Please see Chapter 1 for general info and disclaimers.

*~*

Toby waited until Sam had returned to his own office before he making his way across the West Wing to Leo's. When he arrived, Margaret's desk was vacant, so Toby walked over to Leo's door unannounced. Leo's head was stooped over his desk, his lips giving the slightest sign of movement every now and then as he perused a memo sent to him by the Department of Agriculture. The only light currently on in his office was that of his desk lamp, so it almost appeared as if Leo, shrouded in darkness, was emitting a yellowish glow.

"Got a minute?" Toby asked, standing uneasily in the doorway.

Startled, Leo jumped slightly in his chair before looking up and glaring at his 'intruder.'

"Sorry," Toby apologized. "Margaret wasn't at her desk, so I thought I'd just—"

"Come in for round two?" Leo offered with a surly tone of voice.

"Yeah, about that," Toby closed the door behind him and took a seat in front of Leo's desk, "I want to apologize for my behavior this morning. I was completely out of line."

"Gee, you think?"

"The thing is, I wasn't even angry when I said all those things."

"So you just decided to be an ass for the hell of it?"

"Okay, let me rephrase that. I was angry, but not because of the Jenn thing. I was angry because of how the President's actions have affected the others." Toby hesitated for a moment before adding, "We're falling apart internally, Leo."

"What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about the others. Have you noticed how quiet Josh has become? It started last night, after the meeting downstairs ended. We reconvened in my office, and that's when Josh turned mute. I didn't even notice or care at first because I was in full bitch-and-moan mode. But trust me, when you can go ten minutes without Josh interrupting with some inane comment, it becomes eerie. C.J. was pretty quiet herself, but I thought she was doing that on purpose so that she could digest all of our arguments and produce some words of wisdom. It turns out, though, that she was instead doing some internal raging of her own. And Sam…you should have seen Sam last night. You would've been so proud of him. He was the only one who was making any sense. He was levelheaded and coherent and kept us on task. But now, he's…he's coming apart at the seams. I don't know how much more he can take before we lose him."

"What are you getting at, Toby?"

Toby stared across the desk at Leo and realized that he didn't know what he was getting at. Leo was astute; he must have figured out by now that things were amiss with his senior staff. What had he expected Leo to do? What could Leo do? It wasn't like he could turn back time and erase the Bartlets' marriage woes or prevent Jed from meeting Melanie or stop Jed from 'forgetting' to mention Jenn to his staff. Toby closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his noise as he mumbled, "I don't know." Leo refocused his attention on the memo he'd been reading while Toby took a few seconds to collect his thoughts. "Do you know if Dr. Bartlet's going to be there tomorrow night?" Toby remembered to ask. "Sam's working on the statement and he needs to know."

Leo removed his reading glasses and studied Toby's face. "I don't know, but what's your opinion on the matter? If you were the President, would you want her there with you?"

"It's a tough call to make. I think it's a lose-lose situation for us. Let's say the First Lady appears with the President on Dateline tomorrow. Viewers will read that one of two ways. They'll either say, 'Hey, look at that. The woman who the President cheated on is standing by him and has accepted Jenn so we should accept her, too.' or they'll say, 'God, will you look at that? Does the man have no shame? He cheats on his wife and then drags her in front of the cameras with him.' If she doesn't go on the air with him, then viewers will either not notice her absence, or they'll think she's not there because she's too upset at the President. We run a risk of bad press no matter what."

"Hmm. Well, I guess it doesn't really matter what we think, anyway. Only the First Lady knows at this point whether she's planning on making an appearance tomorrow night."

"Sam needs to know tonight, though. The sooner the better."

"Okay. I'll speak with the President and see if he knows. I'll get back to you guys as soon as I know anything."

"Thanks, Leo." Toby rose to his feet and began making his way to the door. "Oh, and I am sorry about this morning."

"I appreciate that, but I'm not the one you should be apologizing to. You annoyed me, but you insulted the President."

Toby stroked his beard as he mulled over Leo's comment. "Yeah, okay. I'll go see him. Later."

As Toby placed his hand on the doorknob, Leo called out, "Hey, Toby. About Sam, do you think it would help if I—"

"I told him everything would be okay. That seemed to help."

"Good. Keep telling him that. And let me know if there's anything I could say or do for him that'd make things better."

"Okay." Toby turned his attention back to the door before being struck by a thought. "Leo, everything is going to be okay, isn't it?"

Leo sighed and looked thoughtfully at the rumpled man standing in his office. "I certainly hope so. Not so much for us, but for Jenn. She deserves this, Toby. I know you guys just see her as this…problem we have to fix. But she's more than that; she's a little girl who never got to know her father. If I hadn't pushed Jed Bartlet to run for President, then he'd be living up the retired life in New Hampshire right now, and Jenn wouldn't have had any problems reuniting with him. So, for her sake, I really do hope that everything turns out okay."

"Yeah." Toby's gaze fell to the floor and he watched himself scuff the carpeting with the toe of his right shoe. "Thanks, Leo."

"Sure."