PART FOUR
2023
It was probably the last time he would walk into this office, Sam thought. He'd rather not come back, now that it was over. He just wanted to say goodbye and go away.
He looked at the room, still remembering the first time he came in there as Bartlet's speechwriter. God they were young. He had spent so much time staring around him that he hadn't even heard what the President had told him, and after a while, Bartlet had asked "You didn't hear a word I said, did you?" He didn't think he'd ever blushed that much before, it had actually hurt. Leo had rolled his eyes, muttering something that sounded suspiciously like, "Why the hell did we hire them?", and the President, who must have taken pity on him, had proceeded to tell him about CJ's first appearance in the Oval.
The first time he had come in there as a President was after the Inauguration, and he had had lots of fun seeing Colleen, Peter and Jim squirm when they entered it the first time. Too bad all the others had already been there, that would have been entertaining to watch, he had thought.
It had been less funny to think that he would be the one sitting behind that desk now. His resignation had seemed so far away then. There had been so many victories, and losses, since then. It seemed so ridiculous that he'd actually been elected President.
You think you're ready for that, but you're not, Sam had found out. When they called the election in your favor, you smiled, waved, and began praying not to make any major mistake.
He was closing in to the desk when he noticed the bag sitting on it. Packs rarely appeared on his desk, they had usually been searched before. Deciding to trust the Secret Services (if the pack was there, surely it was safe), he opened it and was startled at what he saw.
Well, that was... something else.
He hadn't been expecting coconut oil.
He spun on his heels and sure enough, CJ was there, still taller than him, smiling in the darkened office.
"Thanks for saving my life," she said, not letting him speak first.
"We did that already," he pointed out.
"No we didn't. I said it wasn't important, I said I didn't owe you, but I did, and I'm sorry it took me so long to tell you."
"Do you seriously think you needed to say it?" he asked. "I'm just, I'm glad we didn't lose anyone that night. I'm glad we didn't lose you. And for God's sake, you said thanks already."
"It bears repeating."
"If you say so," he conceded, because he could recognize an argument he wasn't going to win. "But not too often, okay?"
She laughed quietly and added, "Seriously Sam, I would have missed all that if you hadn't been there and I'm glad I was along for the ride."
"Even in bad times?" Sam asked.
Josh's funeral in 2011.
Jed's funeral in 2015.
Ben.
And then, there had been Leo's funeral just two years ago, from a heart attack - unexpected, brutal. Quick and painless, the doctor had said. "Not for us," Ainsley had muttered. She'd always remember Leo as the one who hadn't minded her being a Republican first. Sam had followed suit, of course, but Leo had been the one to welcome her, to teach her that duty meant more than partisanship, to help her adjust.
Too many losses, too many great men gone.
"What is family for?" CJ asked rhetorically. "And hey, cheer up, there were good times too."
Kate.
Jim meeting his kindred soul, Ethan. The two had received trucks of death threats without flinching, with their chins up and the conviction that they were in love, and that it was more important than the rest.
Donna and Bill.
"Yeah. I'm just - " Deep down in the process of cutting all ties to this place, he wanted to say, but he didn't have to. He merely gestured, knowing that CJ would understand, and she nodded.
"Sure. I'm going to say goodbye to mine too. Eventually."
They shared a smile and she walked to him, hugging him tightly, like she had done so many times before, both in times of joy and of grieving.
Which one was it this time, Sam wondered.
Kissing him on the cheek, she left him alone.
She was dying to call him Spanky, he could tell. It wouldn't last much longer. He was ready to bet that as soon as Charlie had been sworn in, she would cave in.
He couldn't wait for it.
**********
Half an hour later, Sam was reasonably sure he was done.
He left the room, not looking back.
Coming back to the party room proved longer than he had thought, though. Every single member of the staff he passed by seemed to want to tell him something, obviously aware that he would soon go back to the Residence with the family - Ainsley, Kate, senior staff - and that it would likely be their last chance to share a few words with him.
When he finally reached the room, he saw Colleen sitting at the bar, on her own, and he made a sign to Ainsley to tell her that he would be there any time now before taking a seat across his Chief of Staff. She seemed a bit sad right now, and Sam supposed that this was as good a time as any to have the talk with her. After all, she'd begin another high pressure job tomorrow morning, and God knew when they'd be able to talk again.
"So it's over," she said as soon as he had sat. "I can't believe it's been all this time."
He smiled, willing to let her talk about the past for now. "Somehow, I think you always saw me as the guy who appeared at your doorstep back in 2002, with no idea what he'd gotten himself into."
"You looked positively petrified," she laughed.
"I was. I really was. And you can't laugh at me yet, I'm still in office."
She winked at that. "Sorry, Mister President."
"I may have been a little pale," Sam allowed, "but you should have seen your face when I offered you the job of chief of staff."
She gulped. "That bad?"
"Worse. You looked this close to hyperventilating."
"I was, I guess. It's just that..."
"You had big shoes to fill?" Sam guessed.
"Yes, sir."
"You did great," Sam said, because it needed to be said, and because in the shuffle of the last eight years, he didn't think he had spent half enough time telling his staff all the good he thought of them. "And you still have a lot of work to do. I know Charl - President-elect Young offered you a job."
"He did," she sighed.
"I don't have orders to give you anymore, but."
"You think I should take it."
"He'll do a great job," he said, his voice not leaving a single place for doubt. "But some people are not going to love him for a president. And some will attack him, and they won't all be republicans."
A President was always under attack, he had discovered. There was always someone who didn't approve of what you tried to do, it was impossible to please everyone, but Sam suspected that in Charlie's case, it would be more than the frustration linked to the office.
"You're the reason the Joint Chiefs gathered around me," he told Colleen. "You're the reason the catholic right didn't make a coup, and - "
"And you think I'll be able to do the same for him?"
She seemed doubtful. And tired, incredibly so.
Yet he hadn't lied, she was the reason the Chiefs had accepted him. His first night in the Situation Room had been a nightmare. There had been a coup in a South American country with whom they had tense relationships, the embassy had to be evacuated, and Sam had no earthly idea whether he should send troops, at the risk of looking like an aggressor, knowing how fast the government of this country could make it look like an invasion, and wait and see, at the risk of intervening too late and lose some of the American personnel in the embassy.
To top it off, the hard ass officers were looking at him like he was a newly discovered and particularly disgusting disease. Not that any of them was overtly disrespectful. They just made it clear that they tolerated him. Nothing more. For that reason only, Sam felt ready to do whatever they wanted to do.
"You think you'll earn their respect that way, Mister President?" Colleen had asked. "By obeying them?"
"What if they're right?"
"What if they're not?" she had shot back. "Mister President, we have the time to at least make a few phone calls. We have contradictory reports about what's happening out there, we won't know for sure until a few hours. Take that time to think, and consider your options. Just because they all agree on a course of action doesn't mean they're right. Besides, they don't even all agree."
"They don't?" Sam had asked, honestly surprised.
"You only asked Admiral Chase, Sir. Yes, he speaks for them, but that doesn't mean that some of them aren't reluctant."
He hadn't noticed.
He didn't know what to do, so he did what he always did when in doubt. He followed Colleen's advise, he notified the Chiefs that they would wait, he thought, and waited for reports to come through. Which proved to be the right decision.
It had taken months for Sam to be comfortable in the Sit Room (longer even than it had taken him to be at ease in the Oval), and Colleen had had to point out to him a few of the mistakes he made. She was more gifted than he was to deal with the military. He had always felt a slight inferiority complex in front of these people who had willingly chosen to serve their country and risk their lives for it.
Once she had known that, Colleen had rolled her eyes. "Mister President, you've given up a well paid job to serve, you've done hours no one could dream of, at the detriment of your personal life sometimes, you walk surrounded by guards because people would love nothing more than to kill you - not you personally, but all you represent, and you think they're superior to you? They're different, sure, but surely not better."
And now, she was faced with the opportunity of helping yet another President, and Sam knew that she was tempted, while fearing that she was too tired to do it well.
"It's up to you, really," he told her. "But Colleen, I've known you for a long time now and you were born to do this job. You'll look for something to do."
"I'm getting old, Mister President."
"I know. That job seems to take all your energy, all your attention, all your everything, but at the end of a good day..."
He trailed off dreamily, and she nodded. At the end of the good day, when you had managed to avoid a war, when you knew that your family could sleep safely, when you had helped a few people, there was nothing like it.
She was getting old, yes - she had more ground experience than he had had when they had met, and she'd helped him every step of the way ever since, but he knew she still had it in her.
"I'll help him," she finally said, "but I won't survive another term. I'll look for a successor, and I'll leave then. I've done enough."
"You have," he agreed. "Do you have someone in mind?"
She nodded toward Peter, and Sam smiled a little. "That's gonna be some battle," he warned her. "He'll tell you that he's going to write a book, that he deserves peace, that he has done enough."
Of all the senior staff, Peter had lost the most in the last years - his personal problems culminating when the girl he had been engaged to dumped him because of the hours he did, and he had learned afterwards that she had been pregnant and had gone through an abortion without telling him anything. To make matters worse, the press had heard the story, and what had been a painful private matter had become a painful very public matter.
He had stayed, and Sam was grateful for that. He often regretted not having the time to socialize with the rest of them, and had developed a pretty informal way of dealing with them to compensate, but he liked them, and had tried to keep an eye out on them.
"He'll tell you he doesn't like it anymore," Sam went on, making it clear he wouldn't blame the younger man for thinking that.
"He'll be wrong, and I'll prove it. He has it in him."
She was right of course. Sam knew that after so many years in this world, you learned to recognize advisor's material when you saw it, the same way you recognized President material. They didn't know what it was, they couldn't name it, but when it was there, they saw it.
Most of them would continue to work in the political arena, Jim as a spokesman for a lobby for gay rights and Peter as future chief of staff for the White House (if Colleen had said he would come around, then there was no questioning he would).
CJ had been asked to teach what her years as a press secretary had taught her. After Sam's re-election, she had distanced herself from the press - she was tired, she had said. She needed to take it easy for a while. Her assistant had replaced her a little at first, then more and more often. CJ's role in the administration had changed, she had worked more from behind the scenes, but she had stayed, and Sam had been relieved that she hadn't left.
Toby... Toby had no idea what he was going to do.
All his life had been dedicated to writing, he didn't have any other asset, he had told Sam a few months earlier. The discussion had degenerated, Sam trying to convince his mentor that he could do everything he wanted, Toby drinking despondently.
It had been the only time they had talked about it. As far as he knew, Toby still hadn't a clue about what he was going to do with his life now. He was just sure that he was done with politics.
After all these years of getting the good people elected for the job, Sam could understand why his friend wanted out. He knew how grueling the fight was, and he was astonished that so many of them had stayed so long in their jobs.
He was glad they had, though. He should tell them that, he thought. Before they went their separate ways, before they tried to pretend they didn't miss it.
Apparently, CJ was going to make sure he did just that. "Mister President, a speech," she cried, and everyone turned to him and began to clap.
Much as he didn't want the night to end, he knew it was time for him, Ainsley and Kate to go back to the Residence. He hoped the senior staff would follow them so they could enjoy some more time together.
Sam rose to his feet, the cheering amplified and he smiled and waved at them to stay still. "Fine, fine, I'll say a few words," he laughed, his heart tightening a little when he saw that Toby, too, was applauding him, nodding softly when he saw Sam watching him.
Smiling, he looked for Ainsley, who had come near him when he had gotten up, took her hand and made his way to the center of the room, ready to say goodbye.
2023
It was probably the last time he would walk into this office, Sam thought. He'd rather not come back, now that it was over. He just wanted to say goodbye and go away.
He looked at the room, still remembering the first time he came in there as Bartlet's speechwriter. God they were young. He had spent so much time staring around him that he hadn't even heard what the President had told him, and after a while, Bartlet had asked "You didn't hear a word I said, did you?" He didn't think he'd ever blushed that much before, it had actually hurt. Leo had rolled his eyes, muttering something that sounded suspiciously like, "Why the hell did we hire them?", and the President, who must have taken pity on him, had proceeded to tell him about CJ's first appearance in the Oval.
The first time he had come in there as a President was after the Inauguration, and he had had lots of fun seeing Colleen, Peter and Jim squirm when they entered it the first time. Too bad all the others had already been there, that would have been entertaining to watch, he had thought.
It had been less funny to think that he would be the one sitting behind that desk now. His resignation had seemed so far away then. There had been so many victories, and losses, since then. It seemed so ridiculous that he'd actually been elected President.
You think you're ready for that, but you're not, Sam had found out. When they called the election in your favor, you smiled, waved, and began praying not to make any major mistake.
He was closing in to the desk when he noticed the bag sitting on it. Packs rarely appeared on his desk, they had usually been searched before. Deciding to trust the Secret Services (if the pack was there, surely it was safe), he opened it and was startled at what he saw.
Well, that was... something else.
He hadn't been expecting coconut oil.
He spun on his heels and sure enough, CJ was there, still taller than him, smiling in the darkened office.
"Thanks for saving my life," she said, not letting him speak first.
"We did that already," he pointed out.
"No we didn't. I said it wasn't important, I said I didn't owe you, but I did, and I'm sorry it took me so long to tell you."
"Do you seriously think you needed to say it?" he asked. "I'm just, I'm glad we didn't lose anyone that night. I'm glad we didn't lose you. And for God's sake, you said thanks already."
"It bears repeating."
"If you say so," he conceded, because he could recognize an argument he wasn't going to win. "But not too often, okay?"
She laughed quietly and added, "Seriously Sam, I would have missed all that if you hadn't been there and I'm glad I was along for the ride."
"Even in bad times?" Sam asked.
Josh's funeral in 2011.
Jed's funeral in 2015.
Ben.
And then, there had been Leo's funeral just two years ago, from a heart attack - unexpected, brutal. Quick and painless, the doctor had said. "Not for us," Ainsley had muttered. She'd always remember Leo as the one who hadn't minded her being a Republican first. Sam had followed suit, of course, but Leo had been the one to welcome her, to teach her that duty meant more than partisanship, to help her adjust.
Too many losses, too many great men gone.
"What is family for?" CJ asked rhetorically. "And hey, cheer up, there were good times too."
Kate.
Jim meeting his kindred soul, Ethan. The two had received trucks of death threats without flinching, with their chins up and the conviction that they were in love, and that it was more important than the rest.
Donna and Bill.
"Yeah. I'm just - " Deep down in the process of cutting all ties to this place, he wanted to say, but he didn't have to. He merely gestured, knowing that CJ would understand, and she nodded.
"Sure. I'm going to say goodbye to mine too. Eventually."
They shared a smile and she walked to him, hugging him tightly, like she had done so many times before, both in times of joy and of grieving.
Which one was it this time, Sam wondered.
Kissing him on the cheek, she left him alone.
She was dying to call him Spanky, he could tell. It wouldn't last much longer. He was ready to bet that as soon as Charlie had been sworn in, she would cave in.
He couldn't wait for it.
**********
Half an hour later, Sam was reasonably sure he was done.
He left the room, not looking back.
Coming back to the party room proved longer than he had thought, though. Every single member of the staff he passed by seemed to want to tell him something, obviously aware that he would soon go back to the Residence with the family - Ainsley, Kate, senior staff - and that it would likely be their last chance to share a few words with him.
When he finally reached the room, he saw Colleen sitting at the bar, on her own, and he made a sign to Ainsley to tell her that he would be there any time now before taking a seat across his Chief of Staff. She seemed a bit sad right now, and Sam supposed that this was as good a time as any to have the talk with her. After all, she'd begin another high pressure job tomorrow morning, and God knew when they'd be able to talk again.
"So it's over," she said as soon as he had sat. "I can't believe it's been all this time."
He smiled, willing to let her talk about the past for now. "Somehow, I think you always saw me as the guy who appeared at your doorstep back in 2002, with no idea what he'd gotten himself into."
"You looked positively petrified," she laughed.
"I was. I really was. And you can't laugh at me yet, I'm still in office."
She winked at that. "Sorry, Mister President."
"I may have been a little pale," Sam allowed, "but you should have seen your face when I offered you the job of chief of staff."
She gulped. "That bad?"
"Worse. You looked this close to hyperventilating."
"I was, I guess. It's just that..."
"You had big shoes to fill?" Sam guessed.
"Yes, sir."
"You did great," Sam said, because it needed to be said, and because in the shuffle of the last eight years, he didn't think he had spent half enough time telling his staff all the good he thought of them. "And you still have a lot of work to do. I know Charl - President-elect Young offered you a job."
"He did," she sighed.
"I don't have orders to give you anymore, but."
"You think I should take it."
"He'll do a great job," he said, his voice not leaving a single place for doubt. "But some people are not going to love him for a president. And some will attack him, and they won't all be republicans."
A President was always under attack, he had discovered. There was always someone who didn't approve of what you tried to do, it was impossible to please everyone, but Sam suspected that in Charlie's case, it would be more than the frustration linked to the office.
"You're the reason the Joint Chiefs gathered around me," he told Colleen. "You're the reason the catholic right didn't make a coup, and - "
"And you think I'll be able to do the same for him?"
She seemed doubtful. And tired, incredibly so.
Yet he hadn't lied, she was the reason the Chiefs had accepted him. His first night in the Situation Room had been a nightmare. There had been a coup in a South American country with whom they had tense relationships, the embassy had to be evacuated, and Sam had no earthly idea whether he should send troops, at the risk of looking like an aggressor, knowing how fast the government of this country could make it look like an invasion, and wait and see, at the risk of intervening too late and lose some of the American personnel in the embassy.
To top it off, the hard ass officers were looking at him like he was a newly discovered and particularly disgusting disease. Not that any of them was overtly disrespectful. They just made it clear that they tolerated him. Nothing more. For that reason only, Sam felt ready to do whatever they wanted to do.
"You think you'll earn their respect that way, Mister President?" Colleen had asked. "By obeying them?"
"What if they're right?"
"What if they're not?" she had shot back. "Mister President, we have the time to at least make a few phone calls. We have contradictory reports about what's happening out there, we won't know for sure until a few hours. Take that time to think, and consider your options. Just because they all agree on a course of action doesn't mean they're right. Besides, they don't even all agree."
"They don't?" Sam had asked, honestly surprised.
"You only asked Admiral Chase, Sir. Yes, he speaks for them, but that doesn't mean that some of them aren't reluctant."
He hadn't noticed.
He didn't know what to do, so he did what he always did when in doubt. He followed Colleen's advise, he notified the Chiefs that they would wait, he thought, and waited for reports to come through. Which proved to be the right decision.
It had taken months for Sam to be comfortable in the Sit Room (longer even than it had taken him to be at ease in the Oval), and Colleen had had to point out to him a few of the mistakes he made. She was more gifted than he was to deal with the military. He had always felt a slight inferiority complex in front of these people who had willingly chosen to serve their country and risk their lives for it.
Once she had known that, Colleen had rolled her eyes. "Mister President, you've given up a well paid job to serve, you've done hours no one could dream of, at the detriment of your personal life sometimes, you walk surrounded by guards because people would love nothing more than to kill you - not you personally, but all you represent, and you think they're superior to you? They're different, sure, but surely not better."
And now, she was faced with the opportunity of helping yet another President, and Sam knew that she was tempted, while fearing that she was too tired to do it well.
"It's up to you, really," he told her. "But Colleen, I've known you for a long time now and you were born to do this job. You'll look for something to do."
"I'm getting old, Mister President."
"I know. That job seems to take all your energy, all your attention, all your everything, but at the end of a good day..."
He trailed off dreamily, and she nodded. At the end of the good day, when you had managed to avoid a war, when you knew that your family could sleep safely, when you had helped a few people, there was nothing like it.
She was getting old, yes - she had more ground experience than he had had when they had met, and she'd helped him every step of the way ever since, but he knew she still had it in her.
"I'll help him," she finally said, "but I won't survive another term. I'll look for a successor, and I'll leave then. I've done enough."
"You have," he agreed. "Do you have someone in mind?"
She nodded toward Peter, and Sam smiled a little. "That's gonna be some battle," he warned her. "He'll tell you that he's going to write a book, that he deserves peace, that he has done enough."
Of all the senior staff, Peter had lost the most in the last years - his personal problems culminating when the girl he had been engaged to dumped him because of the hours he did, and he had learned afterwards that she had been pregnant and had gone through an abortion without telling him anything. To make matters worse, the press had heard the story, and what had been a painful private matter had become a painful very public matter.
He had stayed, and Sam was grateful for that. He often regretted not having the time to socialize with the rest of them, and had developed a pretty informal way of dealing with them to compensate, but he liked them, and had tried to keep an eye out on them.
"He'll tell you he doesn't like it anymore," Sam went on, making it clear he wouldn't blame the younger man for thinking that.
"He'll be wrong, and I'll prove it. He has it in him."
She was right of course. Sam knew that after so many years in this world, you learned to recognize advisor's material when you saw it, the same way you recognized President material. They didn't know what it was, they couldn't name it, but when it was there, they saw it.
Most of them would continue to work in the political arena, Jim as a spokesman for a lobby for gay rights and Peter as future chief of staff for the White House (if Colleen had said he would come around, then there was no questioning he would).
CJ had been asked to teach what her years as a press secretary had taught her. After Sam's re-election, she had distanced herself from the press - she was tired, she had said. She needed to take it easy for a while. Her assistant had replaced her a little at first, then more and more often. CJ's role in the administration had changed, she had worked more from behind the scenes, but she had stayed, and Sam had been relieved that she hadn't left.
Toby... Toby had no idea what he was going to do.
All his life had been dedicated to writing, he didn't have any other asset, he had told Sam a few months earlier. The discussion had degenerated, Sam trying to convince his mentor that he could do everything he wanted, Toby drinking despondently.
It had been the only time they had talked about it. As far as he knew, Toby still hadn't a clue about what he was going to do with his life now. He was just sure that he was done with politics.
After all these years of getting the good people elected for the job, Sam could understand why his friend wanted out. He knew how grueling the fight was, and he was astonished that so many of them had stayed so long in their jobs.
He was glad they had, though. He should tell them that, he thought. Before they went their separate ways, before they tried to pretend they didn't miss it.
Apparently, CJ was going to make sure he did just that. "Mister President, a speech," she cried, and everyone turned to him and began to clap.
Much as he didn't want the night to end, he knew it was time for him, Ainsley and Kate to go back to the Residence. He hoped the senior staff would follow them so they could enjoy some more time together.
Sam rose to his feet, the cheering amplified and he smiled and waved at them to stay still. "Fine, fine, I'll say a few words," he laughed, his heart tightening a little when he saw that Toby, too, was applauding him, nodding softly when he saw Sam watching him.
Smiling, he looked for Ainsley, who had come near him when he had gotten up, took her hand and made his way to the center of the room, ready to say goodbye.