Dec 2022

"And how did your name end up on this list?"

Aaron fiddled with his wedding ring. He still wasn't entirely used to the feeling of it on his finger. But it made a good focal point when he was actively avoiding his therapist's gaze. Therapy was not at all what he had expected, but then again his assumptions had all been based on old movies and TV shows. He'd conjured in his mind either an old tweed wearing professorial white man, or a new aged woman wearing a lot of oversized jewelry and too much perfume. Either way he had been expecting long drawn out conversations about how things made him feel, that somehow ended up circling back to his Mother.

But Dr. Rodriguez was a no nonsense retired Marine that looked the part. When he'd shown up to his second appointment without his assigned worksheets filled out, there had been a second where he thought she was going to tell him to drop to the floor and give her twenty. But instead she had told him in a stern voice, that for therapy to have any impact he needed to take it seriously. So he'd started showing up with his worksheets completed, and his best attempt at a can do attitude.

At first the worksheet thing had thrown him for a loop, he hadn't expected to get homework from therapy. Once he'd wrapped his head around their existence and actually started filling them out, he spent another few weeks putting down what he considered the 'right' answers. But when he'd presented Dr. Rodriguez with a 'Name the Blame' sheet with the entire circle of blame for the Capitol Bombing assigned to Patrick Lloyd, she'd pushed back asking him if that was really how he felt. And assigned him the same exercise for the next session. So he'd sat down again, still secretly thinking that this felt like something you would give a five year old, and put a little more effort into it.

He got through listing Patrick Lloyd and most of his gang of 'True Believers' easily enough but then he reached the names that gave him some pause. Jay Whitaker, who he should have caught on to being a traitor, Peter MacLeish, who he'd practically handed the keys to the kingdom, and Charles Langdon, who Aaron had trusted implicitly. He didn't see how he could put their names down and not follow them with Aaron Rivera. Charlie was the hardest one to forgive himself for. He'd worked with the man daily for years before the bombing, and hadn't had the slightest inkling that the man's loyalties were anywhere other than with the President and the United States.

He liked to think that no one could have known; that Charlie was holding his cards so closely to his chest, that not even the most perceptive person in the world would have guessed what was going on. But there was a second, and in his mind more likely, scenario that he couldn't dismiss. Charlie had always advocated for Aaron, he'd fought like hell for his promotion and he'd never missed a chance to talk him up to President Richmond. At the time Aaron had felt incredibly lucky to have found another amazing mentor. But looking back he had to ask himself the question; had he allowed himself to be blinded to any suspicious activity because everything was going his way? Was there anything that he had let go; because rocking the boat likely would have resulted in him being thrown overboard as well? Or worse still, had Charlie been playing him, handing him promotions and plum assignments that he was in no way qualified for so Aaron wouldn't bother to see what was right in front of him? Was he worried that someone smarter would have put everything together, and considered Aaron a safe option to keep close? He knew he had never consciously turned a blind eye, but he couldn't shake the gut feeling that he had let his own political ambitions cloud his view. And from there he saw it as a straightforward extrapolation to say that if he had been more vigilant, questioning Charlie's willingness to go to bat for him more, he could have stopped the Capitol Bombing.

So last night he'd jotted down 'Aaron Shore' under Charlie's name. And then realized that he'd written Aaron Shore, not Rivera. He considered scratching it out, but thought that would draw more attention to it, and that would open a whole line of discussion he was not ready for yet.

"Aaron, just say the first thing that comes to your mind."

Finally pulling his gaze away from his ring, he let his thoughts pour out. Once he got talking it was hard to stop and he found himself getting frustrated when Dr. Rodriguez would stop him with a question. He didn't like the way the questions challenged his assumptions, and poked at places he didn't want to think about. This was another way that therapy was not what he had thought. He'd imagined gentle conversation that left him feeling better, not these pointed questions that left him off kilter, sometimes for days afterwards. Today it was the question 'How would he have stopped the bombing?' that he couldn't shake lose. Even long after Dr. Rodriguez had left, he stayed in his office, staring at, but not seeing the new worksheets he'd been left with, wondering what it is he would have done. There had been co-conspirators and moles all over the White House. Wasn't it possible, even likely, that he would have confided his fears in the wrong person in which case he would have been taken out? And while that line of thinking did ease his guilt in some ways, it also left him unsettled. He hadn't realized before that the idea that he could have done something to stop the bombing was in a way comforting, because it let him believe he had more control over his life than he really did. He didn't like admitting that sometimes the world really was just random, and events that were outside of his control could totally change the trajectory of his life.

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Aaron glanced through the door of Seth's office and was annoyed to find it empty again. He'd been trying to get a moment to talk to him all day, but it seemed he kept missing him. Letting himself into the office, he sat down and turned on the TV. After watching a few minutes of the coverage of Seth's press conference, he was regretting that. Watching Seth sweat his way through question after question about Russian aggression was giving Aaron a sympathy headache. There were days he hated his job, but he would never trade it for Seth's. He had a hard enough time keeping his cool in the interviews and occasional press conferences he did, but if he had to do one everyday he didn't think he would last a week. How Seth stayed calm after being asked the same question fifty different ways Aaron didn't know.

Although the pundits didn't seem too impressed by Seth's attempt today. Apparently his frustration was showing, and it was further sign that an inexperienced administration was in over their heads. Aaron would have thought that five years into Kirkman's presidency people would have given up on the inexperienced line, Kirkman certainly had more experience being president than any of the idiots partisan hacks he was listening to right now. But whatever 'rally around the flag' patriotism they had enjoyed directly after the bombing was gone now, and it seemed inexperienced was the line that stuck with Kirkman. And by extension Aaron, no one cared that he had close to twenty years experience in Washington at this point.

"The Vice President, waiting on me; to what do I owe this honor?"

Aaron smiled at Seth's sarcastic greeting. "Can't I just visit my best friend?"

"Best friend?" Seth said with a raised brow. "Now I'm actually worried about what the hell you want."

"Nah, it's nothing bad." Aaron found himself a bit embarrassed at what he was going to ask next. One of his 'assignments' from therapy this week was to spend social time with a friend without Emily. Which he actually had to strain himself to think about the last time he had. He mostly saw Seth at work, but if not it was always with Emily. And other than Seth there was… Kirkman? Or maybe Mars? The social life he'd had before the bombing had blown up that day as well, either literally or just due to him no longer having time. "Wanna come over and watch the Wizards games Thursday? Em's speaking at that Standup for Kids fundraiser."

"You're not going?"

Aaron shook his head, "If I'm there she's just the Vice President's wife. Plus we don't have to worry about leaving Callie with a sitter."

"Hm. Yeah, why not then, you said Thursday?" Aaron nodded, watching Seth was tapping on his phone, probably looking at his calendar. "All right, I'm in, assuming the press doesn't kill me between now and then."

"I thought it was Mars who was after you?"

"That was last week, did you see any of that?" Seth pointed to the TV, still looping coverage of his earlier press conference.

"Well I can tell you it sucks more trying to get somewhere with the Russian ambassador."

"But if you aren't fighting with the Russians, how can People write another breathless article about 'The Millennial's Answer to the Kennedys'?"

Aaron rolled his eyes, "No one even reads magazines anymore anyway."

"I don't think it's people reading they're trying to appeal to with this." Seth snickered, opening the magazine to a full page shirtless picture of Aaron.

"If I never see that picture again it will be too soon." Aaron groaned thinking about the time someone had plastered it all over his office. He hated getting attention for stuff like this. He'd prefer a well reasoned critique to a gushing article that boiled down to: he's young, hot, vaguely Catholic, with a daughter named Caroline.

"Life really isn't fair to you, is it?"

"What can I say, some of us are just lucky." Aaron tried his best to flash Seth a devil may care smile, and pushed back the wave of irritation he felt. He didn't mind admitting that he was lucky, he just didn't like being reminded that all his luck seemed to come at someone else's expense. It hit a little too close to everything he was trying to work thought in therapy.

"Hmm." Seth continued flipping through the magazine, passing photos of Aaron, Emily and Callie from the wedding, which were much nicer in Aaron's opinion when not accompanied by over the top descriptions of a fairytale come true. He was about to get up and go before Seth started quoting the article at him, when Seth asked, "Does it ever bother you, not being Cal's biological father?"

Throw off by the question he answered defensively, "What? No, of course not."

"Sorry, I'm not trying to offend you. I was just wondering. Allison and I are talking about marriage and adoption and I'm not sure how I feel about it."

"You're adopted."

"No shit. And if I ask my parents their feelings about adoption, I'll get a bunch of tears about how our family was meant to be. I was hoping you would be a bit more… honest."

"Okay." He stopped for a moment to collect his thoughts. Honestly his stock answer sounded pretty close to Seth's parents. "When Em was pregnant, I used to think it would be so much easier if the baby was mine but now that Callie's here I wouldn't change a thing about her. You know, once it's not some hypothetical kid you might have one day you realize there are all these things unique to that kid and you wouldn't trade them for some idea you had of your biological kid. I mean that's my two cents anyway. But honestly I think that's the easy part. It's knowing that some part of her is probably always going to wonder why her biological father couldn't be bothered to get to know her, and that there is nothing I can do to fix that that keeps me up at night."

"You know it's weird. I spent close to forty years not even really thinking about my biological family, and I never spent much time wondering about why they gave me up, but this last year, especially since Allison started talking about adoption, I can't get it out of my head. I know I'm lucky, I was able to track them down pretty easily, but I always figured they were young, you know teen mom; couldn't take care of a baby. But they were in their thirties, married. No obvious reason they couldn't raise a kid. Finding out who they were honestly left me with more questions than I started with."

"You reach out to any of their families or anything?"

Seth shook his head. "Feels like a can of worms I don't want to open. You never know what you're gonna find. And they made sure I was raised in a family that loves me, so there's that."

"Yeah, that's true."

"And that's the other thing, whatever kid or kids we adopted would probably have much more trauma then just being separated from their family, not that that's not enough on its own"

"Something to think about for sure. You'd be a good Dad though." Seth didn't reply and Aaron wasn't sure what to say, but he didn't want to just leave Seth in a down mood. "You wanna come over for dinner tonight? Emily can fix whatever idiotic plan you have for your proposal."

Seth chuckled, "Who says its stupid?"

"Me."

Seth rolled his eyes, but stood up. "I'm not sure Emily's known for her relationship advice, but I guess I shouldn't turn down a free dinner."

"Especially with this generation's Kennedy's, we're kinda a big deal." Aaron said following Seth out the door.