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Jed entered his private study in a foul mood. He'd acceded to this only to get Leo off his back - he didn't need a therapy session, dammit. He didn't need to see a psychiatrist at all, let alone have an encounter rush-crammed into his schedule as if he might implode if it was put off a second too long.

Yes, he'd been ranting and raving - what, that was supposed to be wrong? Of course he was angry! He was downright pissed, and so he should be. Nobody should have to listen to obscene accusations like that about members of their own family.

He'd thought Leo, at least, would have been able to see past this modern-day vogue for tearing into a man's family history to try and deconstruct his psyche. These days, it seemed, it wasn't enough to just admit that maybe your relationship hadn't been all that it could have. You had to keep digging for more, assassinate every last little aspect of your parents' personalities until you could warp them into monsters to blame for every poorly-judged action you'd ever made.

Sexual abuse! The very thought was enough to make his head swim with a blend of white-hot anger and nausea. That they could accuse his own father of... what, an everyday tale of harsh words and the occasional beating wasn't good enough for them?

No, of course not, because it wasn't sensational enough for them, was it? You had to have more. Why should John Bartlet be just a poor excuse for a father figure, when you could make him the devil himself? Why should the president's childhood only have been a little rocky, when you could turn it into the worst kind of hell imaginable?

Stanley jumped to attention even faster than usual, perhaps spurred on by the embers of frustration smouldering in his client's eyes. "Mr. President."

"Stanley," he said curtly, dropping into his seat with a scowl. He didn't want to be here, and he didn't see any reason to attempt to make himself act pleasant when he was feeling anything but.

"I, uh- Leo explained to me about the press conference," the therapist began somewhat tentatively.

"The press are vultures," he growled. "I got mad. I'm still mad. It's not an unreasonable reaction."

Stanley traced patterns along the arm of the chair with his fingertips, looking at his own movements instead of the president. "No sir, it's not," he agreed softly.

The silence was probably an invitation for him to 'open up'. Well, screw that. He let it hang unfilled until Stanley spoke again.

"If I could just ask, Mr. President, was it the content of-?"

"Oh, what do you think?" he snapped impatiently. "You think I'm losing it because some half-assed, two-bit excuse for a trash-talking gossip columnist outright accused my father of being some kind of child molester? Of course I am. It's a terrible, terrible thing to tar a man's reputation with. And you know what? It doesn't matter that she flat out made it up, it doesn't matter that she invented the whole 'rumour' out of nothing but blue sky, all anybody who follows the news is gonna remember is that the question was asked, and-"

"Mr. President." Stanley's soft words inserted themselves into his tirade with a surprising level of force. He waited until Jed trailed off and looked up at him. "Mr. President."

"What?" he mumbled resentfully.

"I have to ask you..." He hesitated for a moment. "I... have to ask... is there any... truth, at all, to the accusation?"

And that soft, mild, seriously delivered question stopped him in his tracks with all the finality of running into a brick wall. "What- what?" He literally couldn't process it, just could not comprehend that the question was being asked, by this man who took such things seriously, in a tone that rendered it something real, something that needed to be answered.

"Mr. President... I know you're angry, I don't need you to be angry. I need you to tell me, is it true? Is any of it true?"

"I- I- no!" He shook his head, beginning to find his confused indignation, pulling away. Stanley refused to let that distance open by leaning across and softly gripping his arm.

"Okay," he said simply. "Okay."

"That's-" Jed stared at him in honest disbelief. "My father would never-"

"Mr. President," Stanley said slowly and solemnly, keeping his gaze locked on Jed's. "You talk about this as if it's something a hundred million miles from anything your father would be capable of, and... maybe that's true. I don't know. I don't know, because I don't know anything about your father apart from what you've told me, and what you've told me is inherently unreliable."

Jed sat up, beginning to muster a scathing response, and Stanley cut him off with a gesture.

"You say your father never sexually abused you, and fine, I believe that. I do. You obviously feel that it's something he would never and could never have been capable of, and..." he spread his hands- "maybe you're right, I couldn't begin to have any basis to judge that. And yes, you're outraged that your father's being accused of something he didn't do, and that's only reasonable, too." He met Jed's eyes. "But I don't like this kneejerk reaction, I don't like how fast you are to be appalled that anyone could level this particular accusation."

"You don't think I should be appalled?" Jed asked, eyes narrowed dangerously.

"Of course you should. It's an appalling accusation, it's an appalling possibility - all forms of abuse are horrifying to contemplate, and of course they should be." He tilted his head to the side slightly. "What I don't like is this attitude that one form of abuse is somehow quantifiably worse than another, that there are somehow different levels it can take."

The president gave him a sceptically searching look. "You don't think there are different levels of abuse?"

"I think that trying to classify levels of abuse is where we run into trouble," Stanley corrected softly. "Because the moment we start talking about 'worse', we introduce the concept of 'better'... and that's the first step in drawing lines between what is and what isn't acceptable treatment. And those lines... are not drawn where they should be."

Sam wandered into Toby's office, and stood inside the doorway. Toby continued typing. After it became apparent that he wasn't planning to come to a break point anytime soon, Sam said "I've been thinking..."

"Don't," he said shortly, without looking up.

Sam gave a flicker of a smile, and ignored this interjection. Waiting for a receptive mood from Toby was not the world's most fruitful pursuit.

"I've been thinking about my dad," he continued after a moment. "About whether this puts things in perspective... or if it should..."

Toby didn't respond, but Sam was mostly musing aloud anyway, and he absently pushed the door to swing closed and leaned back against the wall to study the ceiling tiles.

"I've been thinking... talking to Gareth Vance, and thinking about the president's dad... And it seems like there are so many bad parents out there, and there are so many worse things he could have done... So am I taking it too seriously?"

He looked at Toby, but Toby wasn't looking at him.

"Should I be more forgiving? I mean, should I be saying 'well, dad, you never used to beat me up or torture me so I guess you weren't that bad'? 'It's okay, because it could have been worse'? Is that the big life lesson here?" He sighed heavily.

"I mean... I don't know what I mean. He... he's not the worst dad in the world, but it wasn't- it's not like it was a little thing. And... I'm supposed to forgive him because there are worse things he could be? Isn't that, like, the all-time crappiest reason to forgive anybody anything?"

Still no response, although Toby was still now, and staring at his laptop with enough intensity to be seeing through the screen, not reading it. "Toby?" he queried tentatively.

Toby tilted his head up to meet Sam's eyes.

"My father killed people, Sam," he said bluntly. "He was part of an organisation... they killed people. What do you want from me?"

And to that, Sam found he didn't have anything to say.

He wasn't sure if it had ever been this hard to tell if he was getting somewhere.

The crack in the president's emotional veneer had seemed like a starting place, a chance to finally break through the shell of defensive barriers and get at the buried pains beneath. But leave it to Jed Bartlet, of course, to flout the conventional path of a therapy session.

Stanley wasn't sure if it was incredible strength of character or just plain old stubbornness that kept the president from breaking down under the incredible pressures being heaped on him. Weak men might bend under outside forces; even the strongest would eventually snap trying to hold them off. Jed Bartlet seemed to be determined to set his shoulder against them and be pushed slowly but inexorably backwards. He might not be winning the battle, but he was damned if he was going to give an inch unnecessarily.

It was a tenacity it was hard not to admire, but Stanley could see the strain it was taking on him. All men had their breaking point, and that was right and natural; a good, clean break would often heal wounds in a way that no amount of pain-free feelgood fixes could accomplish. But Jed Bartlet was steadfastly refusing to hit that breakpoint, and was grinding himself down as a consequence.

Stanley had faced off with his share of stubborn patients before. But the president was more than his equal in battle of will and wits, and far too sharp to be manipulated subtly or overtly. And, worse, he was lacking the one key element that helped psychiatrists to break through the most openly hostile set of defences.

He didn't want to be helped.

"Mr. President-"

"I have things to do, Stanley."

"I think we should talk this over."

"I think we've talked this over quite enough already." There was a curl of good humour in the remark, but it was only a faint shadow of even the subdued version of himself he normally showed in these therapy sessions. The president was on the very edge of his emergency reserves, and was beginning to slowly chip away at those.

"We keep talking, but I don't get any sense of anything being over," Stanley admitted wryly.

"Well, maybe that's because there's nothing that needs to be said."

"Mr. President-"

He was already on his feet, and raising a warning hand. "I have a country to run," he reminded him. "And much as I appreciate your desire to neatly sum me up and fix me within the shortest period possible, I really don't think we're going to accomplish anything here in another forty-five minutes that we're not going to in five."

"No," he admitted quietly.

He stood up, and looked across at the president.

"I'm coming back tomorrow," he decreed; softly, but with force.

The president could have argued, but instead he looked down at the carpet. "Yeah," he said, and sighed.

It was as close to an admission that things were not at all okay as Stanley was likely to get.