XI

Congressman Walters regarded him through unimpressed eyes as he walked in. He didn't bother to stand or offer to shake hands. "Josh."

"Stuart." Josh matched his curt tone as he sat down opposite him. He wasn't in the mood for the exchange of meaningless pleasantries anyway. "I wanted to talk to you about-"

"Some stupid-ass idea you have for pumping up whatever scheme's got a bee in your bonnet this particular week," the Congressman cut him off. "Josh, what the hell are you doing? We settled this-"

"I think we need to talk about routing more money into the US Fire Administration's safety schemes," Josh said tightly.

"Of course we do." Walters rolled his eyes impatiently. "We need to route more money into the USFA, and the police force, and social security, and paying the teachers... if we could afford to fund every scheme on the basis of it seemed like a good idea, half the people running this government wouldn't need to exist. There's a reason we have wrangling over the budget, Josh-"

"Actually, we mostly have wrangling over the budget because Congress are a bunch of argumentative sons of-"

"Josh."

Josh sighed heavily, and rubbed his face. "I've been looking at the numbers."

"The money isn't-"

"I can find the money!"

Walters gave him a look. "I'm not challenging your ability to juggle the math, Josh. I'm saying, why this, why now, why's anybody going to go for it when they wouldn't do before?"

"The United States has one of the highest fire death rates in the industrialised world!"

"It has one of the highest gun death rates in the industrialised world too, why don't we talk about that?"

Josh glowered. "We're talking about that too."

"Oh, I'm sure you've got half a dozen controversial policies up your sleeve for this week," Walters said, narrowing his eyes. "I'm sure you're going to be sending the president out there any moment now with a bold new offensive. Why don't we just wait and see?"

Josh gave him a challenging look. "Don't play this game now, Stuart," he warned.

"You're toothless, Josh!" Walters snapped. "Your guy's under siege from the press, and who exactly do you think is gonna come rallying beyond you to jump on board some crack-brained half-assed scheme with no tangible return?"

"No tangible return?" Josh demanded, voice rising dangerously.

"The government can preach fire safety 'til your face turns blue, Josh, but it's not gonna do a damn thing if nobody listens to them. Because guess what, Josh? People are stupid. They know fast food is poisonous, but they still eat it. They know cigarettes can kill you, but they keep on smoking. And you can keep telling them and telling them that fire alarms will save their lives, but that doesn't mean they're going to believe you!"

"No?" he said tightly. "Well, how about we just go over some statistics on that, huh?"

"Josh." Walters sat back in his chair, looking annoyed.

Josh ignored him, picking up a folder, and begin to recite. "Over forty percent of residential fires occur in homes with no fire alarms. More than three fifths of fatalities occur in homes with no fire alarms. The leading cause of residential fire deaths is careless smoking, and studies show-"

Walters rolled his eyes, and flopped back in resignation.

Jed wandered through the corridors, slightly at a loss. The rest of his day had been cancelled for him, despite his protestations - protestations, it had to be admitted, that were not too forceful, just in case anybody actually felt compelled to act on them. He didn't need to take a break from working, but if one had already been created for him, then, well...

The only trouble with not working was that it left entirely too much time for thinking. He didn't want to dwell in these circular tracks of thought, already wearing dangerously smooth with overuse.

He could go to Abbey... but she would look at him that way, that loving and sad way that said she was desperately worried about him, and he wasn't sure he could take that right now. If one more person looked at him as if he was surely on the verge of shattering into a billion pieces, he might actually do it.

He found himself, perhaps following the echoes of the last conversation he'd had that hadn't physically hurt, meandering over to Josh's office area. Donna sat at her desk, typing, and he leaned against the wall and watched her for a moment, feeling vaguely bemused at his own urge to come over here. Donna glanced up, did a double-take, and then smiled warmly at him. "Mr. President!"

She stood, and he immediately felt guilty for interrupting her work. Great - not only was he being useless, he was now actively preventing other people from accomplishing anything. All in all, a great day for his leadership of the nation.

"Hey Donna," he acknowledged softly, and managed a smile in return. "Don't let me interrupt."

She ignored that, probably under the impression that he was actually supposed to be doing something important. "Josh is still in his meeting with Stuart Walters," she offered semi-apologetically. "Do you want me to ask him to-?"

Jed shook his head hurriedly. "No, no, I was just..." He shrugged. What the hell was wrong with him? Wandering the halls aimlessly... it was a wonder nobody had yet decided he'd flipped completely.

Donna didn't seem to find it particularly odd, however. "Yes, sir," she accepted with a quick nod.

"I'll just..." He pointed vaguely away.

"Okay, Mr. President," she said brightly. She returned to her desk, and he slowly started to leave. Not so much reluctant to leave as... lost. Completely and utterly lost. Where was he going, what was he doing? He felt like a wraith, haunting the corridors of his White House before he'd even had a chance to depart the mortal coil. Drifting from place to place, isolated from the world around him...

"Oh, and, Mr. President-"

He whipped around too fast when Donna called him back, startled to be jerked out of the shapeless blur of his thoughts. She smiled at him a little self-consciously.

"Did Charlie and Zoey say anything to you about names yet? Only there's this pool, and a girl has to maximise her budget-"

Jed chuckled, and was amazed to hear himself do it. "Looking for a few insider tips?" he asked teasingly. Donna grinned back, and he had a feeling that she was only starting this ridiculous line of conversation to make him feel better, but oh God, he didn't care.

She began enumerating on her fingers. "Well, Sam's pushing for a little Samantha or a Samuel, and Bonnie and Ginger think they're going to name the baby after you, and I don't think I have to tell you what idiot put money on 'Fifi Trixie-Belle Moon-Unit'..."

Jed leaned back, and just let the wave of cheerful babble wash over him... and, for a while, escaped from the pains of dwelling on his thoughts.

The aides and interns had abandoned Communications as if swarming from a sinking ship. Indeed, had this been the middle of the ocean, CJ knew exactly what deadly warning would be marked on all the navigation maps.

Here be Toby Ziegler.

Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.

Toby had been a foul mood for several days. Under the circumstances, that was hardly a surprise, but still, CJ thought there was something more to it than frustration at the press firestorm surrounding the president. Toby had known about all this as long as she had - some aspects of it even longer. Of course, knowing and experiencing were quite different things, but still... something was off.

"Toby." She waited until the doorway until he looked up. He had one finger pressed into his cheek as he regarded her through unreadable stormy eyes. He didn't say anything.

Opting to keep a light touch, she sauntered in and smiled at him. "Heard you've been showing off your usual sweet and sunny disposition." Toby shrugged. "Toby, if you go around ripping into the communications bullpen every time they raise their voices above a whisper-"

"They were placing bets on baby names," he growled.

"They were letting off steam, Toby," she reminded him gently. "Charlie and Zoey's baby is the only good news we've had this week, of course people are talking it up. What do you want them to do, dissect the president's psyche like everybody else is doing?" Including us.

"I want people to stop talking about babies," he grated with a scowl.

CJ gave a small chuckle of affectionate amusement. "Oh, Toby, some people like babies."

"I like babies," he said, quietly enough that she had to strain to hear him. "I liked mine, even before they were born. Even though they never were."

CJ stared at him, trapped in a long, silent slice of horror. "Toby..."

"Andy has... a thing," he mumbled. "Or we have a thing. We tried, but it didn't work, and... it didn't work."

Her eyelids prickled with tears of distress for the pain she hadn't even know was buried there. "Toby, why didn't you...? When was this, back when you...?"

"The... campaign. Just before the campaign, we... had some troubles." Just before he and Andy got divorced, he didn't say, but didn't have to.

CJ felt vaguely dizzied by the force of sudden, horrible understanding. She'd known, through a mixture of subtext and instinct, that the subject of children was one not to be brought up or teased over with the couple, but she'd never known any details, wouldn't have felt right about pressing for them. She supposed she'd assumed, if she'd assumed anything, that they'd argued over the right time to have children, conflicts over careers and priorities. She hadn't known that there was... this.

Before Bartlet For America had come along to yank her back to the side of one lifelong friend and into the company of a whole set of new ones, CJ hadn't seen much of Toby and Andy. She'd been off in California while Andy was running for Congress and Toby cycling through his long list of failed campaigns; there had been random intervals between phonecalls and letters, but Toby had always been a master of words and carefully judged silences. Face to face, it was a struggle to pry out of him anything he didn't want pried; without the valuable guide of that incredibly expressive body language, it was impossible.

And this pain, he hadn't wanted to share. She hurt too much for him to let it hurt her. He'd held onto this for - how long? - probably sharing only with Andy, too deep in her own pain to help him out of his.

"Toby... you could have talked to me," she said softly.

He looked up at her, eyes solemn. "What would it have fixed?" he said quietly.

And because she couldn't answer that, she only squeezed his arm in silent commiseration.