Lighthouse Christmas Chapter 4:

Author's Note: Since this whole thing is such a total AU fantasy anyway, I decided I might as well go ahead and resurrect one of my favorite characters. So, in this revisionist version of West Wing history, Admiral Fitzwallace was injured but not killed at Gaza. He made a full recovery and, at Josh's request, has returned from his retirement to take up his position as head of the Joint Chiefs again. Nancy McNally's still around somewhere, too, though I don't think she's going to put in an appearance in this story.

In case you're wondering, Sam is C.o.S., Toby has agreed to be Communications Director again, Danny is Press Secretary, and C.J. is Secretary of State. Margaret, obviously, has become Josh's secretary. (Zoey is helping Donna in the First Lady's office, and is married to Charlie, who's an Assistant White House Counsel. Josh likes to keep his friends around him. And Sam has married Ainsley, who's busy lawyering on the Hill. I'm not doing anything with any of those characters in this story, or probably any other, either, but it's fun to think about!)

Oh, and my thanks to Arpad Hrunta for the image of Josh as Pierre Trudeau doing his "gunslinger" thing. I laughed when he first mentioned it, but then I remembered that Josh really does do something like that sometimes. . . .

Feedback makes a really nice New Year's present, too. . . .

Chapter 4:

Josh laughed. It wasn't a friendly sound. Sam, Toby, Danny, and C.J. exchanged worried glances. They were still in shock themselves from what they'd heard; they had no idea how Josh was going to take it.

"You don't actually think you're going to keep me away, do you?" Josh had his jacket thrust back and his hands on his hips-like a gunfighter in a western, C.J. thought, or Pierre Trudeau in those old photos of the charismatic Canadian Prime Minister facing down a hostile opponent after his return to power in the early 80's.

"Sir-"

"You'd better not be imagining that my family's safety is somehow less important than mine."

"Sir, if you're there, you're a target. That won't make your family any safer. You know the threats we've been getting."

"Apparently my family is already a target."

"I can't let you go, sir. This building is in lockdown."

"I'll unlock it."

"Jo-Mr. President," Sam broke in. "Your safety has to come first. The American people-"

"For God's sake, Sam!" Josh spun around. He was breathing hard. "The American people knew exactly what they were getting when they voted me into this office. After all that publicity, after the Calley thing, I didn't have a secret left to hide. We ran on that. Anyone who thinks I wouldn't be rushing to Donna and my children right now must have their head buried so deep in the sand we should be sending in FEMA to dig them out, if they aren't so brain-damaged already it wouldn't be worth it. No, Toby"-Toby had cleared his throat-"don't even try to talk me out of this. I'm getting on Marine One-it's out there on the lawn right now, waiting for me-and flying to Andrews, and then I'm getting on Air Force One and flying to Maine. And if any of you even try to stop me, I'll fire you. That includes you, Butterfield. I'll call in the Joint Chiefs and order in the Marines to secure this house and my home in Maine against your rogue agents who may have kidnapped my son. Come to think of it, that's what I should be doing anyway. Margaret!" Margaret appeared in the doorway. "Get me Fitzwallace on the phone."

Ron Butterfield sighed.

"Actually, Mr. President, that was the next thing I was going to request."

Josh paused halfway across the room and looked back, a wave of surprise washing some of the tense lines from his face.

"You were going to ask me to get the Marines to take over from the Service?"

"We have protocols to cover every possible situation, sir. Even this one."

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Margaret was still hovering agitatedly in the doorway.

"I'll call the Admiral right away, Mr. President," she said. "But could you talk to Donna first? She's been waiting a long time."

"Donna's been waiting? Why didn't you tell me before? Put her through!"

Sam ushered the others out. As they were leaving, Josh was picking up the phone. They all heard the break in his voice as he said, "Sweetheart? I'm so sorry. . . ."

Danny put an arm around C.J.; she was shaking. Toby didn't want to look at Sam's face, so he looked at his hands instead and twisted Andie's ring. They were together again now, had been since the twins turned two. He remembered the time he'd lost one of them at Hecht's. He'd turned around and Huck was gone. It had been less than five minutes before he'd been found again, but it had felt like a lifetime.

The four of them clustered together in Sam's office, knowing they should be doing something-drafting statements, making press releases-but waiting so they could talk to Josh again first. It was different than it had been with Jed Bartlet. They were Josh's staff, but they'd been his friends first, and they were his friends first now. What mattered most was making sure he was all right. Press statements could come later.

Sam had left the door to Oval a little ajar. They all heard Josh's voice rise.

"The agents said they were doing what?!"

And then, in a completely different voice, excited and almost-but this was impossible, surely-happy:

"Donna, put Sally on the phone."

Sam stepped over to close the door, but Josh saw him and waved him in. C.J., Danny, and Toby looked at each other, and settled down to wait.

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Donna wiped her eyes. She'd been holding herself together all afternoon for Sally's sake, and her mother's, and maybe most of all for her mother-in-law's, but when she'd heard Josh's voice, after that long wait on hold, she'd come apart.

"I should have checked on them," she sobbed. "I shouldn't have just assumed they were all right."

"Donna, it's not your fault," Josh said. "Of course you didn't check on them. I wouldn't have, either."

"It is my fault! It has to be! I should have known it was just Sally coming upstairs. She was making such a noise, laughing and talking-to Gressie, I guess-and stomping so loudly. I've never heard her make such a row all by herself; she must have been wound up from all that sledding. But I should have realized I wasn't hearing Noah's voice, too; I should have gone to see."

"How is she doing now?

"She won't talk to me. The agents upset her, asking all those questions, and she's shut herself in her room and screams at me when I try to come in. I think she thinks it's her fault, because she didn't realize Noah wasn't behind her. They must have taken him from the shed, Josh! His coat's there, and his hat, and scarf-it's so cold out and he doesn't have them, he'll be cold-"

"He'll be all right," Josh said. "Don't worry about that, Donna. He'll be warm enough. He'll be all right."

He knew exactly how empty the words sounded, but they were all he could think of to say.

And yet something was jiggling at the back of his mind, telling him that there was something else he should be saying. Something he should be asking about. Something Donna had said, about Sally. And before that, something Ron had said. . . .

"I'm sorry," Donna sobbed incoherently. "I'm so sorry!"

"It's not your fault, Donna. Don't ever think that. Tell me what happened. Tell me everything."

He didn't know how it could make any difference, but he hoped it would help Donna to tell it to him. And there was that feeling still, that there was something in the story as he'd heard it so far that hadn't quite added up.

"You know what happened."

"Only what Ron told me. I need to know what you know."

Donna took a deep breath, and choked back her sobs. Somehow it helped to hear that Josh needed her to do something.

"Noah and Sally went outside after breakfast. And I was so happy, because Noah seemed happy, and he'd been so unhappy last night." She sniffled a little on that, and Josh intervened hurriedly.

"Noah was unhappy? Why?"

"He asked about going to see Santa today, and when I said we couldn't, he got upset."

"He got upset about not seeing Santa? Noah did?"

"Yes, I was surprised. I'd been thinking he must have figured it out by now, but he was so insistent about going that I realized I'd been wrong. If it had been Sally-but she never even asked about it. She'd probably forgotten, or maybe she just assumed we'd be going and didn't think to ask. She was in bed when Noah brought it up. Oh, Josh. He's such a little boy still. And he must be so frightened right now-"

Josh squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block out the pictures that were swimming before them. His little boy in the hands of a rogue Secret Service agent. Or whatever terrorists the bastard had handed him over to. . . .

He shook himself. Concentrate, Lyman. You've got to stay focused. What had Donna just said? There was something wrong there, too. This whole thing was full of strange disconnections that he couldn't quite make sense of.

Then he remembered what she'd said.

"Donna, Noah hasn't believed in Santa Claus since kindergarten."

Probably nothing could have broken through the mesmerizing haze of fear in Donna's mind quite as effectively as that.

"What?" she gasped. "Of course he has!"

"He really hasn't."

"How do you know?"

"We talk. I know. No, I didn't tell him-he put two and two together, years ago. But he knows you don't want him to grow up too fast, so he didn't want to let you know he knew."

"I can't believe you didn't tell me."

"I knew you'd be sad about it."

"But, Josh-" Donna's mind felt sharper, as if this smaller crisis had cleared it somehow, and left it better able to think about the larger one, "if Noah doesn't believe in Santa anymore, why did he want to see him so badly?"

"I don't know, but he must have had some reason. Look, Donna, is there any way he could have gotten past the agents to get to the village himself?"

Donna's heart leapt up, but only for a moment.

"I don't see how. The agents were watching the children the whole time. They all said they saw the two of them sledding down the hill together, that last time. They were sharing a sled-Noah was giving Sally a piggyback down the hill-"

"They were doing what?!"

The something that had been jiggling at the back of Josh's mind ever since Ron had said the agents had seen the kids taking their last run together stopped jiggling and fell into place. An adrenaline-fuelled excitement began to bubble up through his veins.

"Donna," he said, "put Sally on the phone."

To be cont'd. . . .