fine.

It was when it didn't count that he generally managed to screw up royally.

"You can speak," she agreed gently. "I know that. But Josh, this is Charlie and Zoey's special day..."

"I know. I'm not trying to be difficult," Josh told her earnestly. He hesitated. "It's just... I don't want Sam and Toby to write it for me. Because even if they only help with a little bit, it would be really good, and then I wouldn't be able to write anything that was as good as theirs, and so I'd need them to do the rest of it too, and... I want this to be mine. You know? I want this to be... me."

CJ smiled quietly at him, and stood up to lay a hand on his shoulder. "I know," she agreed. She leaned in closer to him. "But screw it up, and I'm coming after your ass."

He blinked after her for a few moments.

"Okay."

Josh dropped down from the desk and headed back to his own office.

"Hey, babe."

The corners of his mouth turned up as Jed heard the voice on the other end of the phone. "Excuse me, ma'am, do I know you?" he asked with exaggerated politeness.

Abbey chuckled softly. "Is that the Josiah Bartlet School of Wedding Trivia?"

"Indeed it is. Did you know that in 1984 a hundred-and-three-year-old man married his eighty-four-year-old fiancée?"

"Mm-hmm." He could picture her eye-roll as she humoured him.

"I'm saying, it's not too late for Zoey to realise she can take her time."

"And find a man nineteen years older than her?"

"Perhaps not," he conceded.

"Jed, she's twenty-three."

"Exactly! What's that, in modern terms? It's nothing!"

"It's two years older than you were when you married me."

"Hey, I'll have you know I was the picture of innocence until you lured me away from the priesthood to have your wicked way with me."

She laughed again, and he wished she could be near enough to reach out and touch. "They're not cancelling the wedding, Jed."

"I know," he grumbled.

"I know you, Jed," she reminded him. "You'll bitch about it all the way up to the ceremony, and then you'll get teary-eyed, make a big old sentimental speech, get drunk and trip over the bridegroom."

"I resent that."

"I have photographic evidence."

"I bribed Rick to destroy those."

"Yes, but I got to Liz first."

"Dammit."

There was a silence, and he swore he could feel her amused expression down the phone line. "You're nervous," she teased.

"I am not!" he refuted.

"You're as jittery as Zoey."

"I'm solid as a rock," he insisted.

"That's so sweet."

"I am not nervous!"

"Of course you aren't," Abbey agreed tolerantly. "Just like you weren't nervous the day we got married?"

"I keep telling you, the breakfast disagreed with me that day," he said huffily.

"Of course it did, of course it did. And that's why you were pale and shaky and you couldn't remember your lines."

"I say again, I was eating in a hurry, and the motion of the car-"

If they were face to face she would have silenced him with a kiss, but the amused sound that purred out of the receiver was almost the next best thing. "Jed," she said, and abruptly her tone shifted into something less light-hearted. "Don't overdo it today, okay?"

The word 'stressful' and its medical associations lingered unspoken somewhere across the airwaves between them.

"I won't," he promised.

"Did you take a nap like I told you?"

He'd lie, but she'd catch him if he did. "I'll sleep on the plane."

"Jed-" she groaned despairingly.

"Seriously, sweetknees, all I've got is a meeting with Hoynes and then I'm done for the day. I'll sleep on the plane."

"You won't," she reminded him.

"Then I'll sleep when I get to New Hampshire, and you're there." They both knew he'd get more rest that way than any other, anyway.

"Okay." She hesitated, and he heard the smirk return to her voice. "You're meeting with Hoynes before you go?"

"It's a very important piece of government business," he said sternly.

"You just want to hand over your country and tell him not to break it," Abbey cut him off.

Well, okay. Maybe a little bit.

"It's for ceremonial reasons."

"He's gonna love you for it."

"Hey, in three and a quarter years' time, he can have it to do what he wants with it."

"Does that mean I can have and do what I want with you?"

"Always," he agreed, voice rumbling in his chest with sincerity.

"I love you," Abbey said fondly.

"I love you more."

"Start that, and I'll kick your ass," she threatened.

"I know," he smiled.

"I'll see you tonight."

"Yeah."

"And try not to patronise Hoynes too much, okay?"

"Would I do a thing like that?" he asked innocently.

"I'm just saying, if 'Secret Service Restrain Vice President' knocks Zoey off the front pages tomorrow..."

"It won't."

"Good."

"We have ways of covering up things like that."

She sighed, an exhalation of long-suffering affection. "Goodbye, Jed."

He smiled to himself. "I love you. I'll see you tonight."

Thirty-seven minutes to go, and her boss showed no inclination of stopping working.

"Leo."

No answer.

More pointedly; "Leo."

He looked up and scowled over his glasses. Funny; Margaret hadn't realised how much she appreciated that irascible glare until those godawful months when there had been nothing but a blank, expressionless mask in its usual place. "I'm leaving, already!"

"And you're doing it from a sitting position, too," she noted. "Were you planning to hover?"

"I have, like, three quarters of an hour left," he shrugged, continuing to tap away at his keyboard. Margaret had to restrain her secretarial urge to shoulder him out of the way and take over at a more respectable pace. Leo wasn't supposed to do any of his own typing. Did the president ever respond to his own email? Okay, the president probably didn't even know he had an email address, but still...

"We have thirty-seven minutes," she corrected sternly.

"Yeah, well, leaving aside the fact that that's really kind of freakish, that's plenty of time."

"We have to leave now."

He gave her a look. "Margaret, what am I gonna be doing that's gonna be taking me thirty-seven minutes?"

"Well, you have to power down the computer, which takes a minimum of forty-eight seconds, and then you have to put on your jacket, and then you're going to walk over to Josh to ask him about the thing even though I already told you he won't have the thing until Sunday, and then Josh won't know if he's got the thing, and he'll yell for Donna, and then she'll tell him he's an idiot, and then she'll tell you that he won't have the thing until Sunday. And then you'll call Josh an idiot as well, and you'll come back here and shout at me for being right about the thing, and then you'll try to switch your computer back on and go back to work, and I'll have to-"

"Okay, okay!" Leo held up his hands in surrender, and switched off the computer. He fussed around with things on his desk, and she stood and looked at him until the flickering reflection in his glasses dimmed as the screen went black.

"Forty-eight seconds, Leo," she said knowingly.

He glared and stood up, and then somewhat self-consciously reached past her to pick up his jacket and put it on.

"Are you going to see Josh now?" she asked brightly.

"I'm just going to go and ask him about... something other than... the thing," Leo hedged, brows lowered petulantly. Margaret bobbed her head in a nod.

"Really something freakish about you," he muttered as he brushed past.

"Thirty-six seconds to walk over to Josh's office!" she called after him.

"Good afternoon, Charlie."

"Mr. Vice President." The young aide seemed vaguely confused for a moment, then remembered what he was doing and gestured towards the Oval. "He's expecting you."

"Thanks, Charlie." John spared a smile for the obviously edgy young man. His own wedding day had been quite some years back now, and a good deal less of a public affair - even so, he couldn't quite imagine what it would have been like spending the entire run-up to it in the company of the father of the bride.

On the other hand, the father of this particular bride wasn't someone whose company he found spectacularly enjoyable in the first place.

"Mr. President."

"John." The president smiled warmly enough at him, and he wondered, as he always did, whether it was politeness or goodwill. He and Jed Bartlet had gradually straightened out many of the differences they'd engendered over the years... but they would never be friends.

"You wanted to see me?"

He nodded slowly, seemingly lost in thought. "Just for the... propriety of the thing," he said mildly.

John smiled thinly. "You'll be gone barely more than a day," he pointed out.

"But it's for personal reasons." He didn't say 'and everybody in the whole damn world knows exactly where I'm gonna be and too many of them have a beef with it', but John heard it in the silence anyway. "I just wanted to..." he shrugged.

It was John's turn to nod slowly. "The country's in safe hands," he said. He wanted to be sarcastic, but he couldn't, not quite. Because... because once there had been a night of confusion and grim-faced Secret Service men, and the incessant howl of sirens on the news.

Because sometimes exaggerated precautions and empty gestures weren't.

The president gave a satisfied, sober smile in reply, and then - with that enviable spark of easy charm that had put him ahead in a few too many polls five years ago - flipped it up a notch into a bright grin. "Don't get too comfortable," he warned.

"I'll try not to wear out my welcome," he said, knowing he came off stiffer than he wanted to. The president was sincere in the playful nature of his barbs, but they still stung. It wasn't easy, facing the man who'd beaten you in a race he by all rights should have lost.

It was even less easy when that man was too damn easy and comfortable and right in that position to despise him for his victory.

Oh, it would have been so much simpler if he'd been able to resent a man he didn't respect.

John knew, deep down, that in any other position than his Vice President, his admiration for Josiah Bartlet would have been unhesitant. And that made him feel petty, and he didn't like that at all.

"I know I can trust you," the president said. Compliment? Condescension? Just making conversation? He hated the fact that he analysed, and he hated the fact that he cared.

But he was a good man.

John hesitated in the doorway, and turned back. "Mr. President?"

He looked up from the papers he'd already returned to perusing, and raised an inquisitive eyebrow.

"I just wanted to say..." He took a breath. "I admire what you're doing for Leo McGarry, sir. I admire that very much."

The president met his eyes, face abruptly totally serious. "He's my friend," he said, quietly but with an air of finality. "Anything I can do is not enough."

And from the naked honesty in that gaze, he had to look away. "I'll take care of things this end, Mr. President. Have a good flight."

"Goodnight, John."

On the way out, he stopped to smile at the president's aide and future son-in-law. "Best wishes for tomorrow, Charlie."

"Thank you, sir."

He shook the young man by the hand and left.

"Hey, mom." Elizabeth Bartlet-Weston turned around to smile at her mother. She studiously managed not to see the figures in dark suits who slid in beside her. She was used to her own protection detail - glad of it, when she worried about all the terrible things that could happen to Annie in the course of a day - but the numbers increased exponentially around her mother, and now around her baby sister too. It would be even worse when her father arrived. She wondered how he coped with the constant, stifling presence.

Her mother came to join her leaning out over the balcony. "It's beautiful out here," she observed softly, although it was really too dark to see more than smudges of light in the darkness.

"Is that why you and dad got married here?"

Her mother smiled slightly. "Your father and I got married here because this was his church, and because we didn't have any money to go anywhere else."

Liz smiled at that. She knew her father's family certainly hadn't been within shouting distance of poor, and her mother's side hadn't been exactly scraping either, but her parents would never have been prepared to get married on anybody's charity. Just as she hadn't, preferring the simplicity of the ceremony where she and Rick had tied the knot when they were still very, very young. Her father had sworn blind that he wouldn't stand for it, and been there for her every step of the way.

She swirled the contents of her wine glass. "It is beautiful, though. And it's good that Zoey and Charlie are getting married here... it really makes him part of the family." He seemed like a perfectly nice young man from what she'd seen of him... still, it felt strange to think of baby Zoey getting married. She'd only been a child when Annie was born; Liz could still remember the night of her sister's own birth with crystal clarity.

"It does," her mother smiled. She didn't seem quite as celebratory as Liz would have expected; happy, but muted, as if she was caught up in deeper thoughts than those of this brief oasis of calm and happiness.

"I think he's good for her," she said.

"He is." The smile grew warmer as her mother turned to face her. "And Rick is good for you." There it was, the playful quirk of the mouth that she remembered so well, and that still gave her a strange kind of a shock when she saw it in Annie.

"I'll drink to that," she grinned, and drained the last of her wine to prove it. She hesitated, turning back to look out over the landscape. "Ellie's boyfriend's gonna make dad flip out," she observed quietly.

"Oh, boy," her mother agreed dryly.

"What was she thinking?" They exchanged a wry look. "I know exactly what she was thinking," Liz admitted. What was it with her middle sister and her dad? The friction between them had been building even way back before she'd left home, when Ellie hadn't even made it into her teens. Liz had never understood it. Sure, she'd argued, even fought with her father - many, many times, when she'd announced her intention to marry Rick - but it had never ended in anything other than sighs and warmth and cuddles.

But then, Ellie had never been much of a one for cuddles - or for shouting. She kept everything on the inside. And her dad, God bless him, needed somebody to bounce off of. He was too large a personality to share a room with a shrinking violet, he could smother a person just by trying not to.

Where had Ellie got the 'quiet' gene from? It was hardly a Bartlet family trait.

As for her father... well, he could be overbearing as hell at times, no denying that, but you killed that by flaring up at it, not curling up in a ball and waiting for him to stop.

Although, come to think of it, he hadn't seemed that way recently. Liz picked her next words carefully. "Mom, is...? Dad's been kind of, I don't know... weird, lately."

"Your father's always weird, honey, you should know that by now." But her mother's eyes seemed sad behind the automatic quip.

"I know, he just, he seems... Quiet, I guess. Kind of sad." Not quite the word she was shooting for, but somehow she felt strange stretching the limits of her vocabulary in front of the woman who'd known her when she could barely say 'mama'. "Mom, is something wrong?"

Her mother sighed, and mustered a smile for her. "If you're worried about the MS... it's not that. He's been better, these past few months, although he won't admit it."

"Salads?" Liz said, not quite able to suppress the grin. Her dad, chowing down on rabbit food every mealtime? Somehow, she couldn't quite see that happening with good grace.

"And the naps and the giving up smoking." Her mother briefly grasped her shoulder comfortingly. "He's fine, sweet pea, he's just taken to... dwelling on the past... lately."

"The wedding, huh?" she guessed, and her mother nodded.

But somehow, Liz couldn't help fearing that there was more to it than that.

Sam stretched out his legs and sunk into the aeroplane seat with a happy little sigh. Toby glared at him over the top of his laptop as he kicked against the chair opposite, and Sam reluctantly withdrew his feet to a more reasonable position.

"Hey. Oh, hi, Toby." Steve bounced up the corridor to join them and squeezed in next to Sam. "Budge up, sunshine."

"You've got a whole seat there, how much room do you need?"

"I have wide hips."

Sam snorted, but obligingly scooted up a little way. Steve sat down and squirmed, getting comfortable.

"Hey, how come you get the window seat?" he demanded.

"'Cause I got here first?"

"I think I should get the window seat."

"By what reasoning?"

"You get to fly a lot more than I do."

"And since I'm so heartily sick of it, I should get all the perks that are going," Sam countered.

"Which include being nice and safe in the aisle seat where you won't have to look at all those scary clouds."

"Clouds are scary now?"

"They are when you're above them."

Sam smirked. "Well, if I get frightened, you'll just have to hold my hand."

Steve tugged at his arm. "C'mon, Sam, let me sit by the window!" he urged.

"I have to sit by the window. I get motion sickness," he lied.

"No you don't."

"I will if you keep jiggling my shoulder like that."

"Oh, okay, you can have the window seat." Steve slumped back into his own chair and pouted. "But I warn you now, I'm going to go to sleep on your shoulder."

"What, now?" Sam glanced at his watch and grinned. "Are we out past your bedtime?"

"No, but I just think if I'm gonna be spending the whole flight listening to you, I should have a contingency plan."

Toby mumbled something into his beard about having to listen to the both of them. Sam smiled guilelessly. "What was that Toby?"

"Hell. I'm in hell," he muttered to himself.

Steve turned to look at Sam. "What's wrong with Toby, Sam?"

"He's being Mr. Grumpy-Pants," Sam explained. "And now he's doing that thing where he rolls his eyes up," he added. "And fairly soon he's going to snap something at me."

"Like travelling with a pair of twelve-year-olds," Toby growled.

"See?"

Steve looked from one of them to the other. "You two are very sweet, you know that?"

"Hmph." Toby abruptly closed his laptop and stomped off.

"I think we scared him off," Steve noted.

"Maybe he just saw some clouds." With Toby gone, Sam stretched out his feet and sighed contentedly. Steve gave him a look.

"You're a lot more devious than people give you credit for."

"I have an innocent face."

"I'm not fooled."

Sam shrugged, and nodded to the opposite seat. "You can have that window seat now, if you like."

"I don't want that one," he frowned.

"What's the difference between that one and this one?"

"I can't go to sleep on your shoulder in that one."

Sam smiled at him, and obligingly raised his arm and allowed Steve to lay his head against him. They were silent for a few moments.

"You know, you have surprisingly uncomfortable shoulders."

"Shut up." He kissed Steve's hair affectionately.

"Did you know there's a man in Malaysia who's been best man at over a thousand weddings?"

"Shut up."

"I'm saying, he could probably come give you some tips on your speech."

Josh glared at his assistant. "I don't need tips."

"Sure you don't. That's why you're writing it on the plane," she agreed amiably.

"I'm writing it on the plane because certain people won't stop interrupting me."

There was a moment of blessed silence, and he frowned over his words. Then- "Do you know where the term 'best man' comes from?"

"Do I care?"

Apparently, his exasperated look was as good as an invitation.

"It comes from Scotland. Back when the men used to kidnap their brides, all the groom's friends would help. And the one who was best at it got to be best man."

He gave her a look. "I'm supposed to kidnap Zoey Bartlet?"

"Well, I don't know, 'cause, if Charlie was to round up all his friends and do that, I don't think you'd be best at it."

"Nobody would be best at it, we'd all be shot by the Secret Service!"

"You know, that's exactly why you can't get anywhere writing this speech."

Josh was lost. With Donnatella Moss, this was far from uncommon. "What?"

"You have a negative attitude."

"I have a negative attitude?"

"You do," she confirmed.

"I resent that. I'm amazingly positive! I'm so positive, I attract electrons!"

Ha, take that!

She took that, casually flipping over the page in her magazine. "No, Josh, that's just because you suck."

Dammit.

"I can write this speech, Donna," he insisted to her.

"Of course you can," she sighed mildly.

"Are you humouring me?"

"Golly, no, Positron Man," she said, putting on a wide-eyed expression. "Gee, wow, you're one of my biggest heroes with your super electric suction powers."

"Stop that."

"We should get you a cape. And some tights."

"Don-na!"

"I'm not sure what would be best for the colour," she mused. "Traditionally it's red for positive, but I'm sensing some complexion issues there."

"Will you be quiet and let me write this thing?" he demanded.

"Okay," Donna shrugged.

Josh gave a satisfied, manly nod and stared back down at the scrappy beginnings of his speech.

And started wondering how the lyrics to Positron Man's theme song would go.

CJ wandered the plane, looking for someone who was still awake. Ever since the horrific flights to and from Ohio at the time of her father's death five months ago, she'd had trouble with insomnia during flights. It was stupid, illogical, but the feeling of keyed-up tension wouldn't leave her. Somehow she couldn't feel fully secure until they'd touched down at the other end and she'd reassured herself that there was no great tragedy awaiting her.

Normally she could bury herself in work to hide the feeling, from herself and from everyone else. Today, though, there was no work to do. Everybody else was taking advantage of that fact to get in some quality dozing time. Even Toby was nodding in the reflected glare of his computer screen. She'd weighed the amusement inherent in waking him up against having to attend a protracted wedding ceremony with a grumpy Toby the next day, and decided to let sleeping writers lie.

The president would still be awake, and so was Leo; she'd spotted the Chief of Staff going up the corridor to join him a few minutes ago. But both of them had enough problems of their own, and the president was far too sharp to these things to let her sudden onset of insomnia go unremarked. And the last thing she wanted to do was bring anything to do with fathers to his attention.

Ah; at last, a light.

"Hey, Chuckles." Charlie gave her a tight smile as she dropped into the seat next to him. "The others are all sleeping," she informed him.

"Yeah."

"I'm not sleeping," she added.

"Yeah."

"Neither are you."

"No."

"You should be sleeping."

He gave her a look. "I'm getting married to the president's daughter tomorrow morning, you think I'm getting any sleep tonight?"

"No," she conceded. And smiled. "So you don't mind if I come annoy you for a couple of hours, right?"

Charlie continued to stare into the middle distance, keeping hold of the arm rests in something approaching a nervous death grip.

CJ settled down beside him for a long, sleepless wait.

"Hey, Leo."

"Mr. President." The Chief of Staff accepted the seat Jed nodded him into.

"You spoke with Hoynes?" he asked.

"Yeah."

Leo showed the first faint traces of a smirk - too precious after so long in depression to take offence at. "Am I gonna need to speak to CJ?"

Jed lowered his eyebrows in a thundery expression neither of them believed. "I was not patronising."

"Sure you weren't." Leo leaned back in his seat. "You just gave him a pat on the head and told him not to break your country while you weren't using it?"

"I felt like I needed to do... something," he said, instead of pointing out that patting his Vice President on the head would have required a short pause while he went off to get something to stand on.

"It's thirty-six hours," Leo reminded him.

"It's my daughter's wedding," Jed said pointedly. "It's not government business. I feel happier knowing..." He shrugged.

That if anybody takes advantage of this tailor made diversion for a terrorist attack, the Vice President would... know he had his blessing? Was that condescending? Maybe, but he meant it. It wasn't some kind of belief in his own importance that motivated his moves, but the weight of his position that he was never less than conscious of.

"The security's been double-checked?" Leo asked, although he really meant 'checked fifty times in the last three days and being rechecked all the time'.

Jed nodded soberly. The security was going to be the best the world could provide... but what if somebody decided that his daughter's marriage to a young man with the wrong coloured skin just couldn't be? What if there was an assassin in the church, a bomb from above, poison in the wedding cake?

The Secret Service had thought of all these things, and billion more that he wasn't near suspicious enough to envision. They'd thought, they'd checked and they'd prepared. But nothing was ever certain.

A matched pair of entry and exit scars, too small to really believe that a bullet had ever passed through them, gave him a momentary twinge. No, nothing was ever certain. And if the worst came to the worst...

Well, he felt better knowing the Vice President knew he had his blessing.

He looked across at Leo and smiled slightly, to say he wasn't really dwelling on the things that he was dwelling on.

"You're okay?" Leo asked him. And Jed thought about Neo-Nazis, arguments with Ellie, the irrevocable loss of another daughter to adulthood...

"Yeah," he said, and looked across at his oldest friend. "You?"

"I'm fine," Leo said.

They both nodded for a moment, and Jed glanced at him again.

"We're lying, aren't we?" he said, with a curl of wry amusement in his voice.

"Yeah. But I think we're getting pretty convincing," Leo nodded.

They sat together in companionable silence.

"Hey, dad."

"Mallory." Her father gave her a warm but tired smile. He looked smaller than she remembered, washed out and grey. She hugged him tightly, and wondered if she was only imagining that he was so much more frail than he had been.

The wry, sadly guilty smile remained in place as she pulled back. He was expecting her to be disappointed in him, and she didn't know whether to curse him for his short-sightedness or hate the tiny hidden part of her that was.

The president had called her. She was grateful for that. Taking the news of her father's relapse from the man himself would have been too much to bear; the combination of the crushing guilt she knew would lace his voice and the effort of controlling her own voice. At least she'd been able to soak herself in the comfort of the president's concern, both for her and for her father.

When she'd hung up the phone, Mallory hadn't known whether to be relieved or cry or who knew what. After all this time, she still didn't know how to react to the expected unexpected.

Again, again, why did it have to happen again? Why was it never, ever over?

Her father was giving her the hangdog look she remembered so well from her childhood. And she didn't hate him, she could never hate him, but she hated the fact that she couldn't ever let any of her own feelings out because of how it would hurt him.

And God, she hated how he could never escape from the way he always ended up hurting himself.

They'd spoken on the phone in the two months since she'd heard, and there had been a brief, awkward meeting over coffees in his hotel. But she'd sidestepped around all invitations to come to the White House, and she wondered quietly to herself what he'd made of that. She wasn't sure she was ready to admit to herself quite what the reason was, yet.

There was so much to say, and how did you say it?

"Dad, you're getting too thin," was all she put into words.

"I've been on a crash diet," he said dryly.

"Dad..." she shook her head, and he lowered his apologetically. There was an awkward moment of silence before he looked up.

"Has your mother arrived yet?"

"She'll be here in the morning."

He nodded slowly to himself, and she felt compelled to hug him again. "Oh, sweetheart, I'm okay," he murmured softly.

"I worry about you, daddy," she said plaintively.

"I know, I know." He smiled gently at her. "I'm right there in the White House, honey, you can come and visit me any time."

"Yeah," she said, a little awkwardly. She noticed he was still clutching his suitcase - pitifully small compared to the volumes of luggage this trip had required for her - and pried it out of his fingers, to his visible amusement. "You need to get some rest," she told him. "It's going to be a long day tomorrow."

He shook his head as he trailed after her. "Okay, between you and the president, I have entirely too many substitute parents right now."

Mallory giggled, and at least for a little while, things didn't feel quite so strained.

It would have been nice to be able to turn up as a pleasant surprise, but circumstances made it a little difficult. On the plus side, it meant that the time between his limo rolling up at the hotel and Abbey reaching his side was negligible.

"Hey there, father of the bride," she smiled, falling into step beside him as he walked. It was late, but people were waiting up - people had a tendency to do that when he came calling. They both smiled and acknowledged and said "hi" to people without breaking their stride or their conversation. They conversed in the low tones which were all too often all they had for privacy.

"How's Zoey doing?"

"She's good. How's Charlie?"

"Well, he hasn't passed out or thrown up yet, so I'd say he's doing fine."

"Better than you." He rose above that playful jab with a quiet smile, knowing that any discussion of whether or not his dizzy spell at their wedding had been marriage jitters or manfully staving off food-poisoning from a hasty breakfast was not likely to maintain the level of dignity required. "How did your flight go?" she asked.

Knowing this would inevitably turn to the question of whether he'd slept, Jed deflected the enquiry. "Well, mostly it coasted along using its engines. There was a slight rough patch where they asked us to all get out and flap our arms, but-"

Abbey gave a theatrical sigh. "Why did I marry you?" she asked, of the ceiling more than of him.

"I bedazzled you with my vibrant aura of sexual magnetism," he supplied out of the corner of his mouth, smiling innocently at a group of miscellaneous hotel staff as he passed.

"Is that so?"

"Well, you didn't say as much. But I read between the lines." Their arrival at their suite was timed well to coincide with his smirk, and Abbey held the door open and ordered him in with an eyebrow. It closed behind them, shutting the outside world as far away as it ever got.

"It's late," she said, moving to help him take off his tie.

"See, there goes that sexual magnetism again," he noted as she tugged it off over his head.

"You just keep telling yourself that, babe," Abbey agreed mildly, sitting on the edge of the bed to remove her shoes.

"I sense that you're doubting. You're a doubting Thomas." He stole a quick kiss as she was removing her earrings.

"You think I'm a man now?" she smirked. "Are you wearing the same glasses you had on when you 'read between the lines'?"

He gave her a quick squeeze. "Well, the evidence suggests you're not a man. But I think the issue bears further investigation." Jed scooted closer to her across the bed, and she laughed and pushed him away with a hand against his chest.

"You, my friend, are getting nothing but beauty sleep on this fine midsummer evening," she chided. "You've got a big day out in front of the cameras tomorrow, and don't think I don't know you've been distracting me from asking if you slept on the plane."

He heaved a hugely put-upon sigh, but without any rancour, and flopped back against the bed to look up at the ceiling. He locked his hands behind his head. "This is all very familiar," he noted.

Abbey snuggled up against his side. "Yeah." He absently put out a hand to stroke her hair.

"It's not the honeymoon suite, though." He remembered their own marriage as if it was yesterday, and the ecstatically terrifying whirlwind of anticipation in his belly as they retired hand in hand to this hotel. It had been almost more than they could afford back then, both young students not prepared to take their parents' charity, although now it was pretty low down the opulence scale for a presidential rest stop.

He could see Abbey's smirk without rolling over to look at her. "Well, you know, they've reserved that for Charlie and Zoey this time around." He grumbled low down in his chest at that, and she laughed at him, cruel woman that she was. "Everybody's children grow up, Jed," she said gently.

"Not so soon," he objected. "They're still babies."

"Zoey's twenty-three," Abbey reminded him. But that was just a number, not something he could associate with the youngest of his children, because he could still remember the days when he'd been twenty-three.

"I remember when she used to fit in the palm of my hand," he said softly. He did, too, a tiny little baby with eyes so huge and fascinated that you could see right through them to the freshly-minted soul beneath.

His little girl. How could she be getting married?

"Yeah." Abbey's head shifted against his shoulder, and he sensed that he'd transmitted his mood.

"I'm sorry, babe," he apologised, brushing a curl of hair from her forehead to kiss it. "I'm just dwelling on the past, lately."

"Yes, well, that's what happens when you're old."

Her playful tone surprised him into a laugh, and he tugged her tightly into his arms. "I love you," he said quietly, against her hair.

There wasn't anything else that needed to be said.

"Mr. Seaborn?"

"That's me."

The desk clerk ran an efficient finger along his register. "A double; 23A?"

"That's right," he confirmed, taking the card key. "Thanks."

The clerk flicked his eyes to Steve standing next to him. "And you're-?"

"Oh, we're sharing," Steve said, casually wrapping his fingers around Sam's wrist. Sam tensed as the man's face went carefully blank, but all he did was lower his gaze.

"Very good, sir," he said neutrally.

They picked up their suitcases and headed off to find their room. "I'm sorry about that," Sam said awkwardly as they passed out of the lobby.

Steve flashed him a sudden boyish grin. "Are you kidding? I love doing that," he smirked.

Sam shook his head, and had to smile back. Then he shifted his bag to the other hand, so he could slip an arm around Steve's waist as they walked.

Who gave a damn what anybody thought?

SATURDAY:

Donna knocked, and breezed in without waiting for a reply. "Morning Josh."

"Mmpgh." Her boss was slumped face down on his bed amidst screwed-up balls of paper, still in his clothes from yesterday.

"See, this is exactly why I told you to pack an extra suit." Donna casually tugged open the curtains, causing Josh to blink and groan in protest.

"The wedding's not for, like, six hours!" he objected, gathering up balls of paper and uncrumpling them to peer at what was written on them.

"You're the best man! You have duties."

"They're gonna take me six hours?"

"Judging by how long it took you to get started on your speech? A whole lot longer than that."

"It's done!" he said defensively. Apparently having found the correct ball of paper, he waved it vaguely at her. It looked... well, rather like it had been screwed up and slept on.

By a very restless elephant. With spikes.

"Want me to type that up for you?" Donna asked pointedly.

He held the paper against his chest defensively. "You can't read it."

"Well, that bodes well for the ceremony," she noted dryly.

"No, it's... I don't want anybody to read it." Josh continued to hold onto it tightly, watching her with suspicious eyes as if she might suddenly leap across the bed and grab it from him.

Donna shrugged. "Whatever," she agreed, rolling her eyes tolerantly, and moved past him to the closet to remove the tuxedo that was hanging up there.

"Hey!" He blinked at her. "You're stealing my clothes."

"You can't wear this," she told him.

"You want me to go naked?"

"Nobody wants that, Josh. You have another suit in there, the extra one I made you bring."

"But I need the tux for the wedding," he objected.

"Which, as you just reminded me, is not for another six hours."

He gave her an injured look. "You think I can ruin a tux in six hours?"

"Josh. You can ruin a tux in six minutes. You can ruin a tie in six minutes, and I didn't even know that was physically possible."

Josh's face - more eloquent than he was at this time in the morning - took on its familiar 'I'm about to say something fairly stupid that I think is witty' aspect. "What is it with you women and this obsession you have with wrinkles?"

"We women?" Donna arched an eyebrow in the international signal for 'This would be a good time to remove your foot from your mouth'.

Josh had never been good at that particular signal.

"Yeah! When was the last time you ever heard a guy say 'Oh no, honey, you can't wear that, it's got creases in'? You know why? 'Cause we're men of the world, and we know that-" He gradually trailed off as he realised Donna had moved close enough to invade his personal space, and looked up at her.

"Josh?"

"Yeah?"

She whapped him soundly across the top of the head.

"Ow!"

"Get dressed." She swept out.

"Abbey?"

"Claudia Jean!" The First Lady smiled brightly at her, and CJ almost second guessed her instinct to report back to her. But no; there was nothing Abigail Bartlet hated more than people deciding for her what she did and didn't need to know.

Abbey read her expression, and immediately pulled her aside for a little privacy. "What is it, CJ?"

"I got a call from the publisher yesterday."

Her jaw tightened, but her voice remained level and pleasantly low as she asked "Release date?"

"Barring complications, we're looking at mid-November."

CJ saw the First Lady's face mirror her own thought processes. A little breathing time... but really, how could any breathing time ever be enough?

Abbey nodded slowly to herself, and met the press secretary's eyes. "Like to offer me the odds on this book fading into the bargain bins unnoticed?"

She let her expression speak for itself.

"Yeah," said Abbey softly, and she briefly concentrated on smoothing out a piece of carpet with her shoe. Then she looked up. "Does he know?"

"I've only spoken to Toby."

She nodded. "Let's keep this between us, okay? Jed doesn't need to know about it until we're back in DC. Let him have today."

"Yeah."

"And keep Toby on a leash," she added pointedly. CJ smiled.

"Don't worry, he's got Andy to do that."

"Yes, I saw her name on the invite list - your handiwork, by any chance?" Abbey asked, beginning to smirk.

CJ tilted her head curiously. "As a matter of fact, I assumed it was yours."

The First Lady raised an eyebrow. "Hmm, interesting... you think he added her himself?"

"Well, unless the president's behind it..." CJ agreed.

Abbey rolled her eyes. "Trust me, CJ, the president is woefully clueless when it comes to spotting undercurrents in relationships."

The comment was lighthearted, but still, it lingered, as both of them were drawn inevitably to wondering if there was perhaps something in his past that had made him that way. They looked at each other.

"Let him have today, CJ," Abbey repeated, and CJ nodded.

She was really beginning to wish she hadn't brought Jeff.

It had seemed like a smart idea at the time. Jeff was exactly the kind of boyfriend her father wouldn't be able to stand; sullen, moody, unimpressed and uncommunicative... she'd selected him specially for this event with those particular qualities in mind.

What she'd apparently forgotten somewhere in her planning was the fact that bringing Jeff would involve, well, having to spend time with Jeff. And truth to tell, after spending entirely too much time over the last forty-eight hours with him, Ellie was beginning to see her father's point.

"This sucks." Her 'boyfriend' kicked moodily at the edge of the flowerbeds. "You promised me a good time, El. All we've done is sit around a stupid hotel all day."

She hated being called "El". But apparently that hadn't sunk in the first four or five times she'd politely brought it up.

"Listen, I don't like it any more than you do," she said, affecting a shrug. "I didn't know my mom was gonna decide to keep me on a baby harness."

"So let's blow this place," he scowled.

"I would, but-" she indicted over her shoulder. "Secret Service?"

"Can't you ditch them?" Jeff snapped.

Well, gee, buddy, that's an original thought. Certainly nothing I would have thought of on my own at any point in the last five years.

Her internal voice of sarcasm had a strong tendency to sound a lot like her mother.

"Yeah, but then I get totally bitched out 'cause my dad thinks I'm gonna get shot if I cross the street on my own." In theory, anyway. Ditching her protection detail, while rather a recurring fantasy, was not something she was actually stupid enough to try and do. Especially not after what had happened at Rosslyn.

She'd had nightmares, after the news footage and the panicked exchange of phonecalls with her mother. Months and months of waking up with images of the president's assassination on CNN. If she'd been any of the other Bartlet daughters, she'd have gone running straight to daddy and have him kiss it better. But she was Eleanor Emily, and she never went running to daddy with anything. Why should she? He never cared enough to come running to her when she needed anything.

So she faced her nightmares on her own.

Jeff snorted loudly. "Ah, who'd want to shoot you?" he snickered. And even if he was technically just following her lead, it still stung. Who would want to shoot her? She was just plain old Ellie, the middle daughter. The bland one, the nothing one. Don't bother shooting her, her daddy wouldn't even miss her.

Speak of the old devil. Here he came now. He smiled for her, but she didn't miss the way his face tightened momentarily before he did.

Oh, why even bother, if you're just gonna fake it?

"Ellie, hi." He came over and gave her a hug and a kiss on the cheek, which she neither shrank from or leaned in to. She'd never been as much of a one for physical contact as he was.

"Hi, dad."

"And you must be Jeff Coleridge."

"Yeah."

In the moment when it came down to it, she wasn't sure whether to be proud of her selection of Jeff or cringe-worthily embarrassed. He took the arrival of his country's leader with an aura of indifference bordering on contempt.

Her father was obviously less than thrilled, but he made an effort to contain it. His voice was deceptively pleasant as he said "I'm sorry, son, would you mind giving us a couple of moments...?"

"Sure, whatever. See you later, Els." He casually slouched off without a backward glance.

Ellie slipped her hands into her pockets and looked at the ground. There was an awkward silence.

"He's your boyfriend?" her father said after a moment. Trying not to sound judgemental, and definitely not succeeding.

She shrugged, still hiding behind the curtain of her hair. "He's a guy I know."

"Oh, he's 'a guy you know'?" Her father's tone was rising, the way it always seemed to no matter how he tried to contain it. "You brought him to your sister's wedding, but he's just 'a guy you know'?"

"Mom said I could bring somebody."

"What, so you just dragged him in off the street somewhere?"

"I just brought him, okay?" she said, passive-aggressively. "I'm sorry if he doesn't come up to your incredibly exacting standards."

"My standards are the same standards as the rest of civilised society," he said, and damn, she hated it when he blew himself up like a pompous windbag. "Eleanor, look at me. Look up at me."

Oh, this again. She reluctantly dragged her gaze up. He was always so intense, always staring at her, like she was some kind of alien species he had to study.

He had that same look he always did. "Eleanor, did you bring this boy specifically to cause a ruckus?" he demanded.

Ruckus. Ruckus; who the hell used words like 'ruckus'? Ellie scowled. "Dad-"

"Eleanor, the boy barely even acknowledged you're alive. If that's your idea of a good boyfriend, then-"

"Oh, not everything is about you, okay?" she snapped. "Could you maybe just accept that sometimes, sometimes I actually do things that don't have anything to do with trying to get at you?"

Of course, that annoying little voice of conscience pointed out that this had been preplanned, but still, she thought she owed herself a little righteous indignation for all the times it hadn't been.

Wrenching her gaze away from his made it easier to stomp away.

"Ellie-"

She heard the plaintive note as he said her name, but she carried on walking anyway. She knew he wouldn't come chasing after her.

He never did.

Zoey stepped into the room, took one look around, and gasped in horror. "Oh my God, I'm a horrible, horrible person. What have I done? How can you ever forgive me?"

Her bridesmaids looked at each other.

"It's not that bad..." Deanna ventured after a few moments.

Zoey sat down, head in hands. "Oh my God, I'm like, the evil bridesmaid dresser. How could I do this to you? How could you let me do this to you?"

"I think they're really..." Annie sought for a complimentary comment, and settled for "...not that evil." She looked down at her dress. "I mean, the look is... it's kind of..."

"Soufflé," Donna supplied.

"Yeah," she admitted. "Oh, but, soufflés are good!"

"Full of sugar," Deanna agreed.

Annie nodded quickly. "Yeah. Sugar's always good."

Zoey slowly shook her head, and looked up. "Okay, why didn't anybody in this room you know, pull me aside and... hit me over the head with something heavy? Did I get bypass surgery on my fashion centres or something? They're hideous."

CJ took charge, laying a comforting hand on her shoulder. "Then they're doing their job. Rule one in the bridesmaids handbook; make the bride look good." She gave the First Daughter, made-up but not yet squeezed into her wedding dress, a quick once-over. "Not that you're gonna need help. Your hair looks great."

"This is all going wrong," Zoey said despairingly. "The, the bridesmaids' dresses are hideous, Ellie's brought a completely jerky boyfriend just to get at dad and now they're not talking to each other, the flowers are all wrong-"

"Whoa whoa whoa! Time out!" CJ counselled. "One thing at a time; breathe, Zoey, you're going purple. The dresses are fine. Don't worry about Ellie, this is your day, not hers. What's wrong with the flowers?"

Zoey looked up at her, looking very young in her misery. "They won't do them like I want," she said in a small voice. "I keep talking to people, but nobody's listening to me, this is my wedding but they all want to do it how they want, and-"

"Okay," CJ interrupted decisively. "Come on, ladies. Zoey, let's go kick some florist ass. Then when we've done that, we'll find somebody else's ass to kick."

"I vote Josh," Donna volunteered.

"Good plan," CJ agreed. Zoey cautiously began to smile, and CJ took her by the arm. "Lead the way, sister, we've got your back. We're your posse - point us at an ass, and we'll kick it. Okay?"

"O-kay!" Zoey said, with considerably more enthusiasm. "Let's get those florists!"

As they trailed behind the newly confident bride-to-be, Deanna looked across at Annie. "Did I mention want to be CJ when I grow up?"

"Me too," agreed the First Granddaughter emphatically.

"Hey, you guys can get in line behind the rest of us." Donna grinned at the two girls.

The sisterhood marched off to do battle.

"Millie." Abbey's tone was perhaps a little more polite than it would normally been, a warning sign that her husband would have recognised but the Surgeon General didn't seem to notice.

"Abbey." She smiled, looking over her shoulder. "Was that little Annie I just saw menacing the hotel staff?"

"Not so little anymore," Abbey acknowledged. "The girls are out in force - apparently some people here had their own ideas about how Zoey's wedding was supposed to go. I left them to it; they looked like they were enjoying themselves."

"All of them?" asked Millie, ever-so-slightly pointedly.

"If you're referring to my middle daughter, I assure you she's keeping to herself by choice, not by design." Abbey smiled sweetly. By this point in the conversation, Jed would have been looking for an escape hatch.

But the Surgeon General pressed on. "Sometimes people 'choose' to stay out because they're not that comfortable in."

"And sometimes it takes two people to build a wall." Abbey tilted her head to regard her daughter's godmother. "Millie... I love you dearly, but exactly where do you get off telling my husband he has favourites among his own daughters?"

"I didn't say that, I said Ellie thought that."

"That's not what my husband got out of the conversation." It had broken her heart to hear her husband softly confess that he thought his daughter was afraid of him. Millie was only sticking up for Ellie, God bless her, but she was making waves in places she had no idea of the undercurrents.

The Surgeon General rolled her eyes. "Abbey, I know your husband loves Ellie, but he needs a good sharp wake-up call! She's slipping away from him, and if he doesn't do something about it he's going to lose her completely."

Abbey sighed and massaged her forehead. She was silent for a few moments. "I know you're looking out for Ellie in this Millie, and I respect that - and believe me, that's why we chose you to be her godmother in the first place - but... it's complicated."

"She's scared, Abbey," Millie said softly. "You're a family of confident people - you don't know what it's like to always be the insecure one."

Abbey smiled wryly at that. "Oh, Millie," she sighed, shaking her head. "You really think Ellie's the only insecure one in this equation?"

She barked a disbelieving laugh. "Jed, insecure?"

"About this, he's insecure," she repeated.

"That's crazy," the Surgeon General said, frowning. "He's a wonderful father, and you know all the girls adore him. Even Ellie - especially Ellie, that's why she's always so distressed by all of this."

"He worries, Millie," Abbey said softly. "And I know you didn't mean to, but you hurt him very deeply, and he hasn't forgotten it. You're looking out for my daughter, and I love you for that, but this isn't as simple as you'd like to make it, okay? These things never are." She straightened up. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go check on my youngest daughter before she and her pack of bridesmaids decide they're not content with taking over the wedding and move on to world domination."

She left the Surgeon General watching after her with a thoughtful look on her face.

"This is a really nice hotel," Sam observed as they walked.

"Yeah." Josh looked around. "You know what's missing, though?"

"What?"

"I haven't been bugged about my speech for nearly ten minutes. Where's Donna?"

"Well, she was terrorising the staff with the other bridesmaids for a while, and then I think she went outside..."

"Yeah, thanks." Josh started to peel off and then paused. "Where're you going?"

"I'm just gonna go get breakfast with Steve." Sam pointed vaguely over his shoulder. "Long wait until we get to eat after the wedding."

"Yeah. I'm gonna go find Donna."

"Okay."

He found her sitting on a bench outside, in a dress that was probably best described as... 'frothy'. "You look nice," he said, perhaps too tentatively.

She shot him a venomous look. "Liar."

He shrugged, and made to sit down next to her. She snatched the fabric of her dress out of his way. "Careful, you'll ruin it."

"Yeah - I think the guy who designed it already took care of that," he noted dryly.

Donna sighed. "I hate weddings."

"Me too."

"Everybody always seems so... happy."

"Ingrates."

"And there they are, getting all their lives and their futures sorted out, and... here am I."

He smiled at her affectionately. "Where are you?"

"Nowhere fast, most of the time." She frowned down at her outfit.

"You want to be somewhere else?"

"No, I just... sometimes I just feel like there's something... missing, you know?"

Josh smirked. "There's nothing missing from you. You're... complete. The complete Donnatella."

Almost against her will, she began to smile back. "You make me sound like an encyclopaedia."

"Full of pointless information and difficult to read?"

The smile blossomed into a full-blown grin and then a giggle. And then she sighed. "The wedding's not so bad, but then there's gonna be the reception, and everybody's gonna have somebody to dance with..."

He gestured to himself. "Would the best man be an appropriate dance partner?"

Donna smiled. "That's sweet."

"I am that way."

"Willing to publicly humiliate yourself to make me feel better."

"I often do."

"And, strangely, it always makes me feel better."

He grinned, and squeezed her shoulder. "Hey, it's only for today."

"I know," she shrugged. "It's just... I mean Zoey's twenty-three. Doesn't it make you feel... inadequate?"

His smile shrank in on itself and disappeared, and he fiddled with his fingers. "I know," he sighed. "I just... I'm not good at that stuff. I think I- I don't know, I think I have something, and then I just manage to screw it up."

"Me too," she agreed sadly.

"Hey, no you don't," Josh refuted. "You just have a remarkable talent for picking up gomers."

She looked at him. "And you have a remarkable talent for saying exactly the wrong thing at exactly the wrong time."

Now seemed like a good time for a self-depreciating smile. "Ah, but now you want to kick my ass you're not depressed anymore, right?"

She tilted her head to one side and contemplated that for a moment. "You know what? That's true."

"Well, there you go then." He offered her a hand up. "Let's get back inside."

They headed back in.

"Okay, are we ready to go?" Steve looked around.

"More or less," Sam agreed, straightening out his jacket. "Bridesmaids are despatched, the First Couple are following behind... Josh, are you ready?"

Josh frowned. "Has anybody seen Charlie?"

Sam blinked at him. "You lost the groom?"

"No, I didn't!" he defended himself hurriedly. "I, uh... I think he's still upstairs. I'll just go check."

He jogged quickly up the two flights of stairs, trying to ignore the beginning of a burning in his chest and throat that told him he was in no shape for this. He'd been in and out of Charlie's door several times already this morning, and didn't think anything of pushing through it again.

Charlie jumped at his entrance. He was standing in front of the mirror, shirtless, and crossed his arms over his chest in an oddly defensive gesture. Josh lingered in the doorway a moment, then stepped forward, letting the door fall slowly closed behind him. "You okay?" he asked.

Charlie turned back to the mirror, eyes lingering on the blemishes that remained on his dark skin from the aftermath of his brutal beating five months ago. There was uncertainty written on his face, and that made him look even younger than the age his professional exterior usually disguised.

His mouth twisted awkwardly as he gestured vaguely to himself. "Zoey hasn't... seen this." He didn't say anything more, but Josh heard it perfectly anyway.

Is this repulsive? Does it make me ugly? Will she still see me the way she used to? He knew those thoughts and the demons that lay behind them; the self doubt, the knowledge that the marks of someone else's hatred would remain forever stamped on you.

He hesitated, and then stepped forward and quietly unbuttoned his own formal shirt. Charlie's eyes in the mirror flickered briefly to the long, jagged scar in the middle of his chest, and quickly darted away in guilt. Josh gripped his shoulder.

"They're just scars, Charlie," he said softly. "They don't say anything about us, except that we survived. They did those things to us, and we're still here."

Charlie still seemed uncertain. "You think it'll upset Zoey?"

"Maybe," he admitted honestly. His own more prominent war-wound seemed to exert a strange fascination over people; they wanted to see it without him realising they were looking, wanted to know if it hurt him without actually wanting to ask him. He frowned suddenly. "She hasn't seen it before?"

Charlie gave him a look. "The 82nd Airborne works for her father."

"Point," he conceded. He quickly buttoned his shirt back up, and reached across to hand Charlie's to him. "Hey, come on, that crazy girl's agreed to marry you - you think she really cares about a couple of nicks and scratches? Besides," he waggled his eyebrows, "scars are sexy."

"Oh, is that what they told you?" Charlie rolled his eyes, but obligingly started to pull his wedding shirt on. Satisfied, Josh turned to go. The younger man suddenly flashed a playful grin at him. "Written your speech yet?" he asked pointedly.

"Shut up," he growled good-naturedly on his way out.

"Unusual place to meet you," she observed dryly.

Toby turned to glance up at the church. "Not my first choice for a house of worship," he agreed with a shrug.

"It's good to see you, Toby," Andy smiled.

"I'm sure it is," he agreed.

"And in the great outdoors, too."

He looked around. "I fail to see what's so great about it."

"It has trees and flowers and happy little squirrels," she supplied.

"Do they bite?"

She had to smirk. "It's good to know that weddings still bring out your soft and tender side."

"I am nothing if not the spirit of romance."

"Right you are, Pokey." Andy rolled her eyes, but still linked her arm through his when he extended it. They walked together into the church to take their places.

She didn't remember anything so concrete as words or images - just flashes, sensations. The warmth of her father's arm linked through hers; music; the soft and soothing murmur of the voice of the priest as he recited the opening prayer. And Charlie, always Charlie, the one thing in the entire church that she was seeing in clear focus.

Words didn't reenter her world until the moment her father stood up to make his reading, making the church and the people there his own as effortlessly as he did any podium and any crowd. His voice was a comfort, the familiar rumble of her childhood and every important moment since, but she didn't look at him; she didn't look at anyone but Charlie.

She didn't need to look to know that the words he spoke were read from nowhere but the inside of his head. She didn't worry that he would stumble or forget or struggle to get the words out; he wouldn't let her down.

In all her life, he'd never let her down.

"Jesus said to the disciples, 'This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you," he began, and his voice filled the air, gentle but thunderous in the same breath. "Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you."

When she was a little girl, still fresh to the ways of religion and faith, still unknowing of all the ways in which the world was bigger than she could imagine, Zoey had always privately believed that the voice of God would sound exactly like the voice of her father. Here, now, in this place, two decades older and wiser and becoming a married woman, she heard him speak... and she still believed it.

"You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide; so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. This I command you: love one another.'"

In the oasis of velvet silence that followed, she drifted back to herself for long enough to wonder if everyone else in the room - across the globe, as they sat glued to their TV screens for the public event of the decade - was hearing and feeling the same thing she did. Seeing her father, perhaps for the first time, cloaked in the glory of the words and the faith that had always been his power.

She couldn't know... and it didn't matter. Because in this moment, even her father was only a voice; there was nobody else in the church but one man. The man who was going to be her husband.

She felt Jed's hand tighten in her own, knew without looking at him that he was silently mouthing the words along as she was doing. In this exact church, thirty-five years ago, it had been her father and mother who sat in these seats, and she and Jed standing before them. Eyes locked together, hearts beating fast but in synchrony as they spoke the words that would seal them together forever.

"I, Charles Young," (I, Josiah Bartlet) "take you, Zoey Patricia Bartlet," (Abigail Anne Barrington) "to be my lawful wedded wife. To have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health-" Jed's fingers pressed closer against her own, and she closed her eyes momentarily against the sting of tears that were neither sad nor happy but overflowing with a love almost painful in its intensity, "-till death do us part."

She wasn't sure she'd ever known until now quite how much Zoey looked like her. While Charlie, of course, couldn't have looked less like Jed, tall and dark-eyed and chocolate-skinned - and yet, at the same time, in some undefinable way he did. She could see her husband in his stance, in the intensity of the gaze locked on her daughter's face (blue eyes, boring into hers, deep enough to drown in and never come back to the surface, not in thirty-five years, not ever) as she repeated the words.

And the priest could have been any of the men who'd stood where he stood for decades before and would for decades after. Speaking the words of a promise that was sacred to her in more ways than the purely religious.

"You have declared your consent before the Church. May the Lord in his goodness strengthen your consent and fill you both with his blessings. What God has joined, men must not divide."

"Amen," said the congregation in unison.

And softly, below the dying wave of voices, her husband repeated for her ears alone, "Amen." She reached across her lap with her right hand, and his left met it in the middle. They sat that way with both pairs of hands locked together, and as the priest blessed the rings she was conscious of her own in a way that she hadn't been in all the years that it had felt like nothing so much as an extension of her hand.

"Lord, bless these rings which we bless in your name. Grant that those who wear them may always have a deep faith in each other. May they do your will and always live together in peace, good will and love."

"Amen," repeated the congregation. She wasn't quite sure what made her glance at Jed in that very instant, but he was looking at her too, and the softness of his smile made her heart flip as easily as it had at nineteen.

It seemed that she was lost in his gaze for an eternity, for when she looked back to the front of the church the ceremony was reaching its final point.

"I now pronounce you man and wife," the priest said gravely, and Abbey heard the smile enter his voice. "You may now kiss the bride."

And so she saw her daughter kiss her new husband for the first time. But only for a tiny fraction of an instant.

Because right then, she was also kissing hers.

The pink rubber ball bounced off Toby's nose, knocking him to the floor.

"Score!" crowed Bonnie.

"Stand him up again," Ginger commanded. Bonnie crossed the bullpen to reset the fallen photograph.

"Oh, oh, oh!" Ginger waved them over to the TV, and they all scrambled to join her.

"Aww," they all chorused in unison at the sight of Charlie and Zoey.

"They're so cute." Ed dabbed his eyes.

"It's not fair," grumbled Larry. "I really thought we were gonna get to go, until Josh-"

"Josh!" the room chorused, and Carol handed him a ball. He absently fired it off at the Josh target as he continued.

"-decided that somebody had to stay behind and work on the finance thing."

"It's not fair," Ed agreed. "Like anybody else in the entire world is doing any work today?"

Carol peered out into the corridor. "What are we going to do if the Vice President decides to come down here?" she wondered.

"Remind him about last Thursday's vote. Then point him at the Sam and Toby targets," Bonnie suggest dryly.

"Toby. Grr. Gimme the ball," Ginger demanded.

"Is it me, or is this beginning to lose its entertainment value?" Bonnie sighed.

"This is not entertainment, it's therapy," Larry refuted.

"We have to sit here pretending to run the country, while they get to be off in New Hampshire having a thirty-six hour party," Ed agreed, catching the ball as Ginger tossed it to him and taking aim.

"Hey, what did Sam do?" Ginger wondered as the Deputy Communications Director's photograph plunged off the edge of the table and into the trashcan.

"Well, actually I was aiming for Josh again, but it kinda rebounded," he admitted.

Carol sighed heavily and dangled her feet. "I bet Donna and Margaret are having fun," she said with wistful envy.

"Well, Margaret, yeah, if she can stop worrying about Leo for five minutes. But Donna? Not so much." Bonnie arched a pointed eyebrow.

"Those are quite some bridesmaids' dresses," Ginger agreed wryly.

"And you notice CJ still looked stunning?"

"I hate CJ," Carol grumbled. "You know. In a fond way," she amended off her companions' glances.

"I hate them all," scowled Bonnie.

"Yeah. Evil wedding-going... evil people," Ginger nodded emphatically.

"What are we gonna do now?" Ed wondered, as the muted television footage cut back to the anchors.

"We could steal office supplies," Larry volunteered. Bonnie rolled her eyes.

"We could do that any time," she said dryly.

"I propose a military coup," said Carol.

There was a brief, contemplative silence.

"Nah," said Larry finally.

Ginger started to grin. "I vote we sneak into all their offices and rearrange the furniture. See how long it takes 'em to notice their offices are back-to-front."

"Josh wouldn't notice if his clothes were back-to-front," Bonnie smirked.

"Sam would freak."

She grinned. "Better yet, Sam we could convince we didn't know anything about it."

"'What are you talking about, Sam? Your office was always that way around'," Ginger said in her best innocent tones, and they all giggled.

Bonnie dropped off the desktop to stand up. "Okay, it's a plan! Come on, gals."

"Hey!"

"Sorry, Ed."

"Larry," he corrected.

They all tripped off to work some fully justified mischief.

"Aren't they sweet?" Abbey smiled.

"Positively nauseating," Jed grumbled. She elbowed him surreptitiously.

"Play nice," she admonished.

He shot her a studiously innocent look. "I am the soul of courtesy and bounty," he insisted with a shrug.

"Of course you are."

"I'm the father of the bride - who, by the way, is far too young to be settling down and getting married - I could have chosen to be difficult."

"That's hard to believe," she said dryly.

"It's true."

"My heart is all a-flutter at the thought." She laid her hands over it for emphasis, and unmindful of any audience he leaned in and stole a kiss.

"It's time for me to speak," he reminded her, rifling quickly through his speech notes.

"Try not to put the entire room to sleep, please, honey?"

Jed looked injured, and then paused and considered. "That's not a bad idea. I'm all in favour of sleep."

"In place of other popular activities for newlywed couples?" she teased, just to see his face go purple.

"You're a cruel, cruel woman Abigail Bartlet," he groaned.

"Why do I put up with you?" she asked rhetorically.

"Because I'm sexy as hell, and you love to hear me speak," he said confidently.

"Narcissist."

"You know it's true."

And damned if he wasn't right. Judging by the thickness of the wad of notecards in his hand, he was going to do his level best at making good on his threat. But with the gleam in his eye, and the happy little rumble down in the back of his throat that no amount of complaining could quite disguise, she could have listened to him all night if he was reading a law textbook or a telephone directory.

If only he wasn't so damn cute when he was being unbearably smug.

The president was trying hard to look stern and patriarchal. It only served to heighten the contrast with the delighted grin that CJ could see kept flashing through at the edges.

He stood up and shuffled pages of notes, before giving up and randomly jamming them together. Beside her, Sam made a quietly amused snort. She glanced across for Toby's reaction, but his eyes were on Andy, not the president.

"Some of you here may not know me," he began, to a rumble of good-natured amusement, "but I'm the father of the bride." This was about as far from a hostile crowd as you could get, and today the president's propensity for rambling, bad jokes and veering off the script were nothing for her to care about. "It's my job here to say a few words and - unaccustomed as I am to public speaking-" more chuckles- "I thought I'd give it a shot."

He glanced fondly back at Zoey, looking radiant beside her brand new husband. Her pure white dress and Charlie's dark tuxedo only made the sharp contrast in their skin tones all the stronger; it was a striking image, and one which CJ at least found fittingly powerful in its beauty. She only hoped that the vast majority of Americans could share that impression.

"Now, I could go on and on for a couple of hours about the amazing young lady that used to be Zoey Bartlet and is now Zoey Bartlet-Young, but she'd only end up going pink and crawling under the table. And let me tell you, it only seems like yesterday that she was small enough to walk underneath these tables-"

"Get on with it," called the First Lady with a smirk, and he pointed at her with his glass.

"Heckled, I'm getting heckled by my own wife here," he said mock-sternly as the crowd all grinned. "Very well, I'll skip that piece of quality reminiscing - and believe me, you don't know what you're missing - and move on to the main point of my speech. Which is: I could go on and on about how wonderful my daughters are, but you all know that already." He lowered his brows threateningly. "And if you don't, then we'll be having words." Zoey shook her head at him, still beaming.

"So instead," he smiled softly, "let's talk about Charlie. Charles Bartlet-Young. Now there's a name with a nice bit of gravitas, I think you'll all agree."

CJ had heard the name bandied about; had spoken in herself in press briefings, when it had been established that not only would Zoey be keeping her name as her eldest sister had done, but Charlie would be adopting it. But here, now, knowing that it was really for real, it sent a kind of shiver down her spine. She watched Charlie's expression. It looked closer to tearful than smiling, but she could only imagine the awe and delight that lay beneath it.

"Charlie came to me four years ago, brought to my attention by Joshua Lyman." The president nodded across at him, and CJ tried to catch his eye but he was focused on the president. "He got a place as best man for that; he should have got a medal." He slid one hand into his pocket as he sipped from the glass in the other.

"I asked them to bring me a new personal aide; they brought me far more than that. Charlie's been by my side through good times and bad - hell, these days he sees more of me than my wife-" more laughter, although CJ caught the gentle glance between president and First Lady that acknowledged the truth in the joke - "and I know for a fact he's never wavered in his loyalty to me, or in his love for my daughter. If I had any say in who my daughters chose to spend their lives with - and believe me, I've campaigned for it - I couldn't have picked a better candidate." He smiled at the couple. "And I'd wish perfect happiness on them, but it seems redundant, because all they could ever need to achieve it was the chance to be together. And today, that chance has been realised."

He raised his glass, and drank from it briefly. After he lowered it was silent for a few moments, looking down. His voice, when he spoke, had become subtly more solemn. "I never had any sons," he said softly. "But if I had, I think I would have been a lucky man indeed to hope for one like Charlie. He's a good man, and true, and as noble as anyone I've ever known. I consider my daughter blessed to have him in her life; and myself blessed even to know him."

He twisted away from his audience to lock eyes with his son-in-law. "To welcome him into my family is both a joy and a privilege. Every day I'm confronted with further evidence of his loyalty, compassion and his diligence, and he constantly humbles me with his ability to remain a good man in the most adverse of circumstances." He hesitated for a long beat. "I love him very much. And I hope he'll permit me the honour... of calling myself his father."

CJ was aware of the tears beginning to leak down her face, probably making a mockery of her make-up. That seemed both far away and unimportant as her mind filled with thoughts of her own dearly missed father, and of the terrible things she'd learned of the president's past. And, both less and more than that, just the look on the faces of the two men as they stood regarding each other, united as father and son.

A comforting hand covered hers, and she met Sam's eyes. He looked a question at her, and she offered him a watery smile. "Fathers," was all she said, and he nodded in quiet understanding.

His own mouth was a still line as he turned back to look at the president, and she wondered what he was thinking. His own father had betrayed him, corrupted the ideal of a family in a weakness far too long to ever be termed a 'moment'. And yet...

She heard the president's voice in her head. I miss him. He hated me my whole life... I miss him so much. More complicated. It was always more complicated than just the black and white facts could tell you.

Sam's hand still rested on hers, and she impulsively gave it a squeeze. He turned to look at her, startled, and then flashed her a brilliant grin. She smiled back.

Family.

Andy blinked rapidly to dry her dangerously wet eyes - not that she would have been the only one in the room bawling, but still. A familiar arm slid around her shoulders without needing to be asked, and she leaned back against her husband.

Ex-husband. Whatever. Mental Freudian slip there. But, emotional as she was, she couldn't bring her rational centres to bear on chasing it down and stomping on it in the usual fashion.

Toby lightly covered her hand with his own, and when she looked up, he was asking the question with his eyes. Are you all right?

Was she all right? Stupid question. Of course she was. Just all this talk of sons and daughters... She closed her eyes briefly, and he momentarily tightened his squeeze. And despite herself, there she was, locked in the frustrations of the past.

Tests, tests, endless tests. Endless dead-ends, procedures that weren't available, attempts that didn't work. And worse, far worse, the phantom memory of those terrible, agonising cramps and the knowledge of yet another life that wasn't going to be. Her hand almost stole automatically to her belly, but she stopped it before Toby could notice.

His lives too. Those little souls that had never arrived had been his lives too. Oh, but it had been hard to believe that, hard to accept that he could be feeling the same way she did - that anybody else in the world could be feeling the pain that she did...

Pain and guilt and misery and frustration, and the dissolution of a marriage.

How much had those days of quiet desperation been to blame for that? Had their troubles been the cause of it all, or had they simply widened the cracks that were always going to have been there?

She looked up at Toby, at the concern in his eyes, and wished she could just come to a damn conclusion one way or another.

She smiled faintly, and said softly "The chicken or the egg, Toby." And wasn't that an apt little metaphor, when you stopped and thought about it? Eggs and chickens. Fear and infertility. "What came first?"

He didn't seem phased by the non-sequitur. Perhaps he'd been following the same, well-worn tracks of that circular train of thought - or perhaps he was just Toby.

"The egg," he said, without a trace of hesitation, and she had to laugh.

"It's a simple little life over there in Tobyworld, isn't it?"

Toby had never had any trouble being sure of things. She couldn't decide whether she envied him that... or she just wanted to bludgeon him over the head with a heavy object.

He frowned, with an expression that on a less dignified face would have been petulant. "Dinosaurs laid eggs," he explained, and she patted his hand, signalling to him that yes, fine, she accepted his argument.

"You always have all the answers, don't you?"

"I'm well renowned for it," he accepted without a trace of humility.

And she almost said 'So what about us?' But then she didn't, because Josh was standing up to make his speech, and someone else's wedding was no place for dragging up the ghosts of your own.

But still, against Toby's shoulder wasn't such a bad place to rest in the meantime. And when he quietly rubbed her back with a comforting hand, it was as easy to lean into the gesture as it would have been to pull away.

She realised something was horribly wrong a fraction of a second before he stood up. "Josh... where's your speech?"

He gave her an innocently dimpled grin. "I decided to improvise."

Her heart lurched with dismay. "Josh-" She held out a hand to implore him, but he was already standing up to speak. The noise level in the room faded out as everybody recognised the best man.

Donna crossed her fingers under the table.

Don't say anything stupid, don't say anything stupid, don't say anything stupid... she chanted inside her head. Did prayers only work if you believed in them? If so, they were all in a whole heap of trouble.

Josh gave the assembled crowd a smile as they focused on him - an unusual smile, the shy one instead of the big, exuberant, 'everybody see how cool I am?' grin. Good, Josh, good start. Now, just keep it short enough that you don't say anything cringe-worthy, 'kay?

Of course, that could be a definite problem. They didn't usually let the best man get away with a ten word speech. And besides, her boss had proved himself more than capable of screwing up even with that little rope to hang himself. Indicted for tax fraud... secret plan to fight inflation... keep that investigation open until it finds something...

She crossed more fingers, and held her breath.

Josh looked down at the table for a long moment, and then let his breath out all in rush. "I am... a phenomenally screwed-up individual," he began. "And when you live inside a person like me, it can be difficult sometimes to believe there are places where the world really makes sense and you know, fits together like it's supposed to." He hesitated for a beat. "People like Charlie and Zoey; those are the places where you can see it fit together."

Josh had mocked her mercilessly for the way she'd welled up at the president's speech, even while his own eyes were looking suspiciously moist. And now she was doing it again, damn him. His hesitant delivery as he felt for the words was a world away from the president's effortless eloquence, but there was something just as powerful in it. This was the private Josh, the secret Josh, the shy and surprisingly insecure little boy he kept hidden behind a shell of arrogance.

He straightened his head up, and suddenly grinned. "You know, poets and philosophers and songwriters have been trying for thousands of years to define love, and none of them ever came up with it. Well, I guess that makes me smarter than the lot of them, 'cause I know how to do it." Josh raised a hand, and simply pointed at Charlie and Zoey. "Look. That's it, there."

He ran a hand through his unruly hair, and she had to quell a disturbing urge to grab his arm and tell him to quit fussing with it and stand still. Oh holy God, I'm turning into my mother. Or Josh's mother. Either way, it was rather scary. She focused back in on his words as he slid his hands into his pockets.

"Now, I think we can all agree that the two of them are quite nauseatingly young and cute. But there's a lot of places where they're a lot more grown-up than me."

The warning look he sent out at that was directly solely at her. She would have pulled a face if she hadn't been paranoid about getting caught on camera.

Oh, yeah. And the whole 'four milliseconds away from helpless sobbing' thing. Damn weddings.

Josh continued. "Because they've found each other, and they've found something... something that some of us are still looking for. Something that some people never find. They've found... the place where it fits."

She wondered if he was conscious of the way his hand had stolen across his chest to linger over the scar.

"Now, we've been through some hard places and some dark places. I've got scars, and Charlie's got scars, and we've all got scars on the inside and the outside, but it doesn't really matter. Because I... If anybody ever turned around and asked me, 'Was it worth it?', I don't think I'd... I don't even know what that question is about. Because I've walked in this world, and I've known these people, and I've seen this love, and... how could there ever have been a way that I wouldn't want to have been a part of that?"

He smiled, suddenly looking all of six years old, and shook his head. "I love you people. And, you know, I should get it out here now that I'm drunk when I say this, so let's not make a thing of it, okay?" Before anyone could react, he abruptly sat down.

The room thundered into applause, with an undercurrent of both amusement and tears. Donna managed to choke on both as she wrapped her arms around him and gave him a squeeze.

"Didn't do too bad, did I?" he murmured quietly, close to her ear.

"No, you didn't," she admitted, and gave him a quick kiss on the temple before sitting back down. He blinked at her in bemusement for a few moments, and then beamed.

He decided it was probably a good thing that his brand new bride had descended into some kind of manic depressive mood swing thing where she alternated between beaming, sobbing helplessly, and doing both at once. If she hadn't been there to make him look positively stoic, his manly pride might have taken a beating.

The ceremony itself had been a blur. He remembered dead clearly Zoey's face, and very little else. Still, he was fairly sure he hadn't fainted. Unless he had, and this was all some fevered dream - which didn't seem all that far outside the realms of possibility.

Married. Married. He was married to Zoey Bartlet, who wasn't Zoey Bartlet anymore because she was Zoey Bartlet-Young. And all of a sudden he wasn't Charlie Young anymore, he was Charles Bartlet-Young - funny how it suddenly had to be Charles when you put that hyphen in there - and he was going to have to get used to introducing himself that way now...

Mr. and Mrs. Charles and Zoey Bartlet-Young. Husband and wife. Bride and groom. Married. A married couple. Their union blessed by the church. Okay, not his church, but Zoey's and the president's, and that was good enough for him. After all, they were his family now.

His family.

And I hope he'll permit me the honour... of calling myself his father.

Oh, oh, where was that napkin? There was something in his eye.

Probably a great big hunk of over-emotional sentiment.

His stomach was roiling with a nervousness he hadn't felt before or during the ceremony. Not over the promised end of this evening - although the prospect of the president lurking with a scowl somewhere in the same hotel certainly cast a little anxiety over that - but for the rest of the future.

A whole lot of future, and all of it with Zoey as his wife, and him as her husband.

He looked across at her, and she was looking back.

From this day forward... for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death do us part.

He reached out, and took her hand in his own.

And promised himself that he'd never let it go.

"Hey, Charlie."

"Hey, Leo." The younger man beamed at him in such naked delight that it was impossible not to grin back.

The obligatory wave of nostalgia did indeed wave over him, but the images that surfaced were from other people's weddings, not his own. He hadn't been able to give himself over so easily to happiness, even then. Not with the nicks and bruises of his harsh childhood, and the darker shadows of Vietnam hanging over him.

I was never really a kid. Maybe that's why I suck so hard at being a parent. He'd been somewhat avoiding Mallory since the ceremony, on the admittedly shaky foundation of logic that she probably wanted him to do it. She'd wriggled around any suggestion she come and see him since Jed had called her with the news of his relapse, and what was that about? Because she didn't want to see him at the White House - where, everybody face it, he would inevitably be - or simply because she didn't want to see him?

Drunk again, dad? Her disgusted bitterness rang all the harsher for the fact that he only witnessed it in his own mind. Another little slice of his daughter's faith and innocence he'd carved away - how many more times could he do it before she just stopped caring?

The sight of his best friend's daughter and brand new son-in-law ached his heart too, with the melancholy pang of knowing that he'd once had what their bright future promised, and he'd kept throwing it away until it had finally stopped coming back.

But he turned his own regrets into a smile for others' better fortunes; well-deserved, and a long time coming. "Congratulations, Charlie. Congratulations, kid." He ruffled Zoey's hair, although not strongly enough to mess up the... whatever the hell it was that women seemed to be able to do to each other's hair to make it defy gravity like that.

Jeez, little Zoey Bartlet married? That made him... depressingly old.

"Hey, that's my wife you're talking to," Charlie said, the pretence at indignance eclipsed by his expression of wonder at the truth of his own words.

Leo smiled and stepped away to let the other well-wishers crowd in. Moments later, the flood of people had moved on, leaving him behind on his own. There was probably some elaborate metaphor to be constructed there - if he'd been Jed, he'd already have brought in oceans, sub-tropical rainfall, and be off on a tangent about the mating habits of blue whales by now - but he couldn't muster the effort.

He glanced uneasily around, feeling self-conscious at being just about the only one in the room who wasn't part of a couple or some happily giggling group. It wasn't even so much that he wanted the company as he dreaded the pity his solitude would inevitably bring.

By chance, or perhaps because she was watching him, his eyes briefly connected with those of his ex-wife. The instinct to look away and the disgust at his own cowardice struck in almost the same instant of time. He turned and headed back into the crowd, feeling a bitter taste well up in his throat that he had no alcohol to wash away.

There he was, as always, surrounded by a crowd of well-wishers - almost as many as his youngest daughter and her husband. It was neither the presidency nor his new father-in-law status that contributed to the swarm around him; Jed Bartlet had always been able to hold court in any room. In everything but physical height he was a giant; loud and bold and quick and vibrant.

So magnetic, so intense, so overpowering... so difficult to approach, if you were anything but breathtakingly confident in yourself. Her heart bled a little more for Ellie, as it always did. Her father loved her, but he would never understand why she acted they way she did. How could he possibly comprehend what it was like to be shy, to be lonely, to be insecure? How could he ever know how difficult it was for her?

And yet Abbey had said...

Millie crossed the room to join him. The smile he turned on her was perhaps a little dimmer than the megawatt bulb he'd been flashing around the room, but she supposed she couldn't entirely blame him. Her words last time they'd spoken face to face had been harsher, perhaps, than they truly needed to be - but somebody had to talk to the president that way. He always ran away from any attempt to reconcile him with his middle daughter, and if no one was prepared to take him to task over it, he was always going to.

"Mr. President," she nodded.

"Millie." His voice was as polite as ever, but as she joined him he encouraged her to fall into step beside him, guiding them both away from the thick of the crowd. Expecting, no doubt, that words not for public consumption might well be uttered.

"Zoey looks radiant," she observed.

"They all do," he agreed. "But then, they always did."

She'd never quite figured out how he managed that trick of saying something ridiculously trite with such conviction.

Millie hesitated before she spoke again, picking her phrasing carefully. "I seem to recall that, last time we spoke... words were exchanged."

"Oh, yes. Whole sentences, even," he noted dryly.

"I just wanted to say, I wasn't-"

He stopped her walking with a hand to her arm, and turned to face her. "I understand what you were saying Millie. And you were right." He lowered his head, and let out a small sigh. "I don't... I don't know why I can't seem to get through to her. I can't talk to her..." He looked up, and all the festivity of the occasion had bled away into a mask of misery. "She's scared of me, Millie. My own daughter. She's scared of me."

She froze. Oh my God. What she suddenly saw in his eyes startled her. Abbey had been right.

He believed me. God in heaven, I said those things to him, and he believed me.

"Okay, okay, let's... Let's have this conversation again, shall we?" she suggested shakily. "And this time I'll write the subtext up on cuecards for you, how about that?" She rubbed her forehead. "Jed-" Oops, dammit, slipped again - "Ellie isn't scared of you. She just... She just doesn't know how to approach you, and you don't make it any-"

He shook his head stubbornly. "You told me-"

"Jed, I was trying to make a point," she said, frustrated.

"Well, you made it," he said coolly. "My middle daughter doesn't trust me; she doesn't feel safe with me, and she doesn't want me in her life." His voice wavered. "I don't... that's not the way I'd like it to be. But it's what she wants, and if I can't do anything else right for her... well, I can do that."

"That's not what she wants," Millie said, shaking her head in dismay.

"Well, it would be nice to believe that," he said softly. "But in everything I've done and in everything I've said, she has never, ever given me any reason to believe she wants anything else."

And before she could attempt to argue him out of his insanity, he was being pulled back into the swirling crowd, sliding easily back into the smile that she'd never realised could cover such a complexity of conflicting emotions.

She sought out Ellie across the room, and spotted her hanging back, out of the limelight with that sullen young man who might or might not actually be her boyfriend. The sight always saddened her; but it was only now, with her new and startling insight into the insecurities of Jed Bartlet, that she truly began to realise what a double-edged tragedy it was.

"Mallory! Hi." Sam hurried towards her. He'd spotted her at Leo's side during the ceremony, and glimpsed her in passing a few times during the reception, but every time he'd tried to make his way over to her side she'd vanished by the time he'd arrived.

"Sam." The coldness of her tone alerted him that this perhaps hadn't been quite such a random motion as he assumed.

"Nice wedding."

Wow, that was a chart-topping conversation starter right there. Go Seaborn, go.

Mallory looked at him incredulously. "Am I talking to you?"

He attempted to process what that might mean. "Well, we have been exchanging words, albeit a few of them, and so- I'm sensing by that glare that you're levelling at me there that isn't what you meant, so... Or is this the kindergarten thing? In which case I'll be forced to fall back on the tried and tested defence that, by saying you're not talking to me, you were actually forced to talk to me, so you know, in conclusion, nyer. Or-"

Mallory folded her arms and narrowed her eyes, clearly in no mood for further attempts at translating her cryptic remarks. However, her voice when she spoke sounded disconcertingly depressed rather than angry.

"Do I even know you?" she wondered, apparently seriously. She shook her head. "I mean, did I even- I thought I knew who you were."

Sam frowned. "You did know who I was. I mean, um- Mallory, what's-?"

"I thought you were exactly what you seemed," she said quietly. "I thought you were a nice, uncomplicated guy. And then every time I turn around, you've got another secret."

He winced. "Mallory, I, uh-"

I don't have secrets. I just stumble into these things exactly as blindly as you'd think I can't possibly be dumb enough to.

He was trying to find a slightly more articulate way to frame that thought, but before he could, her face tightened at something over his shoulder, and she abruptly turned away. "I gotta go talk to my dad," she said shortly.

"Mallory-" But she didn't turn back.

Steve came up beside him, and Sam absently accepted the glass that was pressed into his hand.

"Was that Leo's daughter?"

"Yeah." He frowned after her pensively.

"She seemed in an awful hurry to not meet me," Steve noted mildly, taking a sip from his beer. He shot his boyfriend a curious sideways glance. "You guys used have a thing?" he asked shrewdly.

Sam vacillated. "We... kind of had a thing. Well, we didn't. We nearly had a thing. It was an almost-thing."

"Well, that's cleared that up," he noted dryly.

"Well, you know how it is," he shrugged. "We met, we argued, we went on a date that wasn't, she randomly grabbed me and kissed me one time, and then there was this whole thing involving call-girls."

"She wasn't too thrilled to find out that you accidentally slept with a prostitute?" Steve assumed.

"Call-girl." Even now, the correction was still automatic. "Oh, she knew about Laurie. She just got upset that there was a photo. Um, not of that," he added hastily, as Steve raised an eloquent eyebrow. "When I got my picture in the papers. She didn't know we were still talking, I guess."

"Did you patch things up?"

He could only shrug. "Um... maybe?"

"So you two had an almost-thing, and then she found out from the morning news that you were still friends with a call-girl, and then you kind of made up but possibly not, and then she found out from another newspaper that you had a boyfriend all of a sudden?"

Sam digested that. "You know, in retrospect, I'm thinking there was probably a point in there where I should have called."

Steve shrugged easily. "Women. Can't live with 'em... probably lucky I'm gay, really." Sam had to smirk, and squeezed his arm in gratitude. Steve responded by slipping his free arm around his waist and giving him a smile. "You know, my life was somewhat lacking in call-girls, presidents and invitations to cultural events of the decade before I met you."

"You've led a sheltered life," Sam said, resting his head briefly against Steve's shoulder. The blond man ruffled his hair.

"You okay there, buddy?"

"Yeah." He pulled back. "I just..." He shook his head, eyes on the direction Mallory had disappeared in. Boy, he'd really screwed that one up. "I can be a real idiot sometimes, you know?" he sighed.

"I do know, but I've learned to live with you."

"Shut up," he retorted, smiling.

"Make me," Steve challenged.

"Okay." The crowd and the cameras be damned, he leaned forward and gave his boyfriend a chaste but lingering kiss.

Yeah, he'd messed things up with Mallory by not keeping the channels of communication open, not taking the time to chase after things and just letting them slide by him. He'd bruised her with the loss of things that might have been, but maybe that was better in the long run. He'd found a kind of spark with Steve that just hadn't clicked in any of the other relationships he'd attempted - so maybe it was better that they hadn't tried, than tried and felt the disappointment of a chance at love that fizzled out.

Things worked themselves out in the long run, he'd always thought so. And here, surrounded by celebrating friends and with the soft pressure of Steve's arm around his waist, he could let himself believe it.

CJ spotted Toby across the room, and made her way over to him with a smile. She followed his gaze to where it lingered on his ex-wife.

"Regrets, Toby?" she asked, shrewdly but gently. He slid his gaze over to meet hers.

"I have no regrets," he said simply. He shifted his feet. "Just... areas where the universe elected to act inconveniently."

She had to smirk. Ah, the Ziegler approach. Why wallow in self-recrimination when there was an entire universe out there to shift the blame onto?

"Did you invite her?" she asked. He answered with a shrug that was a 'yes'. CJ raised an inquisitive eyebrow. "Up to something, Toby?"

The look he gave her was unreadable.

"You should go over there," she nudged. A few couples were moving about the dance floor, bride and groom chief amongst them. Even if Toby conspicuously failed to say anything appropriate, he could still ask her to dance.

He shrugged again. "We'll end up gravitating together eventually. We usually do."

"Why Toby," she smirked. "If I didn't know better, I might think you were a romantic."

"Then it's just as well you know better," he said dryly, slipping away from her in the direction of the bar.

CJ watched him go. Toby Ziegler, on a mission to woo his ex-wife back? Well... stranger things had happened, she supposed.

She looked around the hall, feeling suddenly very isolated. Everybody seemed to have somebody to hang on to; the dancers were slow-dancing, the president was smiling softly over something with his wife, Sam and Steve were casually holding hands as they chatted to the Surgeon General...

She glowered abruptly down at the glass of wine in her hand. Stupid wine. Stupid bridesmaids' dress. CJ Cregg, moping in corners at other people's weddings? Hell no.

She spotted Liz Bartlet laughing over something with her teenage fellow bridesmaids, and smiled, cutting through the crowd to join their little group. Being single wasn't a reason to bemoan your failed love life - it was an excuse to party with the girls. Now, if only somebody at this party could lay their hands on a copy of The Jackal...

"Hey, Steve."

"Oh, hey, Josh." He straightened up from the wall he'd been leaning against and smiled at his boyfriend's friend.

"You okay there?"

"I'm fine," he shrugged. He didn't know all that many people at this party - at least not to talk to - but at this stage in the evening he was happy to stand back and people-watch.

Josh appeared to understand the instinct, coming over to stand against the wall beside him. "Where's Sam?"

"I left him talking to the Surgeon General about- actually, I have no idea what he was talking about. Which is pretty much why I left him there."

Josh nodded absently.

"I liked your speech," Steve told him, after a moment.

"Thanks." A small smile crossed his face as his eye fell on Charlie and Zoey. "They're cute, aren't they?"

"Totally." Suddenly feeling melancholy, he sighed softly into his beer.

Josh, apparently, was more perceptive than Sam's tales of cluelessness painted him. "What's up?"

"It's nothing," Steve said quickly, shaking his head.

"Yeah?" His eyebrows said he knew different.

Steve sighed again, and focused on his beer. "I just... I just worry sometimes that Sam might... he might want this." He shrugged, spreading his hands to take in the happy couple and the entire hall around them.

"He loves you," Josh told him, looking at him concernedly.

"I know that," Steve admitted easily. Sam was near pathologically honest, and he didn't take such declarations lightly. If he said it, he meant it. But... "But I just worry that he's gonna start thinking about... this. Marriage. Kids. Sam... he's gonna want that. He deserves that."

"You're right." Josh frowned and straightened up. You could almost see his features shift as he sloughed off the image of rumpled, casual partygoer and his face tightened into the sharper lines of the political animal underneath. "That's the next step." He started to pace and gesticulate.

"After the hate crimes bill, we don't rest on our laurels; we have to revisit marriage legislation, take a look at adoption - this is only the beginning in the war on discrimination. We have to build a whole cohesive strategy, go after it all at once - if we leave a single corner untouched in a compromise, it's just gonna come creeping back in again the moment we're out of the door. We need to make it so the next generation of bigots have literally no foundations to build on." He stopped, abruptly, as if only just remembering he was talking to a non-politician. "I'll talk to Toby after the party," he nodded. "This is our next item on the agenda, I think; it's the logical progression."

Steve blinked at him for a few moments. "You know, bitching about this kind of thing does not normally produce this effect," he noted.

Josh shrugged, and gave him a winning smirk. "Hey, welcome to the big leagues. You want it changed? We'll change it."

Steve somehow suspected it was a little more complicated than that; but still, Josh's grin was infectious. He shook off his contemplative mood. Yes, Sam might indeed want those things, but had he already forgotten that Sam was a dreamer? He wasn't going to give in and take another route just because conventional wisdom said you had to. If there wasn't a route to what he wanted where he was - well, he'd just go ahead and build one.

Could you change the world so easily? His cynical side wanted to say no - but five months ago, wouldn't he have said that about the US military ever being forced to repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell?

Sometimes, a small group of people could change the world - and right here in this room were the people that did it.

And his boyfriend was one of them. He allowed himself a self-satisfied grin, and sipped some more of his beer.

Avoidance tactics couldn't last forever. Eventually, it came down to a point where it was stand still and let her approach him, or leave no doubt whatsoever that he was trying to escape.

"Leo." She smiled tightly, awkwardly, looking at the floor more than at him.

"Jenny." He sought for something to say, and took the easy route in a little too much of a rush. "You look great."

Was he smiling too much? Not enough? Looking like a petrified zombie? His money was on the latter.

She looked up at him, and caught herself before she could make a face. That was Jenny; always so controlled. But then, that was him as well, too much and not enough of the time - and it turned out that side of him had finally killed their marriage where his uncontrolled dark side hadn't managed to. "I wish I could say the same... Have you been ill?"

All his muscles tensed up, and his first instinct was to lie. The way he'd always lied, because if you didn't speak the truth then it didn't have to be true. And Jenny had always accepted the lie, because as long as she did they could both pretend there was nothing wrong.

But they weren't married anymore. And maybe if he lied, she wouldn't ever have to know about it...

Perhaps nobility won out. Or perhaps it was just masochism. Most days, it was pretty hard to tell the difference.

"I..." he hesitated, tasting the bitter flavour of the words that were to come. "A couple of months ago, I started drinking again. For a... for a while."

Now, now she met his eyes. He wanted to look away, but couldn't make himself. He saw it all; the distress, the heart-breaking disappointment, and worst of all the resignation. The expression that said 'I hoped this wouldn't happen, but I'm not surprised it did'.

He knew it well. He knew it very, very well.

"Oh, Leo..." she said softly.

And he wanted to say something, but what was there? She held his gaze for a moment, asking for... something, that he didn't have to give her. And then she turned away.

He folded his arms defensively across his chest, and watched her go.

"Hi."

Mallory didn't recognise the voice, and couldn't help but frown a little as she saw who it belonged to. Not reading or just ignoring the signs, Sam's boyfriend casually snagged the seat across from her.

"Hey. I'm Steve Radcliffe."

"Mallory O'Brien," she volunteered coldly. Couldn't this guy take a hint? Apparently not, because he scooted his chair up closer to her and flashed her a smile.

He was cute too, dammit. The good-looking guys were hard enough to find at the best of times, they really had to start pairing off with each other?

"You're Leo McGarry's daughter, right?"

"Yeah." As can be told from the hereditary ability to be uncommunicative. Take a freakin' hint, buddy.

"I've met him. He's a great guy."

Okay, maybe that was worthy of a slight smile, even if it was blatant sucking up.

Steve absently pushed his beer across the tabletop. "Sam's a great guy too. I can understand how you'd be pissed at me for stealing him."

"It's not you I'm pissed at," she scowled, frustration egging her into speaking up. She glared at the tabletop. "Apparently he didn't even trust me enough to let me know who he really was."

Steve touched her hand gently and gave her a soft smile. "Hey. You know he's never dated a guy before... maybe he honestly didn't even know he was bisexual."

"Oh, how can you be gay and not know about it?" she demanded fiercely, thumping the table a little harder than she'd meant to. Steve rescued his wobbling beer, took a sip, and shrugged at her.

"Hey, he's Sam Seaborn. He's always been exceptionally clueless."

Despite herself, she snorted. "You got that right." She glanced towards the bar. "Any more of that beer going begging?" she wondered.

Ellie miserably surveyed the room from behind the curtain of her hair. This reception was as hellish as she'd expected it to be. Hardly anyone she knew, and those she did were all bugging her. Liz and her mother and even Annie had all got on her case about being nice to her dad for Zoey's special day. How come they weren't all bugging him about being nice to her?

Finally, she spotted the Surgeon General talking with Sam. At last, a friendly face. In fact, two of them; she'd never had a problem with Sam. She remembered him as the quietest out of her father's campaign staff; passionate, but never loud or aggressive. She could handle hanging out with Sam.

Hell, any company would be better than Jeff.

Her 'date' had been sullen and arrogant the whole day - around the people she wanted to get on with as much as those she didn't. It had seemed like a good idea to play into her father's expectations and get the "why are you always such a disappointment to me?" portion of the day out of the way as fast as possible, but she hadn't banked on the mortification of having everybody else in the room believe this was the best she could do for a partner.

She could hear the whispers now.

Oh, poor, poor Eleanor. Tragic, really - she never could measure up to her sisters. Really, can you be surprised she ended up with such a no-hoper?

Jeff had been rude to everybody she introduced him, and not in any kind of cool movie-star way, either. He acted like a brat, and the perpetual sneer he affected had long stopped being mysterious and interesting, and now just made him look petulant.

"That's my godmother," she pointed out, as if he'd care. "We should go over, say hi. She's just over there with Sam."

Jeff just rolled his eyes as he turned. "Oh, great. You want me to go make nice with the fairy-boy again?"

At that point, she snapped. But because she was Ellie Bartlet, she didn't explode like any other member of her family would.

"Get out," she said quietly, feeling the tears of frustrated humiliation beginning to prickle at the backs of her eyes. How had she ever talked herself into bringing this, this complete Neanderthal?

"What?" he frowned.

Oh, you can't even say pardon?

"I said get out," she repeated, in just as low a voice. It was too much against her nature to even think about shouting and screaming and making a scene. "I don't want to see you anymore. You're an oaf, you're a bigot, and you treat people who are way, way better than you like crap. I want you to leave now."

Instead, he pushed his way into personal space. "Oh, you're better than me now? Is that it?"

Yeah, I know I am. Why, why couldn't she ever say these things out loud? Why couldn't she stand up for herself? She back away from him, pushing him back with an ineffectual hand to his chest. "Just go, Jeff," she pleaded.

"Oh, so you drag me to this stupid party just so you don't look like a total loser, and now you want me to just... disappear?" He made an obnoxious flicking motion with his hands and continued to push towards her.

"I asked you to leave, Jeff," she repeated, horribly conscious of the people all around them, who were beginning to stop and notice the two of them.

"Yeah, well, I'm not gonna just-" He stopped abruptly as a hand thumped into his chest. The slim, smartly-dressed man with the hidden earpiece gave him a nod.

"It's time for you to go now, Mr. Coleridge," he said, mildly but with steel behind the words.

Idiotically, Jeff made a move to go towards her anyway. Miraculously, there were suddenly three more Secret Service people between him and Ellie.

"Let me escort you to the door," said the first man, in the same even tone. Jeff scowled impotently, then threw out his arm in a gesture of angry dismissal and stalked off. One of the agents trailed him at a discreet distance.

The Secret Service melted back into the crowd, and Ellie was left alone. A couple of people shot her sympathetic looks, and that was just too much. She wrapped her arms around herself and rushed out of the room.

Abbey found her middle daughter sitting outside with her arms wrapped around her knees. There were presumably Secret Service agents about, but they had the sense to be discretely out of sight. Ellie's detail had quickly learned that her sombre or distressed moods were something she preferred to experience in solitude.

As her mother, however, Abbey had the luxury of vetoing that particular decision.

"Ellie." She sat down beside her daughter, ignoring what it might be doing to the lines of her dress, and sipped from her glass of wine while she waited for a response.

Ellie continued staring at the ground; it was a habit she'd had since she was a very little girl, and one that infuriated Jed. A man as verbose as he was didn't know what to do with a daughter who went mute and refused to even look at him.

Truth to tell, Abbey found it more than a little frustrating herself. After a moment she reached out, and tilted her daughter's chin so they were looking at each other. Tears glistened on the edge of being shed, and Abbey recognised their cause too well; not pain or distress so much as helpless frustration.

"Your boyfriend run out on you?" she asked gently. Ellie allowed herself a bitter half-smile.

"He's not my boyfriend. And I told him to go." She sniffed and sat upright.

"Well, good, honey." Abbey regarded her wine thoughtfully, swirling it in the glass. "Because he wasn't-"

"Mom-" her daughter cut her off warningly.

"-He wasn't good enough for you," she finished relentlessly.

"I know that." Ellie rubbed at her eyes angrily.

"Then why did you bring him?" Abbey asked deceptively lightly.

"I wanted to bring somebody," she shrugged defensively, already withdrawing into her shell. She became like a turtle, retracting all her vulnerable parts behind her armour; expressive eyes hidden behind the screen of hair, fingers that twisted around each other tugged up into sleeves where they couldn't be seen.

Abbey adopted a sterner tone, not wanting to but knowing from experience that timidity would get her nowhere. "Maybe so, but you've never been shy about going places on your own if you didn't like the company, so don't think that'll wash with me, young lady."

"Fine," Ellie retorted. Sullenly, because that was how Ellie fought and argued; slow burning resentment, not the sparky, easily-extinguished anger of her father and sisters. "I brought him to annoy dad, okay? Is that what you wanted to hear? I brought him because, because- He always has to find something to be disappointed in me for." She wasn't talking about Jeff now. "I figured I might as well give him an easy target."

Sympathy warred with a desire to give her daughter a good strong whack upside the head. "Honey, your father could never be disappointed in you."

She barked a bitter laugh. "Oh sure, that's what everybody always says. But he never..." She didn't finished, picking at the end of the sleeves of her dress.

"He finds it hard to talk to you, Ellie."

"He never tries!"

"You never let him!" Abbey sympathised with her daughter's difficulties - because God knew Jed could be difficult - but her tolerance for 'woe is me' tactics would only stretch so far. "Every time he tries to reach out to you, you move a little bit further away. I don't know how you think you're ever going to mend anything if you're not prepared to meet him in the middle."

"What's to mend?" she asked bitterly.

"Eleanor Emily, don't you start with that," she warned sharply. "Much as you two like to be boneheaded about it, you love your father and your father loves you, so there'll be none of that kind of talk, thank you." She was more sensitive than she would have been, too conscious of the skulking spectre of Jed's father.

She had been shocked - more than shocked - to realise that her husband could be so insecure over his relationship to the girls. It had honestly never occurred to her that he could question any aspect of his job as a father; how could any rational human being ever question that? But of course, she should have known that logic took a back seat wherever the footsteps of papa Bartlet had left a lingering echo.

Ellie looked at her knees. "I just feel like he- I..." She shook her head. "It's just easiest if we don't... if we just stay out of each other's way. We're both happier that way."

"No you're not," she pointed out softly.

"Mom, he doesn't want to mend any bridges with me," she snapped. "I'm different, he doesn't like it, he only wants to change me, make me more like Liz and Zoey - but I'm not like them! I'm me, and he doesn't want to get to know me, whenever I try and be the real me it only makes him angry."

Abbey shook her head, endlessly dismayed by the hopeless level of misunderstanding that existed between her husband and her middle daughter. "Ellie, don't you know he's... your father's terrified of you, honey."

She snorted disbelievingly. "Of me?"

"Of the fact that you don't talk to him."

"Then why doesn't he try and come after me? Why doesn't he care enough to do that?"

Abbey hesitated for a long moment. It really wasn't her place to break the silence of the ages - but she couldn't bear the thought of this rift, this manufactured problem when there were other, much deeper ones looming on the horizon. She set down her wine glass, suddenly no longer finding any taste for it, and carefully sought out the words. "Your grandfather..." She broke off. "Your father..."

"Mom, I'm really not in the mood for some big sob story about how dad didn't make up with his own dad until it was too late," said Ellie sulkily.

She'd been through her share of motherly nightmares, but Abbey didn't think she'd ever felt such a strong urge to slap one of her children as in that brief moment. She sucked in a deep breath, and spoke with the cool, brittle anger that she usually kept reigned in around her daughters. "No, your father didn't make up with his father, and I'm glad of that, and I'd be happier still if he'd driven a stake through his grave and told him to go screw himself, but I've pretty much resigned myself to the fact that it's never going to happen."

Her hands were shaking with long-suppressed anger, and she had to clasp them together in her lap to hide it. "I love you, honey, and I hate to break it to you, but I can only listen to the 'my father doesn't love me' sob story for so long. Because it's crap, and you know it's crap, and sooner or later it comes down to the fact that if you take away the stubbornness on both sides of the divide, there really isn't any problem here at all."

Abbey needed another shaky breath to calm herself down enough to get it out. "Ellie..." she began quietly. "Your father's childhood... he had problems. There was some very real, very serious stuff with your grandfather. His father used to beat him, and he used to cut him down, and he used to treat him very, very badly, and... and when you act like you're afraid of him, he doesn't know what to think. He doesn't know what to think, Ellie. He doesn't want to hurt you, he's so terrified of hurting you..." Her voice cracked, and dammit, she was crying now, and she really didn't want to cry...

She squeezed the words out. "He is frightened, Ellie. You frighten him, because you won't talk to him and he doesn't know why and he doesn't know what he's done wrong. And dammit, Ellie, sometimes I don't know either. You can't keep coming to me with your father doesn't understand you, because sooner or later it's gonna come down to the fact that you don't want to let him try. Yes, I will be the first to agree that he is not an easy man to live with, but you can't keep expecting him to do all the work! You know why he doesn't try to break through to you, Ellie? Because he thinks you don't want him to. And you might take it for granted that you don't mean it when you act like you don't want anything to do with him, but he doesn't know that!"

She was silent for a beat, and then looked up at her daughter sadly. "Ellie... when are you gonna stop getting angry that he won't follow you long enough to realise that he thinks you're genuinely trying to get away?"

Ellie was staring at her. Her mouth worked silently for a moment before she could manage a tentative "Mom?"

Abbey stood up. All the anger had abruptly flooded out of her, and now she suddenly felt... deflated. "I'm sorry, honey. I didn't mean to blow up at you. It's just..." She sighed heavily and rubbed her forehead. "This is not a good time for your father right now. It's really not."

Ellie, still seeming dazed, got up and walked over to her, and Abbey planted a kiss on her forehead and smiled at her. "Oh, honey," she sighed. "I love you. And I know it's hard with you and your dad, but... he's not trying to make it difficult. Maybe it's hard for you to believe it, but he's just as confused and frightened and lost and mixed-up as you are. You have to give him a chance, babe. You can't expect him to fix it all by himself, he can't read your mind if you won't let him anywhere near you."

"Mom, I..." Ellie's face was contorted with distress and shocked confusion. "Dad really-? How could I not ever have a clue? How could I not know this?"

"Because," Abbey smiled wryly, "like certain other people I could mention - your father doesn't ever tell anybody about his problems." She slipped an arm around her daughter's shoulders. "Now, come on. I know it's a lot to ask you to take in, but it's all in the past for now, so how about we get back inside and be with our family and enjoy the celebrations, just for tonight?"

"Okay," said Ellie softly, with the beginnings of a tentative smile. Together, they headed back inside.

The hall was beginning to empty; most of the guests who had planes to catch were on their way out, leaving few but those who were staying at the hotel. Sam finally extricated himself from the conversations he kept getting dragged into, and sought out his boyfriend.

He found Steve at one of the tables at the back, and hesitated when he saw who he was sitting with. Trust Steve. He had to try and make friends with everybody.

Still, Mallory didn't appear to have physically attacked him - in fact, she was grinning quite widely as she leaned towards him, animatedly telling some story or other. They seemed to be getting along just fine, although he supposed that could be something to do with the sizeable forest of empty beer bottles that had sprung up beside them.

Steve, as he listened, was absently spinning a bottle against the table with the fingers of his right hand, catching it every time it teetered off balance. Maybe Sam too was a little bit drunk, because he found himself vaguely mesmerised by the reflected overhead lights, and Steve's quick fingers.

It had been a long day. But the good kind of long day. He shook himself out of it, and approached the table in time to catch the last few words of Mallory's tale.

"-nearly burned down the White House."

"Yeah, I heard about that," Steve smirked, and as his gaze flickered up from the spinning bottle and locked Sam's. "Hey," he said warmly, in that way that still seemed to make his stomach drop.

"Hey," Mallory echoed, her sharper tone closer to a sound of objection than a greeting. But then the corners of her smile turned up. "Talking about you, not to you," she scolded him.

"Yeah. Buzz off, get us some more drinks," Steve directed laconically.

Sam blinked. "Well, this is... disconcerting. I appear to have become the third wheel in my own relationship."

"It could only happen to you, Spanky," Mallory told him.

Steve shot a sidelong smile at her. "Like quite a lot of things, if Mallory's to be believed."

"She's not," he refuted quickly. "She's a liar. Pathological. It's very sad." Mallory stuck her tongue out at him.

"Hey! Garçon! Still waiting on those drinks," Steve ordered.

He crossed his arms defensively across his chest. "Okay, now you're just teaming up to ritually abuse me."

Mallory linked arms with Steve across the table. "It's the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

He wasn't sure if he was supposed to consider this development a good thing or not, but suddenly, he was afraid. Very afraid. He turned away from the table. "I'll... just go get those drinks," he decided, and beat a hasty retreat.

She was hardly in the mood for company, but long-ingrained good manners made her smile at her ex-husband's assistant. "Hello, Margaret."

"Mrs.-" Margaret stumbled in embarrassment over the using name until Jenny gave her a small smile of acknowledgement. "-McGarry," she finished awkwardly. Jenny had kept her married name. Leo hadn't done anything so awful that she wanted to be disassociated from him, and it wasn't as if she had plans to go scouting for a replacement husband anytime soon.

She gave the tall redhead a wry look. "I assume he sent you to check on me?" How like Leo, to handle his private life by proxy.

Margaret shrugged awkwardly. "He wanted to make sure he didn't upset you."

"I'm not upset."

She wasn't; just very, very tired all of a sudden. When she'd been a girl, Jenny had been told that loving somebody made everything easier. It hadn't taken her very long to realise it wasn't true. The love had never worn out, but it had taken so much effort, so much trying to make things work.

And finally, she'd had enough. She'd held it together as long as duty had demanded it, but in the end, something had needed to give.

She was a divorced woman now, and able to keep the better memories of her married life safe where the daily grind of little disappointments and missed opportunities couldn't whittle them away. But there were other memories too. Memories of the not so good times.

She had every sympathy for her ex-husband's life-long struggle, and she loved Jed Bartlet more than she could probably ever have expressed for being there to help him claw his way back up. But she was the one who'd raised a daughter through it all, and sooner or later sympathy had to take a back seat to what you needed and deserved for yourself and for your family.

Oh Leo, why do you do this to yourself? Why?

She knew why, but that wasn't the same as understanding. Maybe you couldn't ever understand if it wasn't your own soul slipping away into the bottle.

Margaret shifted her feet. "It's been... a difficult time," she said hesitantly. "With Charlie and the president, and..."

"I know," said Jenny, although probably her knowledge only touched on the surface of issues that were central to her ex-husband's world. She still understood. Leo was like a flawed diamond; the strongest, most unyielding man she had ever known, but hit him in exactly the right place and you could still make him shatter. And though others might cut themselves on the shards, he was always and ultimately the real victim of his own self-destruction.

"Things were bad for a while, but he's come through it," Margaret continued. She looked the older woman in the eye seriously. "He's been amazingly strong."

Jenny gave a small, melancholy smile. "You don't have to tell me that."

"No," she said solemnly. "But maybe you should tell Leo that."

She smiled quickly, then straightened up and walked away, leaving Jenny to digest that.

His second oldest daughter approached him across the near-empty ballroom, and he felt the familiar stab of contradictory emotions. Delight, and wonder - the delight and wonder that had stirred in him for every one of his daughters since they were no more than an added roundness to their mother's figure, and always would - but also confusion, dismay and disappointment. Not the tiniest fragment of it, whatever she might think, directed at Ellie.

He'd failed his middle daughter somehow. Jed still wasn't sure exactly how he'd started down the path that had left so much distance between them, but he cursed himself for it. If only he'd been a better father, been there for her when she needed him, tried harder...

He saw that she was upset, and moved instinctually towards her, shedding the indulgence of self-recrimination for more pressing concerns. "Ellie? Eleanor, what's wrong?"

"I'm sorry, daddy," she said miserably. "For... for Jeff. I shouldn't have brought him. I'm sorry."

"That's okay, honey," he told her softly. He'd been angry before, but it faded into nothing in the face of the possibility of one of his daughters distressed.

She retreated from him as she always did, backing up a few steps as if she somehow wanted to be out of range. "I brought him to annoy you," she admitted.

The flare of anger collided with the brief pang of despair at the thought that she could be afraid of him, and fizzled into a soggy mess of misery at the bottom of his stomach. "I kind of gathered that, Ellie," he said, with a dry smile that wasn't really much of one at all. He lowered his head and sighed. "And I'm sorry, too. I know I... I make things difficult for you, and I'm sorry." He shook his head helplessly. "If I haven't... I haven't been there for you, I-"

"That's not true, dad," she retorted, sounding startled. And suddenly his frustrated anger was back. Why could she never give him a clear signal, for God's sake?

"Then dammit, why do you always run from me? You never talk to me, Ellie! How am I supposed to know what you want?"

"Well, I don't know what you want from me!" she suddenly yelled back. "You never- I never know what you expect! How am I supposed to know how to do anything right if I don't know what you want?"

"I just want... to be your father," he said brokenly. "Why can't... why won't you let me do that?" His voice cracked down the ragged end of the spectrum into despair. He was just so tired, he kept trying and trying and nothing ever worked, nothing ever got through...

Ellie was shaking her head, small tears beginning to trickle down her cheeks. "Dad... how could you... how could you even think that? How could you ever think that?"

He was startled but gratified as she suddenly threw herself against him, sobbing like a little child. He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close, and buried his face in her hair.

"I love you honey," he said softly, hearing the tears in his own tone. "I love you so much..."

She sounded as if she might have been going to return his words, but she choked on them instead, and clung to him all the more tightly. He rocked her like a little girl and patted her back, remembering simpler times when a hug from daddy had been all his daughters had ever needed to set the world to rights.

Donna poked her head back into the main hall, and found it near deserted. She spotted the president sitting quietly with Ellie, but something in their posture and the way his arm rested on her sleeve as they talked dissuaded her from interrupting.

Instead, she crossed to where CJ stood watching the pair, her head tilted to the side and a melancholy expression on her face.

"Hey, CJ."

"Hi, Donna." She smiled tiredly, her eyes still on the father and daughter across the room. Donna followed her gaze, noting how the president seemed sadder and somehow smaller than the exuberant persona he'd projected during the wedding.

CJ had been watching him all evening. In fact, she'd been watching him a lot longer than that. There was some sort of vibe going on with President Bartlet; some reason why both CJ and the First Lady, were keeping a subtle eye out for signs of cracking under unknown pressures.

Not that you had to look too far to pick a few possibilities out of the air. The usual stresses inherent in being a father of the bride. Leo's recent relapse and painful recovery. Charlie's beating a few months ago, and the constant fears that someone, somewhere, might try to finish the job before his union with Zoey could be sealed. Fears that she was relieved to see hadn't come true - although the nagging thought that it could still happen anywhen and anywhere still lingered... the way it always had, and probably always would, in the aftermath of Rosslyn.

And still that wasn't all that could be occupying the president's mind; his brush with the dangers of wilfully ignoring his MS, and the readjusted lifestyle it had forced him into. All sorts of political things she wasn't on a high enough level to know about, and plenty others she already did.

But maybe it wasn't any of those things. She hesitated. "CJ, is... is something wrong?"

CJ frowned, only now transferring her attention to the woman beside her. "With me? I'm cool," she shrugged.

And she could have left it there, but... "With... with the president. Is there-?"

CJ grimaced, and her stomach dropped. "There's... there is something," she admitted. She glanced around, and Donna didn't feel any more reassured when despite the relative emptiness of the room she said "But we probably shouldn't talk about it here."

Donna gazed at her worriedly. "It's not-?"

She couldn't finish the question. Don't let him be sick, please, don't let him be sick again, he's looking after himself, it isn't fair-

"No, it's- it's not that," CJ reassured her hastily, but she still looked grave. "There's... something that's gonna come up, and the president's not gonna have a good time of it." She hesitated, then placed her almost-empty wineglass down on the nearest table. "Come with me. I think it's time a few more people knew about this."

Donna followed her out, with her heart in her mouth.

Leo headed outside to get some air, and there she was, both achingly familiar and far out of his reach. He offered a sad and frozen smile as she approached him. "You're going home now?"

"I've called a cab." The smile Jenny gave him in return was genuine enough, but brittle.

Leo nodded slowly to himself. "Okay."

There was a long, familiar sort of awkward silence, and they both spoke at once. "I should-"

"I-"

He inclined his head politely, letting her talk first. She hesitated, drawing her coat closer about her. "I... I wanted to apologise to you."

His brow crinkled. "What-?"

She looked him in the eye. "I- I know I haven't always been there for you. Things were- I could have been more supportive than I did."

Leo was shaking his head. "No. No-"

"I..." She looked down. "There were times when I... I reviled you for your problem, when I could have been helping."

He closed his eyes briefly in dismay, then looked back up at her. "I had no right to ask or expect anything of you after what I put you through. I didn't deserve any of the kindness you showed me."

Jenny smiled a bittersweet smile, and touched his arm. "Leo... somehow I never got around to telling you this but... I'm so very proud of you."

"I love you," he said softly, and meant it, in however faded and beaten out a way.

"I love you too." She pressed her lips to his cheek for just long enough to leave a lingering sensation, and then she was gone. He stood watching after her, the coolness of the New Hampshire night wrapping itself around him.

The door beside him creaked open, and he looked back to see Jed. His old friend stood beside him for a moment, and then slipped a warm arm around his shoulders. "Come on, Leo," he smiled gently. "Let's get back inside."

"Charlie and Zoey are leaving," Leo pointed out. Jed watched them from across the room, hand in hand and trading bright-eyed glances at each other, and glowered.

"Probably going up to their room now," Leo added, when he didn't respond.

"Where they will be spending the whole of the night talking and playing video games," Jed said sharply, lowering his eyebrows and daring his old friend to try and puncture his shield of denial. Leo just chuckled to himself.

Jed looked across at him. "Are you okay?" he asked softly. Seeing his estranged ex-wife - a situation Jed couldn't even begin to comprehend from his own life experience - could never have been the easiest ride in the first place. Add onto that Leo's insistence on extracting the maximum amount of blame from his brief lapse back into drinking... He laid a comforting hand on his old friend's sleeve.

Leo gave him a long-suffering look. "I'm fine."

"Good, now the truth," he said without missing a beat.

He rolled his eyes, but sighed to himself and held it for a few moments before answering. "I'm... I'm okay."

He nodded to himself as he said it, and looking him in the eye, Jed thought that this time, he could believe it.

Leo raised an inquisitive eyebrow at him. "You?"

Damn this culture of reciprocation. But he felt obliged to do Leo the courtesy of giving the question the same consideration.

He thought about Ellie. They'd talked for what felt like - but might not have been - a long time. It had still had the typically dancing nature of their conversations; one step forward, two steps back, and a few sideways shuffles out of territory they both found uncomfortable. It had been, really, no easier than it ever was... but at least she hadn't run away from him.

He knew Abbey had followed her outside to talk with her; he wasn't sure what had been said. Whatever words his wife had found to get some way through to her, he was grateful for them. Or maybe it was partly down to the wedding - they always seemed to bring out funny moods in women.

Hell, in him too. It had been a long, exhausting, rollercoaster of a day; pride, delight, nostalgia, highly strung emotions, and a descent into the maudlin mood that had been plaguing him of late. He was dwelling too long and too deeply on things that were buried way back in the past, and should have had the decency to stay there.

He realised Leo was still waiting for a response. "I'm good," he nodded. "I'll be better in the morning," he admitted, "but... I'm good."

"Okay." Leo accepted that. "I'll drop by in the morning before you get on the plane?"

"Yeah."

They both left the reception hall.

"CJ, what's this about?" Donna asked nervously. She shifted her feet uncomfortably. "'Cause if this is something Josh doesn't know, I'm not-"

CJ gave her as much of a reassuring smile as she could muster. "It's... not really on Josh's radar." Not yet, anyway, although she had the uncomfortable feeling it was going to bleed over into everybody's job description once the bombshell hit. "It's more of a PR matter. It shouldn't be, but it is."

Donna was opening her mouth, no doubt to wonder again why CJ was talking to her, so she forged ahead.

"There's going to be a book released in a couple of months. About the president's childhood. And it's going to raise some... uncomfortable stuff."

Donna looked at her, eyes wary and dismayed. "What kind of- CJ, what kind of stuff?"

She sighed, as much out of struggle with the question as despair. Where did you begin?

Well, you'd probably have to begin with a far greater knowledge of what had actually gone on than she ever wanted to. She picked her words carefully. "The president had... a bad childhood. I don't- I don't really know the details." But I do know more than you, and I suspect a whole lot more, I'm just not gonna raise it because I'm a coward. "But there's going to be a book, and it's going to drag it all out in the open and... at the moment, it's literally- it's literally me and Toby and the First Lady and his brother who know this."

And a certain vaguely referenced 'somebody' the president had talked to that she was fairly sure meant Stanley Keyworth. But those were conversations that she had to know nothing of, by a process of wilful ignorance if necessary. If that question ever by some horrific lack of fortuity came up, she had to be able to knock it down with nothing less than unadulterated truth.

CJ had a very nasty feeling that such a question, and many like it, were going to be on the cards in the near future.

Has the president received counselling? Is he seeing a therapist? Is he mentally fit? How can we be sure he won't crack under pressure? Is the administration at all concerned about the studies that show that-?

They said that people who heard voices should worry about their mental health. What did it say when you were carrying around an entire mental press room, its throng of occupants jostling for space and shouting each other down?

Donna's mouth had formed a round 'O' of distress, and in some ways CJ envied her that. Donna wore her emotions nakedly on her face, without the shield of carefully cultivated image and filters of what was and wasn't 'appropriate'. "They shouldn't be able to do that," she whispered, outrage at war with distress. "That's got nothing to do with anything, they shouldn't-"

"I know." CJ closed her eyes. "Yeah, I know."

There was a silence, and when she opened them again, Donna was looking at her. "CJ, I don't- Why are you-? Why not Josh, or Sam, or... does Leo even know?"

Jesus. Did Leo even know? CJ tried to imagine the president having that conversation with even his oldest and dearest friend, and just couldn't do it.

When the truth finally came out, it was going to shake the foundations of everybody's world. Even now, months afterwards, she could sometimes be looking at the president and feel her head begin to swim as everything she thought she knew about him seemed to take on new dimensions.

And that was exactly what he wouldn't want. He met her eyes, sometimes, during those moments of dizzying reflection, and the smile he offered her was sad and heartbreakingly resigned. He knew she saw him differently now, through the lens of a revelation that could be no more put back in the bag than learning that he had MS or that Josh had PTSD or that the Vice President was an alcoholic. Once your view of somebody took on extra layers, you could never peel those layers back and make it what it had been before.

Everybody was going to look at him differently; with sympathy and pity and distress and other things that the Jed Bartlet she knew (but did she really know him at all, really, if she hadn't known-?) had no time for. It was going to hurt, and everybody around him was going to be spinning the story every which way so much that they wouldn't have time to stop and do anything about it.

CJ smiled tiredly at the younger woman. "Donna... when this finally comes out, it's gonna get ugly. We're gonna be out there fighting a battle on God only knows how many fronts, and we're all gonna be giving our all to protect the president."

She nodded solemnly, eyes still big with distress.

"And while we're out there protecting the president... somebody needs to be protecting Jed Bartlet. Donna, when this hits, we're all gonna be consumed by spin and news stories and politics, and nobody's going to have a chance to stop and really look at him and make sure he's okay. Which is why we need you."

She shook her head disbelievingly. "CJ, I-"

"When Toby told you the president had MS, what did you say?"

"I-" She had to think for a moment - although the words Toby had repeated to her, struck by the young woman's response, had stuck with CJ for a long time afterwards. "I asked if, um, if he was sick or in any pain, or-"

She smiled. "Donna. This one's for you."

Donna smiled back, hesitantly, but shook her head. "CJ, I don't... exactly socialise with the president much," she pointed out wryly.

"No, but you see him," CJ said. "And that's the point. You do see him. We... there's all this stuff, with the office and the politics and the spin and- and sometimes, from where we are, it's hard to separate all that out. But you still see him as a man."

She looked her in the eye. "Donna. You care about people; that's the magic that you bring here. Well, you know, that and being able to organise Josh, but that's not so much what I'd call magic as some kind of unholy pact with a power beyond the comprehension of we mere mortals..." Donna mustered a wobbly smile. "And that's what the president is going to need right now. Because the people who usually do that for him, the First Lady, and Charlie-" and Mrs. Landingham, God rest her soul, and God I wish she was still here- "-they're gonna be right in the middle of this just like he is. And so we're gonna need somebody standing on the outside, and watching the president. Looking at him, not at the office, not at the situation, not at our action plan, but just looking at him and making sure he's all right."

She smiled. "We're relying on you to wade in and give us all a good bitch-slapping - and you're gonna need to. Because this is gonna be long, and drawn out, and messy, and sooner or later there's gonna come a time when we're all so bogged down in the process and the details that we just forget to pay attention to what really matters. And when we do, that's when you come after us. Okay?"

Donna's voice was still a little quiet and shaky, but the determination beneath it was iron. "Okay."

Mallory and Steve were giggling outrageously together through the corridors of the hotel, Sam trailing a few steps behind. Her father emerged from the stairwell up ahead, and she grinned at him cheerfully. "Hey, dad."

"Hey, sweetheart," he greeted her fondly. "Did you say goodbye to your mother?"

"Yeah, I caught her on the way out. Everything okay?"

"It's fine," he nodded. He appeared to notice for the first time that she had her arm linked through Steve's, and turned to give Sam a curious look. "What's going on there?" he enquired with a raised eyebrow.

"I don't know, but it's scaring me a little," he admitted.

"Steve's my new best buddy," Mallory explained, raising their linked arms for emphasis.

"She has lots of fun stories that make Sam sound like an idiot," Steve added.

"So does he," she nodded brightly.

Sam leaned back against the wall, and shot her father a wry look. "I gotta tell you, it's a lot of fun being me right now."

"I'll bet." He turned back to look at her. "You wanna go get coffee or something, Mal?"

"Yeah, sure." She surprised Sam by leaning across and giving him a quick kiss on the cheek. He blinked for a moment, and then beamed. Feeling suddenly magnanimous, she planted one on Steve as well, then did the same for her dad and wrapped him in a big hug.

"Hey, hey, what is this?" he grumbled, but only for effect.

Smiling, Steve took advantage of his release to slide an arm around his boyfriend. They grinned at each other for a moment, and then shared a brief, sweet kiss.

As they parted and Mallory released her dad, he pointed a warning finger at the two younger men. "Now, I love you both, but if either one of you even thinks about-"

"Behave yourself, daddy," she chided gently, giving him another squeeze.

Sam just laughed, and patted him briefly on the arm. "I'll see you tomorrow, Leo?"

"Yeah."

They went their separate ways, Mallory linking her arm through her dad's and walking with her head on his shoulder like she hadn't in a long time. He smiled softly at her. "You had a good time tonight?"

She nodded slowly to herself, surprised to find that it was true. "Yeah. Yeah, I did. I... I was kind of worried about meeting Sam," she admitted. "I mean, I mean- what do you say when a guy you almost dated suddenly discovers he's gay?"

He shot her a sardonic look. "Well, to be fair, if it was a guy I almost dated, it probably wouldn't be so much of a surprise."

"Dad!" She laughed and shook her head. "No, I just... It was stupid. I shouldn't have avoided him like that. That's why I wouldn't come see you at the White House, I didn't want to run into him with it all hanging out there - I was just so mixed up and mad..."

Her father was giving her an unreadable look. "That's why you didn't come visit me at work?"

She stopped walking. "Oh, dad," she groaned. "You didn't think-"

"Honey, I wouldn't blame you if you never wanted to see me again, the way I've let you down so many times," he told her candidly.

"Oh, dad," she sighed. "You know that's never gonna happen." She drew him into another, longer hug, and this time he abandoned his customary stiffness in the face of affection to hug her tightly back. Then he pulled away.

"Come on, Mal, let's go get that coffee."

"Okay." She followed her father.

Jed strolled through the night, enjoying the New Hampshire air. Leo would think he was crazy if he said so, but even the oxygen had a different flavour out here. A subtle hint to every breath that tasted like home, and like freedom.

His freedom was an illusion, of course, as was his solitude. The entire hotel grounds had been closed off to all but those few wedding guests high enough up the hierarchy to be staying at the hotel for the night. And just because, in the dark, he couldn't see the escort that shadowed him everywhere, that didn't mean he didn't know they were there.

But tonight, he didn't mind. In fact, when a tall figure detached itself from the shadows, he moved towards it.

"Ron," he greeted with a nod.

"Mr. President." The head agent straightened up, face as impassive as ever. Jed looked up at him.

"How are things going, Agent Butterfield?" he asked formally.

"Everything checks out, Mr. President," he nodded firmly. Always professional, never less than calm, never self-satisfied. "We have our people on the perimeter, the hotel is secure for the night."

"It's been a good day," he smiled. His daughter was married, the ceremony and the reception both had got off without a hitch or even a scare... Yes, it had been a very good day.

"Sir," the agent nodded.

Jed dipped his head respectfully in turn. "Very well done there," he acknowledged. "Very well done indeed."

He wandered off, leaving the Secret Service man standing alone, as vigilant as ever.

And now the room was empty, but for the two of them, and a tired-looking waiter collecting bottles from the tables. Toby crossed the room towards Andy, where she stood alone in the dimness.

She gave him a half-smile, and he leaned against the wall beside her. "Well. That's over," he observed neutrally.

"Yeah."

He asked if she was okay, without bothering to put the question into actual words. She read his gaze, and sighed softly.

"Just thinking."

"Weddings?"

"Children," she admitted, with the wistful tone that had always accompanied that word.

He looked at her. "It's not too late to try more."

She shot him a wry look. "With you?"

Toby gave a little half-shrug, that said he was the natural candidate and they both knew it. She sighed again.

"Toby... you know we weren't exactly the world's best couple."

"But we'd make great parents." He spoke softly, with the understated conviction he saved for things that were unquestionably true. Andy met his eyes.

"Toby, I... I admit I've... pretty much given up hope, this late in the day." The admission came haltingly, and he knew how much it pained her to make it.

"There's always hope," he said, allowing himself the platitude for the simple reason that he believed it.

"Not always," she corrected him, with a sad smile.

"There's adoption." The suggestion, once vehemently shot down, was met with no reaction, and he slid his gaze up to lock with hers. "I've been thinking about it," he admitted quietly.

She tilted her head in not-quite curiosity. "Toby, it's not your problem," she pointed out. "You can have kids. You could have your kids with anyone you wanted."

"I don't want my kids. I want our kids." He allowed the emphasis to fall into place on the second sentence, not looking away from her face.

Andy smiled for him, a fragile expression only a heartbeat away from tears, and looked down. "Toby... you know we can't seriously think about adopting. Our jobs..."

"Three years' time, I can be a stay-at-home dad," he pointed out. And why not? What was there, beyond the White House? Nothing in the world he walked in now, nothing in the realms of politics. And to take a lesser position, after this... No, there was no other way forward but to shed the Toby Ziegler he was now, and be a different man, with different challenges.

And why not this one? Why not?

"And in the meantime?" Andy asked him softly.

"Sometimes, miracles happen," he said quietly into the darkness. A reminder as much to himself as to her. They could wait and they could try and... sometimes, miracles happened.

Andy pulled away from the wall and turned to face him. "And what if there's no miracle, Toby? What if three years' time is too long to wait?"

He stepped forward, and took her hands in his. "Then you'll still be my wife, and I'll still be your husband."

She smiled gently at that, and he moved forward to give her a very delicate kiss. When he pulled back, her smile had widened. "You're a frustrating, self-righteous, curmudgeonly old crank," she informed him. "But I think I love you."

"How could you not?" he wondered, and she chuckled, shook her head, and laid her hands against his shoulders.

They kissed again, for real this time.

The door beside them swung open, letting in a flood of light, and Josh. "Hey, Toby- hey, Toby," he repeated, in a completely different tone.

Toby jerked an impatient thumb at him, and communicated the word 'out' by little more than telepathy.

It worked.

The door fell slowly closed again as Josh departed. They went back to the kissing.

He found Donna sitting alone on a bench outside the hotel. "I am this far from hammering to death the next person to talk to me about happy couples," she warned him as he approached.

Josh smiled as he sat down next to her. "Then you won't want to know that I just caught Toby making out with his ex-wife."

Donna squealed in delight. "Oh my God! Oh, we have to tell CJ!"

"So this dislike of happy couples was more of a theoretical thing...?"

"Shut up, Josh."

"Okay." Donna's face had lit up, and she gave him a brief hug.

"I lied, you know," she admitted against his chest.

"Hmm?"

"I love weddings."

"I know."

"They always make me cry."

"You're just one big ball of sap, aren't you?" he grinned.

She sat up and glared at him. "You can talk, Mr. 'I've walked in this world and I've known these people'."

"I think I may have stolen that from somewhere," he covered quickly.

"No you didn't."

"I might have done."

"You're a poet."

"I am not!" he retorted, injured. Donna just laughed, a reassuringly pleasant sound. "Are you okay?" he asked her softly. "I saw you talking to CJ earlier, you both looked a little..." He wasn't sure how they'd looked, but he hadn't liked it. There was something coming, he could feel it in the air. Something big - he snorted mentally at that; wasn't it always 'something big'?

This wedding had been a little slice of calm in the centre of the storm, but it couldn't last long. It never did.

Donna sighed softly. "I'm... okay," she said, staring out into the night.

He nodded in acknowledgement, and they both sat in silence for a while.

"Poet," she whispered after a moment, just on the edge of hearing.

"Crazy woman."

"Positron Man."

Josh smiled, and leaned back against the bench. "Do you want to be my trusty sidekick, Electron Girl? It comes with a spangly costume and everything."

"As I understand it, those names mean you suck, and I do the opposite."

"Well, at least I'm not negative."

"Will you be wearing a spangly costume as well? With tights?"

"You know, I'm beginning to worry about this strange predilection you have for mentally dressing me in women's clothes."

"You were the one who brought up spangly costumes."

"I think you'd look good in one," he shrugged, unapologetic.

Donna eyed him. "You wouldn't."

"Thanks for that," he said dryly.

"Hey, I call 'em like I see 'em."

"See? See? Negative!"

"Shut up, Josh."

He shut up. For a little while, anyway.

Yes, the bad things kept on coming. But so did the little moments. And as long as you could have days in between that went like this... well, the bad things didn't seem quite so big, all of a sudden.

He paced outside on the grass, eyes on the ground, mind a lot further away. Even through his distraction, he was aware of her presence behind him.

"Hey."

"Hey," he acknowledged, without turning.

"I thought I'd find you out here."

That didn't seem to need an answer, so Jed just kept pacing.

"You're smoking," she observed after a few moments. He stopped, and blinked at her, hands still locked together behind his back.

"Without a cigarette?" he asked dryly.

"Yes. Hence the pacing."

He supposed that was a fair cop. At this time, under these frustrations, he would normally have taken to the nearest available exit and lit up. No wonder he had that odd, itchy, agitated feeling that wouldn't let him rest easy.

Abbey moved towards him and took his hand, and led him over to sit down beside her. They sat that way without speaking, joined at the hands, like teenage sweethearts but a thousand times more comfortable.

"I had a long talk with Ellie," she said, after a while.

"So did I."

"Cleared the air a little?"

He shrugged minutely, and she laid her head against his shoulder. "She loves you, Jed," she said softly.

"I love her." The response was both unquestionably automatic and sincerely heartfelt.

"She wants to get on with you," Abbey told him.

"She always runs away." He stared out into the night.

"And she doesn't understand why you don't follow."

"I-" Complexity of emotion broke his voice. But that was okay, because Abbey always knew what he wanted to say better than he did himself.

"I know, baby, I know."

She kissed his cheek, and he slipped his arm around her.

"It was a nice wedding, I thought," she observed reflectively, after a few moments.

"The media attention in particular added that extra sparkle," he said caustically. Abbey lightly shoved his shoulder.

"Honey, ain't nobody out here with us but the birds in the treetops, and they're not gonna believe you're camera shy any more than I do."

He met her eyes. "I didn't want it to spoil it for Zoey," he said softly. "I didn't want- me to spoil it for Zoey."

"Nothing could have spoiled this for Zoey," she said, by which she meant that none of the things either of them dared to think about could have spoiled it. "Besides, you think she saw anything but Charlie the entire day?"

"Hmm."

Jed didn't have to even look up to feel her grin beside him. "'Hmm'? Is that all you have to say on the subject of your brand new son-in-law?"

"At this point in the evening, we're pretending Charlie doesn't exist," he reminded her. Abbey laughed, and leaned in closer.

"I'll bet Zoey isn't."

"Stop it."

"Right about now, the two of them are probably-"

"Leave me alone." He pointedly shifted to face away from her, and stood up. She chuckled again, following him as he paced a few steps away.

"Remember our wedding night?" she asked teasingly.

He glared. "You're not helping." He looked down at the ground, hands clenched tightly as he tried not to think about cigarettes.

"Jed." At her tone, he slowly looked up, and met her sparkling eyes. "Take a hint."

Suddenly, he started to smile. They linked hands again, and headed back inside the hotel where once long ago they'd spent their honeymoon.

Not all long-held memories had to be unwelcome ones.