XII
Carol bustled through the corridors, her quick step as much from agitation as urgency. Fielding the fallout from painful questions was hardly anything new, but Jackie Grant's obnoxious enquiry in the midday briefing had set everybody reeling - even, she suspected, many of the rest of the press corps.
There was a line between public and personal even for the president - a line drawn entirely too far back for any human being to live comfortably behind, but still, it was there. You didn't ask a question like that in the White House - especially when your 'source' was a rumour that could be traced back to that famously reliable and stringently fact-checked information source 'the internet'. Political journalists might take few prisoners, but they tended to have a stronger sense of social conscience than your garden variety gutter press, and they had a certain amount of respect for lines of jurisdiction.
The logic behind exact positioning of said lines was a mystery to everyone but the journalists themselves - like it might be okay to report dark insinuations about a public figure's sexual shenanigans, but you didn't ask them directly to their face if they'd ever cheated on their spouse - but still, there were days when you were glad they drew them at all. Like when you came up against somebody who showed no hesitation in storming right over them.
Jackie Grant had been silently and coldly given her marching orders, with no protest from her peers, but the damage was done. A question, once launched, had a life of its own, and sometimes the answer was secondary to the fact that it had been asked at all. The fact that the president hadn't been sexually abused by his father - at least by everything they'd been told so far, and she was damned if she was going to go tagging hypotheticals onto a situation already too painful to think about - didn't cancel out that deadly phrase "rumours of sexual abuse".
Perhaps those 'rumours' had been nothing more than one person posing a question in an internet chat room, but now life had been breathed into them, and a rumour once born could never be killed. No proof - even if it hadn't been inherently unprovable - would ever completely quiet the insidious voice of conspiracy theory. People liked to speculate, to gather furtively at the water cooler and show off cynical and sordid tales like precious gems.
Everywhere across the country, people would be looking at President Bartlet and mumbling to each other "Well, I always thought he had kind of a haunted look sometimes, and you know what they say about victims wanting to lash back and prove they can accomplish things... you've got to worry, really, about someone like that being in charge of the big red button, haven't you? I mean, you never know what might make him snap..."
And Jed Bartlet was wise enough in the ways of gossip journalism to know it, too.
It was crazy to think anyone in the press office could have stopped the question before it happened, but the shroud of guilt had settled over them nonetheless. CJ might be tearing herself apart over letting the president down, but CJ's people were tearing themselves apart over letting CJ down.
The president didn't need this. This kind of dredging up of past injury was quite hellish enough for him without dealing with rumours and false allegations on top. Carol winced at the memory of the whispers that had travelled through the halls when CJ met with the rest of the staff after the briefing. The president had been horribly upset by the allegations, this attack on what little foundation he still had to retain any semblance of love and respect for his father. He'd been hurt, and badly enough that the people who'd seen him were shaken.
They were his press office. They were supposed to prevent him feeling body blows like this. They'd failed him...
Preoccupied with her own thoughts, she almost bumped into somebody, coming to a halt as she realised it was Charlie. "Hey, Charlie. What are you doing down here?
The young aide flashed her a tight, tense smile. "The president's wandering. I don't know if he needs me, but I want to give him some space."
Carol nodded sympathetically. It was a fine line walked by aides and assistants in times of crisis; when those above you were powerless, you were even more so, and sometimes it was hard to see past your own helplessness to tell if your support was welcome or a hindrance. "Is he-?" she began cautiously.
Charlie sighed, hard. He rubbed his face. "He... talked to a guy." There was a name and a face mentally associated with 'a guy' that certain higher-ups in this administration talked to during the dark times, but it was carefully filed away in the mental drawer marked 'Nope, wouldn't know anything about that'. "He's... calmed down a bit, I don't know if..." He could only shrug.
"Yeah." What could she say? President Bartlet was a peripheral presence to her, as much a concept of a man as a personality; she saw him often, but mostly through his interactions with CJ and the others, and that was a public persona. A warmer, closer, less formal persona than the one known to the American public, to be sure, but still a distance from the private man. She thought she knew President Josiah Bartlet pretty well, but Jed Bartlet was a rarer beast, glimpsed only in unguarded moments from the corner of her eye. A knowledge like this was a body blow, opening up frightening worlds of pain and history never dreamt of.
Both were silent for a moment, and she nervously filled the gap before it grew too large. "I, uh, I spoke to CJ... she said she can fit you in early tomorrow." It seemed like a million years ago that she'd been casually filling her boss in on requests for her time before the briefing.
"It isn't urgent," Charlie told her quickly. Trusting her to tell him whether it should wait, because he knew that CJ wouldn't. Carol smiled at him.
"Go see her after the early headlines have come in," she advised. "Trust me, that time in the morning, she'll be glad for anything to take her mind off... well, you know."
"Yeah," said Charlie heavily. His eyes were sad and tired as he offered her a lopsided smile. "I only wish there was some way we could do the same for him."
Walters listened to Josh rant on for quite some time, but eventually his patience snapped. "Josh, you're not telling me anything I don't know," he barked, slapping his palm against the tabletop for emphasis. "Yes, smoke alarms save lives. Yes, people should pay more attention to fire safety. But guess what? We already knew that when we hashed this out before. Just because you've got a bug up your ass about doing something about it now does not change anything!"
Josh glared at him sullenly - anger fuelled, in no small part, by the fact that he recognised the truth in the statement. This wasn't an out-of-favour pet project he could dig up and breathe new life into. There was no disagreement on issues here, only the forces of budget and pragmatism at work. And against those, even the slickest of political operators railed in vain.
Seeing hostility fade into depression, Walters softened his tone. "Josh. It's a worthy project, nobody's arguing with that. But you don't have anything new to swing here, and you don't have anyone to back you if you did. You're wasting my time, you're wasting your time, and you knew that before you came in here."
Josh looked down - caught in the futility of his own battle, but unwilling to give it up anyway.
"Josh," the Congressman said gently. He knew what this was about, had heard about poor Congresswoman Henderson's little girl just like everybody else. Joshua Lyman had an oversized heart and he wanted to save the world - but some things, there just were no easy fixes to. You couldn't stop tragedy in its tracks, that wasn't how the world worked. "You think nobody ever died in a house with a fire alarm?" he asked rhetorically.
Josh met his eyes. "I think nobody's life was ever saved by not having one," he said softly.
He turned and left the room, looking tired, and old beyond his years.
She was down one husband, and it was beginning to bother her just a little. The fact that he wasn't working was good; the fact that he was out there, wandering the halls, not so much so.
Abbey had heard from Leo the moment she got back about Jed's little outburst. She bitterly cursed the fact that she'd been out of the White House at just the wrong time. Anything media intensive had been rescheduled and she'd insisted on no trips that would keep her away overnight, but with her husband out of circulation the onus fell on her to keep up the ritual of public engagements. It was necessary to keep up the pretence that everything was normal and going swimmingly even when it was so obviously not.
She hadn't missed the guarded looks and hushed conversations that accompanied her presence, obvious speculations on her husband's state of mind and being - but it was hard to fault the whisperers when the exact same concerns occupied her own mind. She hated being away from him when he was so vulnerable. Not least because he guarded that vulnerability fiercely, letting nobody close enough to tend to his hurts. This wound was so old and deep that even she wasn't allowed to reach the heart of it, but at least she had the comfort of knowing her presence brought him solace.
By the sounds of things, he could have used some solace earlier in the day.
Perhaps, all things considered, though, it had been just as well she hadn't been in the building when that outrageous question was asked. There was a limit to how much good she could do her husband after being hauled away for beating a reporter to death with her own notepad.
Not all of the anger which still burned brightly through the core of her being rested fully on the shoulders of Jackie Grant. She knew her husband well enough to know exactly what had pushed him over the edge about this latest fatuous allegation, and that knowledge was a brutal, ugly truth.
After all this, after everything... Jed was still hurt more by a lie than the truth. It was not pain or fury that had pushed him into his emotional outburst, but love - horribly, terribly misplaced love. That his father's reputation be shattered was a worse crime to him than anything his father had ever done to him.
And screw Christian duty and turning the other cheek - for that, and that alone, John Bartlet would never earn her forgiveness. The bruises had faded, the flinches and hesitance faded into memory, but the legacy of a child's unquestioning love for his father lingered on. One of Jed's greatest strengths, his ability to give his love without reservation, had been used to cruelly bind his pain to him for the rest of his life. That love might not be blind, but it had no perspective, and Jed would never be able to demote his father's memory to the insignificance it deserved.
Abbey wanted rather desperately to punch something, but more than that, she wanted to grab her husband tight and refuse to let him go. She might not be able to protect him from the pains of a harsh past and an insensitive world, but she could at least wrap him in the cocoon of warmth that came from being one half of a two instead of one alone.
Of course, she had to find him first. She decided to seek out Donna; the sensitive young woman had been put on alert to monitor her husband's emotional condition, and besides, she tended to be more observant than most. Perhaps she would know where he'd disappeared to.
As she approached Donna's bullpen, however, she heard a male voice that was definitely not Josh's. Even before she was close enough to identify the words, the faint shapes of sound beginning to reach her felt intimately familiar. That voice had spent too many years sending strange thrills along her neural passages for her to mistake it now.
"...Theodosia. Means divinely given."
"Ianessa... that means gentle ruler." That was Donna's voice, startlingly bright and cheerful for both the lateness of the hour and the events of the past few days.
"Hmm, yes, a suitably regal name for a little princess... I like that one. Now, for a boy, I still say-"
Abbey was surprised to find herself actually smiling. She stepped forward to make her presence known, cutting her husband off with a pointed look. "I know exactly what you're going to say, and don't even think about it."
To a flood of relief that was so strong she literally felt it flow through her, Jed smiled. "I think Lysander Caradoc Bartlet is a perfectly fine name," he said, with a flicker of his usual dry humour.
She approached him across the empty bullpen, while Donna beamed at them both. He looked up at her as she reached out and took his hands. "I should warn you now, the 'no child of mine' rule can be extended to cover grandchildren," she chided lightly.
"Ah, you shoot down all my good ideas." He slowly steered their linked hands outwards so that she was pulled inexorably closer to him. "That's why all our children have such boring names," he claimed when they were almost nose to nose.
Abbey had never felt such a breathtakingly fragile gratitude to see him in a playful mood."That's why all our children are eternally grateful for the childhood hell they didn't go through," she corrected.
He grinned up at her, and then abruptly tugged on her hands so she near-tumbled into his lap. Pleased with this handiwork, he gave her a kiss on the nose. Out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed Donna blushing and quickly glancing away to give them privacy.
Abbey adjusted herself into a more dignified position beside him and rested her head against his shoulder. "Were you looking for me?" he asked softly. She grinned at him.
"Actually I was looking for Donna, but you'll do as second best."
Donna, obviously wanting to give them some space, straightened up and pointed vaguely away. "I should probably-"
"Oh, don't let me interrupt," Abbey said quickly. It was beyond precious to see Jed engaged in any conversation, no matter how silly, that made him smile right now. And if that meant ransoming the happiness of future Bartlet generations... well, she'd just have to get to Zoey before her father could start making 'helpful' naming suggestions. "Please... go ahead and tell me what the naming options are, so I can figure out how many hours of therapy to order as a Christening present."
Jed briefly squeezed her closer, and for just a few moments, they could pretend that everything was perfectly fine. And for now, that was as much as they could ask.