XIX

Jed looked up as Charlie ushered a nervous looking man into the Oval Office. "Mr. President? Gareth Vance."

"Thank you, Charlie."

He nodded at the newcomer, and was silent for a moment as Charlie retreated to his area outside.

Vance shifted uncomfortably, and then blurted "Mr. President, I-"

"You came to talk to Sam about me, didn't you," he said, somewhat wryly. It wasn't really a question.

The charity representative's eyes seemed glued rather firmly to the carpet. "Sir, I realise it was... intrusive of me to approach the White House on the basis of the news reports, and-"

Jed sighed softly. "I know why you did it," he acknowledged.

"Sir." Vance finally looked up.

Jed rubbed his eyes, and was silent for a long while. "I... Don't think I don't have... the greatest admiration for what you do," he said finally. "And don't think I don't want to give you all the help I can possibly give you. But... I can't be your poster boy. I have a job to do, and a life to live, and I can't be your poster boy."

"I understand, Mr. President," the younger man said softly. "And... thank you. For your time, and- Thank you."

Jed nodded quietly. "Okay. I just wanted to tell you that... I admire what you're doing. It takes a greatness of spirit to dedicate yourself to helping the public."

"I realise that, sir," Vance said, with a soft smile that was more directed at Jed than self-congratulatory. He turned to leave, then hesitated. "And, Mr. President? I know this isn't... well, you probably couldn't call this a consolation, but... We've had a lot of calls. These past few days... we've been getting a lot of calls."

He left, and Jed remained alone with his solemn thoughts.

"Hey, Donna." Leo smiled at the assistant, and tilted his head questioningly towards Josh's office. She nodded and pulled a face.

"Yeah, he's working late."

"Okay, thanks." He gave her a kind look. "You can go home, you know."

"When he does," she replied without missing a beat, and he had to smile. It never ceased to amaze him how a bunch of bumbling workaholics like them could somehow inspire such loyalty in their assistants. The Margarets, Donnas and Carols of this world didn't get nearly enough credit.

He stepped inside.

Josh had, for reasons unknown, swivelled his chair to face the back wall. He spun it around now, beginning "Donna, I said I'm- Hey." He blinked blearily at his boss, and started to stand. "Leo. Do you need me to-?"

"Sit down and shut up for a minute? Yes I do."

Josh dropped inelegantly back into his seat, perhaps aiming to look alert and curious, but only succeeding in seeming exhausted.

He glanced down at his deputy's desk, saw the leaflets and folders still spread across it, and smiled sadly. "Josh? It's time to let it go."

Josh followed his gaze. "Leo, I'm not-"

"You're trying to fix the world. And nobody's gonna tell you you're wrong for that, but I'm telling you... let it go."

Josh looked up at him solemnly. "I'm trying to save lives here, Leo."

He was silent for a long beat - knowing that some of the lives Josh was still trying to save were gone beyond hope of recovery. "Yeah," he agreed with a heavy sigh.

"Leo-"

"Josh. I know what you want to do, and I know why you want to do it. And you know we can't do it right now."

He looked down; quiet, almost contrite, an emotion that didn't sit well on him. "Yeah," he agreed softly.

"We do the best we can, Josh. We don't get to be Superman, spinning back the world to put things right. We just do the best we can."

"I-" The syllable was a sharply chopped off burst, the start of a sentence that bled away into nothingness as he sank back into his chair in resignation. He held his forehead for a moment, then looked up. "I feel helpless, Leo." He shrugged angrily. "I feel... helpless."

Leo nodded, and smiled wryly. "Yeah, I know how that is." Ever since he'd learned of the president's private pains and seen them put up on display, he'd been feeling nothing but.

Even through his own slumped weariness, Josh found a concerned look to shoot at him. "You okay?"

"Well, I'm not planning on running off for a shot of Jack Daniels, if that's what you mean," he responded, acerbic though the question was probably fully justified. He made a hand-gesture of apology, but Josh shrugged it off. They were comfortable in silence for a moment.

Leo sighed, and straightened up. "Go home, Josh," he said; fondly, but with the cadence of an order. "We've always got tomorrow."

"Which is, so I'm told, another day," Josh observed sardonically.

"Yeah, well, just try and get out of here before it turns into today."

"Right back at you."

"Oh, I will," Leo agreed. Josh eyed him disbelievingly. "What, you don't think Donna got on the phone to Margaret the moment I walked in that door?"

"Point," Josh acknowledged. They exchanged a brief smile. They were two of the most politically powerful men in the United States of America, but their assistants still owned them.

And they wouldn't have it any other way.

"Hon, is that you?" she called at the sound of footsteps entering the room. She turned, in the process of removing her earrings.

"It's me," he confirmed, sitting heavily on the edge of the bed to remove his shoes. Abbey crossed the room to sit beside him, and smiled up at him. He smiled back tiredly, and laid his head briefly on her shoulder.

"Tough day?" she asked sympathetically, with just enough of a wry twist to acknowledge what a stupid question it really was.

He sighed, and began to loosen the knot in his tie with heartbreaking lethargy. "I met this guy from the Shield of Innocence children's charity... he wanted me to do some speaking for them, but..." He shook his head. "Those poor kids, I wish..."

He didn't have to finish for her to recognise the weight of responsibility pressing on his shoulders. Jed had always somehow believed that it was his duty to mend the world, and the fact that as president he sometimes could didn't outweigh all the things he felt he wasn't doing enough about.

"You can't do everything, babe," she reminded him, as he stood and moved away to drop the tie on the dresser.

His reply was rendered an inaudible mumble as he tugged his suit jacket over his head, but she was sure he'd said that he ought to be able to do.

"Did he want you to talk about your father?" she asked, hoping she could see an opening, a chance to slip her way in through his defences. Maybe it was wrong to press him when he was exhausted like this... but when wasn't he exhausted?

He turned to face her, misery written plainly across his features. "I just- I wish people wouldn't keep doing this, keep equating my childhood with all these nightmare stories, with all these people who've really suffered, when it was, it wasn't-"

"Jed-" She stood up and moved towards him, her words half an exhortation not to work himself up but also half a warning. Was he still doing this, standing in the face of overwhelming evidence and just flat out denying that it had happened? No, worse than that, because he wasn't denying its truth, only its importance, and that was just... "Jed..." she repeated softly, almost pleadingly.

He met her eyes, his own blue portals to naked dismay. "Abbey, I just..." He lowered his head. "He was my father, why can't anybody understand that? He was my father."

She moved closer, wanting to reach out for him but somehow afraid that this was too fragile a moment to dare so. "He still hurt you, Jed. He was your father, but that doesn't change the fact that he still hurt you."

"It wasn't like that-"

The tightly wound coil of self-restraint, one she'd never been particularly inclined to exercise at the best of times, abruptly snapped. "Oh, dammit, Jed, will you get your head out of your ass and stop pretending that he never hurt you!"

Abbey was no stranger to roaring her disapproval in the middle of a fight, but that burst of long-suppressed frustration and anger startled her even as it came out of her mouth. She expected Jed to shout back, or to argue, or to turn away from her and close off, but instead he just stared at her.

And then, completely without warning, he started to cry.

His head bowed and his shoulders quaked with the muffled sobs of a man who hadn't done so in a long long time, and didn't want to be doing it now. Her fury melted away in too short an instant to measure, and she flung her arms around him. "It's okay. I love you. I love you." She kissed his hair, and whispered the only words that had ever mattered.

Jed hugged her as fiercely as if she might be pulled away from him if he let go, struggling to wrest his anguish under some kind of control. There were tears streaking down her own cheeks, she knew, as instinctually linked to her husband's pain as his own choking distress.

He managed to lift his head to meet her gaze, eyes cloudy blue and even now still beautiful. "They want me to hate him, Abbey," he told her in a tear-strangled voice. "They all want me to hate him, and I don't want to do it. I don't want to do it."

Abbey closed her eyes and pressed against him even closer, as if sheer force of will she might be able to blend the two of them into a single being and take on his hurt for herself. "It's okay, babe," she promised, with the authority of one who would move earth and heaven a dozen times to make it so. "I'm here, and I love you, and it's all gonna be okay. I promise. I promise."