And here we go, onto Season 2! I hope you enjoy. And though this doesn't really change anything there are twenty more chapters left of this story!

Disclaimer-Nothing but Jacob is mine.

And on a side note, I like so many other Fanfiction Authors no longer receive notifications via email about reviews/PMs etc. So if you do send any it might be a while, if ever before I get back to you. Please keep that in mind for it is not intentional-If anyone has a fix please let me know.

There will be a second part that follows this...eventually. Each series should cover about seven chapters some chapters several episodes. Flashbacks included when needed.

Also I do not do Private Messaging anymore, any questions stick them in a review and I will get back to you next chapter note.

Also please be aware of a bit of a time jump between these chapters.

Also after much thought and consideration I have decided not to include Mandy in this story. She's there for like one Season and misses half of the episode and while she was an okay character played by a very good actress her disappearance and everything that follows is just too hard to write. So no Mandy. Ever.

And a couple of the episodes are mixed around here but please keep that in mind.

There will be a lot of flashbacks in the Season 2 arc as well

Perhaps Love

Chapter 12-Against The Current

It's Christmas and Jake and Josh are both pretending that they are fine until the White House Christmas Party where it all boils over. Some Trigger Warnings for PTSD and gun violence.

Jake had never gone to therapy or sought anyone out over the shooting. To be honest until he had seen Josh have a complete meltdown he had never thought he needed too.

Josh's meltdown had been coming for three weeks. Jake had not seen what had started it, had not seen the climax of what had taken place in the Ovel Office but he had seen Josh screaming about sirens in the corridor when he had been heading towards his Mom's office. He had found that he didn't want to sit at home alone anymore. he had been an independent child all his life, it was the price that you paid when you were the child of workaholics. You were alone a lot, coupled with the fact that Jake had practically raised himself when he had been on the campaign. He did good when he was alone, he knew how to look after himself. He knew what he was doing. And yet since the shooting the thought of being alone even for one night paralysed him with fear. He found himself up half the night until his parents came home sat in his room and hurriedly flicking the light off and pretending to be asleep when they came in.

He didn't know if they were believing of him when he said that he was doing okay. He didn't know if everyone believed Josh. Maybe it was just Jake who believed him. Jake who believed him right up until that moment when he had screamed that all he could hear was sirens.

"Damn" his Dad said quietly as Josh stormed back into his office and slammed the door shut. "Damn I thought that…"

"Don't say you thought that he was going to be okay" his Mom said quietly. "Don't Toby, he's been on a slow boil since the Midterms. It's been one thing after another and everyone's been praying that it goes away and—"

"I need to go home" Jake said suddenly interrupting the conversation. He was achingly aware that he had only just arrived and yet the need to be far away from both of them right now was so strong it was paralysing him almost.

They both turned to look at him but he didn't look at them. He was watching Josh's closed door and then he turned to look back at his parents and though he didn't know it then, that was the moment that both of his parents knew that he was not okay. That he too was suffering. That he too was drowning in the constant fear that came when you thought for one second your parents were shot.

Gun violence. Jake was quickly learning that it didn't matter how old you were or how young you were or where you came from or who you were, if you survived it, it affected you. Crippled you even when you thought that you were okay. And he was not okay. He was kidding himself that he was okay. Because he was not.

And it all came to a head around Christmas.

"He's not okay"

"Who Josh or Jake?"

"Both CJ, God did you see Josh tonight?"

"Yes, I also heard Josh today and I got a replay from Sam about what happened with the President, please tell me Leo—"

There was a thudding noise and there was the man in question stomping out of the Christmas party. Donna was next to him her face white in her dress and her hair coming out of the knot she had stuck it in.

"Leo—"

"I'm dealing with it" Leo called and then he was gone and Toby wanted to open his mouth to ask what was going on but he closed it again, he didn't want to worry about Josh tonight when his own son was clearly suffering, perhaps that made him selfish, God knows he would understand it.

"You want to head home, I think Jake was heading to mine?" CJ said finally. "I think…Toby how do we approach this? I mean…I thought he was fine, I was…"

"He wasn't sleeping well I knew that" Toby said cutting out in front of her. "I knew that he wasn't sleeping well and I knew that he was struggling with some of his school work but he's a teenager so I just…I think we should go and talk to him, not confront him, not push him. Just go and speak to him and let him know that he has us when he is ready to talk. We can't confront him or demand that he seek out help, it doesn't work like that. We just need to know that when he is ready he has us"

"And then what?"

"Whatever it takes CJ" he said ripping off the bow tie and wrapping his coat tighter around him as they left the White House together.

"Whatever it takes"

Jake was in fact waiting for them to get home staring out the window at the snow that was coming down. Washington was a beautiful time for snow CJ thought. Ohio had been nice in winter too but Washington had snow storms that made you feel like you were trapped inside a snow globe that was parcelled out to tourists. Like you could be safe in there no matter what happened.

CJ had always thought that, that as oppressive. However when she walked into her apartment to see her son whip his head around looking surprised as if the two of them coming home from work alive was something to be surprised about, she realised she had really been selling snow globes short. At least the people trapped in the glass domes were safe from rampaging, lunatic, neo Nazi gunmen.

"Jake" she said sitting down and throwing her shoes somewhere near her room where she was willing to bet tomorrow she would trip up over on her way to…wherever it was that she had to be tomorrow (to be honest she was not even sure what day tomorrow was).

"Mom" Jake said looking between the two of them. "Dad"

"Jake" Toby said sitting down next to CJ and then the two of them paused because for all their talk that they were going to be a united front the reality was that neither one of them knew what to say or what to do next.

Jake watched them both for a second and then sighed. Sometimes CJ had to wonder who was the adult here? Had they stripped Jake of his childhood when they had dragged him along on this ride of a lifetime or had he been an adult in a child's body already?

Either way it was a thought that she knew was damn well going to fester for a long time.

"Jake—"

"Josh okay?"

"He will be"

Jake raised an eyebrow.

"Will he though?"

It stopped both of them in their tracks because the truth was CJ knew, neither of them could answer the question. Josh was clearly suffering and Leo had now moved to actively do something about it. What was going to happen when the results of the work that Leo was doing was exposed to the wider community that worked within the West Wing she simply couldn't think.

"He will…" she said slowly. "I think. But Jake we aren't here to talk about Josh were here—"

"I'm not okay" Jake said before she could finish her sentence. Toby breathed in and then breathed out next to her and CJ nodded. She had not been expecting him to be so direct about it. But then again…Jake was so very much like his father, Toby too did things that she couldn't understand or expect from him.

"Okay" Toby said quietly. "Okay—"

"I've been sat here thinking about it" Jake said quietly. "Went home after watching Josh scream about sirens and when I went out I got why. The music you know…I got it. And I was there and I was trapped unable to move. I was half on the floor with Charlie and Anna and then some Secret Service agent was on top of me. I didn't know what to do or what to think…he just told me to stay down and it took me a moment to realise that he was there to catch the bullet for me." He shrugged and CJ didn't know what to do, she wanted to reach out and hug him, to fold him into her arms and let him rest his head on her shoulder but Toby reached out and took her hand in his and she realised he was telling her to let their son finish.

Jake had to expel this out of him like it was poison, like it was all coming out now. She wondered for a second if he had been trying to tell them this all along or if in his own way he had been trying to put one foot in front of the other until he was able to speak in his own time, in his own place, in his own way.

"And then I didn't know where you were. And I've been sat here thinking about it and the truth is it freaks me, it freaks the living daylights out of me because the truth is that everytime one of you comes home late I think you might be dead. I think you might have caught the bullet from the New Nazi's of Delaware or Virginia White Pride or whatever nutjob organisation is after us. And I don't want you to quit or to…do anything really, I just…it's like there is two different people, the guy I was before the shooting and the guy I was after"

He finished looked down at his knees.

"I am not okay" he said finally. "I am not."

"Well" Toby said after a pause. "Would it help if your Mom and I said that we were not okay?"

Jake's head snapped back up to the two of them in shock and CJ realised with a pulse of hot maniacal anger that her son had never considered that she and Toby felt fear after the shootings, how could he when they had picked themselves up and went back to work? They had been in damage control mode since the first bullet hit the President and they had not stopped.

If CJ ever got a hold of that scrawny little skinhead currently serving life in supermax she was going to snap his leg like a twig under her expensive shoes. She did not believe in hate, she believed that It was a wasted emotion and yet right now she had never hated somebody more than she had hated those three teenagers who had gone out to die.

Josh. Jake. The President, Stephanie Abbott, Ron Butterfield, Leo, her, Toby, Sam, the Press Corps, Charlie, Zoey, Gina…the list of causalities that could have been that night was endless.

And none of them had been the same since.

"Your not?"

"No" Toby said quietly. "Because what you feel, is exactly how we felt. Because when the shooting stopped we looked up and didn't know where you were and when we did eventually find you, you and that girl were coated in blood"

He made a quick abortive gesture with his hand and she realised that he saw it now too the same way she did. Jake covered in blood staring down at Josh's body in the nightmares that plagued them all since this thing had began.

"Mom?"

She nodded. She did not think that she had the words for it anyway.

Jake looked at the two of them and then…

"So what do we do?"

"Do you want to talk to someone about it? A professional? It's what Leo is gonna do for Josh, I can ask Stanley Keyworth to come and sit with you I'm sure he'd be willing to do it. You don't have to do anything after that but we can always get you to see someone if you want to"

Jake opened his mouth, shut it again and then…

"Do not think that it is an admission of weakness to need help" Toby said and his voice was like steal. "Do not"

"Okay" Jake croaked finally.

"Okay. I…I think I need help. I'd…I'd like to speak to this Stanley guy. Because I can't…I can't sit at night wondering if the two of you are going to be shot on the way back to the car."

CJ nodded and she caught Toby's expression and he nodded too his face betraying his emotions no doubt like hers was and she realised that they might all need a little bit of help because nothing was sacred anymore when the President of the United States, the Leader of the Free World could get shot while surrounded by some of the best armed guards in the world.

But it was a start she thought. Admitting that you needed help was a start. She wanted to hug Jake but she was honestly not sure if she should do that. She didn't know if she should hug her own son. Never before had her instincts as a mother been so confused.

Perhaps she should see Stanley Keyworth too. Perhaps Leo should make it a group thing. God knows she and Toby and Jake where not the only two traumatised by what had happened. Sam started still at every loud noise, Donna was a nervous wreck, Bonnie and Ginger, Ed and Larry, Mrs Landingham, Margaret, Danny…Carol…Hell even the Vice President.

All for what? What had it all been for?

Seriously she was going to break their scrawny little white supremacist necks.

And she looked at Toby and she knew that he was thinking the same thing.

They would get Jake through this.

Whatever it took.

And there you go, I hope you enjoy this chapter and I will do my best to bring you the next one. I predict maybe three more for Season 2 and then we move onto Season 3.

Next Chapter-It's Bartlett's third state of the union, Jake is at the White House, his mother is on a mission, his father is drunk, the First Lady is pissed and Sam wants to see Ainsley's underwear. Or something like that anyway.