And Let That Be Our Legacy, Chapter Thirty

[eloriekam]

The line to yell at me forms here. ;)

... I kid. I think. That's really up to you the readers, isn't it? Anyway, what happened is that this is one of the 'core' chapters, in that I had a fair percentage of it mapped out before I even wrote the first sentence of Legacy. Yet... I always had trouble placing this chapter properly with the ages of the girls versus what they'll need in a few years' time, resulting in Sam and Al finishing seventh grade at 11 years of age and asking for real, true answers to the questions that not a single one of their parents want to answer. They were always intended to be extraordinary, but this chapter may stretch reality a little much. I'm just as happy if it doesn't, however.


What Kinds Of Incidents?

Four years later, Walken was still President, and the first young adults to go through all of high school in a district assisted by the Galileo Foundation celebrated their commencement ceremonies (in inner-city Chicago, in Houston, in a rural district in North Dakota, on a reservation in Arizona), and Sam Seaborn had been elected to the US Senate.

The Republicans staying in power was Qumar's fault; they were still pissed about the base, and one of their government officials was funding terrorist organizations in his spare time. Glen Allen Walken was both unimpressed and pissed off when one of those organizations threatened to blow up the Space Needle, and followed the trail relentlessly until the source was discovered. Two weeks later, only seven months before the 2010 Presidential elections, Abdul Shareef vanished completely. Americans voted for the guy who had kept them safe, or at least a little more than fifty percent of them did.

Josh was now working for the Minority Leader; they'd lost a couple of seats through retirements and people running for the Senate instead and not being able to run a House and Presidential campaign at the same time. The margin was narrow enough to just make his work more interesting instead of wholly frustrating.

The same year, California voters had been more fond of Sam than ever before, seeing him as, like Walken, able to protect his fellow Americans. The state party leaders told him to gear up for a Senate run, which was exactly what he'd been planning on doing in 2012 anyway. The state was more Democratic than the 47th, anyway, and there were a couple of candidates a little further right than he was who still might be able to help them out in the House. There was a knobbed scar on his right ear and a jagged line on his upper right arm, and sometimes his hand would drift over to his stomach, but he was still Sam Seaborn and half the voters thought he was ten years younger than he actually was.

And he still wanted to go on.

Will was taking care of the Galileo Foundation; Zoey was doing just about everything else for it even as she took care of her daughter Therese Emily, born just six weeks before Election Day 2010. When he wasn't performing administrative duties, Will was taking on health care, with the same determination that had gained Toby's interest nearly a decade before. It would be just a short while before he was leading Galileo only in name as he struggled to establish something similar for health care. Charlie, with visible hesitation because it wasn't what he thought he'd really enjoy even if it did bring in money, found a respectable New England law firm. And then he did his job beautifully and wondered if one day Josh was going to walk in on him as he'd walked in on Sam and pull him away to do the real work he loved.

They were all waiting and hoping for that moment.

And two of them almost didn't get to see it.

Shortly after Walken's second Inaugural, which Josh swore was the cause after he was able to joke about it, just before Donna was due to give birth to their second son, they got a call from Zoey. For all that Leo and sometimes Jed traveled, both men considered New Hampshire their effective home. All Zoey knew when she called the first time was that both of them had gone to the hospital within hours of each other with a horrible fever and coughing.

Donna, still trying to help women break the invisible glass ceiling and keep their rights, was at home on maternity leave already, and warned Zoey to call her with updates, not Josh. No, not Josh, who couldn't possibly make it home from work early today, not so early in the term and not while dealing with the shifting dynamics... not even for a death.

She didn't know how Margaret was managing. Josh did know the basics and was probably shouting every ten seconds. Margaret could deal with that just fine; she'd had it enough from Leo during her time as his assistant. As long as Josh didn't start worrying about the actual problem, which was Leo and Jed, they'd both be fine.

She could imagine Sam blanching, highlighting the scars from the attack a year and a half ago, and making sure Mallory knew and could go to the hospital all right. Carol's expressive face would tighten as another friend and leader faced the possibility of the end... and then she too would check on Mallory.

Charlie had gone home, then to the hospital with Zoey, watching his mother-in-law pace restlessly, eyes glimmering with fearful tears that spilled only when another family member came into the room, whether it was Ellie or Elizabeth or Annie, very much grown up and with the kind of strategic mind Josh always sparred with on their annual family visits.

Zoey didn't call again until almost midnight. It was pneumonia, she told them. They weren't sure of either father's chances. Jed was a little on the heavy side and had multiple sclerosis. Leo had been taking good care of himself for the last several years, but not so much the prior few decades.

Donna set the phone down and whispered to Josh that it was pneumonia and they were doing everything they could. He blinked and asked if someone was keeping Toby updated, too; he was doing guest lectures on the other side of the country. Carol was, she answered softly, and Josh nodded and wrapped his arms around Noah, who would turn six in April. The twins asked if there was anything they could do, whispering soft prayers in response as Joann woke up again and was scooped up protectively by her father. Donna sat with her hands cupped over her stomach and waited, leaning her head back on the cushions and trying to swallow the tears. Josh was hesitantly murmuring words she'd only heard before from Toby.

She wasn't surprised when she felt contractions a little before dawn. It went perfectly with the events of the past day.

"Josh," she prodded gently. He continued sleeping, face buried in his son's hair, one arm around his daughter. Both of them were fast asleep as well. "Josh," she tried again, a little louder. "Wake up."

"Huh?" Abigail opened her eyes and rubbed them. "What's the matter?"

"Josh, the Republicans are coming!" Donna tried again, voice strained with exasperation. Samantha sat up at that, blinking back her amusement quickly when she saw Donna's expression. Both girls knew what the even grunt of air that followed was, and jumped up as Donna lay back, one hand over her face.

"Uncle Josh, it's Aunt Donna!"

"Buh wha huh?" came the groggy inquiry as he tried to sit up. "Donna?"

"I'm in labor, you idiot," she interceded before the twins had a chance.

"Oh. Oh, man..." his eyes widened as he glanced around. "Hospital... uh... drive... not awake yet."

"I'll wake you up if you don't start moving soon!" she exploded anxiously.

"Right." He hopped up and started searching for his keys. "Yeah... Sam, can you call Aunt Carol real quick for me, please?"

"Sure." The nine-year-old took off for the phone, as her twin poked Noah and then picked up Joann.

It took until dinnertime, but a little boy finally arrived into the world.

"Not so much with the shorter labor this time," Josh griped. "Cute, though."

"He better be cute," Donna grimaced. "Where's the kids?"

"Waiting room. Carol's got them... she came once we realized it would take a while."

"Any word on-" Donna questioned. Josh shook his head.

"Eight pounds and five ounces," one of the hospital staff announced. Donna moaned softly.

"Don't remind me." The nurse just smiled down at her. She'd probably heard it before.

"What do you want to name him?" Josh asked after a few minutes.

Donna looked up at him with faint tears in her eyes. "I know it would sound corny under any other circumstances," she answered softly, "but... I don't know if they're going to make it."

"It's not corny," he told her, feeling tears himself. "It's not."

"They're such good men... they should make it, but if they don't, we need to honor them," Donna murmured, almost to herself.

"It's okay..." Josh stroked her damp forehead.

"Josiah Leopold..."

"It's really Leo," he pointed out. She poked him.

"Josiah Leo doesn't sound as good."

"CJ called Leo Leopold sometimes, you know."

"That settles it, then."

Ultimately, slowly, Jed and Leo shook off the pneumonia, but it was months before Abbey would let them walk around the farm by themselves, let alone bareheaded. Sam and Mallory wept in relief, and Charlie wrapped his arms protectively around Zoey, gathering Ellie in without hesitation when she would have cried alone, and they all gave thanks with a shuddering sigh of relief. Even after Sam told him it would have been too soon for either of them, Leo reminded the younger man that he and Jed were two old men, and things happened. Sam just warned him that Abbey would be all over him if he so much as sniffled, and expressed with his eyes that they weren't ready for another gap in the ranks of friends and family.

Sam despised his Senate campaign, which he started while his fathers were still recovering. After the tenth frustrated outburst, Carol folded her arms and stared at him across the office, while Sam almost took a step back.

"You know why you don't like running, Sam?"

"Yeah... no... I don't know," he answered, running his hands through his hair.

"It takes time away from helping people." His head jerked up and his hands dropped to his sides, as he stared at the woman he'd met as CJ's assistant. "Do you need me to break out your strategy box?" Carol continued.

"Uh... no," Sam decided. "I need to know when the first electric cars are coming off the line, though."

"The affordable ones or the unaffordable ones?"

"The mass-produced ones."

"Three weeks."

"I need an event. Also an event at a Galileo school when they get back from the break... and some, uh, other things...."

"I'm getting you a policy wonk," Carol told him, spinning and heading for the door. "I'm also getting you someone on the other side of the press thing."

"You're not one anymore?"

"Sam, I'm not from California and most of my background is PR. We need you to run on energy, education, and health care in the state with, like, the fifth biggest economy in the world, and for that you need someone besides me."

"Who are you getting?"

"Danny Concannon for the one thing, and Will Bailey."

"Danny's already been helping out, and Will's mired in the thing."

"When isn't he?" she questioned.

"Fair point."

"When do you want him?"

"Sometime before I go totally insane."

"Sam, a time that actually matters."

"This week?"

"I'll work on it."

"All right, thanks. And Carol?"

"Yes?"

"I need some good researchers."

Pause. "Bonnie and Ginger are going to kill you. They're making a lot of money now."

"They like me."

"Okay," Carol sighed with a faint smile, heading for the phone.

It worked, and in January 2013 Sam moved into his Senate office, thanking all of his campaign staffers, including the two youngest ones. Abigail was going by Al now because she thought it made her sound older, and Samantha was constantly having to clarify which Sam she was on written materials, but the two of them had used their summer break in the most unusual way. Not so much for these girls, perhaps, and not a one of their parents had blinked twice when they asked about volunteering with Sam's campaign, running around to canvass and put up signs and everything else they could possibly, legally do. Anyone on campaign staff who didn't take them seriously within a day was moved elsewhere, although it didn't happen much. They were skilled with words and Democratic to the core, and while they were a little young for a campaign, a little inexperienced, they made up for it with determination and inspiration; inspiration that helped fuel the involvement of their peers, then and later.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Samantha stood in the doorway to the kitchen for a few minutes, watching the family there. Her blue eyes were deep in thought, and after the first glance at her Noah distracted his parents for a few minutes while he finished cutting some cheese sticks for his sister's lunch tomorrow, and then ducked out, giving her a smile on the way. He always dimpled in the most cheerful fashion at her, but right now it was a reminder of why she was standing there. Aunt Donna stopped her work on sandwiches after a bit to check on Josiah, and it was just Uncle Josh, who was restlessly sorting silverware. Sam was pretty sure he knew she was there, and was waiting for her to speak.

On the fourth round of inspecting the forks for water stains, she sighed, just a little, and straightened her long and presently skinny frame away from the wall. Eleven years old and already five foot seven... one of the times it was truly a blessing she and Al were so far ahead of their age peers in school. If they'd had to go through fifth grade like this, they would have been absolutely miserable, although going through three sizes of jeans in a year, which they had, would have been embarrassing regardless of which grade they were in. There were, indeed, all sorts of advantages to being in their age and in their grade and having their background with interacting with people, but there was no hiding the fact that her oddly-shaped eyes and sharp features bore no resemblance to those of the two people who usually attended parent-teacher conferences. Nor did they bear any resemblance to anyone authorized to pick either girl up from school, although both knew that if Uncle Albert lived close enough, he'd be on the list, and he did look like them.

Which led to her standing here right now.

"Uncle Josh?" Her voice was soft, almost muted, but it carried, and Josh spun around, light glancing against the silver that had crept into his hair in the last year or so.

"Hey, Sam." He glanced down at the drawer. "I was just sorting through the silverware..."

"Did you know I was there?" she inquired, tilting her head a little bit, eyes sparkling with a gentle mix of respect and amusement.

"Yeah." He lifted his eyebrows a little bit in an odd way, as if waiting for her to challenge him over it.

"Why are we different?" At his confused look, she elaborated, grateful that she hadn't asked Uncle Toby this question. He would have been quite cranky over her sentence construction. "Al and I, we're... I don't know, we're kind of different. Why?"

"You're smarter, different," Uncle Josh told her. He had this look on his face.

Sam sighed and stepped all the way into the kitchen. "That's not what I meant, Uncle Josh. Al and I look different, we... we are different. If there weren't so many divorces in this country, we'd be even more different."

"Fifty percent," he answered mildly.

"That's a false statistic," she retorted precisely.

"Just checking."

"Uncle Josh.... Al asked a long time ago who our mother was, and you told us she died because of an accident. You didn't tell us her name, and you wouldn't tell us who our father was, and neither has anyone else. We're older; when do we get to find out?" Standing a few feet away, she barely had to tilt her head up to look him in the eye. He turned fully and took a step toward her, brown eyes full of something she couldn't identify, for all that she'd seen so many expressions from all of them over the years.

"Do you remember the White House?" he asked slowly, after a long pause.

"Of course. We were five when we left. I miss it."

"Why'd we leave?"

Sam's expression was skeptical and puzzled. "President Bartlet's second term was done, and all of you worked for him. The new President was a Republican."

"Yeah." He paused, and then drew a sniffling breath. "It's funny that Abigail's been going by Al, 'cause those are her initials.... Abigail Leona. Your mother never used her full name, either." One hand pinched his nose, then covered his eyes for a moment. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Samantha..."

"What is it?" Sam stood at arm's length, watching her uncle, one of the fathers she knew, wrestle with something she didn't understand, hadn't been allowed to understand. She'd been raised in the dynamics of relationships of all sorts, but she didn't understand this.

"Your mother worked with us. She was..." He paused again, taking another deep breath. "We've all had eleven years to figure out what to say when you asked us, because it's not a good story."

"Because of my mom?" Sam asked, her eyes huge and worried. Josh shook his head vigorously.

"Your mother was a wonderful person, one of the most gifted and dedicated people I've ever met. Too dedicated for her own good. That's where you get it from, her and Uncle Sam."

"Is Uncle Sam-"

"He's not your father," Uncle Josh answered, almost too fast. "None of us are your biological father."

"So what are you going to tell me?" Samantha asked after a pause.

His eyebrows quirked up a little bit when he glanced up, almost startled, as though he'd forgotten she was still there. "You're smart, and I don't want to lie to you, but... wait, why is it just you asking?"

"I'm asking for both of us."

"Samantha... I can't tell you all of it. I can't even tell you half of it. We all agreed, before you were old enough to remember, that whenever you asked, we wouldn't leave it to just one or two of us to tell the two of you."

"When can I ask again? I, uh... Uncle Josh, I don't want to wait until Christmas, and neither does Al."

"This weekend."

"Okay... can I know anything before then?"

"You really are curious, aren't you?"

"If you didn't want me to be curious, you shouldn't have let me read all those memos when I was younger," she came back with a smile. Then her features turned more solemn, in a fashion that was old for her age. "Aunt Margaret would say I'm asking for the Cliff Notes version."

"You were born in the White House," he said softly.

"We were?"

"Yeah. In the, uh, the Press Secretary's office."

"Why?" she asked with a frown after a brief pause.

"Your mother was the Press Secretary."

"That's, like, high-ranking," she observed, seeing something more about this in his expression. "Why weren't we born in the hospital?"

"It was ten days before the State of the Union. We were all there for prep; she was supposed to go on leave a week later. It was a late leave, but she was Press Secretary to the President of the United States. And, uh, there was a full lockdown for something or other, and we were all stuck in our offices or whatever room we were in at the time, including your mother. And she went into labor and gave birth to both of you right there in her office..." Josh trailed off, closing his eyes against stillness and blood and the realization that she'd known...

Too dedicated.

"Why'd she die?"

"There were... complications. You'll have to ask Uncle Sam; I don't think any of the rest of us remember. We... didn't want to. We'd lost a lot more than a colleague that day, and still had the election to go through... we didn't want to hear what had gone wrong."

"You said she never went by her full name..." Samantha prodded after a minute, her face utterly serious, blinking against tears. What had her mother done for them, or to them, that could still make Uncle Josh fight back tears after this long?

"CJ." He took a breath. "Claudia Jean."

"That's beautiful," Sam said shyly, ducking her head a little.

Josh actually chuckled a little bit. "It went better in press briefings that she went by CJ, though."

"Yeah, it's short. Is that where Claudia gets her name from?"

"Yeah... sometimes Toby and Andi call her little CJ."

"What else can you tell me?"

"I probably shouldn't tell you anything else," Uncle Josh confessed after a long pause.

"Can you tell me where our names come from?"

"Oh, yeah, that I can tell you. You're Samantha Joan; Samantha for Sam, and Joan for my sister Joanie who died. Abigail Leona is for Abbey Bartlet, and Leona for Leo. She... she wanted to honor as many of us as possible. We were a family, and Grandpa Jed and Grandpa Leo consider your mother one of their daughters, no less than Zoey or Mallory."

Sam was silent for a while, digesting this. "Can I see a picture?"

"Of your mom? Yeah, sure. Just a minute." He stepped away from the counter toward the door, then backtracked and swept her into a strong hug. Sam heard him sniffle into her hair. "Don't go anywhere, okay?" he requested in a whisper. She nodded, and looked after him, wondering again and still what her mother had done that this would still be... whatever... she'd have to ask Uncle Toby what the word, or words, was or were... over ten years later.

A few minutes later she heard him come back down the stairs, talking to Aunt Donna.

"This is a good one."

"Give me that, Josh. You're going to drop it."

"I've never dropped a picture of CJ."

"You may have a point there."

"Of course I do. Could you give me the five by seven, please?" They appeared around the corner as she added another frame onto the small pile in his hands. Aunt Donna smiled a little bit at Sam before retreating back out of sight, as Uncle Josh came up to the counter and gently deposited his burden, as careful as if they were threads of spun glass.

"These are just a few," Uncle Josh confessed softly as he lifted the five by seven off the pile. "This is, uh, actually from a photo op in the Mural Room during our second year in office; it accidentally focused on CJ instead of the President."

Sam took it lightly in her hands and studied it, recognizing her own features. Even with glasses on, the eyes were a grace note, and her mother, fully grown into adulthood, was still slender, her arms long. Her hair made her face look shorter than it really was, and Sam suspected that her hands, had they been in the frame, would have been as long as her own. And the hair color was similar, even if the style was totally different.

Uncle Josh picked up another one. "This is during a briefing shortly after the start of our third year. It was a bit of a madhouse, as I recall." Her hair was a little lighter, a little longer in this picture, the oblique profile angle highlighting a nose that was familiar to Samantha. But that was nothing compared to the next one. "The night of the Illinois primary," Josh noted simply. "After we won." CJ's hair was clipped up, and she was hugging Toby and grinning, looking up in the direction of the camera, her eyes bright and triumphant.

"We look a lot like her," Sam observed when she could speak.

"Yeah, you sort of do. I think your hair's a little darker, and your faces are a little different. But there's no question that you're both CJ's daughters."

"There's another one?" she asked, observing Josh's hands hovering over the last frame on the counter.

"Yeah. It's actually of all of us, at some formal dinner I can't remember..." He flipped it over, showing five men in white tie and one woman, taller than all the men, in a floor-length gown.

"May I keep this?" Samantha asked after a few minutes.

"If you still want it at the end of the weekend, yes, you and Al can have it."

"Thanks." She hugged him, still looking down at the pictures. "Night, Uncle Josh."

"Bed already?" he asked, hugging her tightly and kissing the top of her head.

"Al and I'll probably fall asleep talking."

"Don't forget to turn off the light."

"We won't," she promised, stepping away with a grin and sounding almost normal, as though she didn't memorize the House and Senate facebooks as soon as they came out instead of memorizing the new Top 40 songs of the year. "Night, Aunt Donna! Night, Noah!"

"Noah's already in bed, Sam," Donna called down. "And good night!"

"Oops, sorry!" She dashed upstairs, and after a few minutes Donna came into the kitchen.

"How can you always tell them apart?"

"Al's inflections are a little different, and lucky guesses."

"Yeah..." Josh sighed and wrapped his arms around her. "I'll call Sam."

"Yeah... they'll drop stuff to be here. They will."

"I know," he said softly, looking over at the pictures still spread out on the counter. "I know."

"Josh?"

"I promised," he whispered, and it didn't matter which promise he was talking about.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Leo had canceled a lecture.

Carol was leaving Sam's office to the mercy of his junior staff, hoping the weekend and the fact that it was, after all, summer and there wasn't really that much stuff would protect them from any major disasters.

Sam and Mallory had delayed a vacation, leaving Joy and Zach to Zoey, who, while involved, hadn't been one of the people entrusted with this decision, this answer.

Charlie was putting off trial preparation.

Danny, ever trusted with finding something to brighten the girls' day when he saw them, cut short some research and arrived, face utterly serious.

Toby, again on the other side of the country, had taken the first flight back.

Jed and Abbey arrived with solemn suited shadows.

Donna had needed to explain to her boss why she couldn't be at an event on Saturday, feeling fortunate the whole while that her boss was still Amy Gardner. She'd shooed her kids off with Joy and Zach and Isaiah and Therese, reminding Noah that he needed to help.

Now this solemn assemblage, bound by loyalty and family and purpose, waited in Josh and Donna's large living room. They were here not because they were the center of this, but because Sam and Al hadn't gone out to California for the summer yet, and indeed might not this year, and because it was close to Jed and Abbey and Leo, three people for whom travel could be a little complicated sometimes. And they were here because through the slow twining of strategy and purpose, they had the briefing tapes and the scrapbooks and so much else, tucked away and hidden in silence.

There was uncertainty. Just because they'd discussed this hundreds of times and settled on a course of action didn't mean they were unable to be concerned about it, and the same things that had made these people good at what they did, their ability to see the human side of it, made them all the more vulnerable now.

Before the end of this, CJ's children would cry, and they all searched within themselves for a way to prevent that.

Ultimately, each decided that the promise of truth was worth it, that it must be held to, and solidified a little, with a deep breath or a straightening of posture or a silent assurance in the eyes.

They had, after all, in whatever way, brought themselves here, and honoring the beautiful and tragic legacy of determination and truth and the real issues and the real thing CJ had left them, they would see this through.

And having faith in things not yet seen, they would all trust and hope that CJ's children would not shatter under the truth.

Sam and Al sat next to each other, looking around with identical expressions of concern. It was so similar to CJ's 'what's wrong that you aren't telling me' look that Leo had to suppress a shiver.

Abbey and Charlie and Donna and Carol and Mallory were mostly here for the sake of support as far as the five older men were concerned. Their decisions, and their responsibility, made this their burden, and Josh had already borne more than his share in answering the initial questions.

"Girls?" Leo prompted gently. They looked at him hesitantly, Al biting her lip, both images of awkward grace. Sam tucked a few strands of hair that had escaped from her ponytail back behind her ear, then tugged on it.

"The kids at school think we're weird-"

"-and we're different than all of you-"

"-we always have to go to the office to fill out our emergency cards-"

"-because there are so many people on them-"

"-we've got different last names-"

"And it took Uncle Josh five minutes to tell me our mother's name the other night."

"We don't know what we did."

"Or what she did. What did she do? Uncle Josh almost started crying..."

"And sometimes Uncle Sam gets that look on his face when we ask about press releases-"

"-or press briefings, and relations-"

"-we don't know anything else, and we like it."

"It's not fair not to tell us!"

"It's almost like even though we've been immersed in politics our whole lives, you don't really want us involved, even though we're good at it-"

"-probably because we have been involved in it our whole lives-"

"-because of something our mother did, or didn't do, or whatever..."

"We just want to know!"

"We love all of you, but why do we have so many parents?"

"What question would you like answered first?" Toby asked after a considering pause.

"Why is there a bill with our name on it?"

Donna went white. Toby paled visibly, and Sam's eyes grew huge as Mallory put one hand on his. Josh just sat there with a hand over his face, and Jed and Abbey and Leo stared at the girls. Charlie blinked and opened his mouth, then shut it again, and Carol linked her hands together.

"It's actually called the Family Education and-" Leo started.

"We know that, Grandpa Leo." Abigail folded her hands and set them on one knee. "It's also called the Cregg Bill. Why?"

"It's named after your mother," Charlie supplied when no one else did.

"Why?"

"The same reason you have so many parents," Leo answered.

"But no father, father...." Al trailed off in question.

"No, Abigail," Abbey replied levelly, her voice filled with pain. "You have no father, but you have three legal fathers."

"Huh?" Sam wrinkled her face in confusion.

"Toby, Josh, and Sam all have equal legal custody of and responsibility for you," Donna explained. "They all agreed to be like fathers to you, and they have been."

"We're not arguing against that," Al hastened, detecting some hurt in her voice.

"We love all of you, we just..." Sam trailed off hesitantly. "Who are our parents?"

There was another pause. Jed finally leaned forward. "Samantha, Abigail. On your birth certificates, there is no father listed. You have three fathers legally because your mother had the foresight to make sure there would be at least two or three people to take care of you until you turned eighteen."

"Why?!" Al exploded, her tone laced with despair. She turned to Sam, the uncle she'd turned to for every other question. "Why?"

Mallory's grip on Sam tightened. They couldn't avoid it. These girls were too smart.

"We don't know," Sam said at last. He lifted his head and looked right at the girls. "We don't know," he repeated in a whisper. They recognized the look of hurt and pain, but didn't know the guilt of knowledge behind it.

"How can you not..." Al trailed off in distressed confusion.

"You said she wasn't a bad person," Sam added, turning to Josh, almost in accusation.

"She wasn't," Josh replied, eyes filling as he took Donna's hand.

"She wasn't," Toby repeated with conviction.

"It wasn't a... one of those things we've read about in the papers?"

"A scandalous one-night stand?" Charlie clarified. "No."

"Aunt Carol?" Al asked. "You knew her, too..."

"I was her assistant," Carol clarified.

Donna looked up and shook her head in a preemptive communication. Mallory winced as she looked at her father, suddenly aging again.

"Grandma Abbey?" Sam whispered. One little tear trickled down, and she ignored it, holding something else as being more important.

Abbey Bartlet took an extremely careful breath and closed her eyes briefly. Toby actually looked away for a moment.

"You girls know, at the age of eleven, more about the state of our country and about statistics and what works and what doesn't than most people learn in their entire lives." They nodded in agreement. "You've read crime statistics, so you know there are people out there who like to hurt other people, or just do it. There are men who like to hurt women, and-" she stopped as both girls started shaking their heads. She glanced over at Donna.

"Sam, Al?" Donna tried gently. "I need you to listen to me, okay? Your mother didn't do anything wrong. You haven't done anything wrong. We all love both of you very much. You have to listen to me right now, all right?" They nodded, opening their eyes and focusing on her. "Some of these men decided early one morning to attack someone who was running, and that was your mother. And they hurt her very badly, and they-they assaulted her. That was," and here she hesitated, trying to control her trembling voice, "that... that made her pregnant."

It was finally out there. It was ultimately Donna, whom CJ had called first, who spoke the truth they'd promised to themselves and to CJ to speak so long ago. CJ had wanted them to be a little older, but she could have never anticipated the skilled problem-solving thought processes of her twins. And so it was now... and they watched anxiously, almost hoping that the girls were too young to understand, but at the same time hoping they understood now, and wouldn't find out in some crude moment a year or two down the road.

All doubts were erased as Al reacted first, starting to jump up out of her seat. Sam leaned back, shaking.

"I-" Al couldn't even articulate herself, so she turned away, one leg lifting as if to start running. Sam was suddenly there, hands gently taking her shoulders and turning her back around.

"Don't go, Al," he directed. She stared at him, tears starting to flow, and tried to tug away a little. "Abigail, stay here, please." The force of his second plea stopped her, and she sat back down next to her sister.

"Crime statistics," Samantha said evenly. "Rape and battery. Cases go underreported each year, although policy centers believe there has been improvement in the past decade. Approximately 20 percent of sexual assaults result in pregnancy. The Family Education and Anti-Violence Act of 2004, aka the Cregg Bill, imposes stiffer penalties for such assaults and fast-tracks cases resulting in pregnancy to minimal-fee abortions with no moral counseling." Her voice was quiet and vacant, for all that it carried throughout the room, then it broke. "Oh, my God... my mother was... 2001... she's a statistic..."

"Shhh," Toby said softly, getting up. He came over and knelt in front of her, reaching his hands out to just touch her upper arms. Sam dissolved into tears and leaned fully into the proffered hug, as Toby rubbed her back gently. "Shhh..."

"She's very much like you," Leo whispered to Sam.

The younger man lifted an eyebrow. "Yeah," he agreed softly.

Several minutes later, both girls took a deep breath and wiped the tears off their faces again, then looked around.

"You don't always want us involved in politics..." Al trailed off.

"It's not always pretty or nice," Josh answered. "We started off with every intent to protect you from it, even when we were still in the White House, but it didn't work out that way."

"Why?"

"Why didn't it work out that way?" Carol asked.

"No, why did you want to protect us?"

"Your mother was one of the strongest people I've ever known," Charlie remarked. "She trusted these guys to not let you get hurt, and that was the first thing they thought of. That didn't work out at all, but politics can be dirty. We didn't want you to get hurt by anything, especially that, because CJ was a political player and she knew how dirty it could get, and we were all scared she was going to find some way to kick our, you know, our collective butt. She was a strong person."

They both turned to look at him in puzzlement, as did Jed, raising his eyebrows in complete approval.

"There was a scandal for you," Sam figured out first. She turned to Jed. "People didn't know about your multiple sclerosis."

"That's right."

There was a thoughtful silence while the girls turned this over, eyes turning ever more realistic. Josh had to look away several times, and Leo regarded his granddaughters with worry. Jed just waited. If they asked, the answer was his responsibility, and his alone.

"It was the year before we were born."

"Yeah," Carol affirmed.

"Why did she have us?"

"We know about the Christian Right," Al clarified, as Toby opened his mouth. "The scandal was when she was pregnant."

"And I don't want to meta this question," Sam declared, looking over at Toby.

"Actually," Jed corrected, "the scandal started about a week before she was attacked. And then she made a mistake, and everyone was angry at her, and then the thing happened. But, yeah, most of the scandal was when she knew she was pregnant. She testified before a grand jury about two weeks before she found out officially."

"Officially?" they queried in concert.

"CJ came to me first," Abbey replied quietly. "I was under investigation as well, and I couldn't be the official physician for the purpose of an announcement."

"Why didn't she-" Sam jumped off the couch and stared down at them all. "Why did she have us? I don't want to sound ungrateful because otherwise we wouldn't be here, but she was--she was. I'm not thinking straight, either, but why was there an announcement at all?"

Had the circumstances been any less serious, broad smiles would have been exchanged around the room. As it was, a bit of Toby's beard lifted suspiciously in a decidedly approving fashion, and Josh and Sam both gazed up at her. It was as though CJ's own voice, suppressed through those months of pregnancy by the need to succeed in the strategy and then afterwards by death, had come down through the years and forced its way through her daughter's being.

CJ's daughters had inherited her dislike of injustice, and her ability to be outraged. Even when it was something like this, even when they were on an emotional ride to rival any other, they were outraged.

Problem solving.

But they couldn't fix this; they could only find out about it, and these adults could only hope that the second and colder piece of the puzzle wouldn't entirely break the already tarnished light in Sam and Al's eyes.

"She was protecting me," Jed said quietly in response. Sam sat down with a thump. "She was protecting me, because we couldn't afford to have two scandals at once. Her scandal shouldn't have been one, but it would have, because at that time a large percentage of the public was convinced I wasn't trustworthy, and that extended to my staff as well. So CJ, in all her dedication, and with everything she had, took serving and protecting the President to an entirely different level and worked out strategy for my reelection, for possible second term-scenarios. She worked out the press strategy that allowed Josh and Donna to date and marry even though he was still her boss at the time. And she told Sam he'd be good in public office. She left us something extraordinary, and not a day goes by that we don't think of her and give thanks and at the same time wonder if we're doing a good enough job with you and if the price really had to be that high, because none of us wanted CJ to protect me if that was the cost."

Sam bowed his head, as Mallory rubbed his shoulder. Josh let what Jed had just said sink in for a while, then turned to the girls.

"We were absolutely devastated. CJ was our sister and friend and daughter. Between when she died and her funeral, we were all... gone. And then we came back and we rewrote the State of the Union on the same day it was to be delivered and we hit the ground running and we tackled the issues and we continued CJ's beautiful, tragic strategy, because that sort of thing demands we honor it by striving to meet and exceed it. It's why Sam likes to run on education and energy. It's why Donna works for women's rights. It's why Charlie takes on those cases at his law firm. It's why you've met children from schools that haven't had enough money for a hundred years. It's why we keep talking about helping people, and it's why we talk about raising the level of public debate in this country and changing politics for the better. It's why the Galileo Foundation exists. It's why dozens of other pieces of legislation exist besides the Cregg Bill. And it's why we love you so very much, because we've all, for the past decade, been passing around the note she wrote during the lockdown when you were delivered, because even when she knew she was dying, she still said she loved you. And it's why you're precious and intelligent and graceful and caring and want the right thing, because you're the daughters of CJ Cregg."

"In fact," Leo noted into the ensuing silence once he was able to speak, "what Josh said just now pretty much is the capsule version of how we've felt since you were born and CJ died."

"What else?" Carol asked after several minutes, as Sam and Al continued to sit there, blinking and very clearly turning something over in their heads they weren't ready to say yet.

"Who else gets custody?" Al managed, just a little vacantly. Sam hesitated before he answered.

"If something happens to Josh and Toby and I, then Carol and Donna will have custody. If something happens to Carol and Donna, then Jed and Abbey and Leo. If something happens to the three of them, I think Charlie and Margaret would take care of you. After them... I know originally Liz and Ellie and Zoey were named."

"How do you know?" Sam asked raggedly.

"CJ asked me to recommend some lawyers to her."

"Why?"

"She wanted you to be taken care of no matter what happened, Samantha," Sam replied gently.

"So she knew she might die?"

"Yeah."

"How do you know?"

Apparently Josh had transferred his strategic skills. "She told me."

"Grandpa Jed just said that none of you wanted her to protect him at that cost."

"I didn't, either. She had a better argument than I did, and she was more determined, and if Jed Bartlet had lost the election because of her, it could have destroyed her."

"Sam!" Leo exclaimed.

"The truth, Leo," Sam returned with fire. Then he focused on the girls again, eyes questioning and anxious.

"Okay, that's, uh..."

"... a lot of stuff."

"May we go upstairs?"

"You girls want dinner?" Donna offered gently. They shook their heads, looking just a little sick at the concept. "Okay. Let us know if you change your minds."

"Thanks. We won't." They stood and went upstairs very slowly.

After the door closed, there was a loud, collective exhale.

"Please let that have been the right conversation we had just now," Josh whispered.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My mother was a victim.

My father was a rapist.

Love couldn't possibly have had anything to do with bringing me into the world.

Why did she do it?

Am I that ungrateful to be alive?

What's Sam thinking about?

What's Al thinking?

"What're you thinking?"

Sam lifted her eyes slowly from the bedspread and looked at a wavering mirror of herself. "I don't want to be smart anymore." She paused. "What are you thinking?"

"They're guilty. And I can't stand this." Her slender fingers traced a path down her wrist before she jumped up. "I can't stand it."

Sam watched her for a few minutes, standing there in agony inside herself, only the fact that they were twins enabling her to understand and reach out to the core of pained destruction. "You know," she said slowly, "you remind me of the time we went to the Pittsburgh Zoo, and they had a short film running near the gorilla exhibit of when they had one gorilla who didn't have enough space. It just was still, like you are now."

"I thought you said you didn't want to be smart anymore," Al returned, voice fiery with the effort of suppressing something she didn't want to look at.

"I don't. But I am, and so are you."

"They taught us about nature and nurture in science last year," Abigail noted, seemingly randomly. Sam's eyes flicked upward.

"I think we just learned everything else we need to know."

"Nurture helps a lot."

"Uncle Josh said we remind him of CJ."

"Of course we do."

"I just called our mother CJ. How does this work, anyway? Do I refer to her as 'my mother', or what?" Sam asked no one at all, tears pooling a little. "And he meant besides physically. He said that was where we got our dedication from."

Al sat down on the floor, curling herself up a little. "I don't feel dedicated."

"Yeah," Sam answered quietly.

"We shouldn't have to deal with this."

"No. But we asked."

"This is what happens when we act like we're five years older than we are."

"Chronological age doesn't need to be that important."

"But eleven is too young for this."

"Which this?" Samantha asked her sister, eyes dark and shattered with reality and the history of grief. "Which thing?"

Abigail looked up at the ceiling. "I honestly don't know anymore."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was over a week before the twins laughed again. Noah couldn't understand why they were so quiet and pale and grave, these sisters he'd always known, and retreated into himself a little. Toby warned Andrea to not bring Huck and Claudia to visit, and waited quietly, all of them giving these two the same courtesy and time they would have granted her mother. Sam sent Mallory back to California, and eventually Leo and Charlie between them talked Jed and Abbey into going back up to New Hampshire. Carol stayed, hoping she'd see and know what she hadn't wanted to see or know with CJ, but what she owed to CJ to see now...

What they laughed at wasn't even particularly funny, but no one said anything, hoping that it signaled some hope; dreadfully afraid that it didn't.

They didn't do anything for Father's Day; the old assistants took them out for the day instead, at Donna's request. She knew they couldn't give anything to Josh or Toby or Sam or even Jed or Leo this year.

And so it drew to the end of June, and passed into early July, and Leo's gaze upon Sam and Al became ever more thoughtful. Twelve years earlier, he'd been asked to be a first phone call for something utterly devastating, and he wondered if, perhaps, they would do the same. In any case, the time of year weighed heavily on him. And he worried, because there was something almost unnaturally graceful about Sam's movements, almost translucent about Al's posture of thought.

Decades later, the two would write eerily identical passages about how the presence of the other helped; that alone, each would have completely snapped under the weight, but having someone else there who truly understood, because how much more understanding can one get than a twin, helped immensely, even though immense help still meant almost a month of that muted, nearly beaten stillness. In the end, curiosity rose again, and so did a little bit of their bright, sparkling, gracious minds, and both stood solemnly in front of Carol.

"Aunt Carol?" Al's voice was just above a whisper, as though her voice could never ring out fully again after learning something so painful.

"We have two questions," Sam continued, her hands linked in front of her, eyes fearful and bold and direct and determined.

Carol looked at both of them, then met Sam's eyes, and a little prickle ran down her back and CJ's voice whispered down the years. 'You're my assistant, Carol. You've seen me all sorts of ways, and that's going to make them curious, and maybe at the same time, you're going to see one of them looking at you like I would have. This is why I want you there. If you held me together after Pakistan, and after Haiti and the MS, and when I couldn't be in the same room as Josh without having a panic attack, you'll know what to do for those two. If Josh and Donna work it out, she might nurture them more, but it's you I'm trusting with their well-being when they're old enough to need you.'

So she rested an elbow against the edge of a shelf, and replied, "Okay. What are the two questions?"

"You first," Al directed.

"Mine's not as serious."

"That's why it should be first." Carol smiled a little bit and lifted her eyebrows as she watched them reason it out.

"I'm concerned it'll sound irreverent."

"Order isn't going to change that."

Sam actually paused and pursed her lips. "You have a point," she conceded.

"Well, then?" Al prompted.

"What's the silliest thing our mom ever did at a briefing?" Sam asked, tone and face nervous.

"I'll have to think about that," Carol told her. "Al, what was your question?"

"It sounds too serious now."

"It's okay," she reassured.

Al seemed to soften and think, and gazed at Carol directly, her eyes questing. "Where is she?" the question came at last.

Carol shifted just a little, not breaking eye contact. "There's a cemetery just outside DC. It was close enough to visit while we were still at the White House." Sam blushed and ducked her head, and Carol realized that Sam hadn't wanted to ask the question. "And the silliest thing was insulting Danny's spelling."

"Really?" They looked at her with a bit of a grin, eyes starting to sparkle.

"Yeah, really."

"Can we go?" Sam asked, and she wasn't asking if they could leave the room.

"Yes." Carol waited a beat. "But Toby or Josh have to come, too."

"Can Grandpa Leo go with us?" Al wanted to know.

"If he wants to, sure." There was a tension in Carol's eyes, but she'd had years to develop a guarded face in front of the press. CJ's two girls couldn't see through her.

Could they?

The answer didn't matter when they stood, Carol and Leo and Toby, watching two tall, slender figures gaze solemnly down, their faces cast by the sun into shadows of thoughtful puzzlement, for Carol had to fling teardrops to the wind. Al turned, and Carol smiled at her, just a little, and the girl's lips tilted into a faint, familiar smile before turning back.

"I can't believe I've never been here."

"Actually, you were," Leo corrected.

"We were?"

"When you were a year old."

"We came here," Toby breathed, "on the day of the President's second Inaugural. It was unbelievably cold, and I would have stood in the same spot the entire day if asked, because every second the President stood there with all of us was a moment he was thanking your mother for what she'd done."

"I remember," Carol said softly. "Next to that State of the Union, that was when I understood why he was a good President, and why all of you believed in his ability to lead."

"'Us', Carol," Leo corrected gently. "Don't exclude yourself."

"I think it was when I stopped excluding myself so much," she reflected.

Samantha turned. "How do you tell?"

"Tell what, Sam?" Leo replied.

"When someone's a good President, and whether they can lead, and..." she paused to think. "How can you tell when you should trust the inspiring words of a campaign?"

"Does Sam believe in his speeches?" Toby asked her.

"Of course. Otherwise he wouldn't deliver them."

"How can you tell?"

"He gets this look on his face, and emphasizes all of the right words, and I've heard him arguing with his writers when they wanted him to soften something or go to the right, and also the people listening to the speech get a look on their face, and the way his voice fills up... I don't know," she concluded in frustration. Al had turned a little, too, her profile thoughtful and highlighted against the horizon.

Toby, however, smiled a little. "That's exactly how you tell. There's nothing specific you can point to. It's a gut feeling, and it's the job of everyone else around that person to convince everyone else in the district, or state, or country, to believe that too. But it's also their job to convince everyone else to think about the issues and why their candidate is right."

"And then," Leo chimed in, "you give them a hard question and see if they tell the truth. That's how you tell the real thing apart from the rest of them."

"How did our mom know?" Al asked, still half-turned.

There was a pause, and Leo looked at Toby.

"I flew out to California at Leo's request because we both knew she was as capable a person as you could ask for and liberal enough for the President to want on board." Toby shifted just a little then, and glanced down. "I told her that Jed Bartlet was a good man, and she joined the campaign."

"That's how else you know?" Sam asked, her eyes sharp and inquiring.

"Yeah." Toby stuck his hands in his pockets. "But you don't need to worry about this for a while."

There was a tilted smile from both of them, and then they turned back, finally kneeling next to the marker and tracing the words on it.

I serve at the pleasure of the President of the United States...

Some would say Samantha and Abigail Cregg never had any choice in the matter, that nurture had bound them too strongly to the world of politics for them to ever turn away. Those people had never wandered into a schoolroom they were visiting for Galileo, or seen them brightly pushing for cleaner energy at a campaign desk. Curiosity drove them on again, too, and Al stood and turned, knowing she might be about to say the very thing her mother might have feared, the reason her parents had vowed before to protect them from politics.

CJ's choice that had never been a choice had granted these girls, and perhaps their contemporaries and generations to follow, a further choice, a freedom undreamed of before. For them, there was no glass ceiling, and they could do what they wanted and years of watching Donna and Sam and Josh and Carol and Will in the boiling morass of politics had shown them the kind of dedication they needed. Both knew, and were frequently reminded, that white males made up over sixty percent of the federal government.

Toby recognized the posture of determination, and tightened his lips, watching CJ's dedication reach down through the years again. But not at so great a price... please, not at so great a price.

Leo just watched, until both girls stood and he saw the treasured flame of idealism again.

"Aunt Carol?"

"Yeah?" Carol had seen it, too.

"Are there tapes of her briefings?"

"Yes."

"Do you have them?"

"Josh and Donna do."

"Okay."

"It's okay to be eleven years old for a while," Leo reminded them.

"Being eleven years old doesn't preclude being an aware citizen," Sam replied.

Leo grinned at this precious gift, even as he swallowed away the possibility of tragedy, for these girls were far too young for this. "Okay then."

"We already know all this stuff. Not using it would be a waste."

"You're going to make government young again?" Leo asked.

Sam shrugged with young confidence. "Eventually. Right now, Al and I want to watch those briefings, so we understand. Maybe after we do, we won't want to do this anymore. But it'll be our choice."

Leo took Sam's face between his hands and gently tilted her head forward until he could kiss her forehead. And so the fear that had woven its way through the years started to fade away, and they hoped, having all somehow overcome the barrier of truth they feared would be insurmountable, that the other product of CJ's dedication would be within their grasp.