Leo turned, pausing on the stairway as he waited for CJ to catch up.  “Yeah, CJ?”

 “What’s going on tonight?”

 “What do you mean?”

 “Come on, Leo.  I got the message from Margaret, so what’s up?”

 Leo sighed.  No point in delaying the inevitable, at least not with her.  “I think it’s time we had a discussion.”

 CJ stopped walking and he looked up at her, trying to gauge her reaction.  She looked around the hallway for a moment before dragging Leo into the closest room and shutting the door behind them.  He waited for her to talk.

 She ran a hand through her hair before resting it on her hip.  “Leo...you know that the boys won’t –” She paused, shaking her head to correct herself before continuing.  “...that Toby and Sam won’t like it.”

   ‘The boys’ was how CJ – and often Leo or the President – referred to Sam, Josh, and Toby collectively.  They never said it anymore.  There was a lot that they didn’t say anymore.

 “Leo?”

 “Yeah...CJ...look.  We’re going to talk, we’re going to talk tonight, and I don’t care what anyone else thinks.”

 “I’m just saying –”

 “I know.  But they have to deal with it sometime, and it’s better that it’s now and not when you can’t all be in the same room together, or when you ignore his advice on principle rather than it being a crappy idea, or when he gets himself in trouble and no one helps him out, or when the press asks you about the tensions and misunderstandings between the members of the senior staff.”

 “They already are.”

 Leo looked up sharply.  “What?”

 “They already are.”

 “But nothing serious yet?”

 “No.  Obviously I haven’t been asked anything at a briefing, and they’ve pretty much said it as a warning rather than a heads up on a story.  They know how it’s been, Leo, but they have a job.”

 “Which is all the more reason why I need to sit down with you guys.”

 “Do you really think that’s going to help?  That you just tell us to...whatever it is you are going to tell us, and we’ll show up tomorrow arm-in-arm with smiles on our faces?  It’s not that simple, Leo.  Do you think we can just forget what Josh –”

 “No, CJ, I don’t.”  There was an edge to his voice, something akin to bitterness which caused CJ’s to lose her anger and indignation and make her suddenly unwilling to meet his eyes.

 “God, Leo...I’m sorry.  I know...I...I’m sorry.”

 “Yeah.”  And just like that he went back to sounding tired, defeated.

 “I have to go.  Toby’s got a thing for me, I need to prep.”

 “Yeah.”

 He watched her leave the room.  She was trying to hold them together, doing the best that she knew how.  Leo knew that, in a way, she had been covering for him this last month because he hadn’t been doing it – couldn’t do it – and it needed to be done.  Well, he would relieve her of that tonight.  One less burden for her to bear, a deepening of his own.  And he might soon have to do it all without Josh.

*****

 Margaret had forced him, after he lost what he considered an all-too-short verbal battle, to eat dinner.  At this point, Leo was seriously considering following her instructions without argument from now on, since he ended up doing whatever she said anyway.  He didn’t like being ‘handled’, but he didn’t have much choice in the matter.  Luckily, she hadn’t complained – too much – when he took a stack of briefings with him.  He had taken a table in the corner, hoping that anyone who saw him would also see the papers he had brought with him and know to leave him alone.

 From his vantage point, Leo watched as Ed and Larry called a reluctant Donna over to their table.  He couldn’t discern what they were saying, but he listened to the rise and fall of their voices, watched Donna look around as if for escape.  Eventually she conceded, allowing Larry to take the stack of files she was carrying and sitting down.  Good.  He had told her that she was working too hard, but he wasn’t sure that it would have an effect.  He only wished that there was some way to get her to work less without her catching on that that was what they were trying to do.  As for the others...well, he would have to figure out what to do with them as well.  All this, plus run the country.  No problem.

 His pager went off.  Leo sighed, closing the file he had been reading.  There was always work to be done, more so since he had been handling jobs personally which he normally wouldn’t and farming assignments out differently.  He hadn’t been very hungry anyway.

*****

 Leo leaned against the doorframe, looking for his wayward assistant.  He had called for her – bellowed, if he was to be truthful – several times with no response and, perplexed, had been forced to fetch her on foot.  She wasn’t there.  Which made sense, if he was inclined to think about Margaret’s typical response time, but he wasn’t.  In fact, he wasn’t really inclined to think of much of anything at the moment except that there were things he needed Margaret to do and she wasn’t going to do them until he found her.

 Shaking his head, he went over to her desk.  Files, memos, the appointment book, a half-eaten muffin (no doubt she had checked to ensure that it contained the correct calorie count), but no Margaret.  Leo paused, considering the virtue of patience briefly before discarding it and walking around the corner.

 “Hey, Charlie.”

 Charlie looked up, putting aside what he had been reading.  “Leo.”

 “You don’t happen to know where Margaret went off to, do you?”

 “Yeah, she –” he was cut off by the ringing of a phone.  “Hold on.”

 Leo waited while Charlie took the call, pacing slowly between Charlie’s desk and the desk they continued to refer to as Mrs. Landingham’s.  The President still resisted the idea of finding a replacement; unfortunately, that luxury could not be afforded by all.

 “Leo?”

 “Yeah.”

 “Margaret had to go help Sarah.  She said that you could survive on your own for a while, and if not that you would have to go get her yourself.”

 Leo sighed.  “Yeah, thanks Charlie.”

 Charlie went back to what he had been reading as Leo left; whether it was for work or for school he couldn’t tell.  The kid worked too hard, but around here they were all pots and kettles – stubborn ones at that – and you would never hear a complaint from any of them.  There was an abundance of sarcasm, of course, but...

 “Well, your solution’s right there.”

 Leo stopped in his tracks and turned around to see Josh, standing a few feet away with a grin on his face.

 “And who says I needed a solution?”

 “You.  Me.  Besides, do you even know what the problem is that I just so graciously solved for you?”

 “Do I know the solution, either?”

  “Maybe not.”

 Leo glared for a minute, but Josh kept silent.  He sighed, resisting the urge to roll his eyes, trying to remember what he had just been thinking about.  “My solution is...Charlie?”

 “School.  The answer is school.”

 “Now might be an appropriate time to figure out the question.”

 “Perhaps.”

 “Joshua, I swear –”

 “Yeah.”  Josh walked a few steps away, then turned, waiting for Leo to follow him.

 They were in Communications, and it made sense now.  “Donna.”

 “Yeah.”

 “She could take a few classes, we’ll reduce her hours, and she doesn’t even have to worry about –”

 “She’s not a ‘girl on a budget’ anymore.”

 Leo looked up at Josh.  “That one raised a few eyebrows.”

 Josh just smiled.

 “Of course, you knew that.  But in the end all it took to fix the situation was the patented Toby Ziegler death glare.”

 “You see, he’s got everyone convinced that he’s this scary –”

 “Yeah.”

 “ – but really...”

 “Yeah.”

 “So you’ll mention it?”

 Leo nodded.  “Now how about you tell me what it is I’m doing tonight?”

 “Can’t help you there.”

 Leo sighed.  “I really have no idea.”

 “Well, I suppose that if you did, you wouldn’t be asking me.”

 “That seems safe to say...although, I have been known to get your input anyway.  Sometimes I even listened.”

 “A bad habit, no doubt.  But if you really want to know, why don’t you ask them what you should do?”

 Leo followed Josh’s gaze across the bullpen to Sam’s office, where he watched Toby pace, speaking and gesturing with his arms as Sam scribbled rapidly in a notebook.  “But they’re the ones I need to...”

 He trailed off, not needing to finish the thought.  Josh was gone.

 After a minute Leo continued on his way to the bullpen, stopped once by a junior staffer, and looked around momentarily before spotting a red head by a filing cabinet.

 “Margaret!”

 She turned her head towards him briefly, then continued to flip through files.  “Yes, Leo?”

 “What are you doing?”

 Pulling out two files and shutting the drawer, she walked over to another filing cabinet.  “My job.”

 “And you do it very well.”

 “But?”

 He smiled slightly.  “But what are you doing?”

 “Can’t function without me already?”

 “Well that depends...are you finding me the six-month estimates?”

 “No.”

 “Are you finding me the US-Mexico agricultural trade stats?”

 “No.”

 “Are you find –”

 “Leo.  Go back to whatever it was you were doing, I’ll have everything for you in ten minutes.”

 “Where’s Sarah?”

 Margaret tilted her head towards the closed door of the office as she dropped the files on the assistant’s desk.

 “She doing okay?”

 “Yeah, I think she’s going to last.”

 Leo nodded.  “Okay.  Ten minutes?”

 “Yes.”

 “Did I mention that I need –”

 She glared at him.  “Go.”

 Leo tossed a backwards glance over his shoulder as he walked away.  She was shaking her head, but there was a slight smile on her lips.  Sometimes, things were almost normal.

 Sometimes, that scared him.

*****

 Margaret had indeed gotten him everything that he asked for, even things which he needed and hadn’t, Sam had given him a draft for the launch of the new education initiative, he had watched CJ give the final briefing of the day and call the lid, and he had whipped two wayward senators into shape.  Now he stood by the window, hands in his pockets, looking out but not really seeing.  He was thinking instead, concerned by the fact that his ‘meeting’ was fast approaching and he had no idea what he was going to say – what he should say.

 It was hard.  He saw these people a hundred times on any given day, spent late nights and early mornings with them, saw them more than he had his wife, gave them advice, orders, or stern reprimands as necessary, thought of them not just as co-workers, and not even just as friends, but as family, and still he had no words for them.  It was because of this closeness, this bond which they shared, that they were having such difficulties.  In addition to everything that they had to deal with personally, their reaction to the blow which they had been dealt, they had to deal with just as much professionally.  Work was not an escape for them, work was their life and their life lay in their work and each other.  But as they had learned so many times, daily, as they learned after Rosslyn, as they learned with Mrs. Landingham and the President’s disclosure, the country could not wait for them to catch up or even to catch a breath.  It moved on, and the professional part of them moved with it, and all of it felt like a betrayal.

 The President was not immune to such feelings either.  The discussions that he and Leo had been having...it was hard to distinguish where Jed Bartlet ended and the President began.  Personally he hurt, professionally he had to look at everything from a political perspective.  He had always had trouble keeping the two entirely separate, and that was part of what Leo loved about him, but this was an entirely different issue.  This was not campaign finance reform, this was not one in five children living in poverty, or guns, or economics, this was not a situation room decision, this was not even an ill-thought out remark to Mary Marsh about her God or a pressroom disaster.  This was Josh, and there was nothing they could do.  This was the Deputy White House Chief of Staff, and there was no way of knowing what they should do.  This was Sam, and CJ, and Toby, but this was also their positions, and none of them could speak without bias.

 Leo couldn’t.  He had tried, and he had found that he couldn’t.  We had to make changes, we had to.  They shouldn’t resent that, but they do, the President does, I do.

 Come on, Josh, he thought, surely you can give me some insight into this.  You know them, you know why they’re doing this.  How can I help them?  Why have you helped me at other times but not now?  It has been you, hasn’t it?

 “Still don’t know what to tell them?”

 Leo sighed, continuing to stare into the night.  “It’s not fair of me to ask them to ignore everything or to move on...especially since I haven’t.  I don’t know how to reassure them professionally when I can’t personally.  It’s hard to overlook the mistakes and the hostility, even though we knew it was to be expected.  I don’t want to drive him away, even though I don’t want him here, because I know that he has to be here – we need him here, and he’ll be fine...it’s the rest of us I’m concerned about.”

 “Forget about this last month.”

 “Yeah, right.”

 “Forget about this last month.”

 “I don’t see how you can ask me to do that, Josh, it’s not as if –”  Leo stopped, voice halting abruptly as he turned from the window to argue with his visitor.  It wasn’t Josh.  “Mr. President, I...”

 “Leo, forget about this last month.  And forget about tomorrow.  It doesn’t matter right now.  Two days from now, it will be one month since we lost Josh.  A week after that, Eric will have been your Deputy for three weeks.  Those aren’t the things that you can change, those are the things that you have to live with, that we all have to live with.  They have nothing to do with how much we loved him, or how much we miss him, or whether your new Deputy makes Toby want to tear the rest of his hair out.  We all know that, just because we are ignoring it doesn’t mean we don’t know that.  It’s not the same, but it shouldn’t be.  And just because you’re still hurting doesn’t mean that you have nothing to say to them.  You do.

 Forget what you can’t change, and forget what you can’t predict.  What matters is that on this day, you talk with them.  Not to them, and not for them, but with them.  On this day, we can set aside our work for Josh, just him, and nothing will collapse.  They need it, you need it.  It doesn’t matter that you don’t know what to say...tell them that, tell them that we have a problem that can’t be resolved through a speech, a statement, a late night strategy session, an act of Congress, a new filing system.  They know that, but they need to be reminded, and so do you.  Are they angry that Eric isn’t doing everything right?  Yes.  More than that it’s because he isn’t Josh.  No one is.  And he’s not here anymore.  When he was shot, they realized what it would be like if he wasn’t there, and they didn’t like it.  I didn’t either.  That time, after a few days, we knew it wasn’t permanent.  Now it is, and we are just as unprepared.

 We lost sight of what we cannot change, but moving on doesn’t have to mean forgetting, and replacing the position can never replace the man.  I’m as guilty as everyone else when it comes to that.  So much of who we are is what we do, but a lot more of what we do is who we are.  We can’t forget that, and we can’t attempt to ignore it out of misplaced guilt, or anger, or the sense of betrayal that I know we all feel.  We came together for a reason, we fought to have this chance, we made the impossible happen, and this is who we are today.  Our tragedies and triumphs are just as important as our successes and our failures, but only in our eyes.  We all know what we would do for one another, but sometimes it blinds us.  Toby wanted to overturn the Constitution for Josh, and with one word you would all have taken leaves and prosecuted the KKK, but it was Josh who was the voice of reason that time.

 Now we need to listen more carefully, since he isn’t here, and it starts right now, with us.  Eric is smart, and he knows what he’s doing – that’s why we picked him.  Everything else can be figured out as he learns his place here.  CJ, Toby, Sam...once they realize that he’s not the enemy they think he is, they’ll be able to let him into the loop.  What’s left is the hardest part, but anything with Josh is never simple.  The answer isn’t here, but that’s okay.  It doesn’t have to be, not yet.  The only thing that has to be here now is you.  Are you ready?”

 Leo stood there silently, unsure of what to say but not uncomfortable.  The President hadn’t given him any answers, just as Josh had not, but both of them had pointed out the beginning of a path.  It was his turn to take charge.

 The President nodded once, apparently satisfied, then turned to leave.  “Goodnight, Leo.”

 “Goodnight, sir.”

 Leo moved back towards the window.  He wondered if he would see Josh again, or if he had ever seen him at all.  He wondered at the amazing strength of those around him.  He wondered if he should have done this long ago, or if they were only ready for it now.  And he tried not to wonder about the things he could not change, but concentrate on what there was now.  It was hard, all of it.  It was hard, but not impossible, and it was time.

 He heard a soft knock at the door and turned.  It was Margaret.

 “Leo, they’re ready.”

 “Yeah.”

 It was time.
 
 
 
 
 

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