V

"Mr. President." Stanley stood up as he entered the study.

"Stanley," he nodded, politely, if distractedly. He waved the psychologist back into his seat as he poured himself a glass of water. "Drink?" he offered.

"No thank you, sir."

"Okay." The president observed the crystal glass with a grimace, perhaps wishing it could be something a little stronger than water. Most of his usual avenues of stress-relief had been cut off by his new stricter health regime, designed to put as little burden as possible on his compromised immune system. Hence, perhaps, the break in his usual reluctance to turn to Stanley in anything but the most dire circumstances.

"So... how are things?" he asked open-endedly. For a man so obviously eloquent, it was surprisingly difficult to get Jed Bartlet talking. Or perhaps it wasn't so surprising; President Bartlet was sharp as a knife and not at all impressed with the science of psychotherapy. If it suited him, he could keep you talking round in circles without throwing out a single useful answer - and he knew it, too.

Stanley always found himself in an unusual position in these sessions. He felt more like a sounding board than an advisor or confidante; he wasn't the dispenser of wisdom here, more like a conveniently neutral place for Bartlet to bounce his ideas. And, fair play to him, the man was certainly smart enough to analyse himself if it so suited him; the problem lay in the fact that there were certain ideas he was highly reluctant to bounce.

The president shrugged. "My daughter's getting married tomorrow. I'm pretty much how you'd expect."

Stanley was always struck how he could shift from his dynamic public persona to having the body-language of a teenager. Not so much in terms of maturity levels - although he could certainly be sulky and petulant from time to time - but in terms of casual indifference, as if he wasn't really paying attention at all. And then all of a sudden he would snap out of it and be pinning you to your chair with a laser gaze while he fired off cuttingly well-aimed remarks.

Disconcerting really didn't begin to cover it.

He adjusted his position and kept his face neutral. "You're okay with your daughter getting married to Charlie Young?" he asked.

"Of course I am," he snapped irritably. Before muttering more quietly "They're still just babies."

"Mr. President, twenty-three isn't at all an unusual age for a young lady to be getting married," Stanley pointed out. The president glared at him.

"Stanley, do you have any children?"

"I have a little girl," he offered. As the analyst he was supposed to be a neutral presence, fairly devoid of characteristics or anything that shifted him from a non-judgemental voice into the form of a human being with his own life and feelings. Somehow, in these sessions it never seemed to quite work that way. He always came away with the unsettling feeling that Jed Bartlet was learning as much about Stanley Keyworth as he was about himself, if not more so.

"How old is she?"

"Six."

The president smiled wryly. "And what do you plan to be doing on her wedding day?"

"I plan to be dead by then," he admitted.

He chuckled appreciatively. "Quite."

There was a silence; not a particularly awkward one, but still, one that the president was paying for. "Is Zoey nervous about the wedding?" he asked, to keep the conversation going.

The president shrugged minutely. "Girls get nervous about these things."

"So do boys," Stanley pointed out.

He smiled slightly, perhaps thinking fondly of the decidedly antsy personal aide who'd ushered him in a few minutes earlier. "Yeah."

"Your other daughters are going to be there?"

The president gave him a sharp look. "We're not talking about my daughters," he said warningly.

"Okay," he agreed, careful not to sound accusing. The president remained on his guard.

"It's a rule," he said. "I talk about a lot of things; I don't talk about my daughters. That's off limits."

"I'm not the press," Stanley reminded him.

"It's not relevant."

"Okay," he accepted. From what he'd seen, the president had a healthy enough relationship with his three daughters, but with what he knew about Jed's relationship with his own father... the president surely had some issues about fatherhood, and Zoey, Ellie and Elizabeth might represent a safer, more productive avenue of attack.

However, if the president said the subject was closed, it was closed. He wasn't about to fall into any of the conversational pit-traps Stanley might place before a less self-aware subject, and trying was only going to dent any good impression he might have so far succeeded in making.

Still, there were reasons why the 'bury it and pretend it never happened' strategy couldn't be continued indefinitely. "Do you want to talk about the book?" Stanley asked mildly.

The president gave him a steely-eyed look. "No," he said simply.

Stanley shifted in his chair. "It might-"

"I'm giving away my daughter's hand in marriage tomorrow afternoon," President Bartlet reminded him. "Let's not do this now."

He nodded slowly. "Okay."

Fair enough... if only it had been the only reason the president was putting off this topic of discussion. He was still too much in denial about the events of his childhood, and in a few months time, some dark insinuations in a presidential biography were going to expose them for all the world to see. Stanley thought he very desperately needed to confront them for himself before other people started trying to do it for him. He had only the sketchiest idea of what had truly gone on between the president and his father, but he knew and could see enough to know that the president's desire to love and honour the man who'd sired him was being stretched to cover events it really shouldn't have to take on.

He was a trained psychotherapist, and childhood trauma was far closer to his area of expertise than the murky moral issues the president sometimes had to wrestle with. Bartlet might not be happy about it, but Stanley was the best person to talk him through this. The media, once they got the story in their teeth, were not going to be nearly so respectful of the emotional minefield the issue represented.

The president needed to be pressed on this... but perhaps he was right, now was not the time. Stanley sat up straighter. "Okay. Then let's talk about your health plan for a while."

He didn't so much see the president move as feel the abrupt change in his demeanour. This was a subject he was more than happy to expound on at length.

Stanley knew that, even deflected to such a relatively minor issue, he was still helping the president to handle the many stresses and strains of his hectic life. He just wished it didn't feel so much like he was bailing water with a coffee cup while the president refused to let him plug the gaping hole below decks.

"Hey, CJ... Toby," Josh added. He paused, as they both broke up whatever conversation they'd been having to look up at him. "What's happening?"

"My departure from this office," Toby supplied, leaving. Josh sat on the edge of CJ's desk and frowned at her.

"Something I should be in the loop on?"

CJ pulled a face. "There might be a thing. But not a today thing."

He raised an eyebrow, beginning to smirk. "Not a today thing?"

"A sometime in the future thing." CJ looked briefly pained, but today was a day for letting things slide, and he made no comment when she changed the subject. "Written your speech yet?"

"Okay, do I need to get myself a sandwich-board and walk the halls wearing the words 'It's nearly done'?" he wondered.

CJ gave him a very CJ look. "How nearly is nearly?" she sighed.

"About ninety percent," he shrugged casually.

"Done or to do?" she asked immediately.

Damn. Foiled. His expression obviously gave her enough of an answer.

"Josh!" she shouted.

"It's a wedding speech!" he retorted defensively. "How hard can it be?"

"Have Sam and Toby take a look at it," she advised. "Do it now."

"I can write my own speech, CJ."

"And yet there's been no evidence of it so far."

"I have an outline! It's not like I even need to fully flesh it out right now-"

"Oh, God."

"-I mean, I know what I'm going to say, so-"

"Oh, God."

"-Even if I just went out there without any notes at all and said, you know, what's in my head, what's the worst that could happen?"

"Charlie and Zoey start their marriage blessed with a secret plan to fight inflation?"

"That only happened once!"

"Because we were smart enough to never let you speak in front of, you know, people, ever again!"

"That's not true," he said softly. CJ met his eyes, quieting as she remembered the press conference after his very public PTSD attack a few months ago. He'd gone out there without a script, and he'd handled it just fine. When it counted, he could handle it just fine.

It was when it didn't count that he generally managed to screw up royally.

"You can speak," she agreed gently. "I know that. But Josh, this is Charlie and Zoey's special day..."

"I know. I'm not trying to be difficult," Josh told her earnestly. He hesitated. "It's just... I don't want Sam and Toby to write it for me. Because even if they only help with a little bit, it would be really good, and then I wouldn't be able to write anything that was as good as theirs, and so I'd need them to do the rest of it too, and... I want this to be mine. You know? I want this to be... me."

CJ smiled quietly at him, and stood up to lay a hand on his shoulder. "I know," she agreed. She leaned in closer to him. "But screw it up, and I'm coming after your ass."

He blinked after her for a few moments.

"Okay."

Josh dropped down from the desk and headed back to his own office.