II

Ellie hated herself for following the news, yet somehow she just couldn't help it. It was everywhere; internet, radio, TV, newspapers, you couldn't turn around without getting hit by somebody else's take on her family history. The articles were trash-talking at worst, deeply invasive at best, but she still felt compelled to read them. She needed to know. The articles probably couldn't tell her, but she scoured through them anyway, searching for the tiniest clues to the history her father had hidden from them all.

Her mother had braced her for this media firestorm, but she hadn't really told her much. Only that her grandfather, this man she only knew from a few stiffly-posed photographs that had taken on a whole new menace in retrospect, had been... what?

Abusive. That was the word, but her mind slipped away from it, unwilling to grasp something that so obviously couldn't belong there. Not here among the Bartlets, the family that had raised wholesome and good to levels that had threatened to suffocate her through her teenage years. Her dad was like a TV-dad, good old pop from some old sitcom or other who would always sit down with the kids at the end of the episode to explain to them the Very Special Lesson they'd learned.

Her dad was a giant in his presence, intimidating without trying, overshadowing all just by being there. The thought of him as a frightened little boy just didn't... couldn't...

It was an inversion of everything in her world that had seemed frustratingly certain. It couldn't be true, shouldn't be true, but it was true, and so she gorged herself on poisonous articles, forcing herself to take it all in.

Nothing she read made any sense to her, but how could she judge the possible from the ridiculous when the world was so askew? Perhaps only her father knew for sure, but the idea of trying to talk to him...

Ellie had never been able to talk to her father about simple things, the basic facets of a relationship that came so easily to cool, collected Liz or feisty little Zoey. Even Annie had always been effortlessly comfortable with her grandpa, leaping into his arms or chattering excitedly to him about whatever crossed her mind.

Ellie had always suspected she'd inherited some kind of recessive 'quiet' gene - was this where it had come from? The thought gave her a chill. Had she inherited some of John Bartlet's emotional distance, that inability to connect? Had she been hurting her father all her life, an unknowing echo of earlier times when he'd reached out constantly and been rebuffed?

Was there something wrong with her... or had she just been a whiny little brat, inventing personal problems out of nothing while her father had gone through who knew what kind of hell and buried it without a word? Every further word she read made her feel sicker and sicker, like the way she'd had when she was younger of chewing over her miseries again and again and again until she forced herself into a panic attack and needed to run off and puke.

She was torturing herself with horrors both real and imagined, creating a mental picture that was perhaps many times worse than the reality had been, or perhaps not nearly bad enough. There was no way she could possibly know, but she kept trying anyway, forcing down every last muck-raking story and malicious rumour in a bid to understand.

She was making herself sick with distress - but a part of her, the same demon that was always telling her that she wasn't good enough for her father, kept whispering that after the way she'd always behaved, maybe she deserved it.

"Sam?"

He looked up from his computer screen as Ginger appeared in the doorway. "Yeah?"

"Gareth Vance is here."

"From the-?"

"Shield of Innocence charity, yeah."

"Okay, thanks." He straightened up, feeling his back protest, and staggered a little as he made his way out into the bullpen. Bonnie smirked at him.

"It's the beginning of the end, you know."

"What is?" he frowned.

"The beard. Classic midlife crisis material."

"It's only a few short steps to comfy slippers and curling up by the fire with a blanket," Ginger chimed in.

"Hey!" Sam protested. "This is not an old man's beard! It's a youthful beard. It's full of youth."

They exchanged a look and nodded in unison, humouring him. "Of course it is."

"Maybe you should get an earring, too," Ginger suggested.

"And a motorbike."

"And dig up your old electric guitar and try to reform your teenage rock band."

"I wasn't in a rock band," Sam admitted. He paused in the doorway. "I played the glockenspiel."

He hurried away to his meeting.

Josh wandered along in a moody haze.

"Hey, Josh."

"Hey, Charlie." The answer was vague and automatic, and it took him a few steps more to collect himself and turn around. "Hey, Charlie," he repeated, with an apologetic smile.

"Busy day?" the young aide surmised with a sympathetic quirk of an eyebrow. Josh rubbed his forehead tiredly.

"Hell, yeah... Listen, I'm sorry, I've barely stood still to speak to you all week... Congratulations!" he grinned.

"Thanks." Charlie shuffled a little awkwardly.

Josh smirked. "How are things going?"

"I'm afraid to leave my desk," Charlie confessed with a slightly glazed look. "Every time I come back, there's something else there. So far I have six books of baby names, a copy of 'Parenting For Dummies', and an article on the spiritual benefits of celibacy. I have a fairly strong suspicion on who's behind that one."

He snickered, but the expression soon slid into something like relief. "He's messing with your head?"

"A little." Charlie pulled a face. "He's... himself, but he gets pretty down. He's not even angry, he's just... sad."

Josh sighed miserably. "This is... this shouldn't be happening. They shouldn't be allowed to do this to him, Charlie."

The younger man matched his grimace. "I guess that's the price you pay for the freedom of the press," he said wryly.

"Yeah. Well, he's got my vote for a dictatorship," Josh said wearily. Charlie smiled.

"See you later, Josh."

"Yeah."

He sighed again, stretched his shoulders, and headed back to his desk.

"Toby." Leo nodded absently as the Communications Director appeared in his doorway.

Toby shuffled in, and waited a moment for attention to be turned his way. He spoke when it became apparent Leo wasn't about to stop working. "I wanted to talk about-"

"The Cambodian Ambassador," Leo finished for him.

"The position needs to be filled," he pointed out.

Leo tugged his glasses off, the better to reveal his exasperated glare. "Yes, well, strangely enough, Toby, the applicants aren't exactly queuing down the street."

"It looks like the president's spinning his wheels," he objected.

"The guy's been dead a week, Toby, even international diplomacy can take a back seat to respect."

"I'm saying, the president hasn't even spoken to the press, it looks like he's spinning his wheels."

"He's spoken to the widow," Leo snapped irritably. "He goes out there, they'll turn this thing into a three ring circus. It's more respectful to Nathan Williamson's memory if he doesn't make any address at all."

"The press aren't gonna see it that way."

Leo gave him a look. "Well, now you've shocked me, Toby."

Toby touched his forehead. "Leo..."

"No, seriously, Toby, what do you... what do you want me to do? We can't put him out there. We just can't. They'll tear him apart."

"They're not gonna go away if he ignores them! Leo... He can't play a waiting game with the press. He's the President of the United States, he can't duck media coverage for any length of time without things starting to fall apart."

The way the Chief of Staff shook his head was more frustration than denial. "He's not ready."

"Is he going to be?"

"Oh, how the hell should I know, Toby?" he demanded with a scowl. "This is not a presidential sulking session! This is very painful for him."

Toby bowed his head in acknowledgement; Leo shook his head sadly.

"No amount of time is gonna make this any easier for him, but every moment we can give him away from the media frenzy gives him a chance to regroup, and their interest a chance to die down." He hesitated, and sighed. "It's all we can do."

Toby met his gaze, and neither of them needed to say aloud how little they both knew it was. After a moment he turned to go, and Leo called him back, mustering a smile.

"Hey. You heard about Charlie and Zoey?"

He found a smile to return. "Yeah."

But as he made his way back towards the Communications department, the expression quickly faded into weary solemnity.