'Love means never having to say you're sorry' is the dumbest thing I ever heard

A modern Pride and Prejudice with a swirl of The West Wing and a dash of What's Up Doc?

If you are midway through watching The West Wing and do not want to know what happens, stop reading, finish watching it, then come back. I would hate to spoil anything for you. For everyone else, not having watched The West Wing shouldn't be a handicap. However, just in case you would like to know exactly who these people are, here is a brief run down. Liberties have been taken with the eight years between the end of President Bartlet, and the end of President Santos. My word is not law. The word of Aaron Sorkin, Peter Bogdanovich and Jane Austen, however, is.

Dramatis Personae:

Matthew Santos: President of the United States of America.

Josiah "Jed" Bartlet: the previous President, under whom worked:

Joshua Lyman: Deputy Chief of Staff to Bartlet, Campaign Manager for Santos, now Chief of Staff for Santos.

Donna Moss Lyman: Josh's PA, worked on Santos campaign, Chief of Staff to Helen Santos, married to Josh Lyman.

Sam Seaborn: Deputy Communications Director to Bartlet, ran for office in CA, Director of Communications for Santos, was Democratic Presidential Nominee.

Ainsley Hayes: Associate White House Counsel for Bartlet. White House Counsel under Santos, married to Sam Seaborn.

Toby Ziegler: Director of Communications for Bartlet, disgraced and fired, now teaching at Columbia University.

Claudia Jean "C.J." Cregg: White House Press Secretary, promoted to Chief of Staff following retirement of Leo McGarry.

Will Bailey: Deputy Communications Director, Chief of Staff to vice-president Bob Russell, campaign manager for Russell, then promoted to Director of Communications following firing of Ziegler.

PART I

Damn Candidates

The elevator doors ding open, and Will no more than starts to move forward when he stops, and steps back into the car, making room for Charlie to amble in beside him.

"Where are you going?"

Charlie looks up, mid way through a yawn, both hands clasped behind his neck. "Just for a walk." He grins ruefully. "Every joint has seized while sitting at that desk."

Will nods, and leans back against the wall, pulling out his Blackberry. "I'll come too."

"You really don't have to. I don't need baby-sitting."

Will glances up. "I know," he says, slightly surprised. "I only meant…I needed to talk to you about something anyway." He gestures generally to the panel of buttons. "Going anywhere specifically?"

Charlie shrugs, and punches the 'B' before leaning back against the wall. "What did you need to talk to me about?"

Will, midway through frowning at a message, looks up, momentarily confused. "What? Oh…" he continues, shoves his Blackberry in a pocket, and straightens up. "Jaime gave me the drafts for the Democrats Together speech."

"Oh? Any good?"

The airy interest proves to Will that his suspicions were correct.

"Yes," he says, pulling out a sheaf of papers from under his arm. "Remarkably so." He studies the pages, rifling through them as he talks. "I don't think I've seen writing this good since, I don't know…" He looks up. "The State of the Union?"

If there was ever any doubt about Charlie's political abilities, the fact that his face remains impassive proves his worth.

"Really?"

"Charles." Will's voice is wavering between amusement and threat.

"Fine." Charlie moves against the back wall of the elevator as it stops several floors short of their destination. Two women walk in, both on phones, and Charlie lowers his voice. "But you know very well that they are dismal."

Will rubs his forehead. "Who are we talking about?"

"Those idiots on the communications team." It's the nearest that Will has seen Charlie get to angry in a long time. "I mean," he continues, slightly calmer, "you've got a great team here Will. Jaime and Matt and Viv and Lou and, you know…" He looks a little resigned. "Even Caroline. They're the best, and I have no idea why they're working for me, but Will," he continues, jaw set, "the communications, the speeches, even some of the press releases? They're not good."

One of the women glance up at them, and smiles slightly, still on the phone. Charlie calms for a second, and returns it. Will ignores her.

"They'll get better. The press releases certainly are."

The doors open again, and the women walk out, still on phones. Will starts to walk, while Charlie remains leaning against the wall.

"Really?"

Will sighs. "Yes. I mean, I know the early few were dire, but that was before Caroline came on board, and she really has whipped them into shape."

"Yeah, I guess…"

"But you really can't be writing all your own speeches. Not now."

Charlie pushes off the wall, and begins to walk, slowly, Will keeping pace beside him.

"Who else will?"

"You have a whole staff."

Charlie stops, rounds on Will. "Are you not listening to me? They're dreadful! Did you never hear Barker talk?"

"This is different."

"No Will, it's not!" He leans defeated against a wall. "We've both always said that Barker just couldn't be that dumb. He couldn't," he adds, certain. "And yet? He sounded like an idiot in every single speech, every single time he stood up."

Will rubs his forehead again. "It's not the same. They aren't that bad. Look, I'll admit, that one time in Boston was bad, but they've been getting better and recently…" He pauses and sighs. "Well, recently you've probably been writing them yourself."

Charlie lets out a great sigh in return, and starts to walk again. "Yeah, well, it's the only way."

Together they push open the double doors to the restaurant, open at all hours whilst the building is so busy. The room is gloomy, most of the light coming from spotlights over the counters and coffee makers. A few people sit at one table, one woman at another, on the phone. Will automatically walks towards the coffee maker, and pours himself one. He offers it to Charlie, but is turned down with a wave of the hand. Will slumps into a chair, papers and pens, his Blackberry, his two phones all spilling out across the tables surface. Charlie remains standing, leaning against the counter.

"Look," he begins. "I know it's dumb, and I know I'm writing stuff that I could farm out to an eighth grader. I know that Will," he adds, "but I can't be reading speeches which aren't as good as I could write. I look at the stuff they send up to you, and I try to reconcile myself to it. I know I can't do this permanently. But Will," he implores, sitting down. "I'm better than this. Those two months in the West Wing, I was surrounded by great writers."

Will sips his coffee, and raises an eyebrow. "Wasn't the fact that there were no great writers the reason they drafted you in?"

Charlie laughs. "Well, maybe, but only briefly. You could feel them though. The history, that weighty history of great words and thoughts all coming from there." He shakes his head. "It felt like I could write anything. Like I could have just a fraction of the greatness of the ones who came before." He shrugs. "And now? Where's my Toby Zeigler? Where's my Sam Seaborn?"

"Will Bailey," mutters Will, rubbing his neck, trying to ease out a few kinks before going back to his office.

"Yes! Where's my Will Bailey? In fact," he continues, "where are they anyway? Any of them out of work?"

Will raises an incredulous eyebrow. "You want to get, what, Toby, Will and Sam as your writing staff?"

Charlie grins. "Wouldn't that be amazing?"

Will smiles very slightly. "Well, Will's off representing the Oregon 4th, anyone that Toby would respect enough to work for he wouldn't want to bring down by association, and you know Sam's out. That's the only reason why there's any point in campaigning. He would have had every single Democrat behind him, with Jed Bartlet front and centre."

"And Matt Santos just behind…" Charlie sighs, and slumps. "Is there any word on what 'personal matter' caused Sam to drop out?"

Will chews his lip for a second. "Josh Lyman blurted it out this morning. His wife lost a baby. Well, he and his wife…"

Charlie stills. "Really? That's awful. Should I send something or do…?"

Will shakes his head slowly. "I don't think so. He asked for privacy and has deliberately not said anything. The only reason I know is that Josh had a bit of a moment."

"Probably starting to realise that he's got to actually, you know, have a life after the White House." Charlie grins, and links his hands behind his neck, stretching. "So I have no writing team."

"I'll look into it."

"And we'll have to fire our present writers."

"I'll look into that too. It's not like there's no jobs available around here right now for political writers."

"There aren't for the dreadful ones."

Will smiles a little. "I'll send them Bob Russell's way. He won't be any the wiser."

Charlie snorts and stands up. Draining his coffee, Will gathers his things, shoving all he can in his pockets, the rest in his arms, and also stands. "Going back upstairs?" he asks, beginning to walk.

Charlie smiles mysteriously, and takes the pages, stapled together, from Will's pile labelled 'Democrats Together' with talk to C scrawled across the top. "It's not quite right yet. I want another go." He drops it on the table, and ambles towards the coffee machine, pulling out a pen.

"Charles," says Will, warningly.

Charlie turns and grins. "The sooner you find me a Ziegler, the sooner I'll stop writing."

Will sighs, pinches the bridge of his nose, and then turns and walks out. Charlie smiles to himself, and it broadens as he helps a beautiful blonde to a coffee. "You all right?" he asks, noting her wet eyes.

She smiles and Charlie catches his breath. "I'm fine," she says. "Just a little home sick."

Charlie gestures to the table. "Sit with me?" he asks. And she does.

Earlier that day

"Sorry! I'm so sorry. You haven't been waiting long?"

Josh Lyman glances up from the paper and smiles. "No. Anyway, it gives me a chance to read the paper. Remarkable," he adds "how I just don't have time for it any more."

Will drops into the chair opposite. "I'd imagine that making the news leaves little time for reading it."

Josh laughs, and hands Will a menu as the waitress comes over. "Black coffee and half a grapefruit please," he says. "Have you decided?"

Will rubs a hand over his face. "Coffee and some kind of Danish? One with lots of icing and…" He half smiles. "A decent sugar injection. Thank you," he adds as the waitress scribbles down their order and turns to leave. Will turns to Josh. "So. Half a grapefruit?"

Josh groans, good naturedly. "Yeah, well I'm not as young as I once was, as my wife continually reminds me. She'd rather I didn't end up in an early grave, and so curtails the sugar intake."

"And you conform even when she's not here?"

Josh grins. "Happy to be whipped," he says, a rueful glance at a plate of pancakes and syrup as they pass. "Anyway, I steal food off of my daughter's plate." He grins again and shakes his head. "And this is what I have become."

Will smiles. "I don't know. The prospect of family and the little things…they seem quite attractive at five AM."

Josh laughs. "At which time this morning I had my eighteen month old daughter, screaming with an ear infection, and was simultaneously trying to find my extensive notes on the federal budget." He sighs, and gratefully accepts his breakfast. "Again," he says. "Happy to be whipped." His face falls. "It falls into perspective when things like Sam, you know?"

Will takes a sip of his coffee, and shakes his head slowly. "I don't actually. It has all been kept very quiet and…"

Josh runs a hand across his face. "Oh, damn. Well…" He pauses. "Sorry, Will. I forget you're not Toby or Sam or…" He pauses again, then, in an undertone, "Ainsley lost a baby. Far on too. They had to take her in and…" He sighs, making a helpless gesture with his hands. "Sam dropped out of the running to be with her."

Will takes a breath. "That's awful. So… I'm guessing he doesn't want to be contacted."

"No," says Josh slowly. "He wants privacy right now."

"Of course." He sighs, breakfast forgotten. "What a hideous decision to have to make."

Josh smiles slightly. "It's not at all. In that moment it's the easiest decision in the world. It's in the quiet afterwards that you wonder if it was right." He shrugs. "I know when Donna was hurt there was nothing else, no where else I could have been." He smiles. "When it comes to down to the wire, you discover where you heart is."

"Yeah," says Will, quietly, picking at the edges of his Danish.

Josh sits up straighter, and starts into his grapefruit. "So," he says, "how's the campaign going?"

The previous subject now pushed aside, Will takes a second, then says "I'd reckon you know as well as I do."

Josh laughs. "Maybe, although I don't know how it is from inside the campaign. It's looking good though."

Will shrugs. "It feels good. We're working hard. Harder than ever, but it's good. Bingley's really excited and that seems to be coming out. And you know, everyone's buzzing about how young he is and what a good successor for change and…" He shrugs again, a little indifferent.

Josh pauses, mid way through dissecting his food. "You don't agree?"

Will starts picking again at his breakfast, unwinding the pastry. "Not necessarily. I just think maybe this should be more than it is. No one talks about issues. No one wants to debate. It's all character and whether he's too young and inexperienced or whether he'll bring new life to the party."

Josh eats the last few pieces, pushes his now empty grapefruit skin aside, and takes a sip of coffee. "They're testing the ground. It's going to take a while before people really start to listen."

Will shrugs again. "I'm not sure. After having the first Hispanic president, people seem to be crazy for another first. The youngest, the first woman…it's like if a black, young woman turned up, she'd be voted in before she could reveal a single policy."

"That's why you need to get in there and start talking policies, start teasing out the politics from the picture."

"Yeah," says Will, not entirely convinced. "So," he continues, "who's looking good to you? Whose campaign would you run?"

Josh laughs. "None of them. If I started another campaign now, Donna would kill me. I'm not even kidding."

Will smiles. "Hypothetically."

"All right," he says, and with both elbows on the table, coffee between his hands, he considers. "Bingley is certainly polling the best. His youth and exuberance are absolutely helping. You're campaigning well. Oh, and the speeches. Toby told me that too. He thought the speeches were suddenly much better."

Will rolls his eyes. "Yeah, well we're working on that. The speech writer is way over qualified, and should be doing other things…" He shakes his head. "Damn candidates."

Josh laughs. "The uncontrollable ones often turn out to be the best."

"So who else?"

"Dawn Lee is good. She's changed her mind on some policy which doesn't necessarily look good, but then it shows an awareness of the campaign itself, maybe. They're riding the same character wave as you though."

"Yeah."

Josh pauses for a second. "Have you heard about Saul Zimmerman?"

"He's coming way down the polls, isn't he?"

"Well," says Josh. "He won't exactly be breaking new ground. He's no young, black, woman." He smirks. "Anyway, his campaign is pretty ropey. I'm not sure who's running it, but they could do with being fired."

"What's he like?" Something is fluttering inside of Will. It's that expression on Josh's face that's doing it. It's the same one he had eight years ago, almost the first time they met.

"Interesting. Stubborn as hell. One of the smartest men I think I've ever seen though."

"No. You who worked for President Bartlet?"

Josh laughs, and shrugs. "I know," he says, "and yet…there's something about him." He shrugs again. "He's very interesting. Keep an eye on him."

Their eyes lock for a second, and Will feels like maybe there's more to this moment than just friendly chat. He'd never leave Charles, would he? They don't just work together. They're friends, going on ten years. It's not something you drop because of opportunity and fame. Will takes a breath and smiles. "Sure," he says, and vows to keep an eye on Saul Zimmerman, just enough to be wary, not enough to be interested.

Beeping from Josh's pocket disturbs them. He glances down. "Oh, I've got to go," he says. "Sorry it wasn't quite the catch up we planned. Donna said to come round to dinner some time maybe?"

Will nods. "Sure, that'd be nice."

"OK."

They both stand up, and shake hands, and then Josh is gone, striding out back to the White House. Will sits back down for a second, and breathes again. No. It'd be safer to just not think about Saul Zimmerman at all. And with that, he adds his money to that which Josh left, and leaves.

"We fly to beauty as an asylum from the terrors of finite nature."

"And what's that?"

She turns where she sits on the top fence rail and smiles at her father. "Emerson."

Rex Bennet leans against the rail, gazing off across the fields in the early morning sun light. The grass sparkles with dew, and the bees are beginning to hover over the flowers around the house. The sun has risen behind the trees on the horizon, and their spidery, feathered shapes tower, rustling in the breeze. Behind them now comes the sound of horses, stamping and breathing out heavily, harrumphing. Sol leads one out, tall and dark, stepping proudly. Rex shakes his head slowly. "I don't know. What happens when finite nature is beautiful?"

Elizabeth smiles. "I'm not sure. Is it?"

He shrugs. "I'm not sure I understand it anyway. I like they way life cycles round though."

"You're not scared of dying?"

He laughs. "Concerned for my health sweet pea?" He straightens up, and sighs. "I've had a good life and I know where I'm going after. Why fear the end? What is it those singers you like say? The first and last breaths don't matter?"

She nods, and turns back to the view before her. "It's all the ones that are in between" she murmurs.

"Exactly. And I'm making the most of those breaths, and not worrying about the last one, which," he adds, his arm around his daughter, his bristly cheek against her arm, "will be a good way away."

She grins, and slips the arm round to his shoulders. "Good."

They stay that way for a minute, both looking out across the land. Then, Rex stirs. "You any closer to knowing what you're going to do with your life?"

She laughs. "No. Not really. Nothing seems right."

He shakes his head slowly. "You can do anything," he says, with a smile. "Just don't do it too far away."

She smiles, touched. "OK," she whispers.

"Well then, the work ain't going to do itself is it?" With that he straightens up and walks away, whistling between his teeth. She hears her mother getting up inside the house, the shower running. It'll be at least half an hour until breakfast, so she sighs, climbs down off the fence, and heads off after her father.

A week later

"You have got to be kidding me! What's wrong with the bunk house?"

My daughter whirls around, arms full of bedding, hair whacking her in the face which is, not for the first time, incredulous.

"Lizzie, can you just do it?"

She gets that stubborn look. The one that first appeared when she learned to walk, and wanted to climb the stairs. She couldn't speak, but boy did we know what that face said. Her mouth settles in a firm line. Frown sets in. Everything tense. "What's wrong with the bunk house?" she says again, slowly, anger brimming.

My wife runs a hand across her face. "Nothing is wrong bunk house. Nothing at all. But I have decided that these guests will sleep in the house."

"But why?"

"Sweet pea" I interject. "Just do as your mother says."

She glances down over the stair rail to see me, in the hall, and her frown deepens. She has lost and she knows it, and yet she's not going to go down graciously. "But what's wrong with it? Why if every other guy who stays gets put in there, why do these guys get our bedrooms at our inconvenience? Why?"

I laugh. I can't help it. "Darlin', it's no inconvenience to you! Jane shares your bed for one night which you'll yak through anyway, and we make up the study roll-away. The only person getting put out is your mother with all these extra linens, and she doesn't appear to mind."

She sighs, looking seven again, and begins to walk downstairs to the study, linens flapping behind her like a train of a dress. "It's just because they're rich" she mutters as she passes me.

"Yes" retorts my wife, finally having had enough. "It is, Lizzie. We house your cousins and your uncles in the bunkhouse. We house Sol and Jem and anyone else who works for us there. We do not," she continues, her voice rising higher, "house the man who very well might be our next President in the bunk house! What would he think?"

Lizzie stops at the study door and shrugs. "Maybe he'll think 'Gee, there are some people who aren't blinded by money and…'"

"All right, that's enough." I flap a hand at my wife who rolls her eyes and enters Jane's old room to start making the bed. "I know it sounds hypocritical, and I know that you clearly don't understand, and frankly," I add, in an undertone, "I'm not sure I do ever understand your mother, but this is her decision."

"It's a stupid one," she mutters, dumping the linens on the desk and leaning against it, arms crossed.

"Hey. None of that." I lean next to her. "This man may well turn out to be important, and he probably has never slept in anything as simple as our beds, let alone the bunkhouse. He's also Janey's boss," I add, "and any of those would be a good reason to be civil, all right?"

She's silent for a minute. "Not the second one," she says, and smiles, sighing. "Fine," she says, seeing my smile in return. "I'll be civil."

"You never know," I say, straightening up. "They may turn out to be, what, kindred spirits?"

"OK Anne-of-Green-Gables!" she says, resigned, and smiles properly. I pull her into my arms and kiss the top of her head, wishing it was as easy as it had been when she was seven.

"They won't though," she adds, and sighs, turning to make up the bed. "They never are."

I pause in the doorway and watch her. She isn't seven anymore, and I never knew how hard it would be, just trying to keep her happy, let alone dreaming for her. I sigh. "They might be sweet pea. They might." And I leave, out the front door to go and see to the horses.

Hey. Welcome to the madness.

05/07/10: I needed to reformat, and at the same time, have hacked half the Dramatis Personae, just to West Wing characters. I'm happy to replace the full and massive list. I just thought it might be scaring people off. So, if my cast of thousands is foxing you, and you want my handy reference guide back, drop me a line. Otherwise, we will stay like this. FP.