In every beginning, there is an ending.
It's late. The corridors are finally dark and only cleaners and security staff can be heard. There are occasional footsteps, the low roar of a vacuum in the distance and, every now and then, the crackle of words over an RT. In the canteen, in a spilling pool of light, the new staff sits around a straggle of tables they have dragged together.
CJ has kicked off her shoes and stretched out her legs. Her feet rest on the opposite seat and Sam has obediently scrunched along to allow her room. Sam and Cathy are squabbling gently over a half packet of polo mints found in the bottom of Cathy's handbag. The canteen closed a couple of hours back and none of them feels confident that you can get takeaway delivered to the White House. Josh has his chin propped on his hands and looks like he might fall asleep any minute; beside him, Donna is asleep, head pillowed on folded arms on the table. Toby glares at his cardboard cup of coffee.
"Somewhere in this benighted city they must sell a decent coffee."
He fixes Josh with an accusing look.
"You used to work here; you should know where to get good coffee."
It's said in Toby's best menacing rumble.
"I do know, but not at one in the morning. Besides, we mostly made our own - we had one of these really good Italian espresso machines, all shiny silver metal and whizzing noises."
CJ groans. "How come we don't have one of those instead of that, that ."
She waves at the vending machine.
"Uh, because we've been here for, oh, sixteen hours? I'll worry about it after I've finished finding out the names of all our senators and congressmen."
Softly, Sam begins to recite Congressmen and districts in alphabetical order. Distracted from the semi-warm and tasteless liquid the café-bar machine calls coffee Toby glares at him instead and snorts. Josh reaches over and taps Sam on the shoulder.
"How did you go today, anyway, buddy? All I've seen all day is Leo and my desk."
Without moving Donna says clearly, "You didn't see your desk: you can't see your desk."
Josh looks at her as Bonnie and Ginger giggle and CJ licks her finger and marks a point in the air.
The canteen was only half-lit. The soft light was restful to eyes that barely remembered sleep and it was comforting to be in one of the few places that was scarcely changed. The three of them clutched large takeaway mugs of coffee as they sat around the table in attitudes of exhaustion. The large percolator that normally hummed busily in the communications bullpen had been boxed up and hauled away hours earlier, but Susie had been on a coffee run to the 24 hour deli down on Third that sold a thick, treacly dark coffee that had often fuelled all-night debates or marathon speechwriting sessions. After a moment of sitting quietly in the soft twilight and resting backs that ached and eyes that stung, Louis got up and went back of the counter to hunt for supplies. He came back with their traditional oh-my-God-it's-so-late-even-the-canteen-has-shut-down food - a half loaf of rye bread, cream cheese and grape jelly. Susie made some rough sandwiches and, for a while, they simply ate and drank in silence. The darkness around them matched their moods and provided a welcome interlude in a night of noise, bustle and sharp lighting. In the corridors and offices above them removalists carried furniture in and out while tradesmen bolted, screwed, drilled and glued. Electrical cords ran along corridors and small piles of plaster or sawdust showed where new computer wiring ended or began.
Sam leans forwards, face resting in his hand, and sighs.
"I'm never going to find my way around this place. I've already set off three alarms being in corridors I don't have clearance for - Ron said he's going to get me a sheepdog."
Bonnie grins.
"Tell them about the desk, Sam."
Sam pouts; half-knowing he's still playing the new boy trying too hard to be amusing.
"It moves."
He shakes his head at the smirks of disbelief. "It does! I swear. Every time I go in it's in a different place. I just think about walking somewhere and - bang! - there it is!"
Bonnie smiles at him and shakes her head. "Six times he's walked in to it - can you believe it?"
"Eight," says Sam softly, almost on a sigh.
"You know what I think is really freaky?" Donna says, interrupting the laughter. She sits up and pushes her hair back from her face. "Thinking that any moment you might turn a corner or open a door and accidentally walk into the Oval Office!"
"I think you'll find that Secret Service will down you long before you get there," Toby points out.
"Which, of course, wouldn't be embarrassing at all," says CJ.
She gives her cup of coffee one last disgusted look before pushing it away.
"I just keep thinking how can I have been more organised and had a more efficiently running office while living on a bus for the last 18 months? I can't find a thing, my computer makes a lemming look determined to live, the podium is three inches too short, the New York Times is sulking like a two year old because it is in the third row instead of the second - and people keep asking about a new radar the Navy is apparently testing that I can't even pronounce!"
"The Serjequovio Tzwyksan Infra-Radar Network?"
"Freak," CJ says, smiling fondly at Sam.
Josh has been quiet for a long time. Now he gets up, stretches, looks around and then holds his arms out in proprietorial ownership.
"I don't care," he says simply. "I don't care that my office smells like someone's wet dog or that my phone line has dropped out four times today or that it takes me six minutes to find Leo's office and he wants me there in one we're in the White House, people!"
It was Marcus who broke the silence.
"You know that thing about 'tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life'? Tomorrow is."
Susie wiped carefully at mascara that had been a lost cause hours earlier.
"Well, thanks for making me cry - again. I swear I haven't cried this much since my hamster died in second grade. Every time I walk down the corridor to the Oval Office and know he's not there I tear up. God, I even cried when I took the last picture off my wall."
Louis grinned. "Scarier than that - I almost cried when Connie came by to say goodbye and she's a complete bitch. I can't believe I might be going to miss her; I've spent the last four years wishing I could throw a stapler at her."
"How is she going to survive without her desk of power and her title of third assistant to the President?"
"How are we?" asked Marcus, looking from one to the other. "What do we do now? Have you thought about it - really thought about it?"
"Yeah," says CJ, grinning at him. "We really are."
Ginger nods. "Even when I walked in this morning I couldn't believe it. I was walking into the White House - and I belonged! I never even dreamt, growing up, that I'd do more than visit here. I'm here now - I really am. For the next four years I'm working where the world changes."
She blushes a little as she sees that everyone is looking at her. Sam reaches over and touches her arm.
"Toby and I - we'll know where to come when the words dry up."
Toby looks over at her and nods and Ginger blushes again. She looks like a nervous, but pleased, mouse.
"If I had pie, I'd give you pie," says Toby, and his voice has that soft gentleness that sometimes catches people unawares, "But all I have is this really bad coffee."
"Then you'd better come up to the Oval Office because the President has pie and pizza," says Leo's voice from the darkness beyond their pool of light.
There is a confused chorus of 'Leo!' and people begin to unwind themselves from pieces of furniture.
He walks into the light and looks at them, shaking his head slightly.
"Don't you people have homes to go to?"
"We do," says CJ, "- but we've had homes before. We've never had a White House."
"Yeah," says Josh, looking around the room again. "Ours," he says proudly, throwing his arms out again, then grins at Leo. "Our White House, Leo."
Leo smiles back with that softer smile he keeps for his daughter and for Josh.
"Yep, but it'll still be ours tomorrow and so will all the work that goes with it."
People pull faces and groan. Leo smiles at them again and thinks with a sudden fierce pride of how they are his staff and of what they have won for themselves and for the man who waits for them in the Oval Office. He thinks of what they will do tomorrow and all the tomorrows after it for four years.
He puts a hand on Ginger's shoulder so the assistants will know that they are included in the invitation.
"Come on - before President Bartlett eats all the pizza and all the pie."
As they begin to trail out and up the stairs, Sam moves closer to Josh.
"Are you sure it's okay to eat pizza in the Oval Office?"
From a few stairs further up, Leo turns to look back at them.
"When the President asks you to."
"Yeah," says Josh softly, "because - we serve at the pleasure of the President."
For a moment - a long moment - no one moves. Then Toby puts a hand on Josh's shoulder and Leo turns and begins to lead everyone up the stairs once again.
Susie shook her head. Louis looked down at the table.
"I got a job offer."
The silence lasted until he looked up again.
"I didn't say because it's Marshall."
They both looked at him. Susie sniffed and blinked then rubbed her eyes again.
He folded his arms and took a deep breath that shook a little.
"He's not running against him now." He sounded a half defensive and half desperate. "You know I've got to have medical insurance for Garry."
Marcus looked away and nodded a little distantly, as though Louis was an almost forgotten acquaintance chance-met at a party.
"Better Marshall than Bartlett, I suppose."
It was Susie who spoke, voice carefully kept even. "That's not fair. We weren't all chief of staff; we don't all have a large publishing contract to walk into."
"I turned it down. What do you think they wanted me to write?"
Suddenly decisive he stood up. He scooped up the remains of their meal and in a few strides dropped it in a nearby waste bin.
"Come on. We can't just stay here. Tomorrow is going to come whatever we do; it's time to stay goodbye."
They followed him across the canteen and up the stairs. They paused for a moment when they reached the first floor corridor and looked around. Once, almost beyond memory it seemed, all this had been new and strange - a mystical land to be explored. Now it was as one of the exiled they looked upon it. Susie pulled her jacket around her more tightly and felt her eyes prickle yet again.
"We'll always remember, though, won't we?" she asked quietly.
It was Marcus who answered. He turned back from watching some cleaners scrub the last of their occupancy from the walls.
"Yes." He took a quiet breath. "We served at the pleasure of the President."
In every ending there is a beginning.