WEDNESDAY:

Leo looked across at his old friend with concern. Now that he knew, it was all too easy to see things in a different light. That momentary wince as muscles tensed, the way he would blink and struggle to focus on a document, moments when he took the time to sigh heavily or lay his head back and rest an instant... Things that could so easily be ascribed to tiredness suddenly took on a much more sinister aspect.

I think my MS may be progressing.

Funny, how few words it took for the foundations of the world to disappear from under you.

Jed had shared that quiet revelation with him Sunday night, moments before the two of them had stepped back inside to rejoin the cheerful buzz of Charlie and Zoey's engagement party. Leo had found it almost unbearably painful to look at their young, smiling faces, and those of the senior staff around them, united in the belief that for now, the worst was over.

The worst wasn't over. The worst hadn't started. The public relations disasters of the last two weeks now seemed laughably small in the scheme of things - a lost bill, Josh's PTSD, the First Daughter's secret engagement... what did it matter?

What did any of it matter, with the unthinkable looming on the horizon?

The president looked up, and smiled softly when he registered Leo's eyes on him. He sat up straighter. "Abbey's made arrangements."

"You're seeing a doctor?"

"I'm having some tests done. Tomorrow," he confirmed.

"Who's the doctor?" he asked. His mind preferring to focus on unimportant things, administrative things, the meaningless issues of appearances and legal ramifications.

I think my MS may be progressing.

"Dr. Keeble," Jed told him.

"You know him?"

"Abbey does."

The two of them had known each other long enough to communicate in shorthand and silences, saying things without needing words. These past two days, however, they'd been wordlessly not saying things.

Not saying what this could mean if it was true.

Not making assurances that it was nothing for fear of how hollow they might ring.

Not saying how they could feel the spectre of "we told you so" looming large on the horizon.

"Leo." Jed met his eyes. "This could be nothing."

"Yeah."

Not saying 'I know you better than that, old friend'. Not saying 'you wouldn't be doing this if you believed that'. Not saying 'why didn't you tell me?'

Jed shifted in his chair, and gave a heavy sigh. "This time, I'm learning from past mistakes," he said, and Leo gave him a questioning look. "I need you to gather the senior staff," he elaborated. "This may be nothing. It may not be. But either way, they need to know."

Leo nodded heavily. He was right.

That wasn't going to make the upcoming conversations any easier, however.

Toby stopped in CJ's office doorway and hesitated. She was talking on the phone with her back to him, and he could see from the tense set of her shoulders that it was far from a pleasant call.

Respect for privacy stopped him from stepping inside; concern stopped him from backing away. Either CJ's usually flawless sensor for his presence was malfunctioning, or she had more weighty matters pushing for her attention.

"Peter... just, just tell me, okay?" Toby watched her run a tired hand through her hair, recognised the gesture for what it was. "Is he- do you need me to- okay. Okay. Yeah, I've gotta- yeah. Call me if he- Thank you. Bye."

She put the phone back in its cradle, and sighed so lightly that someone other than Toby Ziegler might have thought they'd imagined it. He stepped inside the room, knowing she would know who it was. She didn't turn, but he could tell from the set of her spine that she knew he was there.

"Your brother?" he said softly. Not truly a question; the name and the strained quality to CJ's voice had been enough.

Her father was worsening again.

CJ spun in her chair, and gave him an almost-smile. She didn't say anything; what was there to say? Her father had Alzheimer's; he'd recently had a stroke. He was slipping away, and she knew it, and she wanted to be there, but she couldn't.

Toby was a wordsmith, but some things there weren't words for. He gave her a quiet, almost shy smile of his own.

"Coming to senior staff?"

CJ's expression brightened into a proper grin, and she straightened up and followed him out.

In the scheme of things, walking somebody to their next meeting was hardly a grand gesture of friendship and support.

But it worked for them.

The staff filtered into Leo's office. Josh and Sam jostled through the doorway together, laughing over something completely unimportant. Leo would have been relieved to see them bouncing back so well from the blows the administration had suffered lately, if it wasn't for the weight of the secret pressing down on him. Those cheerful expressions were going to be wiped away all too soon.

It would be a return to the siege mentality that followed the revelation of the president's MS - only worse. Even that uphill battle he'd been able to face with the absolute conviction that his best friend was fit to be president, that his condition was completely inconsequential.

And now...

Now, he was scared. As scared as he'd been that day over three years ago when Abbey had first put a name to the president's inner demons.

He has multiple sclerosis, Leo.

I think my MS may be progressing.

He looked down at his hands, laid flat against the desktop, and was amazed to see that they weren't even shaking. He'd been carrying this secret around inside him for two days like a poison, and yet no one on the outside could even see it.

It was almost a relief to see the more subdued demeanour of the other half of the senior staff, except that there was something about the tightness of CJ's expression he didn't like. He almost hoped that she had some inkling of the president's condition; better that than the thought that there might be something else going on as well.

But meanwhile, he was supposed to be chairing this meeting, and it certainly wasn't his place to tell them anything before the president had a chance to do it. He cleared his throat.

"Okay, Sam, Toby. What's going on with Sex-Ed?"

The Deputy Communications Director grinned brightly. "Toby lit a fire under some people," he said happily. "We've actually made some progress, and it looks might we might be able to swing a pilot scheme in one, possibly two states."

"It's not enough," scowled Toby, looking frustrated.

"It's two states further than we ever expected it to go," Leo pointed out. "Josh? The Peterson thing?"

"We're working the crowd," Josh agreed with a shrug. Leo had been glad to see that the dent left by the recent loss of an important healthcare bill hadn't been fatal to his deputy's confidence. "It's looking good."

"Good. What about the new amendment to the Commerce Bill?"

"I'm meeting with the committee tomorrow."

Leo nodded. "Okay. Now-"

"Hate crimes," spoke up Toby quickly.

"Yeah," Leo said, with the edge of a sigh. Toby Ziegler all fired-up wasn't the worst thing in the world when it came to shoving legislation down the throats of recalcitrant Congressmen, but it always pushed him into the uncomfortable position of being the one to reign him back in.

"Our stance on this is weak, Leo," Toby said warningly.

"He's right," Sam agreed with a nod.

"This is our chance to completely reshape our position on hate crimes," he continued relentlessly. "We've been sitting on the fence for too long; it's time to send a message that this White House has zero tolerance for prejudice and segregationist tactics."

The others were nodding in agreement, and this new spirit of determination was too fragile for Leo to strike down with a "we can't do this now" - not least because that would mean explaining why they couldn't do it now. He nodded, feeling like some kind of traitor.

"Put some stuff together on this for me," he agreed, and shuffled papers. "Okay, that's everything for now." Liar. Liar. Liar. "The president wants to see you all later today."

Even tossed off casually like that, it raised some worried eyebrows. "Leo," CJ began warily. "Is there something-?"

Leo met her eyes, and hated how easy it was to pretend he didn't have any secrets. "He'll tell you when he sees you. Everybody, get back to work."

"Hey Zoey." Charlie found himself grinning widely, even though Zoey was on the other end of the phone and he was alone at his desk.

"Hey, Charlie!" Zoey said just as brightly, and he could picture her expression. "What are you doing tomorrow night?"

"Working my ass off, same as I always do," he reminded her.

"Well, don't work too hard. I agreed to marry you as a package deal, and that ass was definitely part of the offer."

"Oh, so now the sordid truth comes out," he smiled, leaning back in his chair.

"Seriously, Charlie, can you get away? I can get us dinner reservations at seven."

"Well, I'll have to ask your father-"

"Ask me what?"

Charlie jumped upright, to the quiet amusement of the president who'd come up behind him. "You had something to ask me, Charlie?" he repeated, smirking ever so slightly. Charlie only hoped he wasn't going to query the 'sordid truth' remark.

"Uh, Zoey has dinner reservations tomorrow for night. I was wondering could I-"

"You can go," agreed the president benevolently, and Charlie smiled in thanks. It was amazing how much easier it was to wrangle time off when the person you'd be disappointing if you failed was your boss's beloved youngest daughter.

"Your father says it's fine," he said into the phone.

"Oh, is he back? I should go. Call me tonight?"

"Sure." The president gestured for the phone, and Charlie told her "Your father wants to talk to you."

"Zoey!" said the president expansively. "Hassling my staff again?"

Charlie rolled his eyes, and pointedly ignored all the jokes the president made at his expense just because he knew he was listening. As was his habit when he got a spare moment, he scanned his employer for signs of... well, signs. He didn't like to think too much about what those signs might add up to, but they'd been depressingly prevalent of late.

The president might be under the impression he was some kind of brilliant actor, but Charlie knew better. He spent more time in the company of Jed Bartlet than even the First Lady or Leo, and often he was hovering in the background with the president barely conscious of his presence. He saw the winces, heard the soft sighs, registered the way he rubbed his eyes and how tired he looked.

The president might fool almost anybody else into believing everything was fine, but Charlie knew better.

His future father-in-law hung up the phone, and Charlie was too slow to flick his gaze away before deep blue eyes met his own. But instead of his usual trick of deflecting attention onto the next pressing item of business - and there was always a next pressing item of business - the president gave him a soft, knowing smile and gestured to the Oval Office.

"Come in, Charlie."

Something like nervousness rippled through him, and it only grew stronger as the president closed the door and gestured for him to take a seat. "Mr. President?" he queried hesitantly.

The president gave him a reproachful look for that. He'd declared that if Charlie was intending to marry his daughter, then in private he should call him 'dad' - a directive that Charlie was almost painfully honoured by, but not one that he found it easy to obey. At the Manchester farm in the holidays perhaps, when the lines were more fully blurred... but not here and now, with the weight of the Oval Office bearing down on him.

The president sat down across from him and sighed. He was silent for a moment. "Charlie, I know you've been... worried about me," he began.

"Sir, I-"

The president waved him quiet "You're not the only one," he admitted, and hesitated. "Me included. Which is why the First Lady and I have decided that I'm going to see a doctor. Tomorrow. Just to... to get a few things checked out." The president's eyes were locked on his now, and he couldn't think of a thing, not a single tiny fragment of a thing to say. "It probably isn't- We're just going to get things checked out."

He nodded slowly, feeling bizarrely disconnected from his own body. "Okay." This was a good thing, right? A good thing. Just the president being careful, looking out for himself the way he was supposed to.

Except...

Except that everybody knew that the president was just about the world's biggest expert on sticking his head in the sand, ostrich-style, and what did it mean that this was serious enough that he couldn't do that?

The president stood up, abruptly, perhaps troubled by the same thoughts as his young personal aide and future son-in-law. He briefly covered Charlie's hand with his own, and when he spoke again his voice was firmer, stronger.

"It's not necessarily anything; we're just covering all our bases, Charlie, okay?"

Charlie nodded again, because that was easier than trusting his voice not to betray his concern.

The president turned to go, and then hesitated. "And, Charlie? Don't... let's not bother Zoey with this, okay? I don't want to worry her unnecessarily."

"Okay," he said again. The president left, and Charlie watched him go, painfully aware of how small he sometimes seemed - when the magical fire of the presidency left him, and he was just a man.

It felt like a long time before he trusted his legs enough to stand up and follow.

"Okay, folks, and how are we today?" CJ stepped up to the podium with a practised air that betrayed nothing of the anxiety she was feeling underneath. She'd heard the strain in Peter's voice, and though he hadn't said it, she knew the truth of the matter anyway.

Her father was dying. She knew it, Peter knew it, Robert knew it. But Peter and Robert could drop everything to be at his side, and she...

And she was the White House press secretary.

"We've got more news on the Sex Education; it looks like the pilot scheme that was mentioned last briefing will be going ahead in both states, and several others will be monitoring reactions with a view to implementing something similar further down the line."

No questions yet, and my, wasn't that a surprise. CJ knew what they were really after, but she soldiered on regardless.

"In other news, we're going to be revisiting hate crimes. Toby Ziegler and Sam Seaborn will be meeting with several action groups and looking towards crafting a much more proactive stance on crimes of prejudice and discrimination; we want to emphasise that this White House has absolutely zero tolerance for organised hate groups."

Okay, not much meat on the bones there, but nobody had anything to say on some juicy freedom of speech issues? She sighed internally and opened a by now familiar can of worms. "Any questions?"

"CJ!"

"Sandy."

"Have Charlie and Zoey set a date?"

The whole room grinned at the way she theatrically rolled her eyes. It was a question that had been bouncing around the pressroom at every single briefing since the news of the engagement had come out. Okay, it was much better than the ugly questions that had first emerged when it looked like Zoey might have been hiding the news from her parents, but CJ still wasn't sure how she was supposed to magically know every detail long before the couple themselves had even considered them.

And yet, they kept on asking.

"Well, I'm sorry, Sandy, but I've yet to be involved in wedding planning. I'm sure they could use my invaluable knowledge, but I'm holding out for an invitation to be a bridesmaid. Yes, Katie?"

"Any word yet on whether Zoey Bartlet wants to be married by a Catholic priest, or-?"

It was going to be a long day.

"Hey, Sam."

"Hey, CJ." He grinned as he fell into step beside her. "Boy, the press really love a wedding, don't they?"

"Apparently, the vogue for royal weddings didn't die with the Declaration of Independence," she said, rolling her eyes. Ever since the news had come out, the press had wanted to talk about nothing else. "Incidentally, talking of young lovebirds-" she added.

"CJ." He couldn't help blushing just a little, embarrassed.

"Seriously, how's things with your other half?"

"Going very well, you'll be disappointed to hear," Sam informed her.

"Sam." She gave him a look which said, all press complications aside, she was fully behind his fledging relationship with Steven Radcliffe. And he appreciated it.

He'd met Steve less than three weeks ago, but he and the cheerful young technical writer had instantly connected, and at a time when he was at his lowest ebb, that connection had been something to be treasured. And it was a least partly Steve's influence that had helped haul him out of the depression he'd been living in. It had been too long since he'd had any kind of anchor outside work to keep him from crashing and burning when things got tough, and - inconvenient as it might be when the press got wind of it - he wasn't going to give up this chance at that kind of stability.

"Seriously, CJ, it's... we're cool," Sam nodded. He blushed slightly, and that made her smile.

"You kids are so cute, do you know that?"

"Hey! I resent that." He wasn't sure he whether he resented being called a kid or being called cute, but he was fairly sure that neither one of them would be good news if Josh got to hear of it.

"Have you called your parents yet?" she asked him, almost out of nowhere, and he winced.

"I've been..." He trailed off.

"Procrastinating?" she supplied.

"Yeah, that would just about cover it," Sam admitted. He pulled a face. "CJ, it's... it's difficult. I'm... you know I'm an only child, and my parents always wanted grandchildren. And then, and then there's my dad..."

Hi, dad, haven't really spoken to you since I found out you were screwing another woman for twenty-eight years of marriage, oh and did I mention I have a boyfriend now?

"Yeah." CJ briefly laid a hand on his shoulder. "Just... just be aware that, you know, this could break at any time. It'll be better coming from you than over the news."

"I know."

"You don't want to burn any bridges with your parents," CJ said seriously. "You never know when-" She shrugged. "You never know."

"Yeah. I'll talk to them," Sam nodded.

One day.

Maybe.

He peeled off towards his office, but stopped as CJ called him back. "Sam. Any idea what this thing with the president is about later?"

Sam could only shrug.

Margaret hesitated in her boss's doorway. "Leo?" He didn't look up. "Leo?" she repeated more loudly.

He blinked up at her, and removed his glasses. "Margaret?" He didn't snap at her, and that bothered her. If he was working late because he had too much to do, then he would snap if she interrupted him. Which meant he was working late for some reason other than the work itself.

And those kind of reasons were never good.

"Do you need anything?" she asked, because it was the only thing she could ask.

"I'm finishing up here. You go on home."

Liar. She knew it, and he probably knew she knew it. But he also knew she wouldn't come right out and say so.

"Everyone's still here," she said instead. "Is there something-?"

"It's nothing."

But Margaret could read Leo's eyes, and she knew it wasn't nothing - at least, not the ordinary nothing.

It was that kind of "nothing".

"You'll go home and get some sleep?" she said. A ritual urging, not one that she expected to have any true effect.

"I'm nearly done." As if, in the world of Leo McGarry, there was ever such a thing as 'done'.

And something about the look in his eye... Margaret suspected that she wouldn't be sleeping too well tonight, either.

"You're sure you're ready to do this?"

Jed smiled at his wife, but though she returned the expression it didn't erase the worry in her eyes. "I'm sure," he agreed softly.

"Do you want me with you?"

Always.

"I'll be fine."

"Jed-"

"Abbey." He gently touched her hand. "This is... it's just something I think I should do by myself." Perhaps if he'd broken it down into blocks of logic he could have found the argument of not seeming to need support, not bringing up parallels of the public announcement two years ago - but really, it was much more instinctual than that. Just a gut feeling that this was something he had to do alone, without that safety net, that option of sitting back and letting somebody else answer the hard questions. The questions he didn't truly want to ask himself.

"Okay," she nodded. Understanding, even if she wasn't happy about it.

"Okay," Jed smiled back.

They were silent a moment. "If they need to ask-"

"Abbey."

"I'm just saying, if you're not comfortable, if you don't want to-"

"I'll be fine."

"Send them to me," she continued, regardless. She looked him in the eye. "If you need to, send them to me."

He wouldn't, whatever happened, but he nodded anyway. And then, because it was almost painful to look into her eyes and see how much she loved him, he said "You know this is probably going to be nothing."

He was sure of that, believed it, believed it with the same force he gave his prayers for his loved ones, with the same force he believed that the young men he sent into combat would survive, would come back, wouldn't die in vain.

He believed it because it had to be true.

But Abbey, who had always seen through him better than any other person he'd ever known, simply reached up and touched his cheek. "What if it isn't nothing?"

And for that, he didn't have an answer.

Josh could feel the rising apprehension like a crackle of static through the room, sliding over his skin and making it itch with nervous energy.

CJ looked tense, her hands constantly in motion where they were clasped together in her lap. Sam was frowning and kept adjusting his glasses. Toby was motionless, staring at his shoes. None of them spoke.

The click of the opening door was quiet, but they were all on their feet the moment they heard it. "Mr. President."

"Everybody sit down," he nodded quietly, taking a seat across from them. Josh found himself examining him, searching for... what?

Searching for something. Anything.

The president was silent for a long moment. Looking down at the carpet, not at any of them. Josh felt the tension in his stomach tighten like a vicious cramp, and begin to twist...

And then the president looked up. And Josh saw something in his eyes that he didn't want to see, something that he'd seen in a hastily-scheduled late meeting two years ago, only then, back then before the world started shifting, he hadn't understood what it meant...

The president sighed, and began to speak. "Some of you may have noticed this... in fact, I'm willing to bet that probably you all have. Maybe even as far back as I first did."

And something inside Josh was screaming denials - he hadn't seen anything, really hadn't seen anything, because he knew there wasn't anything - but he didn't speak.

"I've been having... some trouble," the president continued haltingly. "Stiffness in my back, sometimes in my legs - a bit of pain sometimes... Blurry vision, sometimes, and fatigue..." His mouth twisted into a half-smile which none of them could return. "I'm think I'm getting old. I'm probably just getting old. But-" He took a breath, and leaned forward in his chair to rest his chin on interlaced fingers. "What I might think and feel about this takes second place to my duty as president of this country. If there's a chance, however small, that this could be-" his voice wavered for just a second - "something more than that, then I have a duty to check it out."

He straightened up, becoming firmer and less hesitant as he moved from dark intangibles to practicalities. "Tomorrow, Abbey and I are going to see a specialist, a Dr. Joseph Keeble. I'm going to get some tests done, we're going to check on the general state of my health. He paused for a beat. "This may very well be nothing - I think it probably is nothing - but I have a duty to the people to be absolutely certain of that fact, and you have a right to know that this is happening."

And then there was silence, and if there were things to say to fill it none of them had a handle on them. Josh was finally able to pull his gaze away from the president long enough to look at his companions. Sam looked deathly pale, his lips compressed into a thin, tight line. Toby was gazing at the president intently, no room in his attention for the rest of his surroundings.

And CJ... CJ looked away as she registered Josh's eyes on her, but not quite quickly enough. He caught a flash of her taut, pained features and saw that she was dangerously close to the verge of tears.

Then the president was standing up, and they all stood with him. "I'll be talking to you again when I know more of what's going on." He swept his eyes over the four of them, and Josh made himself meet his gaze. "But after all you've been through for me and for this presidency, you have a right to know that this is happening."

"Yes sir," said Sam softly.

"Mr. President," Josh nodded.

The president smiled quietly, and nodded in return; a thanks that it was easier for all of them if he didn't say aloud. "I'll be in the Residence. Goodnight."

"Goodnight, Mr. President."

As they left the room, Josh hurried to try and catch up with CJ.

Toby hung back as the others filed out around him. The president slid his hands into his pockets and smiled faintly, as if he'd expected this. After all, it was a kind of symmetry. "Toby."

"Mr. President."

"You've come to ask me-"

"If you've considered resignation."

There. That was it, spoken; stark even by his standards - but wasn't it his place here to confront the president with truths other people preferred to leave buried? Perhaps it should have been Leo's place, but Leo loved the president too much to hurt him even when he had to.

It was all very well to love the president, but somebody had to love the presidency.

It was his love of the office and all it represented that made him push where others would step back, force a confrontation when the anger mattered less than the truth and the reality.

Tonight, however, the president didn't shout, only bowed his head for a moment. He took a breath, and then met Toby's eyes. "I want to serve my country, Toby. And if that's what it takes... then that is what I'll do."

A small smile curled the edges of his lips, not quite bright enough to be called 'genuine' but not precisely false, either. A smile of determination. "And furthermore; we will not pull back, we will not hesitate, we will not seek to cushion ourselves in preparation for a future blow. The presidency goes beyond my fortune or the public's favour, and we will not compromise our goals to ease us into an uncertain future."

And that was it; the answer. The answer he'd been waiting for ever since that fateful day two years ago, since long before the president was willing to admit he needed to give it.

He nodded once, slowly, with the finality of a pact being sealed. The sanctity of the presidency would be preserved. The gauntlet of Congressional investigation, the censure, reelection... those weren't the true tests. This was the real thing... and Jed Bartlet had passed.

Toby shifted on his feet, in the uncomfortable - and uncommon - position of feeling the need to apologise. He'd doubted, when the truth first came out, that the president understood the true magnitude of what this could mean for his office and his duty to the people. Now he knew that those doubts had been misgiven.

"Mr. President-" he smiled awkwardly at his shoes- "about two years ago-"

"You were right, Toby," the president said quietly.

Toby looked up to meet his gaze. "But I was wrong-headed."

The president chuckled, a low rumble of amusement. "Yes, well, we've rather grown to expect that."

Toby smiled back, and straightened up. "Goodnight... Mr. President."

"Goodnight, Toby."

It definitely wasn't part of the plan to get caught sniffling in her office. But then, which part of this hellish day had been going to plan in any case?

"CJ, are you okay?" Josh hesitated in her doorway, his voice and eyes gentle enough that they threatened to set her off crying for real.

But she wasn't going to do that. She was the White House press secretary, and she was damned if she was going to do that.

CJ composed her face a little and swivelled in her chair to face him. She didn't say anything, just let the moment speak for itself.

Josh smiled in tired understanding, and came in to sit on the side of her desk. "This is all pretty..." he trailed off, and shrugged his shoulders; not finding a word, but not truly needing one.

"Yeah."

He hesitated. "Do you think-?" He didn't finish, and she didn't have an answer anyway. She didn't think anything, didn't want to think anything. Didn't want to have this last half hour preserved in her memory.

They sat in silence for a moment.

"You want me to walk you home?" he asked softly. And she could've made some big thing about how she was a big girl and she could look after herself, except that wasn't why he was offering and she knew it.

"Okay." CJ stood up and reached for her coat.

Better Josh's company than Toby's tonight, because even though Toby wouldn't say anything, he knew. Knew about her father. And CJ didn't want anybody making that connection - because there was no connection to be made.

Just because her father was dying, just because her father was losing his mind... that didn't mean the president was going to go the same way.

Didn't. Didn't. Didn't.

"Hey, Sam!" Steve grinned brightly at the sight of the speechwriter on his doorstep, but the expression faded abruptly as he registered Sam's shaken condition. "What's wrong? Are you okay?" He stepped out into the street to take hold of him, suddenly worried that he might actually fall down right there in the road.

"I- I just- I can't, um-" Sam's face was taut with distress as he struggled to find words.

"Hey, hey. It's okay." Steve had no idea what was going on but it was second nature to speak soothingly, bring a hand up to smooth Sam's hair. "What's wrong, Sam? You can tell me."

Sam just mutely shook his head, with an expression of such misery he looked about six years old. He buried his face against Steve's shoulder.

"It's okay. It's okay. I got you," Steve said gently, rubbing his back. "Whatever it is, I got you. Now come on. Come inside." He pressed a brief, comforting kiss to Sam's temple and then led him through the door.

Neither of them was in any position to notice the flash of the camera.

THURSDAY:

It was a noticeably subdued Charlie who appeared in the Oval Office doorway. "Mr. President? Leo."

"Thank you, Charlie."

Leo hesitated, and Jed gave him a quiet smile. Leo had been awkward around him these past few days, unsure of how to approach him, and it was a constant reminder of things he wished he'd never let himself contemplate in the first place.

He hadn't slept a wink the previous night, and his wife's body beside him - normally a soothing presence like no other - had only made the night more torturous. He'd known she was awake, and she'd known he was awake, and neither of them had spoken because there wasn't anything to say. Only the weight of shared knowledge, hanging over their heads like the Sword of Damocles.

Today was the day they found out. Found out whether this was nothing more than the half-imagined aches and pains of a body getting older - or the beginning of the end of everything.

Leo shuffled his feet. "Looks like Sex-Ed's gonna take off," he offered after a moment.

"Yeah?"

"Toby's got two states implementing a pilot scheme, and it looks like a couple of others might be willing to jump on the bandwagon if it works."

"Good," he nodded slowly.

"And hate crimes... we're looking at getting aggressive, and-"

"Leo." Jed put him out of his misery with a single word, and waited for him to look up. "This isn't why you're here."

Leo bowed his head for a moment. "Your thing's this afternoon?" he asked.

"In a couple of hours."

"Do you want me to-?"

"Abbey's coming with me," Jed quickly cut him off. He knew Leo wanted to be by his side, but he couldn't cope with that support right now. Leo had stood by him so faithfully through everything - and now he might find out that his faith had been misplaced.

Arrogance, always arrogance; that was his downfall. He'd sold himself the uncertain truth that he could see this through to the finish - had sold it to himself, and in his arrogance had used his own conviction to sell it to the world. He'd told Leo he could do it. He'd told the staff he could do it. He'd told the people he could do it. He'd even, God help him, convinced Abbey against her better judgement to let him do it.

Well, now it was time to turn up the cards, and see if his bluff had been called.

"I could still come with you," Leo offered, and in his tone Jed heard the words he'd spoken two years ago. I could've been a friend.

And if he was a liar, then he was going to lie some more, because it hurt too much to hear that tone in the voice of his old friend. "Leo. You know this is probably nothing."

"Yeah."

But Leo didn't believe him, and Jed knew that even though he tried to hide the stiffness in his back when he stood up, Leo still saw.

CJ knew her success in avoiding Toby had to end sometime; she'd just been hoping that wouldn't happen until they got to senior staff, safely surrounded by other people. But no, there he was in her office doorway, doing a remarkable impression of some kind of melancholy ghost. At least, this was how she imagined being haunted would be; a silent presence that would stand and stare at you with soulful eyes until you had to say something or explode.

"Hey."

Well, that was something, wasn't it?

Toby just kept looking at her, dammit, until she had to look down at the floor. He came inside, and sat on the edge of her desk where Josh had sat the night before.

Josh was easy to deal with; transparent in his concern, and with his ever-active political brain, always simple to deflect. But Toby... Toby knew her too well. She could put up her walls, hide her weaknesses away from anybody else, but Toby had a disconcerting way of seeing through it all.

Plus, he asked questions without speaking. Which really wasn't fair.

"I'm okay," she said in answer to the query that was hovering between the two of them.

"Do you want me to-?"

There wasn't, in truth, really much he could offer to do, but in leaving the sentence open-ended he offered all of it. But she was CJ Cregg, White House press secretary, and she didn't need help.

"I'm really fine, Toby," she said more sharply.

The president's sick, my father's dying, and I'm fine. Peachy-keen, even.

"How's your father?" he asked quietly.

"Why are we talking about my father?" she demanded defensively.

"Because he's sick," he said, although he meant because the president's sick.

"He's dying, Toby." And she hadn't wanted that to come out, but it came out anyway. Her father was dying, and the president was sick, and she wasn't drawing that connection, because there wasn't a connection-

Toby opened his mouth to speak, but shut it again as Carol appeared in the doorway, apologetic smile in place as she hovered. "CJ?" She extended a note, and CJ took it, slipping on her glasses.

She read the note, and a sick feeling began to settle at the base of her stomach. "I'm gonna get ambushed in the briefing this morning," she told him.

"With what?" Toby asked.

CJ looked up and met his eyes. "Sam."

He was giving serious consideration to bolting out of the building. Unfortunately, in his current condition and with the Secret Service on his tail, he wasn't likely to get far.

Sensing his nerves without even looking at him, Abbey reached out and squeezed his hand. Jed squeezed back gratefully, and she laid her head on his shoulder to look up at him. "Are you ready?" she asked gently.

The time for false bravado was well over. "No," he admitted sincerely.

Abbey only smiled in reply, and kissed his forehead tenderly, as if he was one of the children needing their nerves bolstered before some pre-adolescent trial.

He only wished that this was such a challenge, to be laughed over in retrospect as nothing so big after all. But no amount of tricks with perspective could make this anything less than huge. Today, he found out whether he was fit to be the President of the United States.

Today, he found out where the rest of his life was going.

And as if that wasn't enough... he would be finding it out from a medical examination, of all things. He might have once got a kick out of having his wife as his own personal physician to play doctor with, but the real thing left him seriously cold. Being poked, prodded and scanned was not his idea of fun.

If he was forced to resign his position, Abbey could take her medical licence back. There; a plus side. He'd finally found one.

Not that he'd share it with Abbey. That was still too sore a subject, even now.

The silence stretched on.

"I hate getting MRIs done," he confessed, after a moment.

"I know."

"I hate being in an enclosed space like that."

"I know, honey, I'll be right outside."

"I don't want to do this." He looked her in the eye and smiled wryly. Abbey sighed, fondly, and then moved closer to wrap her arms around him in a warm hug.

"It's gonna be okay, babe, I promise." And when he tugged her tightly against him and buried his face in her hair, it was almost possible to believe it.

A soft sound from the doorway disturbed them from their embrace, and when Jed looked up Charlie was hovering awkwardly. "Mr. President?" he said tentatively.

He straightened up and disentangled himself from his wife. "We're ready?"

"Yes sir."

He and Abbey exchanged a silent glance that said everything they needed to. It was time to go and face the truth. No more room for wilful blindness or hesitation.

With his head held high and his wife's hand in his own, Jed Bartlet walked out to find what destiny had in store.

Toby strode into the communications bullpen at speed. "Ginger! I need you to get Sam."

"He's in a meeting with-"

"I need you to get him now."

Ginger exchanged a worried glance with Bonnie and quickly hopped to her feet. "What shall I tell him?"

"Tell him he's about to make a technical writer very famous."

She gulped, and quickly scurried off to do Toby's bidding.

Steve had been... a surprise. Sam's sudden uplift in demeanour a week and a half ago had been quickly identified by the assistant corps as the result of, to use Bonnie's terminology, 'getting some', but still... when it came to predicting what kind of unsuitable potential partner Sam had picked himself out this time, nobody had guessed anywhere near Steven Radcliffe.

However, after the initial surprise, the pretty much universal reaction had been a shrugged 'cool'. They'd briefly encountered Sam's other half at Charlie and Zoey's impromptu engagement party, and general consensus was that the Deputy Communications Director had impeccable taste in men. Which certainly balanced out his rather troublesome talent for picking wildly unsuitable women.

A happy Sam was a joy to behold, and a cute boyfriend hanging about the place was an added bonus, so as far as the sisterhood of White House assistants were concerned, it was all good. And besides... hey, free country.

Unfortunately, the press and a disquieting percentage of the population were likely to see it differently. Ginger felt sorry for poor Steve - she wondered if he had any idea what he was about to get into. At least Sam had experienced a taste of this before after the thing with the call-girl - which was one-hundred percent certain to be dragged up and dissected in this media cycle...

And it had started out as such a good week.

Ginger peered through the glass doors to see Sam and Josh holding court in a room full of Congressmen. They both looked like they were enjoying the argument, something she hadn't seen in quite a long time. She hesitated before going in, and quickly scribbled on a slip of paper.

"Sam." She pressed the note into his hand, and he put his glasses on as he unfolded it. He looked up sharply as he read the single word printed there.

Steve.

Josh leaned over to read over his shoulder, and questioned Sam with a look. He shrugged it off, and asked "Can you take this from here?"

Josh grinned devilishly, enjoying the prospect of a good fight. "Sure."

Sam stood up. "Excuse me, gentlemen. Sorry. I'm going to have to leave you with Josh now."

He and Ginger hurried back to communications, where Toby, Bonnie and the others were already clustered around the TV. "CJ's gonna get the question in the briefing," Toby said shortly.

Sam took a few deep breaths. "Okay."

They waited for the briefing to begin.

It was never a good idea to take to the podium pissed. Just witness the legendary exploits of one Deputy Chief of Staff - hostility, thy name is Josh Lyman.

CJ was an expert at defusing her anger and tension with a light, airy attitude, deflecting the press with smiles and quips that made them instantly forgive the evasion. Today, though, she was feeling anything but airy. Her father was lying in a hospital bed across the country, the president was at this moment undergoing medical tests to find out whether his MS was progressing, and what did the press consider important?

Woe betide the first journalist who stepped over the line today.

Still, she nodded to Carol in passing as she usually did, and smartly took her place as if all was right with the world. "Good morning folks, I have some more details for you on-"

"CJ! CJ!"

Well, colour her surprised. "Keith." She abandoned her notes to take the barrage of questions she knew was coming. Nothing else she said today would get reported anyway.

"CJ, do you have any comment on a homosexual relationship between Deputy Director of Communications Sam Seaborn and a man called Steven Radcliffe?"

Nobody in the audience looked remotely surprised. She didn't think Katie had been the leak, but somebody had obviously tipped the press to be on the lookout. Sam and Steve had been deliberately not going out of their way to be secretive, and, inevitably, the press had got their photographic evidence.

Still, that was no reason to make it easy on them. "The White House doesn't comment on the personal lives of its employees, Keith, you know that."

He'd obviously been expecting the official line, because he quickly followed it up "CJ, do you have any comment?"

Before she had a chance to be appropriately scathing, somebody else called "Is Mr. Seaborn denying the rumours?"

"Nobody's denying anything, Arthur."

"CJ, has Steven Radcliffe been to the White House?" Dammit, somebody had already connected the dots to the engagement party.

"Yes, but only in a social context."

"What kind of social context?"

She couldn't help a brief, tigerish smile at that. "As Mr. Seaborn's date. Next question." The beat of hesitation was so small a casual observer would never have noticed, but CJ was an expert in the tides and rhythms of the press, and she knew she'd momentarily thrown them. Let them chew on that little titbit awhile.

However, it didn't take them long to regroup.

"CJ!" called Chris. "In light of this administration's position on gay rights, any comment on why Mr. Seaborn felt the need to keep sexuality a secret?"

"He kissed the guy on his doorstep, Chris, exactly how non-secretive do you expect him to be?" CJ scowled. She was getting irritated now, and if she stayed up here, things would not go well. She swept an imperious gaze over the crowd. "Does anybody here want to talk about actual news? No? Okay then."

She left the room, cries of her name following her down the corridor.

"Hey." Josh appeared in the doorway to the communications bullpen just as the crowd around the monitor was breaking up.

"Josh?" Sam frowned. "Didn't I leave you babysitting a room full of Congressmen?"

"Yes, but as it turns out, something cropped up that required my attention," he said dryly. He, Sam and Toby gravitated towards Toby's office.

"How'd it go?" he asked.

Toby shrugged. "As well as can be expected."

"They've got photos?"

"Already online." He flipped up the screen on his laptop to reveal a candid shot of Sam and Steve embracing on his doorstep, the blond man placing a quick kiss on Sam's temple.

"Cute," Josh observed cheerfully.

"I'm thinking of getting it framed," Sam said dryly.

Josh turned back to Toby. "What's our next move?"

"Hey, hey, whoa!" Sam quickly stopped him. "Who says we're moving anywhere?"

The other two exchanged a glance. "Sam-" Toby began slowly.

"No. No, seriously." He folded his arms. "No spin on this. We're just gonna let it play, and let it fade away." The media might be interested in him and Steve now, but they were a one-hit wonder, and trying to play the game would only prolong it. Besides, this was his life, not the latest foreign policy. He didn't want to sit down and figure out the best way to sell his new relationship.

"It'll be-" Josh's warning tone was interrupted by the arrival of Bonnie in the doorway.

"Sam? You've got a call."

"He's not taking any calls," Toby said quickly, but the assistant still lingered.

"Sam? I think you should take this one." She hesitated. "It's your mom."

And suddenly, the media reaction was the least of his worries.

Jed could swear he heard the crack of his veins icing up as Dr. Keeble reentered the room. He and Abbey stood as one, linking hands without even thinking about it.

"Well?" he said, and was slightly amazed that his voice didn't seem to wobble at all.

Keeble was a jittery little man with thin, silver-rimmed glasses and a habit of coughing to cover his nervousness. He did so now, and Jed felt like shaking him to try and make him talk faster.

"Well, from looking at the results of uh, the MRI, my medical opinion is that your MS has not yet, uh, progressed beyond the relapsing-remitting phase."

His own gasp was shockingly loud in the small room, and he wasn't aware how tightly he was squeezing Abbey's hand until she pulled it away from him. He didn't look at her, couldn't bear to do so until this was sure it meant what he thought it did.

"Then the symptoms I've been experiencing-"

"Are MS-related, yes. But in order to make a diagnosis of uh, secondary-progressive multiple sclerosis we look for enlargement of the ventricles, which indicates-"

Jed quickly shook his head, waving away the medical details which wouldn't mean anything to him anyway. "I don't understand. If I'm still following the relapsing-remitting pattern, these symptoms I'm having now will fade away? I'll make a full recovery?"

Dr. Keeble coughed again, and looked down at the ground. "As, uh, as is usual with multiple sclerosis, I'm afraid that it's, uh, it's not quite that simple."

"Hey, Sam." Donna offered the Deputy Communications Director a tentative smile as he arrived in the White House mess. "Hey, are you okay?" she asked, when he didn't immediately respond.

"Yeah." He dropped into the seat opposite her and sighed heavily. "I just- I've just been talking to my mom."

"Oh."

Oh. Sam had admitted to her he was procrastinating over talking to his parents about Steve. She could definitely commiserate over parents with their own ideas about what your destiny should be, and even if Sam's parents were more sympathetic than her mother - not spectacularly difficult - there was still the fact that he was an only child. Even the most hip and understanding parent would probably be taken aback to abruptly discover that their chances of ever having grandchildren had suddenly plummeted.

Especially if they found it out from the morning news.

Donna briefly squeezed his hand. "Bad?" she asked.

Sam met her eyes, and she could see he looked pained. "My mom called me to commiserate over the press telling lies about me... looking for a denial. Which she... didn't get, and it kind of went downhill from there."

Donna gave him a smile. "She'll come around," she assured him. Not that she'd ever met either of his parents, but hey - anybody who could produce a Sam Seaborn had to be a pretty cool mom, right? "She's probably a little bit... surprised, is all. She'll get over it."

Sam sighed. "Maybe..." He didn't sound convinced.

"What about your dad?" she asked cautiously. Sam immediately scowled.

"I'm not calling him," he said fiercely.

She held her hands out in surrender. "Hey, I'm not trying to make you."

"Sorry," he apologised quickly. "I'm just a little-"

"I hear you." She pushed aside her empty plate and wrapped him in a brief hug. "It'll all be okay. You'll see. Your mom'll come around, and the press'll find something new to wig out about... it'll be fine."

"Yeah."

He smiled in thanks, but behind it he looked fragile, and she wished she didn't have to abandon him so quickly. But she was the Deputy Deputy Chief of Staff, and the White House didn't stop for anybody.

Jed scowled at the doctor. "Okay, I still don't understand. You're telling me that my MS hasn't progressed - but I've got the blurry vision and the fatigue, and you're saying they're not going away?"

Keeble held up a hand to forestall him. "Well, it's not quite as, uh, as clear cut as that." He hesitated, and knitted his fingers together. "Mr. President, as I'm sure you're aware, you've experienced, uh, an exceptionally benign course of MS. To put it simply, most people, even in the relapsing-remitting phase of the disease, don't enjoy, uh, perfect health between attacks. There are symptoms which appear and disappear during an exacerbation, but others may be more, uh, permanent in nature."

He closed his eyes briefly. "So you're saying this won't clear up like my symptoms usually do?"

"Mr. President... you have multiple sclerosis. We don't know what it's going to do. Your condition may worsen. It may remain steady. And yes, it may improve; but, in all honesty, the third option is the, uh, the least likely. Sir, although your symptoms may appear and disappear, the fact of the matter is that MS doesn't do the same. There is a cumulative effect."

"But there's no reason it has to be excessively debilitating." No reason it had to stop him doing his job.

"No, sir. However, Mr. President - might I be permitted to be frank?"

Abbey spoke up from beside him, where she'd been uncharacteristically silent so far. "Oh, be frank," she suggested, dangerously sharply.

Keeble blanched. "If I could possibly make, uh, a mild suggestion-"

"Franker than that," she told him.

He hesitated for a beat. "Mr. President... as your doctor, I feel obligated to warn you that your current lifestyle is very likely to be having a negative effect on your health."

There was a long pause, during which Jed almost felt the world shrinking, until there seemed to be nothing in it but these four walls and the three of them... and this conversation.

And a question that had to be asked.

"Are you telling me you think I should resign?"

"Sir, I... wouldn't possibly feel qualified to comment."

"And yet you're commenting," he said sharply.

Keeble pulled off his glasses and polished them rapidly. "Mr. President, the, uh, the plain fact of the matter is that your lifestyle puts you under a great deal of stress and doesn't afford you enough opportunity to rest when you need to do so. I cannot guarantee you that the removal of these factors will cause your condition to improve, or even slow any, uh, any future deterioration. But I can tell you that their continued presence is almost certainly a danger to your health."

He hesitated. "How much of a danger?"

The doctor looked him in the eye. "It's impossible to say."

Abbey took his hand, and there was a long, uncomfortable silence.

"CJ?" Carol cautiously poked her head through the doorway.

Her boss gave a harassed scowl. "I've got the Washington Post, I've got the New York Times, I've got three different Out Now organisations, I've got a whole bunch of Congressmen who, for reasons past understanding, appear to think this is their business-"

"It's your brother."

CJ massaged her temples for a moment. "Peter?"

"No, Robert."

"Okay."

She sighed and reached for the phone, and Carol beat a retreat to her area outside. She was far enough away not to overhear, but she was still conscious of CJ's tone of voice as a murmur on the edge of her hearing.

The calls from her brothers were getting more and more frequent. It used to be only Peter who called, checking in with their father's condition after he became too vague and confused to do so for himself. Her older brother, Robert, was some kind of big businessman who ran his own company; if this was bad enough for him to drop everything to be at his father's bedside, well... It had to be bad.

She wished there was something she could do, but of course there wasn't anything. Toby and Josh were both hanging around, but there was nothing they could do either, and she wasn't sure Josh even knew what was going on. And Sam had problems of his own.

Which were also CJ's problems.

Carol sighed, and quickly decided that there was some photocopying that needed to be done that would take her away from the painful, muted conversation going on the next office. And if any reporters should happen to wander in while she was away... well, it was their funeral.

Charlie wondered whether he should feel proud of himself or bothered by the fact that it was so difficult concealing something from the woman he was going to marry. He'd wanted to blurt it out a hundred times through dinner, but the thought of Zoey going through the same hell of anxiety he was helped to keep him silent.

He'd hoped that the president would be back in the office before the time he'd arranged to leave, but it hadn't happened. Which meant that it was eating away inside of him, but he didn't know anything. He was sitting across from the daughter of the man who had become his hero, and he didn't even know what he was hiding from her - a minor health scare to rattle a few nerves, or something a far deeper and darker.

The trouble was, there was no way he could spin a lie, and he couldn't so much as hint at anything going on with her father - the unspoken nightmare had been shared amongst them all for so long that there was no way she wouldn't guess what it was about.

Which meant he was left with avoiding her eyes and muttering "It's nothing." And she knew him far too well to believe it.

He could see it in her eyes as he kissed her cheek goodnight; hurt, and not a little fear. He wondered what Zoey thought he was concealing from her - second thoughts about their engagement? The thought of letting her believe that was like a knife through his heart, but he still couldn't blurt out the truth. After all, this was her father. Charlie might have never known his own father, but the president was more than substitute enough, and if the thought of anything happening to him was this paralysing for him...

No, it was better that Zoey didn't know. Not until they knew for sure there was anything she needed to.

"I love you," he said, because it was the only thing he could say right now that was completely true.

"I love you too. Charlie-" she added pleadingly.

He silenced her with a gently kiss. "I have to go now. I'm sorry."

He didn't look back as he walked away; not that it helped. He couldn't see her expression, but he could still picture it, and it haunted him anyway.

The streets had grown dark during their time in the restaurant. The president had to be back by now, didn't he? The truth had to be waiting for him at the White House. He'd been given the rest of the evening off, but the president would have to be crazy if he thought Charlie wasn't coming back.

One way or another, he had to know how this was ending.

Charlie moved through the streets in a fog of introspection, barely conscious of the world around him. One time, he thought he heard a scuffling of footsteps as if someone was following him.

But maybe it was just his imagination.

He'd sent Margaret home about two hours ago. That early dismissal had been enough to earn him a severely worried look, but he knew full well it was nothing on the one he'd be getting if she could see him now.

Leo couldn't remember ever being so nervous in his life. Which was crazy - he'd sat through two tight presidential elections and flown in a war for God's sake - but still... he really couldn't remember ever feeling like this. It felt as if it was his own body that might be torn apart from the inside at any moment, not his best friend's.

And he needed a drink. He needed a drink. He really needed a drink.

Leo clenched his shaking hands into fists and forced himself to breathe. No. He wasn't going to fall apart. He didn't have the right to fall apart. It wasn't his world on the edge of collapsing in on itself. He wasn't the one with multiple sclerosis. He wasn't the one who might be-

The sound of the door startled him so badly he literally jumped out of his seat. And there was Jed in his doorway, looking exactly the same as he had that morning - but then of course he did, and why had he been expecting anything different?

All of a sudden there was no air in the room. And after all this time waiting, he suddenly desperately wished this moment hadn't come. He'd changed his mind. He didn't want to know.

His breath seemed to tremble in his throat, but he forced his body to obey the rigid lines of control he'd created for it, letting no trace of the turmoil beneath escape to the surface. But when he finally spoke, the name that came to his lips betrayed him.

"Jed?"

Jed gave him a tired smile and looked down at the ground. Suddenly free from whatever had frozen him to the spot, Leo crossed the room to lay a hand on his shoulder. He couldn't have said, if asked, which one of them he was trying to support. "Did you-?"

"Well, it's good news," the president said softly. And Leo wanted to breathe out, but something in the tone didn't quite match the words.

He looked a question at Jed, and he turned his head away. "It's... it's not the best news, but it's good news, okay, Leo?" He sighed shakily. "I'm not- it's not progressing. I don't have secondary-progressive MS."

"Then you're gonna be okay?" Leo winced internally at his own tone of voice, recognising that it was too desperately optimistic. Jed mustered a smile from somewhere, and Leo could almost hear the clang of shutters going down behind his eyes, cutting off everything he didn't want to be seen. Ironically enough, a true politician's skill - and one that Jed Bartlet only ever used in matters personal.

"I'll be fine."

But perhaps, as he turned towards the office door, he felt that he owed more than a half-truth they both wanted to believe. He hesitated in the doorway. "We'll speak in the morning?" He offered the suggestion like a peace branch.

"Yeah."

And then Leo was alone in his office, staring at the walls. Not the worst news. It wasn't the worst news.

But whatever Jed might try to tell him, it was obvious things were a long way from being fine.

His house was surrounded by reporters. He'd been expecting it, been steeling himself for it - but still, the reality was something different.

Sam had steadfastly refused to listen to sensible suggestions from Josh, Toby and CJ about laying low; having somebody collect his things from home, staying at a hotel. Why should he run and hide, when he'd done nothing wrong?

Well, okay, the baying crowd outside his apartment building rather answered that question. He wondered how many of his neighbours had been stopped and pressed for comments. He wondered if any of them had actually seen enough of him to do so, and whether that little detail was likely to stop them. Everybody wanted their moment in the spotlight, even if it was only as Shocked Neighbour #3.

He shouldered his way through the crowd almost mechanically, so tired that their shouts barely penetrated anyway.

"Mr. Seaborn-"

"Sam-"

"Mr. Seaborn, can you-?"

"-would you tell us-?"

"-how long-?"

"-give a comment on-"

"-when did you-?"

The glass doors shut them out, but there were shouts and camera-flashes following him until the elevator doors slid closed. Sam leaned his head against the side and closed his eyes against the harsh yellow glow of the overhead lights.

Two floors up, a woman with a basket full of laundry got in beside him. Closing his eyes again made it easier to pretend he didn't know she was watching him.

He met nobody on his own floor, but he wondered how many eyes might be pressed to peepholes as he passed. Come look at the government employee, my what a scandal. Oh, but he always seemed like such a nice, quiet young man.

Sam let himself in to his own apartment and flopped bonelessly on the couch, too tired to move further. He didn't flip the television on; too much chance of encountering his own face, splashed across the news in a way it would never be for the most stunning speech he ever wrote or the most radical piece of legislation he hammered into being.

He wasn't doing anything wrong. So why couldn't they just back the hell off and let him live his life?

It was a while before he realised the ringing in his ears was actually coming from the telephone, and longer still before he accepted that it wasn't going away. Probably one of those jackals downstairs, hoping to provoke a mouthful of abuse so they could then report how suspiciously hostile he was acting.

He meant just to take the phone off the hook, but habit made him raise it to his ear anyway.

"Sam?"

His mouth curled up into a disbelieving smile. "Steve?"

"Hey," confirmed the other man casually, and Sam could picture the way he shrugged.

"Listen, Steve, I am so sorry-"

He was caught completely off guard when Steve started to laugh. "Oh, Sam. Relax, okay? It's a three ring circus out here, and I'll bet it's worse on your end... don't worry about it. They'll be gone the moment Michael Jackson gets a new facelift. And anyway, who's reading this stuff?"

"My mom," answered Sam miserably.

"Oh, hey." The warmth in Steve's voice somehow made the constricted feeling in his chest begin to loosen. "You okay? You want me to come over, give the press something to shout about?"

"You can't do that," Sam refuted, but somehow even the suggestion of it was enough to make him feel better.

"Sure I can. I'll go all Mission Impossible out the back window and be at your place before they even know I'm coming. How would they know?"

"Well-" he found himself, surprisingly, smiling - "as crazy as it sounds, it's not completely impossible that the press have bugged one or both of our phones."

"Well dang, there goes the phone sex!" Steve started laughing again. "Seriously?" He sounded positively delighted.

"Seriously," Sam confirmed, smiling at his enthusiasm.

"Wow. That's so cool. I can tell all the guys at the office I'm a Russian spy. Should we use code names? You be Moose, and I can be Squirrel."

"Hey, hey, whoa! How come I have to be Moose?" He grinned as he settled back into the chair and pulled the phone into his lap.

Maybe this wasn't going to be such a depressing evening after all.

He was conscious of his wife's eyes on him as he crossed the bedroom, but he tried to pretend that he wasn't. It was all too easy to just act as if the buttons of his shirt could be taking all his attention. Deliberately avoiding things, who, me? No, I honestly just didn't notice...

Pretending to be oblivious would get you further than you'd suppose, but there were places you just couldn't pull it off, and a shared bed was definitely one of them. Short of reaching past her to flip the light off - which seemed a little, well, unsubtle - there was just no way of avoiding the look in Abigail's eyes as she watched him.

It was his least favourite look, worse even than the fiery-eyed one that said she was gearing up to rip off parts of his anatomy that he'd really rather keep.

She looked deathly worried... and more than a little bit hurt.

Worried, and hurt. About me, and by me.

Jed had practically blanked her out ever since their conversation with Dr. Keeble. At first because it was just too much to process all at once... and then, because he didn't want to talk about it.

In some ways, it would have been easier if the doctor had just dropped the bombshell he'd been more than half expecting. Worse, but easier. Secondary-progressive, that was the deal breaker. Game over, take your chips and leave the casino. But this... this was a grey area.

Once, when he'd been a young and enthusiastic theology student, he'd been deeply fascinated by grey areas, and the convoluted reasoning that went with them. Then he'd become a governor and a president, and suddenly grey areas were a whole lot less fun.

As he understood it, his condition wasn't necessarily worsening - but he was suffering the consequences of not paying heed to it. He'd been running on empty for what had probably been years now, and whatever good luck had protected him so far had taken a downturn. Symptoms were lingering where they hadn't before, and much as he'd like to pretend it was random chance, he knew that living the stressful, sleepless life he did wasn't doing him any favours.

But then, a few spots of blurry vision and some stiff muscles... it wasn't exactly completely insurmountable. It wasn't enough to force him to step down, it wasn't enough to make that decision for him.

He could continue as president... he just probably shouldn't.

But there were no guarantees, no promises. He could choose to see out the next three years of his term and never have another health problem. Or he could do it and then pay the price in his later years. Or he could try to make it, fail, and collapse into accelerated decay and be forced to resign.

But if he walked away...

If he left his presidency before it was completed, Jed knew it would haunt him forever. If his health suddenly spontaneously improved, he'd spend the rest of his life wondering if it would have done the same if he'd stayed in office. And if he went into a downward spiral anyway, then he'd be left with the bitter knowledge that he'd thrown everything away to save his health and it hadn't worked.

And that was the true reason why he couldn't look Abbey in the eye. They both knew he needed to come to a decision... but only he knew that for better or worse, he'd already made it. Jed knew he couldn't voluntarily walk away from this presidency, even if it destroyed him.

And he also knew that had always been Abbey's biggest fear; a fear that he'd sworn would never come to pass. He'd already broken one deal, and though no other had ever been agreed to take its place, he knew he was breaking it anyway.

When she tried to talk to him, he pleaded tiredness; a true lie. He kissed her cheek, and said "We'll sleep on it, okay?"

But it was a long time before unconsciousness finally came, and it didn't bring him any kind of rest with it.

FRIDAY:

Sometimes, Sam could curse his own efficiency. If only he could manage to have been desperately late for work - then he'd have an excuse not to make this call. But no, here he was all ready with a half hour to spare. His nervousness was conspiring against him, causing him to move too quickly.

Well, maybe he should leave early in a bid to escape the reporters. Yes, he could do that... He was halfway to the door when he realised that would mean he'd have to make the call from the office.

He really didn't want to make this call from the office.

Sam picked up the phone and then hesitated, on the verge of putting it back down again. No. No chickening out. He had to do this.

The number was second on his speed dial, right below the office and above the pizza place, but he dialled it the long way, delaying the inevitable. While it rang, he prayed there would be nobody there to answer.

No such luck.

"Hello?"

"Mom?"

"Samuel?" There was a note in his mother's voice that he'd never heard her use on his name before. He didn't like it.

"It's me, mom." As if it would be anybody else.

There was a slightly painful silence, and he found himself suddenly gabbling to fill it. "Mom, I just had to call up and- About yesterday, I- I know it was a shock, I should have called you before..."

"Sam, I can't- Please, I don't want to fight with you..." His mother sounded distressed. The way she always did, folding in on herself as if she could get rid of things she didn't want to deal with by refusing to hear them.

And apparently, he was now classed as one of those things.

"Look, mom, I realise that I just completely dropped this on you, and I'm sorry. But Steve and I-"

"Samuel, please-"

"Mom! Will you just let me talk to you, please? I know you're upset, but-"

"This is about your father, isn't it?" she asked him suddenly.

He was silent for a moment, thrown off balance. "What?"

"He hasn't been a good father to you. I know it must have hit you hard to find out... Sam-"

"Mom- This isn't- Mom, I can't talk to you now. I just... I can't talk to you. Goodbye, mom."

He hung the phone up, feeling sick to his stomach.

His mother thought this was some kind of... what? Some kind of youthful rebellion? A way of running away from the kind of mistakes his father had made?

This wasn't that. He wasn't running away from himself, he was being himself. He was following what felt right, and no matter what else happened, that couldn't be taken away from him.

Somehow, with his mother's words still ringing in his ears and the knowledge that there was a pack of reporters waiting outside his door, that didn't feel like a lot of comfort.

Donna arrived in the office and quickly went through the phone messages. Most of them were reporters, looking for a comment on Sam; she shook her head and deleted them all.

Josh rolled in half an hour later, looking rumpled. He managed to greet her with a vague "Hey." His resolution to get less irritable with the people around him was still holding surprisingly well, but asking him to be a human being in the mornings was a bit more of an uphill struggle.

Still, making-an-effort Josh was much better than cranky Josh. He still shouted at her the exact same amount, but now he apologised afterwards. He still made her work the unreasonable hours he always had, only now he tried to find ways to bribe her into it instead of just assuming that she would.

Yes, a definite improvement there. And anyway, Donna had a suspicion she would be in his debt for the next billion years just for keeping her sane through a birthday visit from her mother.

She trailed him into his office. "Senior staff in fifteen."

"Yeah," he nodded, staring blankly at his desk. At this time in the morning, it could take a while for the coffee to kick in.

"Meeting with the Commerce Committee at eleven."

"Okay."

"Giant penguins invading the White House at two."

"Mmm-hmm."

Donna returned to her desk, and waited. A few minutes later, Josh appeared in his doorway, brow comically wrinkled. "What was I doing at two?"

She grinned. "Negotiating my raise?"

He leaned his elbows on her desk and smirked at her. "With the penguins?" he asked dryly.

"Penguins are fascinating birds, Josh."

"Renowned for their financial abilities, are they?"

"Did you know they can jump six feet in the air?"

"I imagine it comes in handy evading the taxman."

"And they only have sex twice a year."

"No wonder they take to accountancy."

The phone rang. Josh eyed it. "That'll be the chief penguin."

"Emperor Penguin, Josh."

"Remind me why I keep you employed?"

Donna gave an exaggerated shrug. "Desperation?"

"Sounds about right."

She gave him a look as she picked up the phone. "Josh Lyman's office."

"Good morning, Donnatella."

"Oh, hi, mom." Josh made a commiserating face and retreated into his office. "Josh says hello."

"Hmph." Her mother made a noncommittal noise. She was not Josh's biggest fan; the fact that he was Deputy Chief of Staff of the White House apparently went no way towards cancelling out the terrible crimes of being scruffy and disorganised.

"What are you calling about, mom?" Her mother usually called her outside work; the more convenient for long and dispiriting rants.

"I saw your friend Sam Seaborn on the news last night." Oh God. "Really Donna, I wish you would have told me about him before."

"Mom, I, um-" She wondered with a sick dread in the pit of her stomach what her oh-so-prim-and-proper mother would possibly think of Sam's new relationship.

"Honestly, you couldn't have just told me he was gay? You let me make such a fool of myself suggesting you should date him."

Well, that was unexpected. Donna scrambled for a reply, rejecting 'well, at the time I had no idea' and 'actually he's bisexual' as only complicating matters. "Well, um, uh... I didn't know if he wanted me telling people. What with all this..." She sought for a word to describe the media explosion and couldn't find one.

Her mother sniffed. "Biggest fuss over nothing I ever saw. Honestly, in my day, journalists reported news. It's a disgrace; ripping up perfectly ordinary people's lives and printing them all over the front page for people to gawk over."

Donna found herself grinning goofily into the phone. Well, wouldja listen to that? Maybe there was hope for her mother after all.

"But anyway, Donnatella, I called to talk about that dreadful rat-trap of an apartment of yours. I've been looking into properties in the area - preposterous prices they charge, but since you won't let your father and I help you pay for it... Really, this would be easier if you could find yourself a nice young man to set up with..."

Or, then again, maybe not.

Abbey straightened her husband's tie, not needing to look up at his face to read the nervousness boiling off him. And she almost resented it. Why did everything have to be so complicated?

He was scared. How was she supposed to be as mad at him as she wanted to when he was scared?

She wanted to cuddle him close as much as she wanted to pick him up and shake him, and in doing neither she felt like she was farther away from him than ever.

Abbey wanted to rage at him for refusing to believe in his own mortality, but how could she do that when she looked him in the eye and saw the fear that lay behind his stubbornness? It wasn't arrogance fuelling his denial, but desperation.

She'd told him. She'd told him, but this was not a time that she could ever say 'I told you so'.

They'd had a deal. A deal that was supposed to have stopped this from ever happening. But he'd broken the deal, and she couldn't hit him with that, either. She couldn't hit him with anything, because she loved him so much it hurt and he was scared and so was she and this wasn't supposed to happen.

Jed always knew what she was thinking. He smiled at her comfortingly. Not that there was any way that she could possibly take comfort from it right now.

She did, anyway.

"It's-"

"Jed." Abbey cut him off, because if she heard him say it would be fine, she might actually scream, and First Ladies of the United States did not scream, especially not when standing in the Oval Office waiting for her husband to address his senior staff.

At least, none of them had so far. Maybe she should consider starting a trend.

"I have to talk to the staff," he said softly, sensibly. An obvious truth. And an excuse.

They hadn't talked since they'd spoken with Dr. Keeble the previous day. Or rather, they'd talked, but without saying anything.

The sensation of time ticking away second by second was ludicrous, but it wouldn't leave her. Every bit of the scientist and doctor rebelled at the superstition - the damages of MS were not measured in minutes; the mere proximity of the Oval Office was not some kind of radioactivity, poisoning him for as long as he wore his job title.

And yet she could still hear the clock ticking.

She knew that even if she could gather every physician in the world together and every one of them delivered the verdict 'your job is killing you' he wouldn't believe it. He wouldn't let himself believe it. This job was his life and his dream, and the source of a righteous fire in his eyes that made him almost painfully beautiful to look at. She didn't want him to lose that.

But more, far more than that, she didn't want to lose him.

"You can't lie to them, Jed," she said, hearing the ragged edge of distress to her own voice. "You can't just pretend that you're as fine as you ever were. You can't pretend that none of this was ever said."

"But I can tell them it's not bad news," he said earnestly, gripping her shoulders. And she wanted to laugh and cry at that, refuting it as much as she believed it. "It's not the worst news."

"Jed-"

"Abbey, I-"

The door behind him opened, and Leo hesitated there, looking concerned. Jed turned to him, and Leo gave him a slow nod. He turned back to her. "I have to go."

"Okay." She kissed his cheek and prayed he would admit to his staff - and to himself - at least something approaching the truth.

She watched him walk through, Leo at his side, and tried to pretend she couldn't hear the clock ticking.

"Mr. President." The assembled staff shot to their feet as he and Leo walked into the room. Jed quickly waved them back into their seats.

"Morning, everybody." He took a seat of his own. "I think we can guess why you're all here."

On a normal day, someone would have made a quip.

On a normal day, he wouldn't be standing here contemplating how to tell his staff that his doctor recommended he resign.

Recommended. That was the key word. Recommended.

He said it would be better for me if I did. Didn't say I had to. Didn't say I needed to.

I promised Abbey.

Yes, he'd promised Abbey, but the deal had fallen out of date, the deal had been set aside. They'd never spoken of any new terms, never made any agreement other than if he had to step down, he would.

But she trusts you.

Abbey trusted him... but so did his staff. He saw them arrayed before him now, the mingled hope and desperate anxiety in their eyes. It wasn't just his own life's work he would be tearing down, but theirs, too. How could he do that to them, throw away all their good work on just a maybe?

They had three more years of changing the world still in them. How could he deny them that on what was basically nothing more than a gamble? Resigning now might make him less likely to get worse.

How could he justify to his staff such a self-centred shot into the wind?

How could he justify to Abbey not doing everything within his power to be the best husband and father he could?

The staff were waiting for him to speak. He took a breath. "As you know, yesterday the First Lady and I went to see a Dr. Joseph Keeble, who is probably the closest thing the medical community can provide to an expert on MS. He... took some scans, and we discussed my symptoms."

Nobody in the room was quite ready to interrupt the President of the United States with an impatient "And?" but it was a pretty near thing.

He hesitated. "It is the medical opinion of Dr. Keeble that my MS has not progressed beyond the relapsing-remitting stage."

The joint exhalation of relieved breath filled the room. Josh and Sam smiled in delight and CJ looked relieved, but Toby met his eyes. "Mr. President..." He rubbed his forehead. "Then the health problems you've been experiencing-?"

"Are MS-related, yes."

The level of joy in the room dipped noticeably. And, God help him, he couldn't help but try to lift the looks of concern from those faces. "The truth is, I have been a bit run-down lately, but the important thing is that my MS still follows the relapsing-remitting pattern. MS can be... complicated. Symptoms can linger between attacks, it's not always cut and dried."

And he wasn't lying, he wasn't telling them anything that wasn't true. Was it his fault if they just assumed that meant he would make a complete recovery?

Sins of omission, Jed? Boy, that's never got you in trouble before...

With his usual sense of timing, Leo stepped in and shifted the room's attention his way. "Okay, folks, everybody get back to work. Josh, you've got the Commerce Committee. Toby, CJ, go with Sam. The press are gonna keep hounding him until he speaks up; best we get a statement on our terms instead of theirs."

Sam nodded quickly, looking tense, and the staff headed off their separate ways. CJ lingered after the others were gone.

"CJ?" Jed stood up to meet her.

She looked him worriedly. "Sir, are you... I mean... you're gonna be okay?"

And when he spoke it wasn't a lie, any more than he could have considered it a lie if it had been one of his own daughters asking. He smiled gently. "I'll be fine."

CJ smiled back, looking a little tearful, and surprised them both by giving him an abrupt hug. He briefly squeezed her arm in understanding. "It's okay, CJ."

"Okay." She grinned tentatively, beginning to look embarrassed.

"Go on now," he reassured her. "Sam's gonna need all the help he can get."

"Yeah." Quickly recovering her equilibrium, she left. Jed felt his smile fade as he watched her go.

When he looked up, Leo was watching him intently. But neither of them said anything.

"Hey Zoey."

"Hey." Zoey's voice on the other end of the phone was tentative. Charlie really couldn't blame her after the way he'd unceremoniously run off after their dinner yesterday evening.

"Listen, I'm really sorry about last night. I was having kind of a stressful day, there was all this stuff going on at work... I was a jerk. I'm sorry."

"Good start," she noted, and he was relieved to hear a small spark of humour in her voice. "Now make with the sucking up."

He leaned forward in his chair and smiled into the phone. "Well, it just so happens that there were some Saturday tickets floating around for a certain show somebody wanted to see, and-" He was briefly deafened by Zoey's squeal.

"Am I forgiven?" he asked playfully.

"Are they front row tickets?"

"Four rows back."

"Then there'd better be ice-cream in the interval." He pictured her mock-determined expression, lower lip stuck out the way she always did, and smirked.

"I'm sure that can be arranged."

"Well, okay then. And I expect flowers."

"And that'll make us even?" He rolled his eyes.

"Depending on the quality of the ice-cream. And the imaginativeness of the flower selection."

Charlie made a mental note to pick up something other than red roses. "You're a tough woman to please, Zoey Bartlet."

"Well, we Bartlets are used to the best."

"Oh, is that why you picked me?"

"Yeah." She giggled, and his heart was lightened.

He was forgiven.

CJ could see Sam's jaw tighten with every point that she or Toby made. He didn't like being spun - well, fine, did he think they liked spinning him any better? But this was politics; this was media perception. And the press didn't give a damn how right you really were, only how right you could make yourself sound.

"Sam..." She rubbed her forehead and sighed. "You've got to let us help you. Please, could you just... let us help you?"

"CJ, this is my life here!" he objected. "I shouldn't need to, to edit myself and justify my choices in neat soundbites!"

"You shouldn't... You do," Toby summed up succinctly. Sam shook his head defiantly.

"I'm just... I'm just gonna go out there and tell the truth. I don't care about the spin. I'm just telling the truth."

"Sam-" CJ groaned.

"That's what Josh did about the PTSD," he reminded her. "And it worked for him."

CJ tried to remember if there'd ever been a time when she'd been able to put all her faith behind the magic power of The Truth. It led her to the depressing realisation that she'd been a cynic for a long, long time.

"Josh had... media sympathy," Toby pointed out. "He was the guy who got shot in the chest. It was easier to make him a hero than break him down for public entertainment. They're not going to do that with you. They don't want to stand you up there and applaud you, they want to drag you down into the gutter and make you look like sleaze, because sleaze is more interesting than guys who stand up for their principles."

"I don't care." Sam looked them both in the eye, jaw set. "I don't care how they try to make this sound, because I'm right, and I'm going to go out there and be right, and I'm not going to play their game."

CJ could see nothing more they could say would get through to him. He was standing there, fists clenched, eyes alight with the righteous fire of knowing he was doing the right thing. A picture of the white knight, ready to go into battle with nothing but truth and justice for his weapons.

And when she put him out there in her press-room, he was going to get torn to shreds.

"Good afternoon." Sam walked to the podium with as much confidence as he could muster. He knew many of these journalists, had chatted with them on Air Force One or struck deals and called in favours. But now they were all out for blood. Specifically, his blood.

"As I'm sure you're all aware, some photographs of me were published on Thursday morning, with the result that my current relationship has been making the news. I've called this press conference with the intention of answering any outstanding questions and correcting misinterpretations, in order to get this business out of the way as quickly as possible and return to the business of governing."

Oh, good start, said his internal editor, pointing out that he'd used 'business' twice in one sentence and come off as confrontational. He should have written a prepared statement beforehand - but he hadn't wanted it to look like he was guarding his words. He shouldn't have to be doing that.

Katie Jackson helped him out with a simple first question. "Mr. Seaborn, is it true that you're currently in a homosexual relationship with the other man in those pictures, a Mr. Steven Radcliffe?"

He nodded briskly, determined to look directly into the cameras even though it was next to impossible to figure out where all the different flashes were coming from. "Yes, that's true."

Apparently, that was all he could expect in terms of softballs.

"Mr. Seaborn, given this administration's progressive attitude towards gay rights, why did you feel the need to conceal your sexuality?" He wasn't even sure which reporter had spoken. They were already beginning to blur together into a big blob of journalistic hostility.

"I made no attempt to conceal anything," he insisted.

"But you didn't disclose that you were in a homosexual relationship."

"I didn't - and don't - consider it relevant to the job I do for this administration."

"Not even the administration's position on gay issues?"

"This administration also employs women, but nobody's suggesting that we take their gender into consideration when we look at equal opportunities legislation."

Out of the corner of his eye he saw CJ flash a smile at him. Well, at least that was one question he'd managed to hit right.

"Mr. Seaborn, how long have you been in a relationship with Mr. Radcliffe?"

"A few weeks." The questions were flying so fast now that it was hard to think about them, hard to consider whether they were something he was supposed to brush off or reply to. How did CJ do this every day?

"How did you start dating?"

"We struck up a conversation in a bar," Sam filled in quickly, eager not to make it sound like a one-night stand. "We met on a few consecutive occasions, and then he asked me out."

Kissed me on my doorstep, same difference.

"Do you make a habit of picking up men in bars?"

Oh, who the hell was that? Sam hoped CJ was taking notes, because it was all he could do to keep track of the questions, let alone who was asking them.

"Uh, this would be my first, although I've met a few girls that way." Dammit, dammit, way to bring up Laurie. Idiot. "Steve is the first guy I've dated."

There. See? See? No coverup!

"Mr. Seaborn, would you describe yourself as bisexual?"

"Well, it's not my favourite word, but..." he shrugged. "I guess. I don't... I don't really see any need to stick a label on myself."

"Would you care to comment on the photographs that were published three years ago showing you in the company of a known call-girl?"

Oh, he should have known where that line of questioning was going. He had the sinking feeling that any story which included the words 'bisexual' and 'call-girl' was not going to go a long way towards painting this as a completely innocent and non-sleazy relationship.

Sam hesitated for a beat too long, but CJ was already charging to the rescue. "Mr. Seaborn's comments from that period are already on record," she said, giving him a quick nod and a less-than-subtle nudge to get the hell out of there. "That's the end of the Q and A, folks, and I'd like to remind you before you ask me that the White House does not comment on the personal lives of its staff, but hey, why let that stop you from going ahead and asking me anyway-?"

Under the barrage of camera-flashes, Sam left the room with his head still held high.

And a strong urge to throw up.

"Hey, Sam." Leo stopped the younger man in the corridor and gave him a quick nod. "Good job."

Sam's jaw was tight and he was clearly frustrated; no doubt he was beating himself up for all the things in that press conference which nothing on heaven or earth could have made turn out any better. "That got totally out of control. I should have just read from a prepared statement."

"And looked like you had your cover story all written out? You did fine, Sam. You did great. Your parents'd be proud."

Or not. Leo couldn't miss the way he flinched at that, and cursed himself for bringing Sam's already-fractured family status into it. "Aw, Jeez, Sam, is your dad-?"

"I haven't talked to him," Sam said shortly.

Which meant, presumably, that it was Mrs. Seaborn who wasn't taking her boy's new circumstances exceptionally well. So Sam was on the outs with both of his parents.

"Give it time, Sam," he offered, wishing he could come up with something a little less... lame.

"Yeah. I have to go," Sam said abruptly, and stalked off. Leo would have followed, except Toby intercepted him.

"You wanted to see me?

"Yeah. Come with me." He led Toby back to his office and closed the door. "Hate crimes," he said shortly.

Toby scowled. "Leo-"

"We can't."

"We-"

"You know we can't." He funnelled his frustration over not being able to help Sam into snapping at Toby. "Take on homophobia right now? We just can't do it."

"There's no connection," Toby pointed out. Leo glared at him.

"Of course there's no connection, Toby. Nobody in this building's arguing that anything we want to say about gay issues has to do with Sam. Nobody with half a brain would argue that it has anything to do with Sam. But there are a lot of people out there without half a brain, and unfortunately, a great many of them belong to the United States Congress! We don't want it to look like we outed him for a publicity stunt, we don't want it to look like we're scrambling to back him up to minimise our embarrassment, and we cannot take on hate crimes right now!"

Toby looked him in the eye for an uncomfortably long time, then nodded sharply and turned to go. Leo had to call after him.

"Toby." He rubbed his eyes tiredly. "Don't tell Sam why we're-"

"He'll know anyway."

Of course he would.

"Yeah."

The door fell closed, and Leo buried his face in his hands.

This was all getting too much. Way too much. First all this stuff with the Healthcare Bill and Josh, and just when it seemed like they were crawling out of that hole, Jed had dropped the bombshell on him. And now Jed was claiming to be fine, but Leo knew him better than that, and he really didn't like the way the president and First Lady were avoiding each other's eyes. He didn't like the feeling that the righteous battle they'd fought with Congress over the MS might not have been so righteous, and he sure as hell didn't like posing himself uncomfortable questions about what he would do if it came down to Jed's health or his presidency. He didn't like the fact that he was supposed to be the president's closest friend, but he was praying like mad that Jed would turn to somebody, anybody else for advice if he had to make that decision.

And as if that wasn't enough to be bouncing endlessly around the inside of his head, everybody else's lives were falling apart too. Here was Sam, caught in the middle of a media vortex just because he'd wanted to follow his heart. And what was Leo supposed to be able to do to help? Nothing. He couldn't chase the press away, couldn't wave a magic wand and fix all the problems Sam had with his family. He snorted wryly at that. Mend other people's families? Like he'd been so successful dealing with his own?

No, the only thing he'd ever been good at was doing his job, and now he couldn't even do that. Their hands were tied at every turn, and he was stuck in charge of enforcing decisions even he couldn't stomach. How could they hope to change the world when they had to fight so hard to simply stay afloat?

And now Sam was going to blame himself for the fact that they couldn't move forward on hate crimes, and Toby was frustrated, and that was bound to get Josh bouncing off the walls, and CJ was already upset about something though he didn't know what...

He didn't know how long he sat that way, doing nothing but chasing depressing thoughts through his head. He wasn't jolted out of it until Margaret knocked and entered.

"Leo? Do you need anything?"

She looked worried. Well, she always did, but his troubled mood over Jed had not gone unnoticed. She wouldn't believe him if he said there was nothing going on, but what could he tell her? If he couldn't fix it, she definitely couldn't, and Margaret was by nature a worrier. She was better off not knowing.

"I'm fine," he lied, and went back to his work.

"Hey Sam." Donna gave him a smile, but it felt like a strain to return it.

"Is Josh around?"

"He should be just getting out of his thing with the Commerce Committee now." She gave him a cautious look. "Did your mom-?"

He just shook his head, letting his expression say 'no comment'. She nodded in commiseration, then brightened. "Oh, hey. My mom says hi. And she wants you to know she's a little pissed you didn't just say you were gay so she could get on with the wedding seeking in greener pastures."

He couldn't help grinning. "Well, you know, technically I'm-"

"Yeah, but let's not confuse her."

"Thanks, Donna," he smiled, and he didn't just mean for telling him where to find Josh. He headed off to the conference room in a slightly brighter mood.

"Hey, Sam." Josh ran a hand through his hair as he stuffed files into his backpack. "How'd the press conference go?"

Sam pulled a face. "Well, we haven't got a secret plan to fight anything, if that's what you're asking-"

"Hey-!"

"Hi, Sam." He turned to see Matt Skinner smiling at him. "You okay?" he asked sincerely.

"I'm fine," he agreed, smiling back.

"Saw your boyfriend on TV," the Congressman added. He patted Sam on the shoulder and leaned in confidentially. "He's pretty cute."

"He is," Sam agreed, beaming.

As other people called out encouragement to him as he and Josh walked past, he decided that maybe things weren't so bad after all.

"What's next, Charlie?"

"Uh... just a consultation with the Secretary of State, then you're free."

"Okay, thanks, Charlie." He called the young man back as he started to leave the room. "Hey. How about you take the rest of the evening off? Go see Zoey, give her a surprise."

He felt a distinct flare of ambivalence at the way Charlie's face lit up at that. "Don't look too cheerful there, Skippy," he warned.

Charlie quickly schooled his features into an impassive mask, but Jed could still see the smirk peeking through underneath. "I could still rescind that offer, you know."

"Yes, sir."

Jed patted him on the shoulder and smiled. "Ah, get on with you. You're young, you should be out enjoying yourselves. Take the opportunity while you still can."

The young man hesitated, plainly worried. "Sir..." He swallowed the word and started again, tentatively; "Dad... are you really okay?"

Jed smiled, and gripped him earnestly by the shoulders. "I'm fine... son." Charlie smiled brilliantly, and let the president capture him in a brief hug. "Now you go on and see Zoey," Jed added as he disentangled himself.

"Okay. Goodnight, Mr. President," he added as he left, customary formality already creeping back in. Jed wasn't sure whether to be amused or exasperated.

A moment later, he was aware of a familiar presence at his shoulder. "You lied to Charlie," she said softly. Not quite accusing, but... oddly flat.

Jed looked up, and met Abbey's eyes. "It's not... I don't want Zoey to worry."

"You don't want to worry," she corrected him.

He wished she would explode at him, instead of looking worried all the time. It would be easier to feel better about fighting with her if she would explode.

He didn't want to fight, because he had a strong suspicion he was in the wrong here, and fighting would only lead to one of them saying the things they didn't want to hear. But there was only fighting, or running away.

Big brave man that he was, he ran away. "It's late, Abbey," he said quietly, not meeting her eyes. "I have a meeting, and then-"

"It's always late," she said, sounding resigned.

"Abbey, I-"

"I'm flying out tomorrow. And I suppose it'll be late then, too."

"I-"

"Jed-" He saw the pain in her eyes, and hated himself for it more than he could ever hate her for the way she tugged his heart strings so easily. Abbey shook her head despairingly. "You have to- You have to talk to somebody. If you can't talk to me, just please, Jed, talk to somebody."

"I will," he said softly. "I promise." He laid a tender kiss against her cheek, and then pulled her into his embrace.

And as always, for a little while, that was enough.

As he approached the communications area, Sam eyed the pair of identically grinning assistants warily. Ever since the early days of Cathy and her doughnut stealing, he'd learned to be suspicious - and occasionally fearful - of those who were supposedly only there to help him.

"What's going on?"

Bonnie and Ginger looked at each other and giggled. "Your office," Ginger supplied.

"What's in my office?" he demanded, already picturing some fiendish device involving... balloons filled with custard, or something.

"You'll see," Bonnie grinned.

Somehow, he wasn't reassured. He approached the door extremely tentatively, and poked it open. A grinning face appeared in the doorway to confront him.

"Steve!" he gasped in amazement. "What-? Uh, how did you get in here?"

"It's a criminal conspiracy," said Steve, shooting a cheerful wink at the two assistants, who giggled more.

"I'll say. I-" He shook his head. "The media, how did you-?"

"Shh." Steve laid a finger across his lips, causing him to contemplate a few things which were definitely not suitable for the office environment. "Chill out, Sam. Who cares how I got here? I'm here." He drew Sam through into this office and closed the door behind them. Sam blinked at him.

"Okay, whatever you're planning, I should remind you that this office has windows. Of the, you know, see-through variety."

Steve grinned. "Hey, I'm not shy."

"Yeah, well, I have to work with these people, so-"

Steve laughed, and tugged him close enough to lay his head on Sam's shoulder. "I missed you."

"Well, I was only gone for a day and a half, so really-"

"Sam." He rolled his eyes. "Are you, by any chance, clear on the concept of romance?"

"Yes, but until recently, it was something that largely happened to other people."

Steve smiled at him. "Well gee, I guess we're going to have to do something about that." Unmindful of the assistants who were probably not only watching but taking notes and trying to figure out the fastest way to get hold of a camera, the blond man pressed a brief but lingering kiss against Sam's lips. "Have dinner with me," he urged.

Reality, sadly, chose that moment to creep in. "Steve..." He sighed and shook his head. "We can't- you know there's no way we can go out anywhere."

Rather than look daunted, Steve just wiggled his eyebrows suggestively. "That's okay. I can cook."

Sam had to laugh. "You're a real catch, aren't you?"

"You're lucky to have me," he said dryly.

"Don't I know it." He sighed heavily. "Steve, we can't go home together. There are still reporters outside my apartment."

Steve shrugged. "So we'll go to my place."

"There are reporters outside yours too," Sam pointed out.

"Yeah, but they're a different set. Adds variety, which, as we all know, is the spice of life."

He grinned, and shook his head. "Steve... they're gonna be taking pictures, they're gonna be shooting for an exclusive-"

"So what?" he shrugged. "We can pose for pictures." He slipped a casual arm around Sam as if they were waiting for somebody to take a holiday snapshot. "I can tell 'em you snore, you can talk about how I squeeze the toothpaste from the wrong end-"

Sam folded his arms. "All I'm saying is, it's a perfectly logical thing to-"

Steve kissed him again to silence him. "Shut up," he said fondly.

They walked out of the office together. "And while I'm at it," Sam added, "let's talk about coffee. Now, I like coffee, I like strong coffee. Everybody likes coffee. But in real coffee, the kind that you drink, the spoon should not be able to stand unsupported. It should not hang suspended when you turn the cup upside-down. I think we can all agree that-"

Steve laughed, and threaded his fingers through Sam's. "How are you still alive?" he wondered.

"I honestly don't know." They walked out of the communications bullpen.

A few moments later, Sam stuck his head back in, and pointed warningly at the two assistants. "First one to say 'awww' has to work with Toby for a month. Okay?"

They both looked innocent, and he shook his head and left. He had a suspicion they were both going to be saying 'awww' anyway. And probably some sort of variations on the word 'cute'.

And he didn't care at all.

SATURDAY:

Sam gradually drifted awake and rolled out of bed. He stretched lazily, buttoning his shirt as he sauntered into the kitchen. It was amazing how different Saturday mornings felt when you hadn't spent the night before hunched over documents until your eyes felt like they were going to bleed. Or drinking the night away in an effort to forget that you spent all your nights hunched over documents until your eyes felt like they were going to bleed.

His happy mood dimmed somewhat as he saw that Steve's blinds were tightly closed against the sunshine, and remembered why. Somewhere out there were a swarm of reporters, waiting to catch their first glimpse of the happy couple leaving the building. No doubt the ones who had been outside his own apartment had come charging over here in the night, cursing the missed photo opportunities.

Well, that was their problem.

Already the layout of this kitchen was becoming as familiar as his own - after all, it wasn't a place he'd spent a great deal of time in any case. He made himself a cup of coffee and wandered through into the next room.

Steve stood shirtless with his back to him, frowning at some kind of paper in his hands. With a smile, Sam came up behind him and draped a hand over his shoulder. "Hey, what's that?" he asked close to his ear.

Steve flinched and dropped the papers. An envelope and the letter from inside it fluttered to the ground. Puzzled, Sam made a grab for it at the same time he did.

"Sam-" Steve protested. But it was too late to stop him from seeing the letter.

Sam read the crudely-lettered missive with rising disgust, and then crumpled it into an angry ball. Hate mail. Already. "Jesus, Steve, I'm-"

Steve glared at him. "No. Don't."

"I'm sorry," he continued, turning away from him. "This is- damn." He buried his face in his hands. "This is because-"

"Don't you dare start telling me this is your fault, Sam," Steve said warningly.

Sam looked up and met his eyes. "It is my fault. Those guys out there; they're here because of me. You're all over the papers because of me. And- And you shouldn't have to deal with this crap just because you're with me."

Steve folded his arms. "I'm gay, Sam. You think this crap wasn't already out there for me? You think I never had any trouble in my happy little world before you came along? Get over yourself, Sam! You didn't make this world for me, you didn't make me what I am, and you sure as hell didn't make the guy who pushed this through my door what he is! Which, now I come to think of it, would probably be my mailman, so just pretend I said something there that actually made sense, and nod your head! Okay?"

"Okay." Sam blinked a few times, and quickly nodded his head.

"Well, good." They kept staring at each other, and then gradually dissolved into nervous chuckles. "It's okay, Sam," Steve said more quietly, and pressed a grateful kiss to his cheek. "It's sweet that you want to protect me, but I don't need your protection. I'm a big boy now."

"You are not," Sam insisted, lightening up a little. "You're a baby. How old are you again? I'm a cradle-robber!"

"Oh, no, no, no," Steve said firmly, shaking his head. "I am nicely matured. You, on the other hand, are old."

"I am not old!" he retorted, mock-offended. "I'm in the prime of my life here!"

"You've got grey hairs on your chest!"

"I've got what?" Sam hurriedly tried to peek down the front of his shirt, and Steve giggled.

"Made you look."

He glared. "That's just cruel."

"Hey, you wouldn't have been worried about it if you weren't so old."

"Well, since I'm officially decrepit, I guess you're gonna have to make the breakfast." The two of them wandered back into the kitchen, and Steve dropped the letter into the trashcan as he passed it.

They spoke no more about it, but as Sam pushed his way through the throng of journalists to go to work, the dull burn of frustrated anger resurfaced. Whatever Steve said, it was his job that had thrust them into this media spotlight; a spotlight which showed no signs of fading away anytime soon.

CJ blinked, thinking to clear the hallucination her tired eyes were showing her. But the unlikely image remained.

Toby Ziegler, bearing coffee.

"Okay, what the hell is this?" she demanded warily as he crossed the room and placed the steaming cup in front of her.

He just looked at her. "Coffee."

"In what sense?"

"Mostly in the caffeinated beverage sense," he said, rolling his eyes.

"What's wrong with it?" she asked, giving the mug a cautious nudge.

"Nothing."

"And yet you brought it to me."

Toby shuffled his feet. "It's... a gift."

It was hard not to smile at his bashful expression. She let him squirm for a minute.

"A gift."

"Yes."

"For me."

"It's coffee," he elaborated.

"I think we covered that already," she said dryly.

"You seemed confused."

"Ah." She was desperately in need of some caffeine. She picked up the mug and took a cautious sip. Surprisingly, Toby didn't take advantage of the moment to beat a retreat and hide any evidence of doing good deeds.

CJ peered at him over the top of the mug. "Okay, was there a point to this little coffee delivery expedition?"

Toby responded by sitting on the edge of her desk and regarding her seriously. "Don't do that," she scowled at him.

"Do what?" He kept looking at her.

"That."

"Sit?"

"You know what." She turned away from his sharp gaze and rolled her eyes. "Toby, I'm fine."

"Okay," he nodded, in a way that meant he didn't believe her, and wasn't going anywhere. It would probably have been quite sweet, if it wasn't so frustrating.

"Toby..." Shaking her head, she let her defences down for a few seconds. "Really I, I feel better." She smiled wryly at herself. "It's... I know it's stupid, but knowing that the president's going to be okay, I somehow feel like... I don't know." Not that her father was going to get better, her father was dying, but still, somehow... It felt a little less like the world was falling apart.

Still, CJ hesitated. "Toby, he is... the president is going to be all right, isn't he?"

Whatever she might think she'd seen flicker in his eyes was gone too fast to classify. Toby smiled softly at her. "The president's gonna be fine."

"Mr. President? Leo."

"Thank you, Charlie." The president looked up as he entered. "Ah, Leo."

"The First Lady's already left?" he asked.

"Yeah." Jed nodded. He hesitated. "Leo, I need you to set up a meeting for me."

That didn't sound good. "Sir?"

The president pulled a face. "I want to talk to Stanley Keyworth. Today, if possible."

Leo felt as if the wind had been abruptly knocked out of him. "Mr. President, is-?"

"It's not-" Jed overrode him quickly. He shook his head and snorted. "It's just... I need to talk about..." He reluctantly met Leo's eyes. "My doctor recommended that I look at ways of getting more rest and reducing the amount of stress I'm under."

It wasn't difficult to read between those lines. You could fit several full length novels between them.

Did he say you should resign? The question hung in the air between them, unspoken. When had he become such a coward that he couldn't ask the hard questions?

When all the hard questions started getting a hell of a lot harder.

Jed was the first to look away, and he waved a hand as if dismissing the unsaid words. "So, anyway, Abbey would feel better if I talked to somebody."

"I think I would too," he agreed sincerely. The president rolled his eyes.

"Well, you know, I still hope that one day Abbey will treat me like a grown-up, but I've given up all hope of getting you to stop fussing over me."

Leo rolled his eyes too, and on the inside wholeheartedly agreed. "I'll set you up some time."

"Thank you." Jed quickly changed the subject. "Have you spoken to Sam?"

"I saw him at staff this morning."

"How is he?" Leo privately marvelled over the way Jed could be so protective of everyone around him, and yet never spare the slightest flicker of concern for his own condition. It was hard to tell if it was faith in his own invulnerability, or some kind of near-suicidal altruism.

"He's holding up pretty well," Leo agreed. "But it's taking its toll. That's a hell of a lot to get landed on you all at once."

"Yeah." The president reflected a moment, then nodded firmly. "Sam's strong. He'll be okay."

"Yeah."

But on the inside, Leo couldn't help thinking that everybody being so strong only made it that much harder to watch them suffer and be able to do nothing.

Sam was beginning to wonder if it would be such a bad idea to replace the entire legal department with Republicans. A room full of Ainsleys was a pretty scary idea, but surely anything would be better than this morning's meeting with Brooks and Harrison.

Saturday, when they weren't in the process of sinking without trace, was usually a day for dealing with scraps; unimportant tasks and low-level meetings. Well, this was pretty much as low-level as you could get, and the standard of company was only taking it lower.

Brooks and Harrison might be extremely junior-level staffers, but you wouldn't know it from their egos. They reminded him entirely too much of the typical arrogant lawyer stereotype. They clearly resented him being down here, horning in on 'their' operation - which they appeared to be under the impression was run purely for their own benefit.

"Listen, guys," he tried again, "I know this is basic stuff, but you have to clear this with us."

"Sam, we know this," Brooks scowled at him.

"I know you know this, but the fact is-"

"We know the procedure, Sam!" Harrison chimed in. "And we don't appreciate you coming down here and treating us like idiots!"

No? Because it seemed pretty appropriate to me.

"Okay, I'm not here to lay the blame on anybody-"

"Then why are you here?" Harrison demanded.

Sam gave him a sharp look. "To make sure you understand our position on this."

"Fine." The junior staffer rolled his eyes.

"Understood." Brooks gave him a sarcastic sketchy little salute.

"Okay then." Sam pushed his chair back and stood up. He was willing to bet that exactly the same stupid mistakes would continue to be made, but it was no longer his problem. He'd set out the rules; if they continued to screw it up, well... firing them would not be the greatest hardship in the world.

"Bye, Sam," said Brooks, with an obnoxious smirk.

"Yeah, bye-bye, Sam," Harrison agreed, giving him a little wave.

He left.

Sam didn't quite catch what it was that Brooks muttered to his partner to make them both bust up laughing as he walked out, but it had something to do with 'positions', and not of the legal kind. His back tensed up momentarily, but he kept on going without turning.

"Hey, CJ."

"Joshua."

He crossed the room to sit on the edge of her desk. "Whatcha doing?"

She looked at him over the top of her glasses. "Work."

"Ah."

"Foreign concept?"

"I've heard of the word."

"You should try it sometime."

He pulled a face. "I prefer to stick with what I know."

He was rewarded with a slight smile for that, but Josh could see that she looked tired. "You okay?" he asked quietly.

CJ snorted. "You boys are a bunch of real mother hens, you know that?"

There was a smart remark on the tip of his tongue, but he reminded himself that he was a nice guy now. "We care," he said instead.

CJ stared at him for a few moments. "Jesus," she said wonderingly, shaking her head.

"Nope, it's still me."

"I was beginning to wonder."

He pretended to be injured. "I can't be nice sometimes?"

She rolled her eyes. "Did you bring me coffee as well?" she asked.

"No," he said, wondering who'd brought her coffee. Surely Sam had other things on his mind, Leo would've sent Margaret, and who else was there? "I was afraid you might think you were getting fired," he elaborated.

"What?" she frowned at him.

"Well, Donna only brings me coffee when she thinks I'm about to get fired."

"That often?"

He was about to reply when Carol stuck her head through the door, looking deeply worried. "CJ? Peter on line one."

"Yeah, okay. Can I just-?"

"You'd better take it," Carol said seriously.

CJ suddenly looked worried, and grabbed for the phone. "Peter? Is he-? Yeah, I- Okay. When did he-? Right. Uh, did they say-? Yeah. Yeah, okay. Uh, thank you, thanks, Peter. I'll- okay. Okay. Bye."

Josh looked on worriedly. "CJ?"

She shook her head. "It's- it's my dad, he's taken a turn for the worse, they think-" She buried her face in her hands. "God, I can't fly out to Ohio, not now-"

"Sure you can," Josh said firmly, taking a comforting grip on her arm. "Donna!" he bellowed. There was no particular reason why his assistant should happen to be in this part of the building, and yet somehow when he called, she knew to be there.

"Josh?" Carol's worry must have communicated itself to her, for she gave him and CJ a concerned glance.

"I need a flight to Ohio. Earliest one going." He smiled across at CJ. "Get two tickets," he added.

Toby hurried up and stopped Josh in the corridor. "CJ's flying out-?"

"To Ohio, yeah," he nodded. "Donna's sorted the tickets out, there's a flight in about an hour."

"How's her father?"

Josh shook his head helplessly. "I don't know. I only heard her side of the call, but... it sounded pretty bad."

"He has Alzheimer's," Toby explained. "He was hospitalised a couple of months ago with a stroke, and they re-admitted him on Monday. Her brothers have been keeping her posted."

Josh was dismayed. "How come I didn't know any of this?"

"She doesn't like to talk about it."

"Yeah." For a moment he remembered his own father... and the way he'd missed being there to say goodbye at the end. That wasn't going to happen to CJ. He wasn't going to let it. "I'm going with her," he said decisively. "She's gonna need somebody there."

"I should be there," Toby said quickly.

"Yeah, but one of us has to stay behind," Josh pointed out.

"Why can't it be you?"

"One of us has to stay behind and handle the press," he elaborated.

"You're going with CJ," Toby said instantly.

Josh smiled wryly. "Yeah, that's pretty much what I thought."

He turned and started to move away, but Toby called him back. "Josh?"

"Yeah?"

The Communications Director looked him in the eye for a long moment, and then said seriously "Look after her."

"I will," he promised, and meant it.

He felt an irrational stab of panic as they approached the hospital, and fought it down. This isn't about you, Josh. Get over yourself. He was supposed to be here to provide a comforting familiar presence for CJ - much good he would do if he ended up collapsing and hyperventilating and she had to help him.

Still, it was hard not to feel that phantom constriction in his chest, and when one of the ambulances pulled away with its sirens blaring, his friendly grip on CJ's arm must have tightened, because she looked at him worriedly.

"Don't worry about me," he reassured her gently. "Come on, let's go find your dad."

The stereotype of the disinterested receptionist was obviously doing somebody a disservice, because the young woman at the desk was friendly and sympathetic. Josh spared her a grateful smile as he and CJ headed toward the elevator.

As they got out on the right floor, a tall red-headed man with a neat goatee beard hurried towards them. Josh had already met him briefly at some campaign-stop or other, but he would have recognised something of CJ around the eyes anyway.

"Peter." CJ moved away from Josh to give her younger brother a close hug. "How is he?" she asked anxiously as she pulled back.

Peter pulled a face and ran a tired hand over his eyes. "He's in and out. Robert's in there with him now."

"Okay." CJ passed through into the hospital room, and Josh hung back to give her some privacy. The first glimpse of someone you loved looking small and shrunken in a hospital bed was always a shock, no matter how prepared you were.

Peter gave him a distracted smile. "It's Mr. Lyman, right?"

"Josh," he correctly quickly.

"Thanks for coming up here," he said gratefully. "I wouldn't like to think of CJ making that flight all on her own."

Josh shrugged the praise off, knowing that any one of his colleagues would have been willing to do the same. He took a brief glance through the doorway; CJ was sitting by the head of her father's bed, her older brother gripping her arm. Jack Cregg lay unconscious, moving and mumbling slightly in his sleep. Josh was no expert, but it didn't look to him that the old man was much longer for this world. He only hoped that he would wake some time before the end came, and CJ would have a chance to say a proper goodbye.

They exited the theatre giggling. Zoey clung to his arm delightedly, any trace of annoyance she might have been harbouring towards him forgotten. "That was great! We should go again!"

"Yeah, because it's not as if I already cleaned out my bank account getting these tickets," Charlie reminded her dryly.

"I'm not worth it?" she demanded, pretending to be hurt.

"Yeah, I'll have to think about that." She gave him a playful shove.

"Remind me why I decided to keep you?"

"Free supply of theatre tickets?"

"Yeah, that must be it."

"Zoey." One of her agents appeared, ready to usher her to the limousine. They'd been edgy enough about her coming to the show at such short notice, although it was a venue they'd scoped out before. It had been afternoon when they went in, early evening now, and the streets were beginning to darken.

Zoey turned back to him. "You want a ride?" He glanced at his watch. "Oh, we're not fast enough for you, now?"

"No, I've got an errand to run." He should just about have time before the store closed...

"So we'll drop you off," she shrugged, but Charlie shook his head.

"It's a surprise."

"For me?"

"No, it's for your limo driver." She rolled her eyes.

"Fine, go ahead and walk! Just don't expect me to offer again."

He grinned, and kissed her lightly on the cheek. "I'll see you tomorrow?"

"Maybe." She spoiled her pretence at a haughty mood by grinning. "Goodnight, Charlie."

"Goodnight, Zoey." He kissed her again, on the lips this time, ignoring the impatiently hovering protection detail. Then he pulled back, gave her a tiny wave, and headed out into the rapidly darkening streets.

"Mr. President." Stanley stood up quickly as the president entered the study. The shorter man waved him back into his seat.

"Stanley," he nodded. Stanley watched the president lower himself into his chair, scanning his face for signs of the same weariness he'd seen at their first meeting. He looked as if he had the weight of the world on his shoulders, but then he supposed that was, all things considered, rather appropriate.

"Okay, so... have you been having trouble sleeping?" he probed cautiously. Jed Bartlet, he'd quickly discovered, was a complicated enough personality to unravel even without all the extra layers the presidency laid over him. Joshua Lyman had been - offended as he would probably be at the idea - a relatively predictable encounter; he'd had plenty of practise defusing high-risers with flawless academic records and fragile personalities.

President Bartlet, though... They'd spoken, briefly, of the fact that one of his staffers had accused him of embodying two personalities. Stanley privately thought that had been an amazingly astute diagnosis, although he suspected the two were far more closely intertwined than that unknown staffer had suggested. It wasn't a simple case of flipping between the steely-eyed intellectual and the playful, avuncular prankster; they were both there, all the time, and whenever you made a comment you could never be sure which of the two might choose to leap on it.

He was used to being the one doing the analysing - not being deconstructed just as expertly in return. Also, he had a strong suspicion that President Bartlet was considerably brighter than he was. As a man who was accustomed to holding his own as the intellectual high point of any gathering, he found that more than a little disconcerting.

The president gave him a wry smile. "Actually, I've been having trouble staying awake."

"And you think the cause is psychological?"

"Actually, I happen to know it isn't." He hesitated for a long beat, and then met the psychiatrist's eyes. "I'm suffering complications from my MS. My health is... not critical, but it's not good."

And Stanley wouldn't have guessed that anything he could hear in a therapy session could feel so much like a kick in the teeth. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "Sir, I-"

The president waved him quiet. "It's minor; minor problems, nothing that would affect my ability to do my job. But I have been warned that my position isn't doing me any favours... and I think we need to talk about that."

"Sir, I..." He stood up, shaking his head. "In all honestly, I'm really not sure I'm qualified to advise you on this." He was a psychiatrist, not a medical doctor. What did he know about MS, beyond the fact that the president had it, it was neither fatal nor curable, and even people who actually knew about it couldn't predict it?

The president regarded him from under lowered brows. "Well, you may not think you're qualified, but in the pool of people I can talk to about this, you're the only one to have the distinction of not being married to me, so why don't you sit right back down there and try to look knowledgeable?"

He sat right back down there and tried to look knowledgeable.

Josh gently laid a hand on CJ's shoulder. "CJ. You should come back to the hotel, try to get some rest." It was early yet, but the journey had been tiring, and CJ had spent most of it gripping the armrests so tightly it was painful to watch.

She was obviously reluctant to leave - she'd stayed at her father's side without moving the whole time, as if sheer force of concentration she could make him wake up. Josh could sympathise, but he feared she was running herself into the ground. She'd been living with this since Monday, and then there'd been the president's health scare and Sam's media outing - and it wasn't as if they'd been having a very restful couple of weeks before that.

"You should get something to eat; take a shower, try to get some sleep," he told her. Not that relocating her to the hotel was likely to be enough to accomplish that; he knew full-well what a little bit of floating guilt could do to your sleep patterns. Even with the sudden and completely unexpected nature of his own father's death, he couldn't help thinking that if he'd only been there...

Stop it, Josh. His collection of past guilts, polished smooth from years of turning them over, would still be waiting for him when he got back to DC. Right now, he was here to be a friend to CJ.

She accepted his hand to help her up, but cast a worried glance back at her unconscious father. "I should-"

"You should go, Claudia Jean," her older brother told her, gripping her shoulder in a brief gesture of comfort. "We'll still be here."

"I promise, I'll call you if anything changes," chimed in Peter. Josh had quickly decided he liked the Cregg brothers. They obviously adored their sister, and it was clear neither of them blamed her for the way her job kept her away. Not that they needed to; he was sure CJ was giving herself more than enough of a mental beating over that.

"Okay," she agreed slowly. "Um, I'll-"

"Josh gave me all the numbers for your cells and the hotel and everything," Peter reassured her, holding up a neatly folded square of paper. CJ gave Josh an enquiring look.

"Donna organised me before we left," he admitted. He was rewarded with a fragile grin.

"Okay, I'm just gonna go find a restroom," she excused herself. Josh suspected that when she emerged, she'd look every inch the polished and professional press secretary, no hint of the turmoil beneath reaching the surface. But that was all right, because he knew the real CJ, and even though she was probably one of the strongest people he knew, he was still prepared to give her every bit of comfort he could afford. He'd realised, in the aftermath of the political error and PTSD attack that had almost cost him his job, that he'd spent entirely too much time being a good politician and not enough being a good friend. And he was determined to change that.

As he waited, hands in pockets, in the hospital corridor, Robert came out to join him. "Thank you," he said sincerely. "Little sister thinks she can kick the world's ass." He grinned. "Between you and me, I think she's probably right. But it's good that she's got people looking out for her."

Josh shrugged. "Hey, I won't let her down." He smiled. "Or else I'll be facing the wrath of Toby Ziegler."

Robert smirked, and shook his hand. "In that case? I have no worries. Seriously, thanks, man."

"No problem."

He released his grip as CJ returned to join them. She hugged both her brothers, and then Josh lightly took her arm. "Come on, CJ. Let's go."

Sam kicked back in his seat with a groan. The good mood he'd been fostering Friday night had completely dissipated over the course of a truly dismal day. Hate mail at breakfast, jerks from the legal office, and now it looked like CJ's father might die. He wished he could have flown out to Ohio with her and Josh, but the way things were right now he'd only turn the whole thing into a media circus.

At least the press had been respectful, even concerned, when Toby had supplied her deputy with a brief, vague statement about a 'family emergency'. Sam wasn't sure how to reconcile that with the voracious appetite of the press for news about his own situation. It only seemed to reinforce the idea that this whole thing was 'his own fault'; that following his heart to be with Steve was wrong, even though he knew it wasn't.

Well, the whole 'Steve' aspect of him and Steve was certainly a welcome kind of compensation, but still... he shouldn't have to be going through this. And he definitely shouldn't have to be putting everybody else through this, at a time when the last thing they needed were more complications.

Toby emerged from his office, and Sam stood up to join him. "Any news?"

Toby shook his head. Sam knew it was burning him up not to be at CJ's side; his post as her guardian angel was entirely unofficial, but he carried it out with unshaking devotion.

Sam sighed. "I hope he's okay."

"Spoken to your father?" Toby asked him. Dammit, why was everybody drawing that connection?

"No," he said sullenly. Since the revelation two years ago, he and his father had reached a point where they could at least communicate - provided they stuck to safe subjects. Anything involving relationships, especially of the controversial variety, was definitely not a safe subject. He gave his boss a sharp look. "I suppose this is the 'life's too short' lecture now?"

Toby, being Toby, just shrugged. There was a brief silence.

"We're backing off on hate crimes, aren't we?" he said after a moment. Toby nodded, and Sam shook his head slowly. "This is all my fault."

"Yes."

The unexpected agreement was enough to shock him into a snort of startled laughter. "Hey, what happened to 'don't beat yourself up over this, Sam'?"

"And there you're mistaking me for somebody who doesn't find you inconvenient."

Sam grinned wryly and stretched, Toby's blunt refusal to pander to anybody doing more good than any empty reassurance. He rubbed his eyes tiredly. "I need beer," he announced.

"Josh has beer," Toby supplied neutrally.

"Josh is in Ohio."

"This, to me, seems like a fortuitous combination."

"It does."

They went to raid Josh's fridge.

Charlie thought to himself that he probably looked like an idiot, wandering through the streets of Washington, grinning his head off. He didn't care.

Who would have thought, just sixteen days ago when some momentary madness had moved him to propose, that the president would even let him live, never mind give his blessing? And yet here he was, seriously - seriously - planning his marriage to Zoey Bartlet. True, at the moment it was very much a potential marriage, and slated for a long time in the future - several decades, if the president had his way - but... still.

He was getting married.

To Zoey. Married. To Zoey.

Was it any wonder he couldn't stop grinning?

Of course, he'd known that for several days now, but today it was feeling more real than ever. Mostly because he'd just come out of the jewellers.

The store had been minutes away from closing up when he'd arrived, but the man behind the counter had been only too happy to let him in - as he said, how often did you get a personal request from the president?

Charlie had politely but firmly refused the president's offer to fund him for fancy engagement rings; the ones he'd bought with his own modest pay-packet were plain and simple, but after they'd worn them in secret on chains around their necks, they had a certain amount of sentimental value.

Wedding rings, though... He certainly didn't want to begin his marriage on anybody's charity, but there had been a highly convincing argument in there that hinged around the fact that the president was technically paying his wages anyway... Hence, several visits to the jewellers.

Hastily snatched visits, mostly, which meant that time to pick out the perfect ring - and it had to be the perfect ring - was severely limited. Today, though, he thought he'd found it.

Not that he had it in his pocket or anything. There would have to be some kind of chicanery involved in paying for it - he didn't think the president was going to be able to just saunter down with a credit card, and it was the kind of price range where he couldn't just pick it up himself and wait to be paid back. At least, not without selling his home, possessions, and possibly some top secret government documents first.

But he'd made his choice. There would have to be presidential approval, and then he'd have a fight over the inscription on the inside - he favoured something pure and simple, the president was predictably pulling for Latin - but pushy future in-laws aside, when he closed his eyes, he could see the ring on Zoey's finger.

And that was what mattered.

It was full dark now, where it had been only dim when he entered the store. His quest had probably been keeping the jeweller from his dinner, but hey, at the end of it all he'd get to say that the president's daughter had got her wedding ring from his store.

Charlie walked along the city streets in a dreamy daze, picturing Zoey's face when she saw the ring that she would one day wear as his wife.

His wife. Man...

It was quite a while before he began to realise he was being followed.

The scuffle of more footsteps on the streets behind him made his heart race, but he stubbornly tried to quiet it. Growing up in southeast DC had given him the instincts to jump at every shadow, and they followed him into nicer, safer areas of town. Nobody was going to leap out at him here. And besides, he wasn't a kid anymore, he wasn't an easy target; he was a full grown man, with youth and muscle enough to make any would-be mugger think twice.

And just because those footsteps were still behind him, just because they'd taken the same turn a short while back, that didn't mean he was being followed. And just because he could tell now that it was more than one person walking, well; that didn't make them any more likely to be muggers.

Just because they'd taken the same turn again...

He walked a little faster. After all, he was in a hurry to be home; Deanna would be waiting for him. Okay, not actually waiting, because even for a Saturday it was pretty damn early for him to be getting back, but even so...

And those footsteps were closer now, and they were moving faster, and maybe it was about time he stopped impressing his complete lack of an audience with his bravery and turned the hell round to see who was chasing him.

There were three of them, all probably no more than nineteen, all with the kind of blank, flat eyes that plugged straight into those instincts that he should never have been ignoring.

They advanced towards him, not speaking. Charlie quickly held up his hands. "Hey. Hey, okay. I'm gonna get my wallet out, okay?" He didn't have room to run, and wasn't stupid enough to pick a fight with three guys who could have pretty much anything in their pockets. Knives, guns... he kept his movements slow and steady.

"I'm gonna take the money out, okay? And you can have it. You can take all the money. But I've got my ID in there, and that wouldn't be any good to you, so if it's okay with you I'd like to-"

But when the first fist slammed into him, wallet and money both fluttered to the ground, and none of the three made any move to grab for them. And for the first time he really took in the fact that all of them were shaven-headed and all of them were white, and that maybe he was in even bigger trouble than he'd thought he was...

It took a moment to wonder why her alarm was going off in the middle of the night, another moment to wonder what she was doing in bed this early, and a third moment to wonder why her alarm sounded remarkably like her cell phone.

Then it all came together, and she leapt for the phone. "CJ Cregg?" long professional habit made her answer. She listened to the brief, urgent message and said "Okay, I'm coming," before shutting off on the phone.

Josh appeared in the doorway to the adjoining room, looking sleep-rumpled and befuddled. "CJ? Is something-?"

"That was Peter, we have to get back to the hospital, I-" She paused, taking in her travelling companion's decidedly baggy nightwear. "Are those my pyjamas?"

"Not in the strictly literal sense, but yeah."

"You don't have any that fit?"

"I like these."

"Okay." She didn't really have enough marbles to try and process that right now. "We have to-"

"Yeah. Get dressed, I'll call us a cab."

"Thank you." CJ found herself almost pathetically grateful for the assistance. It seemed like the simplest of tasks was magnitudes beyond her, now; she found herself staring at her clothes for entirely too long just trying to figure out how she was supposed to put them on.

She felt like the entire world was spinning away from her, and in it she could only manage to get a grasp on one simple fact.

Her father was dying, and she needed to be there.

"Okay, sir, can I ask... does your- do your symptoms... interfere with your cerebral functions at all?"

Jed shook his head firmly. "No." His discussion with Stanley had been going nowhere fast, not least because he'd been called away in the middle of it to briefly visit the Situation Room. Thank God that hadn't been anything world-shattering; Josh and CJ were several states away, Leo was looking as stressed as he'd ever seen him, and he'd given Charlie the rest of the evening off.

He reeled off his symptoms with a kind of flippant ease that he had to inject to be able to do it. "Stiffness in my back, sometimes in my legs; blurry vision; fatigue."

Stanley shifted in his seat. "Okay. And these are... constant? Occasional?"

"The fatigue is... fairly constant," he admitted. Oh, why don't we go the full distance? Add crushing, overwhelming, incredible, unbearable in there... maybe you're getting a little closer to the truth. "The others generally come towards the end of the day, when I've been sitting too long, concentrating too long... it's easy to assume they're just your everyday signs of getting older."

The psychiatrist nodded slowly. "But you don't think they are."

"My doctor tells me they're not," he pointed out.

"And he thinks that remaining in office is likely to make these symptoms worsen, maybe cause others to linger?"

Jed shrugged pointedly. "He doesn't know."

Stanley frowned. "But reducing stress and getting more rest will help them to improve?"

"He doesn't know that, either."

Stanley let out a slow breath and sat up. "Mr. President... with respect... I don't know how you can ask me to make any kind of informed decision with no concrete information."

Jed gave him a wry smile. "Yeah, that's a real son of a bitch, isn't it?"

They exchanged a look for a long moment, which was interrupted by a knock at the door. Jed sat upright with a scowl. "Dammit," he muttered vaguely, heading towards the door. Apparently strict instructions not to be interrupted didn't count for much when you were the president.

He pulled it open, and frowned when he saw that it was Margaret. "What is it?" he asked, a little more brusquely than he would normally do. Then he registered her expression. "What's wrong, Margaret?" he asked more gently, with panic beginning to rise in the back of his throat.

"It's Charlie," she said fearfully.

Sam and Toby were both kicking back in Toby's office, several beer bottles open on the coffee table, as he approached. "Hey, Leo." Sam froze, and slowly straightened up as he registered the look on his face.

"What's happening?" asked Toby abruptly.

The smell of alcohol was a distraction, but not the kind he needed right now.

"Did CJ's father die?" Sam asked tentatively.

"No- I, I don't know," he stuttered out. Both of them got to their feet, exchanging nervous glances. "It's Charlie."

"What happened?" asked Sam urgently.

That's what I'd like to know.

"We don't, uh- he was brought into GW. He's been badly beaten up, no one's sure-"

"Is he gonna be all right?"

"I don't-" He shrugged. "We're literally just, we just heard this now."

"Did somebody call Zoey?"

"She's on her way," Leo nodded. "She was the first one to get the call, he had her number in his jacket."

"Aw, hell," Sam groaned. Having been the one to deal with the semi-hysterical young woman on his phone when she couldn't get through to her father, Leo could definitely second that emotion.

"Is the president still in the building?" asked Toby.

"He's, uh-" Leo stumbled for a moment as he realised how close he'd come to just blurting out a not inconsiderable secret. "He was in a meeting, I sent Margaret."

"It'll be a while before security clears him to leave," Sam said.

"Yeah." Toby nodded. "We should get down there." They both grabbed for their suit jackets.

"Josh is still in Ohio, I gotta stay here," Leo reminded them.

"Leo-" Sam began.

"We've got no senior staff, guys! I know it's Saturday night, but somebody's gotta stay in the building." Not so long ago, he and the president had been called down to the Situation Room - so far, it was nothing requiring urgent attention, but what if that changed? The way everything seemed to be exploding in his face right now, that felt almost guaranteed.

Toby's words from the tension-filled evening when he'd been let in on the president's MS floated back up. He'd stated flat out that Leo taking charge in the absence of the president was pretty much a coup d'etat - but Jesus, who else was going to do it? Hoynes was on the other side of the country, and the chances of persuading the president he had to stay put while Charlie's life might be on the line were so close to zero a statistician couldn't argue it.

"Did someone call Josh and CJ?" Sam wondered.

"Uh, Donna's still in the building, so-"

"Okay."

"Go," Leo told them, half giving permission, half ordering. "Call me if-"

"Yeah." They both ran for the door, and Leo wished he could be running with them almost as much as he was currently wishing he could curl up in bed and have the past - oh, ten or fifteen years ought to do it - just not happen.

Everything was just... too much. It was all coming down around his ears. The president was maybe seriously sick and pretending he wasn't, Charlie was lying in hospital with God only knew what injuries, Zoey was completely hysterical and babbling about how this was all her fault for agreeing to marry him, Sam was getting shredded in the tabloids, CJ's father was dying...

And he couldn't do a thing about any of it. Not a single damn thing. Here he was, Chief of Staff of the White House and man behind the most powerful leader in the free world, and he'd never felt so useless.

Leo ran a hand through his hair and tried to breathe, tried to find the centre of calm that had guided him through all the other crises they'd faced. But those were easy, that was politics - this was personal. And you didn't have to look very far into his fractured family life to know what Leo McGarry was like with personal.

He needed to get a grip on himself. He was supposed to be the cool, calm, collected one, that Jed and the staff both could lean on. He needed to get a hold of himself. He needed to-

He needed to not be somewhere there were open bottles of beer.

The smell was enticing, in a darkly insidious way that quietly suggested it was just beer, not real alcohol, barely alcoholic at all when you got right down to it, certainly not enough to make you drunk, maybe just enough to blunt that edge off a little, get your head together, smooth your nerves out so you could do your job in the cool, efficient way everybody was accustomed to...

Not that those were thoughts he was going to follow up on, of course. But somebody really ought to do something about those open bottles of beer just sitting there, where anybody could come upon them. Wouldn't do to have open bottles of alcohol littering the offices of the White House, might give people the wrong impression. Somebody really ought to pick them up, and dammit, Margaret wasn't a slave, she was a secretary, it certainly wasn't her job to do the fetching and carrying. And besides, he could only imagine the look she'd give him if he asked her to do something about those open bottles of beer lying around.

No, that would give her entirely the wrong impression about what was, after all, a fully justified desire to avoid any possible embarrassment. It wasn't as if he was in any danger of giving in to temptation or anything.

No, not at all.

Not even slightly.

"Leo?"

It was definitely the chaotic events of the last few days that caused him to jump when Donna appeared in the doorway. Since, after all, there was no reason why he should have any kind of a guilty conscience.

"Donna. Why are you still here? I thought you'd gone with the others?"

She gave him a cautious smile. "I want to wait in case Josh calls in. I've been trying to reach him but his cell's turned off. I guess he and CJ are at the hospital."

Leo nodded. "Okay." He hesitated, then gestured to the office behind him. "Sam and Toby were in here. Could you get somebody to-?"

Donna took in the bottles on the coffee table at a glance, and nodded efficiently. "Sure."

"Okay."

Margaret would have given him a suspicious look for being anywhere near the presence of unguarded alcohol, but maybe Donna was more casually trusting, or just less prone to worrying about nothing.

Because after all, there hadn't been anything for her to worry about.

At all.

SUNDAY:

CJ was barely conscious of her feet touching the ground as she raced through the hospital. Just as well she wasn't wearing the heels she sometimes wore for work. Her brothers met her as she approached the room at speed.

"Is he-?"

"He's awake," said Peter urgently. "But I don't think-"

"I need to see him."

"Yeah."

Despite the urgency of her approach, CJ found herself slowing to what felt like a crawl as she entered the room. She didn't want to go inside. If she didn't go inside, then her dad was still the hearty giant she remembered, casually swinging her up into his arms in the days long before she was nearly as tall as he was.

She had to go in. He was her father, and she owed him that much. She owed him a hell of a lot more than that, it suddenly seemed, and now it was too late. Why hadn't she said it all before he started getting vague? As soon as she realised he was getting vague? When he had his first stroke? As soon as Peter had called at the beginning of the week to warn her he was back in hospital?

Because she'd always believed there would be more time, and suddenly there wasn't any more time, just the solid brick wall of "too late" rushing towards her at the speed of light.

She entered the room. Her father lay with his head lolling back, eyes staring up at nothing; he looked as if he was already dead, but ragged breaths were still tearing from his throat. They sounded as if they hurt, and she blinked back tears without knowing why she wanted to hide them.

"Daddy?" she said tentatively, her voice sounding like a child's in her own ears. But even as a child she'd never sounded that hesitant, because when she'd been a child she had believed without understanding the possibility of disbelief that her father would always know her.

There was little movement to his slack, grey face, but she saw the ghost of a smile anyway. "Claudia Jean," he whispered, and the name that she'd forsworn ever since she was old enough to realise that was an option sounded beautiful.

"I'm here, daddy," she said, collapsing down to kneel beside him as if she was still the lanky, inelegant tomboy of her teenage years.

"Shouldn't you be at... the election?" he asked laboriously, and she was too relieved to know he knew her to care that he thought they were months ago, or maybe even five years ago.

"The election's over, daddy," she smiled through tears that were now running freely down her cheeks.

Her father was silent so long that she thought he'd drifted away again, but then he tried to speak again. "Your man... did he... win?"

"That's right dad, he did."

"Good... I shook his hand."

"You did." Jack Cregg was a man who believed in the power of a handshake, and he'd never given one to a man who he didn't consider deserved it. CJ would never have admitted to the boys on the campaign trail how she'd secretly snuck off to rub some suspiciously red eyes after her father had judged her new cause and deemed it worthy of a Cregg handshake.

"Your mother must be so proud to see you up there..." he whispered vaguely, and CJ gripped his arm.

"I'm sure she would have been, dad." Her mother had been gone a long, long time now - it had been her father through everything, daddy, tall and stern jawed and fearless, teaching her to be a Cregg just like her brothers; unbowed, unbloodied, and unafraid of anything.

Just like her father.

"I love you, dad." She didn't know when she kissed his cheek if he even still knew she was there, but she held on tight to him anyway. Her brothers came in to kneel to either side of her, Robert laying an arm across her shoulder, Peter giving her a quiet, melancholy smile.

And they waited.

Toby paced the waiting room frustratedly. Nobody at the hospital was telling them anything; they hadn't been able to see Charlie, they hadn't even been told anything beyond the obvious assumption that his injuries had to be quite serious. At this stage, he wasn't above pulling White House rank on the first person who looked like they might be impressed by it, but none of the doctors had stopped by for long enough for him to try.

Sam was coiled across two of the uncomfortable chairs, too agitated to doze but obviously needing to. What little relaxation a few beers had brought him had evaporated without trace, and the strains of the past few days were catching up with him. With so much weariness in his face he looked older - not, Toby suspected, that his deputy would ever end up resembling his actual age, but for once he didn't look like a twenty-year-old. Regardless of how depressing he found his deputy's unnatural aura of youthfulness, he found such dents in it even more disturbing. Sam had only recently climbed out of a worrying kind of lingering depression - the last thing he needed was to have these kind of stresses poured on him.

Sam's default position was 'perky'. And though there were few tortures under which he would have admitted as much, Toby had been missing it for months. Fostering somebody else's fragile optimism was a fairly novel experience for him, but with a few blunt nudges in the appropriate direction he'd had Sam on the way back to something approaching normal.

And then the universe had decided to have other plans. He wasn't entirely sure how one would go about kicking the universe's ass, but he was more than prepared to do it.

Reflections on suitable substitute asses to kick until such time as he found out were interrupted as the doors swung back. A pair of dark-suited Secret Service agents charged in, despite all their fitness training only just managing to keep up with their diminutive protectee.

Zoey spotted the two writers and dashed towards them. "Did Charlie-?"

Toby was saved from giving answers he didn't have by the arrival of the doctor. He saw Zoey and gave her a respectful nod. "Ah, Miss Bartlet-"

"How is he?" she demanded without preamble.

The man hesitated, as if weighing up how much to tell her, but Toby was having none of it. "The truth," he said bluntly. "In plain language."

Zoey gave him a grateful smile as Sam came over to give her a brief, comforting squeeze. They all looked at the doctor, who was obviously uncomfortable under the collective attention.

"Ah, it appears that Mr. Young was, uh, quite badly beaten. His injuries are... extensive, but with the proper treatment, he should make a full recovery. Fortunately there was no organ damage, although he has a fractured wrist and several broken ribs. Physically, he's stable. However..."

"However what?" Toby growled pointedly. The doctor glanced cautiously at Zoey.

"Mr. Young clearly received a severe blow to the head at some point during the struggle. Until he wakes up, it's impossible to fully assess what, if any, damage that may have done."

Zoey's eyes looked huge with trepidation. "He might be brain-damaged?" she asked tentatively.

The doctor pulled a face. "We really couldn't say until he regains consciousness."

"When will that be?" Sam asked.

"I couldn't say," he repeated.

"But he will regain consciousness?" Toby asked, forcing the issue out of some stubborn need to hear the whole truth no matter what it might be.

The man adjusted his glasses. "Well, we believe that Mr. Young was brought in not long after he was first knocked unconscious, so yes, the chances are good that he'll awaken in the next couple of hours."

That was all he said, but Toby heard the unspoken corollary; that if those hours passed and he still didn't wake, his chances would grow steadily smaller.

Zoey nodded slowly, taking it all in. "I want to see him," she said firmly, jaw set with a determination that stirred mental echoes of her mother and father both.

He hesitated. "Normally, we only allow family members-"

"I'm his fiancée," she cut him off abruptly.

Toby suspected it was more likely her parental connections than future marital ones that caused the doctor to relent - or maybe it was the not so subtle glare he was getting from two governmental speechwriters and the slightly more menacing figures of two Secret Service agents.

"Very well," he agreed with a quick nod. "But I'm afraid the rest of you will have to wait here."

If he'd meant the Secret Service agents to be included in that, he was out of luck, for they simply followed straight after their protectee. Sam and Toby, however, had neither presidential relatives nor concealed weaponry as a pass to get them inside. Toby wasn't sure whether he would have wanted to, anyway; he'd done enough torturous lingering at Josh's bedside three years before to last him a lifetime.

They went back to waiting as they had before, except that this time it was Toby who sat and Sam who paced. Agitated, he made several circuits of the room before coming to an abrupt halt. He gestured vaguely towards the door. "I'm gonna go, uh, go get- do you want coffee, or... or anything?"

Toby shook his head. He didn't want anything, and he suspected Sam didn't, either; he just needed to get out of the waiting room.

Sam left, and then he waited alone for an indefinable period of time. Though this room had obviously never been used for anything but waiting, it still carried that familiar antiseptic smell. He thought of CJ, several states away, perhaps waiting in a hospital room just like this one. For all that he wanted to be right where he was because of Charlie, and for all that he trusted Josh to be a friend to her, the nagging feeling that he should be at her side persisted. His association with CJ was one of the longest in what was by choice a fairly insular life, and the bonds that tied them together were as strong as they were complex.

Toby could picture every nuance of her reaction when she found out about Charlie, and wished he could be there when she did. And if he had been, he would probably have done nothing and said nothing - but the nothing that he said and did would still have been instinctively understood.

But she was there, and he was here, and Charlie was in a hospital bed because his skin didn't match some young psychopath's approved colour chart. That was the way the world spun today, and the struggle for Charlie's recovery wasn't a battle he could fight with words, and so he was at a loss.

So he just waited.

The night air was cool, and the stars above very clear. Josh looked across at CJ worriedly. "Are you okay?" he asked gently.

She nodded slowly, but didn't speak. He knew that she'd been crying earlier, but her eyes were dry now. Her father had eventually slipped away and after a while she'd come out here for air, and at last he'd felt able to be at her side without feeling intrusive.

"Thanks," she said abruptly. "Just for- you know. Thanks."

Josh just smiled at her in silent understanding. He slipped his hands into his pockets, and they both looked at the stars. He thought about his father. Gone for five years now, could it really be so long?

His cell phone bleeped. They both jumped, and then CJ chuckled quietly. He made an apologetic face, angry at his own instinct to switch it on as soon as he was out of the hospital, but she just said "It's probably Toby."

"Yeah." He fumbled inside his jacket for the phone. "You want to talk to him, or should I...?"

CJ hesitated, then shrugged. "Yeah, I'll... if it's Toby, I'll talk to him."

"Okay." He pressed a button and brought the phone to his ear. "Josh Lyman."

The voice at the other end wasn't Toby - but it was even more familiar to him, and there was a note in it that he didn't like at all. His chest seized. "Donna? Donna, what's wrong? What's happened?"

"Leo?" Margaret hovered in the office doorway. She cleared her throat. "Leo?"

It took the second try to get a reaction; her boss was pretty much slumped over his desk; not so much dozing as in a near-zombie state. He shook himself out of it and blinked at her. "Margaret. Any news?"

Right then, her desire to be able to give a positive answer was as much for Leo's sake as for poor Charlie's. But she didn't have anything to give.

"He's still unconscious. They won't know more until he wakes up."

She didn't miss the way the hope deflated out of him - and that, in itself, was worrying, because even when Leo was deeply troubled he usually hid it much better than that. Margaret ran a concerned eye over him. "You should go home."

He shook his head, not that she'd expected him to do anything different. "Josh is still out of state. With all this going on, he needs one of us in the White House." Margaret didn't experience even a moment of pronoun confusion - when Leo meant the president, you could hear it in his tone of voice.

She also knew the president wouldn't be any happier about Leo wearing himself into the ground than she was. "He also needs you to be, you know, alive and semi-conscious."

"Margaret-"

"I'm just saying-"

"Leave it, Margaret," he ordered, sharply enough that she did.

"Are you all right?" she asked tentatively, in the silence that followed.

He exploded. "Charlie's in hospital and the president- How all right do you want me to be?" he demanded harshly. The tone of his voice made her flinch. Leo was regularly cranky, but now he sounded genuinely angry, and not at her. Leo was tearing himself up, and she didn't know how to fix it.

So she pointed him in the direction of someone who might.

"The president's ready to tear the building down trying to get out," she told him.

Leo stared at her. "He's still here?"

"There was a problem with the security clearance. Zoey's team called in a group of boys behaving suspiciously close to the hospital."

Leo pushed to his feet, his own exhaustion forgotten with the prospect of a duty he could discharge. "I should go calm him down before he hurts somebody."

"Yeah."

But as Margaret watched him go, she wondered who was going to calm Leo down before he hurt himself.

Donna arrived in the waiting room like a blast of cool refreshing air.

"Hey Deanna. Hey Zoey." She smiled kindly at the two girls, huddled up together like the sisters they almost were. She got two wobbly grins in return; it was hard not to smile at Donna.

"Hey, Toby. Is he still-?" Toby nodded.

"We're still waiting." Not the best news - but after a certain night three years ago, he was very glad he didn't have a worse bombshell to drop on her. The look on her face after he'd broken the news had been as much a part of his nightmares afterwards as the blood on his sleeves and the image of Josh, falling.

"I got through to Josh. He and CJ are coming back on the next flight out of Ohio."

He must have frowned; or maybe there was something to Josh's claim that she could read minds. "CJ's father died around one o'clock," she told him. He was pretty positive she'd never met the man, but the compassion and sorrow in her voice was deep and genuine. He remembered once telling Josh that if more people reacted like Donna Moss, things might go a lot better.

He nodded slowly, hoping that CJ had got there in time to talk to him - and that the conversation had been something other than the painfully circular telephone calls he'd overheard towards the end. CJ had always quietly worshipped her father; losing him at any time would have been a devastating blow, let alone with all the other things that were weighing down on them right now.

Donna had spoken softly, perhaps to keep the mention of death from the ears of the two girls waiting for news on their own loved one. Now she raised her voice, rustling in the bag slung over her arm. "I brought food! And this." She handed a framed photograph across to Zoey, who took it and gave it a sad-edged smile. "The president said we've got to put it by Charlie's bed, so it's the first thing he sees when he wakes up."

Toby managed to get a look at the picture, and saw it was a shot from the engagement party a week before; Charlie and Zoey gazing adoringly at each other, while the president stood with one arm around his wife and the other around Deanna.

Zoey looked up at her solemnly. "Is my dad coming?"

"As soon as he's finished biting the heads off his Secret Service people," Donna promised, and Deanna let out an involuntary giggle. Toby suspected it was more true than either of the girls realised - arguments like the importance of his own safety would never impress the president when there was a distressed daughter to rush to.

Zoey lapsed into silence as she gazed reflectively at the picture, and Donna came over to sit next to Toby. She nodded at Sam, back to being curled up in an exhausted heap. He hadn't stirred when she came in.

"Is he okay?"

"He's had a tough few days," Toby reminded her. "I'd send him home, if it wasn't for the possibility of reporters." Sam was better off getting his rest with his face pressed into a plastic chair than facing that gauntlet again.

"I doubt they're there," Donna told him. "They're mostly at the White House. I don't know how, but they know about Charlie."

He frowned. "Who's briefing?"

"Carol." She smiled. "I think she's pretty much scared out of her mind, but she's doing fine."

Toby nodded, but he still hoped for CJ's speedy return. Not just for the administration, and not just so he could resume his customary watch over her. On an unspoken and probably irrational level, he would just... feel better if CJ was there.

Leo slipped inside the president's private study, not missing the frustration that tightened his old friend's face.

"Stanley gone?" he asked neutrally.

"He just left," nodded the president, taking a puff on his cigarette.

Leo hesitated. "So, did you-?"

"Not now, Leo," Jed told him warningly. He acquiesced with a nod. Jed smiled bitterly. "I doubt he's coming back," he added. "He thought he'd seen me mad before..."

Leo supposed that was exaggeration. Or not. He couldn't blame Stanley if he'd quickly fled the scene - it probably took more than years of training with trauma victims to handle Jed Bartlet in a full blown impotent rage.

The president stood up, abruptly, and the icy calm of his most deadly anger settled over him. He turned steely eyes to Leo. "Whoever did this, Leo, we will find them, and they will pay the full price for their crimes."

It was Leo's job to defuse the president's rages, and to stop him from doing anything irrevocable in a fit of anger... but some things, it was hard to disagree with. "Yes, sir," he said coolly. Whether this had been a gang of street-punks out for trouble or a pre-meditated attack on the president's future son-in-law, they'd messed with the wrong family.

The door opened with no knock to precede it - it was one of the few people who had that privilege in any and all circumstances. Ron Butterfield gave the president a sober nod. "Sir, you're cleared to go."

Not even wasting enough breath to rant about the security procedures that had forced him to wait, the president crushed out his cigarette and headed for the door. "Leo, come with us," he ordered casually over his shoulder.

Leo shook his head. "Sir, I need to stay in the White House."

The president came to a halt. "Leo, you've been here all night," he objected.

"Josh is flying back from Ohio," he replied. Without actively stating that he would in fact leave when that happened. He didn't want to go home; not when home was still a featureless hotel room. That would not be a good place for him to be right now.

The president looked less than thrilled at his reasoning, but nodded. "Okay." He followed his Secret Service man out of the room.

And Leo was left alone in the president's private study, very conscious even beyond the thick smell of smoke of the faint thread of bourbon in the air. He knew without looking where the crystal decanter would stand, from long memory of good days and bad days alike where it was always the first thing to catch his eye when he entered the room.

Today was a bad day.

He didn't turn around to mark that spot where he knew without question it would be. But he did flip open the president's abandoned cigarette case, and steal one to smoke down to the butt with shaking fingers.

The president stormed in at the head of his Secret Service escort like some kind of military invasion. With eyes for nobody else in the waiting room, he rushed towards the two girls seated together and pulled them into his arms.

"It's okay, sweetheart, it's okay honey, I'm here. I'm sorry I couldn't get here sooner." He dispensed comforting squeezes and kisses to Zoey and Deanna in equal measure.

The two girls still secure in his arms, he now took the time to look around the rest of the room. Toby, Sam and Donna had sprung to varying states of attention; he waved them irritably back into their seats.

"Enough of that." He surveyed his troops with a clinical eye. "Sam, you look like you slept in a dumpster. I want you to go home and get some proper rest."

"Sir, I-"

Jed quickly cut through his objection. "Sam, I know you want to be here for Charlie, but you're not doing him or anybody else any good in the state you're in now. You'd be dead on your feet if you could actually stand on them."

"I'd prefer to stay until Charlie wakes up, Mr. President," he tried to politely refuse.

The president was having none of. "And if I thought you could stay conscious more than five minutes I might let you. But you won't get any rest here, and I am not prepared to have one of my staffers collapse from nervous exhaustion on my watch. Now go, before I have Toby pick you up and carry you."

"Yes. Go before he does that," Toby said dryly.

Sam cast around for support, but didn't find any. "Go home, Sam," Zoey urged him worriedly.

"I'll get you a cab," Donna offered, standing up.

He closed his eyes briefly, too close to the point of exhaustion to argue further. "Okay, but-"

"We'll call you if anything changes," the president promised, gently patting him on the arm. "But seriously, son, you need to get some rest. You've had a tough week, and Charlie'll kick your ass as hard as I will if you push yourself until you collapse."

"Okay," he nodded again, blanking on what to do next. Donna smiled fondly at him, and slipped an arm around his waist.

"C'mon, Sam, let's get you out of here."

As the two of them left, their place was taken by the doctor who'd spoken with the group before. The president straightened up and looked him in the eye. "Okay. Tell me the truth, doctor; how's my boy?"

"Okay. Okay, thanks, Donna." Josh shut off the phone and looked across at CJ. She probably knew from his tone what the news was, but he told her anyway. "That was Donna; she say the president's still at the hospital. They're still waiting for Charlie to wake up." Donna hadn't said that the longer he was unconscious, the less good his chances were, but he knew it anyway.

He and CJ exchanged a long and understanding look. They both knew that they wanted to be where Charlie was - and that duty dictated otherwise.

"Leo's gonna need us at the White House," Josh admitted, and CJ nodded. Even considering the night they'd had, they'd probably got more rest than the staff who'd been in their offices all day. Josh had slept briefly on the plane, though he suspected that CJ hadn't. But when he looked at her, she was standing as tall and determined as ever.

"You okay?" he asked gently. "I mean, I know... it was family."

The gaze that she levelled at him was as cool as any she used in the press room. "So is this," she reminded him.

"Hey, mister. You're gonna sleep there all day, I'm gonna have to start charging you rent."

Sam gradually stirred out of a surprisingly restful sleep to discover he was still in the back of the cab. He stretched, blinking, and the driver grinned at him.

"Feeling better, sleeping beauty? You've been out like a light all the way from the hospital."

"Yeah, actually," he admitted, yawning, as it penetrated that he was outside his own apartment block. He hadn't wanted to leave the hospital, but now he was forced to accept that the president had been right. The brief nap on the way home had got his synapses firing just enough for him to realise quite how braindead he'd been before.

He paid the driver and picked his way wearily through the lobby to the elevator, exceedingly grateful that the press pack had apparently abandoned him in search of fresher news. In the state he was now, he doubted he could have made even a pretence of mustering any political savvy.

Sam half crawled out of the elevator and slumped against the door of his apartment as he fumbled for the key. Actually inserting it in the lock was an exercise in hand-eye coordination that took him several minutes.

When he got inside he didn't bother to remove his shoes, let alone undress. He just fell forward onto the bed and dropped instantly into a deep sleep.

The scene in the press room was playing on all the monitors as they walked past. Questions were flying thick and fast at an obviously flustered Carol, but she was holding it together and keeping her dignity - considerably better, Josh was forced to admit, than he had on his own ill-fated attempt at briefing.

"She's doing fine," he observed softly.

"She is," CJ agreed, with a certain note of pride in her voice. Josh wondered if all their assistants could step in at a moment's notice and take on their bosses' jobs. There was no question in his mind that Donna could handle his, and there were rumours floating around about Margaret's ability to forge signatures...

"She could take the next one as well," Josh suggested gently. CJ gave him a knowing smile.

"Yes, she could." She looked him in the eye. "But that's my job."

He smiled back. "Okay." He knew only too well from personal experience what a blow CJ had suffered that night. Grieving was a private thing, and not to be done with in a matter of hours, days or weeks... but CJ was CJ, and she was down but not out.

He nodded his acceptance, knowing she would hold it together now that he had to reluctantly leave her side.

"I'm gonna go kick Leo out on the streets," he told her.

CJ grinned back, the first flash he'd seen of her usual playful self. "Good luck with that," she said dryly.

"Yeah."

In times of crisis, Leo and his office went together like some sort of burrowing mammal and its... burrow. Leo both solved and ran away from his problems by throwing himself into his work. Things like food and sleep - minor issues in the McGarry consciousness at the best of times - ceased to register on his radar at all.

Josh didn't miss the way Margaret straightened up as he approached - he was guessing his own absence had been fairly high on Leo's excuse list for why he had to stay. The fact that Margaret was still here, considering it was now beyond the twenty-four hours at work mark, was troubling enough. Leo's tendency to send her home was as much self-defence as altruism - if she wasn't there to mark his comings and goings, nobody knew whether he ever left the building or not.

He frowned worriedly at the secretary. "He didn't send you home?"

Margaret bobbed her head in quick nod. "Four times," she said, in a tone that suggested it could be four hundred more for all the effect it would have.

Josh nodded in understanding, and went in.

"Leo?"

"Josh." He removed his glasses and looked up. "How's CJ?" To Josh's eyes, he looked deathly tired and somehow smaller than usual. Leo McGarry was not a big man, yet most of the time he projected an aura of being one. Seeing him stripped down by stress and fatigue to the mere human being beneath was both troubling and uncomfortably invasive.

"She's holding up," Josh nodded. "What about Charlie?"

"We're still waiting." Leo rubbed the bridge of his nose.

"Leo, you need to go home and get some sleep. I can handle things this end."

"You just got off a plane," Leo reminded him.

"On which I actually slept, so, I'm saying, I can handle things this end."

"Josh," Leo began, obviously starting to get irritable, but he wasn't backing down.

"Leo, you're going home," he said firmly. "Now, we can do this the easy way, or I can get Margaret in here."

Leo glowered at him. "You don't play fair."

"Aren't you glad I'm on your side?"

He snorted. "That's debatable."

"Leo..." He turned serious, and played his trump card. "The president's gonna need you top of your game when he gets back from the hospital. You gotta get some rest."

"Yeah." In other circumstances, Josh might have found it amusing how Leo greeted that statement like a prison sentence. But then, who was he to talk about preferring the office to home? He hadn't had any call to want to return home promptly since he'd been with Amy - make that the early days with Amy, before he'd lost absolutely any desire to be on the same planet as her, let alone in the same apartment.

Much like his relationship with Mandy, in fact. Hmm; maybe there was something to this staying at the office twenty-four hours a day, after all.

He hustled Leo towards the door. "I'll take care of everything, Leo. We'll call if anything happens with Charlie. Margaret?" She was already ready to leave, handing Leo's coat to him as he lingered reluctantly in the doorway. "Make sure he actually, you know, leaves the building?"

Leo glared, and Margaret gave him a grateful smile. Josh headed back to his own office to place another call to Donna and pray for good news about Charlie.

Sam slowly blurred into wakefulness with sunlight warming the back of his head. He pushed himself up and remembered he was still wearing yesterday's clothes. He contemplated them, contemplated the effort involved in changing them, and opted for the simplest option of a fresh shirt. Nobody was going to be caring about what he was wearing this morning.

Or maybe somebody would. He smiled as he registered a familiar voice outside his bedroom door.

"...Yeah, I got here about half an hour ago. Took a quick peek; he's sleeping like a baby. I didn't have the heart to wake him."

Steve. Though they hadn't actually been dating all that long - the chaotic events that had been going on all around them made it seem longer - Sam had seen fit to furnish him with a key. It had been so long since he'd had somebody in his life, he didn't want his erratic hours to be any more of a stumbling block than they had to.

And apparently, the key-supplying approach was paying dividends. He finished tying his tie with greater speed, guessing that Steve had probably answered his phone to stop it waking him.

But the automatic smile died on his lips as he pushed open the door and saw that Steve wasn't talking on the phone at all. He was talking to somebody already in his apartment.

His father.

The silent stretched on for a long moment. "Dad," he said flatly.

"Sam."

"Coffee!" declared Steve brightly. He disappeared into the kitchen extremely fast.

His father gave him a tentative smile, which he didn't return. "Hi, Sam." More silence. His father glanced towards the doorway through which Steve had fled. "I've been talking to your young man. He seems like a nice boy."

"He... is." To say he was completely lost would be understating it more than a little. He shook his head in bewilderment. "Dad... what are you doing here?"

"I wanted to see you."

"Why?" he demanded disbelievingly.

"Because you're my son," he laughed, a little nervously.

Sam scowled. "What makes you think I'd want to see you?"

His father looked at the floor. "I never thought you would. I just..." he trailed off. Sam didn't feel any real pressing need to help him out of the awkward silence.

This was the first time he'd seen his father since... well, since the day his own private world had briefly stopped turning. Twenty-eight years, dad, what could you ever possibly say that would justify twenty-eight years? They'd passed the point where Sam wouldn't even answer phonecalls, because, well... he was his father. But to actually see him, face to face...

It hurt. It hurt precisely because he didn't look any different; the familiar stamp of Seaborn features, boyish still at sixty despite the grey at the temples. The same blue eyes, and they were his eyes, and that hurt even more.

In the intervening years, of divorce and betrayal and the shaking of the world's foundations, his father hadn't shrunk or shifted or taken on the look of the devil incarnate. He just looked like dad.

Dad.

Dad, who'd been seeing another woman since before his son was old enough to understand what that was. Yeah, he'd say he was just about due a certain amount of awkward silence.

After a long moment his father ran a shaky hand through his hair. I do that, you always used to that, what else did I learn from you dad, what else did you make me?

When I grow up, I want to be just like my dad.

Was it too late to take back words spoken when you were five or six years old, and a lie was when you said you hadn't taken the last cookie? His fingers flexed, but he didn't want to make fists and he didn't know quite what else to do with them.

"Sam, I just... I just thought you could use some support right now."

"From you?"

"From anyone." He hesitated. "I spoke to your mother."

"She doesn't want to talk to you."

His father sighed sadly, and Sam hated him for it. He didn't have any right to feel sorry, to feel guilty about what he'd done to their family - because if he understood that, if he was capable of feeling that, then how could he ever have done it at all? If his father was a man and not an unfeeling monster, then there had to be an answer to the question, and he didn't want there to be an answer to the question. He didn't want to be living in a world where there could possibly be an answer to the question.

Why? For the love of God, why?

"I know that she's- she might be-"

"Don't," Sam said warningly. It didn't matter that his mother was being so wrong-headed he wanted to scream, only that if his father dared to say any word against her after what he'd done-

"I just thought you might need..." His father shook his head. "I was wrong. I'm sorry. I should go."

He hated himself for not saying 'Don't go' almost as much as he hated himself for wanting to.

His father stopped in the doorway, and turned back. "Sam, I- If there was some way I could shield you from..." He sighed heavily. "You're just a guy who fell in love. You think I don't understand that?"

Sam found himself shaking his head in the numbness of disbelief. "Oh, no. You are not-"

"Sam-"

"You are not going to compare this to-"

"Sam." His father stepped towards him and looked him in the eye, solemn and serious. "I'm your father, and I love you, and I know you hate me and I know you have every right to hate me but I love you. And your mother loves you too, and you don't want to listen to her now while she's mixed up because she loves you and she'll come around. She'll come around, son."

Sam could feel something dangerously like tears building in the tiredness around his eyes, and he didn't realise he was still so furious until the words just boiled out. "Oh, is that what you told yourself when you-?"

"Sam." His father held his gaze in a look that lasted forever. "As you're so fond of telling me, you're not the same man I am."

He hesitated for a beat. "Dad..." His voice betrayed him with a crack that should never have been there.

And then, somehow, he was in his father's arms. And it didn't change anything and nothing was any different and nothing was any better but it helped.

It should have been redundant to say that everyone snapped to attention at the president's passage. It wasn't. To categorise the way the White House staff leapt out of their seats as respect for their leader's position would have been a gross misinterpretation of the facts. Today, nobody was standing for the President of the United States; they were standing for Josiah Bartlet, and the look on his face that could set the world on fire.

Toby followed a few steps behind; the taller of the two, but matching the pace only by an effort of will. Today, such niceties as the usual laws of the universe were set aside; today, their leader led, and they would follow if Jed Bartlet walked them into hell. He could feel the fire of tension rising and recognised it; it was a feeling he had marched to once before, through a storm and from a funeral to the podium where the truth would be told. It was that feeling, the one that he tapped into when the words were flowing with the unshakeable certainty of being right.

Power. Sheer, raw energy, boiling off the man ahead of him in waves. He almost fancied he could taste the metallic tang of lightning in the air, or maybe that was something like blood in his mouth where his jaw was locked in place so tightly it hurt.

Nobody had to tell Josh and CJ to fall without speaking in line to either side of him. Right now they weren't advisors, counsellors, strategists. They were warriors, in the service of a man who at this moment was more king than president. Where he led, they would follow, no negotiation and no hesitation.

In the Oval Office the president wheeled around and turned to face them, and nobody in the world would ever have hit on the word 'small' to describe him. His eyes were on fire, and his voice so low and steady it was deafening.

"I want to address the nation."

And they could have said a million things about how it wasn't usual, how it wouldn't be expected, all the ways it could be spun and all the things they should consider. But nobody did.

"CJ, make it happen," he said, in short, clipped tones which brooked no argument. "Josh, do what you do. I want no objections and no complications; this is happening, and it's happening today. Toby, get Sam back here and both of you come to me. I'm gonna say what I'm saying, and you're going to help me do it."

There were a million different reasons why the president shouldn't go on TV to address the nation in a fit of anger over his daughter's boyfriend's attack - and not one of them mattered a damn.

"Mr. President."

"Yes, sir." They inclined their heads respectfully, and made it happen.

It should have been a dark and stormy night. It should at the very least have been overcast, not a bright and sunny Sunday that looked and felt like any other.

There should have been something. Not just him, not just life, not the universe just ticking along as if nothing had changed and his world wasn't tearing itself apart from the inside out.

But nothing was the same and nothing was right, and he just needed something, just something, that would let him stand aside from the world a few moments and come back to himself. Just a chance to teach himself to remember how to breathe.

There should have been something, but there was just him, and that was the way it had always been.

He stood for a long time, considering his purchase. Contemplating, mulling it over, and maybe waiting. Waiting for the sign from God that everybody knew you ought to get when things were like this.

He took his purchase to the cash desk, and the young woman didn't even look at him as she bagged it and took his money. Then he brought it home, and it lay on his bed while he shrugged off his jacket and tie and thought about showering but didn't do it.

Then he picked it up, and looked at it.

Leo regarded the bottle for a long, long time. He still believed, right up until the moment he twisted the cap off, that he wasn't really going to drink it.

Abbey rushed into the waiting room with her Secret Service team behind her, trying not to let herself feel the ghosts of three years past. Today it wasn't a husband and a friend she was running towards, but a future son and the love of her daughter's life.

And she didn't have her medical licence. Never mind that the doctors here were as qualified as any in the world, that Charlie's most pressing need for medical attention had been long before she got here, that even were she not First Lady she would never have been called upon for assistance - she didn't have her medical licence, and she felt naked and helpless without it.

She couldn't be a doctor - but there was still one role she could play here, the same one she'd played that terrible night when all she'd known was there was a bullet in her husband's gut and no one would tell her how serious it was.

"Mom!" Zoey rushed into her arms and Abbey squeezed her tightly. Deanna hung back, but Abbey swept her up for a swift hug as well. Charlie's sister needed a mom every bit as much as her own daughter right now.

"Nobody's telling us anything, mom." Zoey's eyes begged nakedly for her mother to find a way to get answers that weren't there. "He's still unconscious, I don't-" She didn't seem to know how to finish the sentence, or else she didn't want to.

Abbey cursed her future son-in-law's doctors for keeping the girls in the dark even as her inner medic reminded her that there was probably no information for the them to give. And then she realised that there were more glaring absences than that of the attending physician.

"Where is everybody, Zoey? Where's your father?"

Zoey looked big-eyed and confused. "I don't know. It was dad, he said they had to go back to the White House, I'm not sure-"

Oh, please. Please God, not a national crisis. Not now. Anything but that.

Her worry must have shown on her face, because Zoey asked anxiously "Mom, you don't think it's-?"

"I don't know, sweetheart," she admitted. "Is there a TV around here?"

"Charlie has one in his room," Deanna pointed out quietly.

Abbey nodded slowly. "Well, I don't think he'll mind if we use it, do you, honey?"

Zoey offered her a fragile smile. "Maybe if we find some Fresh Prince of Bel-Air reruns to tune into he'll wake up just to make us change the channel."

For a second, the tightening around her heart at her daughter's bravery made it hard to breathe.

As they entered the room, she didn't miss Deanna's little gasp at the forcible reminder of her brother's condition, or the way Zoey's hand tightened in her own. Even as her inner physician dispassionately assessed swellings and bruises, her inner mother was urging her to defy all medical wisdom and just take the injured boy into her arms and hold him until he got better.

Come on, Charlie. Wake up for us. Please, just wake up for us.

Zoey crossed to the bed and took his hand in hers, pressing a kiss to his forehead that broke Abbey's heart. She spotted the framed photograph at his bedside, and recognised her husband's touch in it.

Jed loved the people around him more deeply and completely than anybody else she'd ever known. The fact that he wasn't here...

She turned on the TV. Despite the fact that she knew Charlie was unconscious, not asleep, and that anything that might wake him up was good, some stupidly misplaced instinct for good manners made her keep the volume hushed.

She switched to CNN for the news, in time to catch the anchor with a hand to his earpiece. "-And once again, in fifteen minutes we go live to the White House for a presidential address. Nobody knows exactly what we're about to hear, and the president is- ah. We're taking you live now to Julie, who's just outside the White House. Julie; has there been any indication of what the president intends to say?"

As the journalists debated amongst themselves, Zoey and Abbey exchanged troubled glances. What was going on?

"Joey." Josh rushed across the room towards her, relieved. "Kenny," he nodded as an afterthought. The translator blended so well into his partner's words and personality that it was sometimes difficult to remember that he had a whole existence of his own to go with it.

"What's going on, Joshua?" Joey demanded in her own voice. She started signing rapidly to Kenny.

"I got your message. You want me to pull together a poll right now? What about? What's happening?" She frowned at him, momentarily pulling her gaze away from Kenny's flashing fingers to take in the hive of activity that had overtaken the White House corridors.

Josh moved closer. "The president's giving a national address," he explained quietly.

"What's he going to say?" Kenny translated.

"Hey Sam," said Joey herself, as the speechwriter approached. Josh was so used to hearing Kenny as her voice that he was momentarily disoriented to hear her talk over her own statement.

"Hi, Joey," Sam smiled. "Hey, Kenny."

Josh turned to him. "That's a good point, Sam. What is he going to say?"

Sam gave a small smile; tense, but laced with a fiery self-satisfaction. "He's going to blow the roof off," he said, and the quiet, matter-of-fact tone made the statement ring with truth instead of hyperbole.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

Josh frowned. "Did you see Leo?"

He shook his head. "Donna was trying to call him."

"Yeah."

"He's not answering his phone?"

Josh couldn't help feeling a tiny bit worried, but thrust it aside as nothing more than itchy nerves from the upcoming address. "He must be sacked out, or else he's at the hospital."

"Yeah." Sam shook his head slowly. "I can't believe he's going to miss this."

"I know."

Josh realised Joey was still looking at him expectantly. "Okay," he said. "The president's gonna address the nation in about ten minutes; it's pretty much unprecedented, I don't know what he's going to say, but we need you to put together a poll and we need the results as fast as it's humanly possible to get them."

Joey made a rapid series of signs to Kenny.

"Would you like fries with that?"

Josh gave her a brief smile. "Can you do it?" he asked seriously.

Joey made an exaggerated shrug. "Whatever!"

It only took that to make him sure the polling was in good hands.

The president's face as he spoke to the camera was stern and firm-jawed with determination. "My fellow Americans, good evening. All of you are no doubt aware of the shooting that took place at Rosslyn, Virginia three years ago; considerably less of you will be aware of the attack that occurred yesterday evening - despite the fact that it was carried out for the exact same reason. Or rather, the exact same lack of reason."

His eyes were steely as he look directly ahead. It was a face his staff, his friends and his family had seen many, many times before - but not one that the public were usually permitted to.

"Last night, a racially motivated attack was carried out on my future son-in-law. He's lying in a hospital bed right now because somebody thought it was an unforgivable sin for him to have skin of one colour and love a young woman of another." He raised his head. "And why was three years ago international news and last night not so? Because I'm okay." He hesitated for a beat, and smiled wryly.

"But I'm not okay. This isn't okay. Last night, my son was the victim of a hate crime - and the assault of a bright, innocent young man who never did a wrong thing in his life will never be okay."

Nobody in the White House witnessing the broadcast missed the way he slipped into calling Charlie his son. And not one of them believed for a second it was calculated - or that he even knew he'd said it.

"Now, I'm told I shouldn't make this personal. But it is personal, and not just to me; it's personal to anybody who ever saw a loved one wounded or killed or rejected or hated for reasons that defy all reason."

The smile twisted again, a curl of fiery determination that was a world away from the cheerful, avuncular president the American public thought they knew. "I'm not prepared to lose a son to ignorance and pointless hatred," he said fiercely. "I'm not prepared to lose anybody. Too many precious lives in this country are ruined every day by racism, by homophobia, by religious intolerance... well, it stops here and it stops now. It's time we stopped letting bigots hide behind the Constitution. The Constitution wasn't written to defend your right to hate your fellow Americans - it was written to defend their right to be an American. And it's time we stopped pretending that making out any one citizen to be less than another because of race - or gender, or religion, or how they choose to live their life - is anything less than the travesty it is."

The power of his gaze was such that everybody in the room felt it turned on them alone - and perhaps even those seeing it through their TV screens felt the same. "Too much innocent blood has been shed already - and every further drop is a greater crime. We want to call our country the land of the free - well, it's about time we lived up to that. Because freedom is freedom for everybody, and until every man, woman and child in this country can be who they are and what they are without fear, without apology, and without the suggestion that they are somehow less of an American than their neighbour, we haven't achieved that." His hands were tight in fists as he spoke.

"America is more than a country, it's an ideal, born in the minds of men who wanted a better world for their children and their children's children. And being one of those children isn't about sharing the colour of their skin or following the same religion, because America is bigger than that. America is an idea that was built to house everybody." He smiled then, and slipped his hands into his pockets in a gesture that a few key people would recognise well.

"We are America, we are the people, and whatever it takes and wherever it takes us, we are going to build a more perfect union."

Zoey continued to stare, mouth agape, at the TV screen. Not entirely pointlessly, since they were after all re-running sections of the president's address ad infinitum. Maybe after the hundredth or so she might be able to believe it.

"Mom, did he just- Am I, you know, losing it, or did he actually just-?"

"I don't know, honey." Her mother was still watching the address on repeat, with a slightly glazed smile that Zoey was doing her best to ignore - because she had a vague idea of what was going on behind it, and anything involving her mother, those kind of thoughts, and her father, she was not touching with a barge pole, no sir.

Of course, had they been in some dangerously warped parallel universe where her mother could have those kind of thoughts and her father was somebody about whom such thoughts could be thought, then that speech would probably have been able to spark them. Zoey could see the way her father had been on fire, so caught up in the passion of his words that he practically glowed even through the TV screen.

Zoey knew her father loved Charlie; had never doubted it, even through the distinctly nerve-wracking period when their secret engagement had hit the newspapers before her parents heard about it. But to hear him stand up before the nation, before the world, and make a speech like that...

It wasn't a political manoeuvre. Oh, you could call it politics, but something so passionately felt and so close to home; if he'd wanted to score points, there were safer ways to do it. Even a novice like her could tell he'd left himself open to attack about pushing personal agendas or ignoring problems until they landed in his own backyard.

But the words hadn't rung that way to her, and she was willing to bet that they hadn't to the majority of Americans, either. Because could anybody, anybody, watch that speech and believe her father didn't mean every word of it? You couldn't pass it off as some kind of grandstanding or empty promises when he poured that much of his soul into it.

Deanna was sniffing back tears beside her, and trying to keep her composure in the awkward way of someone well aware they were the youngest in the room and trying not to seem it. "You okay, Deena?" Zoey asked softly, slipping back into the nickname she'd supposedly grown out of, although she didn't seem to notice.

She nodded, jaw trembling, and swiped her eyes aggressively with her sleeve. "That was- That was amazing."

"I don't know," came a weak, slightly ragged voice from behind them. "I thought he was kind of ropey on the second section. And that whole thing with the leaning his arms on the desk-"

"Charlie!" Zoey squealed. She and Deanna rushed over to huddle up to him, and just as quickly pulled back at the first twinge of pain to cross his features. Her mother beamed, and immediately clicked into doctor-mode.

"Okay, Charlie, could you look at me a moment? I just want to check a few things..."

But Zoey didn't need to hear the medical diagnosis to see what was important. Charlie was awake, and he was still Charlie. And nothing, nothing else mattered.

Later, much later, they were back in the Residence. Alone for the first time, with the jubilation of Charlie's recovery fading to a muted glow of relief, Jed and Abbey locked eyes.

"So I guess we should talk," Jed conceded softly.

"I guess we should," she agreed neutrally.

Jed sighed, and looked at the carpet for a moment. Not - for the first time in days - as an attempt to avoid her gaze, but rather an acknowledgement that she had the right of the matter. As she always did.

He looked up. "I... I know I was making promises. Grand promises, when I should be..." Even now, the admission was hard to choke out; "When I should be seriously thinking about whether I can continue to do this job at all."

And Abbey smiled at him, and crossed the room, and kissed him tenderly. "Jed," she said, in the way that always made his own name sound more complex and beautiful than he could ever have imagined. "I turned on the TV tonight, and you know what I saw? I saw my husband. And it wasn't until I saw him up there that I realised how much I've been missing him lately."

She was silent for a moment, a beat of his heart which didn't sound. "Jed, I don't want you to resign. Not... not like this. Not as a pre-emptive measure. We've come too far to walk away on a maybe. I love you, Jed, and I'm terrified. But I don't want to steal your soul to try and save your life. Jed... you're the president. It's not just who you are, it's what you were born to be. And as much as it hurts, I know you belong up there, and I know it's wrong to make you walk away one second before you have to."

And there it was; the capitulation that he'd in his secret moments prayed for. And yet... For her...

"Abbey..." he said slowly. Tasting the name, and everything it meant to him. "You know that if you asked me to resign, I would do it."

Her smile could have broken his heart in so many different ways. "I know."

"And I wouldn't hate you for it," he said earnestly. "I could never hate you."

"I know," she nodded softly. "And sometimes I think that's what hurts the most."

There was a long moment of silent communication, in which worlds rose and fell, and a lifetime of love was spoken, shared and understood.

As always, the words were completely unnecessary, and the only thing in the world worth saying.

"I love you."

And Abbey smiled back. "I love you too... Mr. President."

They kissed, softly, almost chastely; an echo of a kiss on the front steps of a library when he'd watched her laugh and talked about nothing and never quite admitted that he'd never kissed a girl before. For an instant he was twenty, and he didn't know what it was like to be anything but invincible.

And then she pulled away, and he wasn't twenty anymore, but that didn't matter, because there were things in life that were better than twenty. And she would always be one of them.

Her smile folded itself away, but it was not into sorrow or dismay but determination.

"And now we do need to talk."

He sat down on the edge of the bed, and smiled faintly up at her. "How about you do the talking, and I'll listen?"

Her smile was dry, and laced with something stronger than steel. "Yes. You will."

For once, he seemed able to do it right, and simply watched and listened. Abbey sat down beside him, and tilted his chin with her hand to look him in the eye.

"You want to be president. I want you to be president." The flash of fear and pain in her eyes cut through his very soul, the more because he knew she didn't want it to. "But I don't want to lose you, Jed. I don't want to see you fade away from me. I don't want to see you hurting."

He kissed her forehead; not a silencer, just comfort. She laid her head against his shoulder for a moment before straightening up again.

"Jed... I need you to understand this. I need you to be able to believe this. That this is real, that this is you, and you can't run away from it. You can't pretend it doesn't exist, and you can't... You can't make it not real. You have to let it be real, and you have to deal with it, and you have to do that every day."

He kissed her again, and surrendered to the future he'd been fighting for a decade. "I know."

Abbey sat up and pulled away from him. He could see the mental shutters go down as she became the voice of authority. "Then this is what you're gonna do."

He waited, resigned to his future.

Well, maybe nine parts resigned to one part nervous.

Scared, even.

Terrified, possibly.

...Help?

Abbey folded her arms and narrowed her eyes. "You need to look after your health. And when I mean that, I mean that. You will go on a diet, and no, I mean a real diet. You will give up all those saturated fats you love so much. You will eat a large portion of vegetables every day, and not just as a side dish to your big juicy steak. You will eat fish instead of red meat, and if you so much as breathe in a room containing junk food, there will be trouble. You will eat fresh fruit, and you will give up sugar. You will exercise. You will not smoke. You will drink less coffee and less alcohol. You will rest when you need to, and no, I don't give a damn about your presidential schedule. You will do what I tell you, because this is the new deal, and if you break this one, all bets are off."

Wild horses wouldn't have dragged him into making an interjection right then. She tilted her head challengingly.

"And now you think I'm telling you this, but you don't know the half of it. You see, I'm not just talking to you. I'm talking to Leo, I'm talking to Charlie, I'm talking to the senior staff. I'm talking to your doctors, your chef, and the Secret Service. I'm talking to housekeeping, admin, and the guy who polishes the hubcaps on the presidential limo. Don't think you can manipulate anybody into helping you break this diet, because it will not happen. I know you are not unreasonable enough to have somebody fired if they won't bring you junk food, but I can - and I will - make it happen if they do. From now on, helping you to break your diet will be classed as an attempt to cause the president physical harm, and will be treated as such. Are we absolutely, perfectly clear on this?"

He gave a quick, nervous nod, and she suddenly flashed a grin at him.

"Still want to be president, honey?"

He smiled back, and waggled his eyebrows. "Did I ever tell you that you're hot when you're like this?"

She laughed, a sound that sent tingles through every imaginable part of his body, and wrapped him in a hug.

"I'm dead serious about this," she said into his shoulder.

"Okay."

"Especially the diet."

"Okay."

"You're starting tomorrow morning. In fact, you're starting now."

"Uh-huh."

"Those cookies in the box at the bottom of the cabinet? Lose 'em."

"Okay."

"And the secret candy stash in the Oval Office you think I don't know about."

"Okay."

"And take that bag of cheese puffs out of your jacket pocket."

He pulled away from her embrace. "Hey! How did you-?"

She smirked triumphantly. "I know everything."

Jed smiled. "I noticed that too." He kissed her nose. "Did you know you can burn twenty-six calories in a minute-long kiss?"

She gave him a look that didn't quite cover the amusement underneath. "Jed."

"And sex burns three-hundred and sixty calories an hour."

"An hour?" Abbey looked at him from under her lashes. "My, we're ambitious."

He reached for her. "I have it on good authority that the First Lady of the United States finds grand ambition very sexy."

"Does she now? And how does she feel about delusions of grandeur?"

"She likes those too, as long as they're mine."

"She does," Abbey agreed.

He kissed her again, and she kissed him back.

MONDAY:

"Mr. McGarry? This is your Monday morning wake-up call."

The chirpy young woman at the other end of the hotel phone had no idea that truer words had never been spoken.

He levered himself up on his elbows, feeling the familiar thickness in his throat, and already the urge. Just one more drink, to make it better. Just one more drink, to take it away.

The bottle was empty. This hotel room that doubled as his home had no mini-bar, something he was frustrated by even as it relieved him.

It was funny how, when you hadn't had a drink in years, you thought you knew what craving was. But now, with the memory of last night's consumption still in his system...

He clenched his hands into fists, for a moment fighting himself so hard he literally couldn't move. He wouldn't take another drink. Wouldn't. Wouldn't. Wouldn't. He wouldn't have one, didn't need one - but that was a lie, that was a lie so big it was impossible to swallow, he needed one so badly he could feel himself shake...

He wouldn't. Wouldn't. Wouldn't. He'd beaten it before, he could do it again. He could. People were depending on him.

People had been depending on him last night. And he'd let them down so badly... but oh, how easily another a drink would wipe the pain of that away...

Leo tried to find some semblance of poise in the morning rituals of dressing and shaving, but it eluded him. The itch at the back of his mind that never fully went away had been boosted, and now it was a constant blur of white static, getting in the way of all his thoughts.

He found the phone and checked his messages.

Bleep. "Leo, this is Donna. Are you there? The president's calling everybody back to the White House."

Bleep. "Leo, are you there? The president's going to address the nation."

Bleep. "Leo, it's me. If you're hearing this, turn on your TV. Seriously, Leo, turn on your TV."

Bleep. "Leo! Still asleep? Good! You work too hard. No, don't make that face at me. Anyway, Charlie's awake! He's pretty beaten up, but Abbey assures me all parts are in working order, and he spoke to Zoey before he went back to sleep again. I'll see you tomorrow, when you will no doubt be kicking my ass for pulling what I did last night without consulting you. And Leo - don't let me catch you creeping back into work at four AM, or I'll have the Secret Service throw you out of the building. Clear?"

Leo automatically glanced at his watch. Almost seven; early for some, but unbelievably late by the internal clock he lived by.

Charlie had woken up, the president had been doing God only knew what, and meanwhile he'd been here, passed out and drunk in his hotel room. Once again, a major league screw-up, courtesy of Leo McGarry. He'd let everybody down, and if the president turned out to have done something rash or irrational, it was on his head and nobody else's. He'd failed in his duties, and abused the trust Jed put in him.

But, since he didn't know what else to do with himself, he simply went to work.

And tried not to think about having another drink.

Unsuccessfully.

His hand hesitated over the speed-dial. Oh, for God's sake, do it, muttered an irritable voice in the back of his head that sounded disconcertingly like Toby. He dialled.

"Hello?"

"Mom, it's me."

A dangerously long silence, and then they both spoke at the same time.

"Mom, I-"

"Sam-"

He started talking, before she had a chance to say anything and shake whatever instant of courage had made him make this call. "Mom, I needed to- I just had to-" He could hear the way his voice was cracking, but he couldn't seem to prevent it. "Mom, a friend of mine was just beaten up because of who he's getting married to, and I-" He knew what he wanted to say, he was a speechwriter for God's sake, but the words just wouldn't choke themselves out. "Mom..."

Please... why won't you talk to me? Why won't you listen to me? What did I do, what's wrong with me, why can't you let me be who I am? Why can't you just be my mom? Please...

"Sam..." He could hear in her voice that she was upset. And he hated that she was upset and he hated that he'd upset her and he hated that she found this so upsetting...

"Mom, I just- I love Steve. I know you don't- I know you don't really understand that, but it's true. I'm... I'm sorry that I couldn't, that I didn't talk to you before, but I can't just... Mom, I'm just, I'm just what I am, and if you can't-" He could barely stay coherent as he skirted on the edge of breaking down.

Please mom, say something. Can't you just... say something?

When his mother's voice finally came, it was heartbreakingly hesitant. "Sam, I'm sorry, I- I don't understand it. I don't understand why you-" She broke off, and when she spoke again, he could hear the mother that he recognised. "But you're my son, and, and I'm your mother. And I don't have to understand you to still love you."

"Okay, mom," he said, breaking into a smile through unshed tears. His voice still sounded hoarse and ragged in his own ears.

"You're my boy. I don't want- I don't want you to be hurting."

"I'm okay, mom. I... I am. Really."

"Mrs. Harris from the corner shop was saying terrible things about you."

"It doesn't matter, mom," he told her gently.

"I told her to shove it up her ass."

"Mom!" He spluttered into startled laughter.

"You're my boy, Samuel. And it doesn't matter what they say about you, because I know you, and just because I- I know you would never do anything wrong. You're my boy, and you'd never do anything that was wrong."

He smiled softly. "I have to go to work now, mom," he pointed out quietly.

"Okay, Sam. You take care now."

"I will. Goodbye, mom."

He put the phone down, and looked up. Steve was leaning against the doorway, smiling fondly at him.

"Everything okay?" he asked gently.

"Yeah. Yeah, it is." He crossed the room, and gave Steve a quick kiss on the cheek. "I'm going to work."

Steve nodded. "And I'm going back to bed. Where I will stay until gone eight o'clock, like any normal, civilised human being."

"Oh, you do impressions?"

"I'm multi-talented."

Sam smiled. "I'll see you later?"

"If I haven't run off with somebody who keeps more reasonable hours."

"Okay." Before he left, he planted another quick kiss on Steve.

Just because he could.

Jed smiled brightly at his oldest friend as he entered the office. "You missed quite the fireworks display last night," he said dryly.

"Yeah." Leo sounded exhausted; Jed gave him a worried, assessing look. His Chief of Staff always worked himself too hard, but it wasn't like him to be anything less than impeccably presented on the surface.

"You okay?"

"I'm fine." Leo answered too quickly, not looking at him. Jed regarded him sternly over the top of his glasses.

"I could order you home, you know," he threatened.

"I'm fine," Leo repeated snappishly. Jed didn't believe it, but he let it slide. He shuffled papers on his desk.

"I smoothed things out with Abbey."

"Yeah?" Leo looked relieved.

He pulled a face. "I have been put on a Diet." He considered it more than worthy of the mental capital letter he assigned it. "Abbey's taking the White House staff to DefCon three - if I so much as think about breathing the wrong air, she'll hear about it."

Normally Leo would have made a smart remark about now, but today he said nothing. Jed sighed, and looked up at him.

"I'd be lying if I said I was thrilled, but I guess I had it coming. It's a small enough price for the conceit of believing I had a right to do this job. We all have to make our sacrifices." Indeed, the myriad ways it could have turned out worse... Yes, when you stacked it up against the alternatives, a Machiavellian health plan suddenly didn't seem so bad.

Jed assumed, from the uncomfortable expression on Leo's face, that his Chief of Staff privately agreed with him.

Everybody fell silent as Josh, Joey and Kenny entered the room. For somebody with such an abysmal poker face, the Deputy Chief of Staff was doing a remarkable job of revealing nothing. Only the preternatural brightness to his eyes and the bounce to his step betrayed the whirlwind going on under the surface.

The president stood, and the others copied him. They all awaited the verdict; Sam frowning with nervous tension, CJ grinning for the same reason, Toby blank-faced as ever but with a burning intensity in his eyes.

Josh turned to the pollster beside him, and gave her an encouraging smile. "Mr. President," she acknowledged, and then began signing rapidly to Kenny.

"We're just starting to get a decent section of the results in now. Obviously the figures are very soft at this stage, and we can expect a certain amount of bias along employment lines owing to the timing of the sampling period-"

"That's fine," the president nodded understandingly.

CJ nodded. "Nobody expects perfect numbers this soon; just anything you can tell us about what America thought of last night's speech."

Joey hesitated.

"The numbers on practicality are wobbly - general feeling is the president was pretty vague on what he was actually proposing."

"I noticed that too," the president said dryly. He glanced around at his senior staff. "That's what this lot here are for." They all straightened up, some more perceptibly than others.

"First Amendment issues?" Toby queried.

"Pretty well split," Kenny relayed. "To a certain extent along party lines. He got good numbers on taking a stance on these issues, but-"

"But that doesn't mean much on an official government poll," Josh nodded.

"The bigots aren't registering their prejudices with the government?" CJ queried dryly. "Colour me surprised."

Sam looked to Joey. "What about sincerity?" Everybody tensed.

Joey grinned widely. "Eighty-four percent," she said, in her own voice.

The room exploded. Eighty-four percent of Americans believed the president had been sincere in his determination to get tough on hate crimes and stamp out prejudice. Soft numbers be damned, that was the kind of figure no sudden downward swing could possibly erase.

The president waved his ecstatic staff into silence. "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Before we all get carried away, I have a second announcement to make." He hesitated for a long moment, and then smiled brightly. "As you all know, Charlie woke up yesterday evening, and is well on the way to recovery. Well, he and Zoey spent most of the night talking... and I can now tell you that in five months' time, my daughter will officially become Mrs. Zoey Patricia Bartlet-Young."

"Congratulations, Mr. President!" CJ said, amidst the other exclamations of delight. Her eyes were beginning to glisten with tears of both relief and suppressed grief, and Toby lightly touched her hand. She smiled at him gratefully.

"I think commiserations are more the order of the day," he refuted, pulling a mock-stern face that he couldn't quite maintain for long enough. His face was split by a brilliant grin, and the staff exchanged another round of hugs and gleeful words.

The crisis point was past. Charlie was going to be okay, the tabloid scandal over Sam's sexuality had been blasted out of existence by more newsworthy events, and the hate crimes initiative they'd been forced to set aside had just been given a kick-start of a magnitude none of them could have envisaged. Things they'd long dreaded had come to pass - and they were still standing. If that wasn't reason enough to celebrate, then what was?

And if, amidst the celebrations, Leo McGarry seemed a little more subdued than his companions... well, nobody saw anything incredibly unusual in that.