XVIII

"Mr. President!" Leo stood at his old friend's arrival, as much from surprise as habitual respect. Jed waved him quickly back into his seat.

"Leo."

"You've finished with-?"

"I sent him home," he said shortly. "I'm done talking with him." He was brusque rather than angry, the edges of what would have been an acerbic tone blunted by the ever-present weariness. Leo looked up at him carefully.

"Sir-"

"You think talking's going to help?" Jed asked flatly, looking him in the eye. Leo had to look down. No, he hadn't really thought so, but he'd hoped. Stanley seemed to have provided the president some solace on other occasions, even if only in the form of having somebody there he could comfortably line up his thoughts in front of. But for something as intimately personal as this... no, he really hadn't expected it to solve things.

Stanley had helped Josh... but then, Josh had been openly exploding in his self-destruction, whilst Jed Bartlet's quiet combustion remained strictly internal. And besides, Josh was from a different generation, almost a different world, where the rules of Things That Men Did were not what they had once been. A better world, no doubt - but one that he and Jed, products of a different time, still only had one foot in.

It was easy to accept the new order of things, hard to seamlessly mould yourself into a part of it. You were pleased and proud and gratified to see women become accepted as equals, take their rightful place in society... but you didn't stop holding doors. You admired the fact that emotions were now something it was okay to have and share and hold up and examine... but that didn't mean you were ready to put yours on display. The old ways were dead and dying - and in most cases, good riddance - but the shadows of long-ingrained codes of behaviour lingered on.

It was easily forgotten sometimes, with the way Jed Bartlet was so casually comfortable with himself and the people around him, that he was a product of that same culture too.

"Okay," he acknowledged softly. Pushing the president to open up and talk about things was a route that would lead exactly nowhere... and besides, he was hardly the man for that. He shifted tack, slipping back into brisk professionalism. "You're meeting with O'Bannon?"

Jed nodded. "Yeah. But I'm free until then. What's happening?"

He wanted to say 'nothing you need to worry about', but that wouldn't help, now would it? "It's in hand. Josh is meeting with Baker and Carrington on Tennessee, and Toby's meeting with Mel Wicks to discuss the changes to the language."

"And Sam's meeting with Gareth Vance from the children's charities," the president completed softly. Leo met his eyes, momentarily startled and trying not to look it. How had the president found out about that?

"Sir. He's-"

Jed dismissed it with a gesture. "I know what they're meeting about."

Of course he did - how could he not? Child abuse PSAs from a suitably scarred and battered president? He was surprised they weren't queuing down the street to try and book him for the chat show circuit.

"Mr. President-"

"It doesn't matter," Jed said softly. He shifted, moving for the door. Leo had to call after him.

"Sir. Are you... okay?"

The strength of their friendship earned him the right to more than a brush-off... but not much more. Jed gave him a shrug, and a wry smile. "I'm fine," he said, and left.

Gareth could have almost cried with frustration. They'd come so close, he'd really started to believe they could do this... and now, abruptly, 'We'll have to think about it' had become a flat 'no way'.

Seaborn had seemed so receptive in their first meeting; not a hardened politician but an earnest, conscientious mind, ready to be swayed by arguments of doing the right thing and how many children they could save. He'd been wavering, but now his mind seemed made up, lips set in a firm but apologetic line.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Vance," he repeated, "but there's just no way we can ask the president to do this."

Gareth knew he was asking a lot, of course he was asking a lot, but wasn't it worth it? If even one abused child could be convinced to come forward, wouldn't it be worth it? Surely President Bartlet would see it that way. He was a good man... and he'd been through the exact same hell these children were trapped in. He had to see it that way.

"If you could just take this proposal to the president," he pleaded. "If you only explained to him, I'm sure that he'd-"

"Want to do it? Yes," Sam agreed. "More than that, he'd feel obliged to do it, and that's not fair. I won't be responsible for putting him in that position."

"Sam-"

But he wasn't finished. "Mr. Vance... you work directly with victims of this kind of abuse?" His voice dropped, probably unconsciously, adopting the hushed tones people nearly always did when they talked of the things no one wanted to think about.

"That's right," he nodded, hoping Sam's conscience was beginning to sway him.

"I can't imagine what it must be like for them," he said softly.

"It's... hard." Gareth stared at the table. No matter how long you worked in this kind of field, it never stopped affecting you. "Sam, if you could see them... They're, they're lost, they're frightened... abuse is the only life most of them have known, and they cry to be taken away from it. They love their parents, they don't want to be saved from them. They don't even understand the, the wrongness of it. They don't know that there are lives other than the kind that they've been living."

"They find it difficult to talk to you about their pasts?"

"Very, very difficult," he confirmed solemnly.

Sam sighed. "Mr. Vance... I understand your position, I understand why you want to do this, and that it comes from the purest of motives, but there's one thing you've overlooked."

Gareth frowned. "What's that?"

"You've been trying so hard to find a way to help these kids, you've forgotten that President Bartlet is one of these kids."

He was silent.

Sam rubbed his face. "Contrary to... anything you might read in the papers, this isn't some open secret that we've been running interference on since the days of the campaign. The president doesn't talk about his childhood - he's never talked about his childhood. We didn't know, his children didn't know... I'm telling you now, I'm not even sure that the First Lady knew."

He stood up, sighing, before he continued. "I know that you think this could help a lot of victims of child abuse, and for what it's worth, I think you're probably right. But it would also do a lot of damage for one of them, and he's the one I work for, and I can't let you ask him to do this."

Gareth looked down. "Yeah," he said quietly.

There was a soft knock at the door, and a young black man stuck his head through apologetically. "Hey, Charlie," Sam acknowledged.

"Hi, Sam." He turned to look at Gareth. "Mr. Vance?"

"Yeah?" he frowned, puzzled.

"The president would like to speak with you."

"Hello?"

"Eleanor?"

Ellie smiled automatically at her godmother's voice, but it didn't ease the ball of tension gathered at the centre of her stomach. "It's me."

"How are you?" the Surgeon General asked kindly.

"I feel awful," she admitted frankly.

"I'm not surprised, honey. I know this is tough for you."

"No, I-" She struggled to articulate her confused thoughts. "There was this reporter, yesterday, he-"

"Ellie, you cannot blame yourself for the actions of the gutter press," her godmother told her sternly. "That little rat Drumm would have written his story no matter what you said, and you know it."

"Yeah, but it's my fault," she said sickly. "All that stuff about dad neglecting us, about him being a bad dad... they got that from me, from me being an idiot and stomping round in a teenage sulk all the time..."

"That's ridiculous, Eleanor - everyone knows you love your father."

"He didn't!" she retorted. "He always thought I... He didn't know that-"

"Eleanor, you can't blame yourself," the Surgeon General repeated more softly. "Not for the newspapers, not for your father's past, not for any of this."

"Yeah, I- I suppose. Listen, I've- I've gotta go. Bye."

"Eleanor- goodbye," her godmother cut herself off just before Ellie put the phone down, sounding faintly exasperated.

Ellie sat and looked at the phone in its cradle for a few moments, brooding. Then, decisively, she picked it up and began making calls.