A/N: I don't own what you recognize. I really appreciate all the support that this fic has gotten. Enjoy the final chapter!

December 2006

"How was your day?" Sam asked his wife.

She sighed. "Can you distract your son for a while so that I can make dinner?"

Their son was playing with some trucks by his mother's feet when Sam scooped him up. "You've got it. Anything else I can do for you?"

"Make your younger daughter stop using my internal organs as soccer balls?"

Sam rested a hand on Ainsley's belly. "Hey you in there, this is your father speaking. Behave yourself."

The baby just kicked him in answer.

Ainsley shrugged. "Hopefully she'll be more compliant out of the womb."

"Ains, she's your daughter. It's not looking likely."

His wife swatted at him. "It's not like you're any more compliant than I am."

"I beg your pardon. I am the soul of duty."

Ainsley shook her head. "Oh Samuel Norman, what will I do with you?"

He kissed her cheek. "You'd have a totally different life, and you love this life that you have."

"Marrying a Democrat has not proven to be nearly as terrible as my father told me that it would be."

Sam laughed as he adjusted Tommy on his hip. "I think that there have been a few benefits."

"And I'm sure that my dad would be proud that my Democrat husband is letting me be a stay at home mom."

"For two months," he replied. "You're going back to work in a month."

She smiled. "And then you'll let me have twelve weeks of maternity leave."

"And maybe under President Santos it'll be a real maternity leave."

Ainsley snorted. "President Bartlet wasn't the problem with my first maternity leave. That was all Babish."

"And you won't have to worry about him in this administration."

January 2007

"And that brings us up to pretty much now," Sam said.

"Just so long as we don't have to deal with Babish in this administration," Ainsley remarked.

Matt laughed. "I don't think that's a likely possibility. He said he wants a good and long break from Washington at this point in his life."

"He's earned it," Ainsley replied. "Lord knows that I know that well."

Sam squeezed his wife's hand. "He's worked hard and done good work. And yes, he worked my wife too hard."

"Too hard?" Matt repeated.

"Just when I was supposedly on maternity leave after Nora was born," Ainsley elaborated.

"Supposedly?" Helen repeated.

"I was under the impression that I was on maternity leave. Babish thought that I was working from home."

January 20, 2007

"How are you feeling?" Sam asked as he walked into the bathroom where his wife was carefully applying mascara.

"Pregnant, excited, tired," she replied. "It's going to be a good day today."

He smiled. "It's going to be a very good day."

"Are you ready for all of those balls this evening?"

"I'm not the one who is seven months pregnant."

"Hey, I didn't agree to go to all of the balls. I'm not married to the President, not yet anyway."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Ainsley turned to look at her husband. "If you don't know, then you're fooling yourself."

"Let's not focus on that today. Let's focus on Santos today."

"Even if I didn't vote for him," she replied.

"Hey, your guy is the Secretary of State."

"And your man is good enough of a person to hire Republicans for both Secretary of State and Chief Counsel."

"He's a smart man."

"With good advisors," Ainsley replied. "But you're right. It's going to be a very good day."

For the record, they were home by eleven that night. Pregnancy covers a multitude of social faux pas.

February 2007

"I feel like I'm not home enough."

Ainsley sighed. "Samuel, look at the clock."

"It's seven-thirty."

"On a Wednesday night and you're the Deputy Chief of Staff to the President of the United States," she replied. "And you're at home."

"I missed dinner."

"But you didn't miss bedtime or bathtime."

"Which is a relief," he replied.

"It's a miracle," she said. "I can't do bathtime anymore. I'm too big for getting up and down from the tub."

"Three more weeks," he told her softly as he rubbed her belly.

"It can't come soon enough. I don't know what I'd do if I didn't have you and a nanny."

"I feel like Ines is more valuable than I am right now."

Ainsley put a finger over Sam's lips. "Ines is great, but she's no substitute for Daddy when Tommy has a cold and can't sleep through the night."

"I'm his dad. Just because I work crazy hours that doesn't mean that I can't sit up with him at night while he's hacking up his lungs."

"And it makes you a hero in my eyes."

"Sam, you went home at seven last night," Josh said the next morning. "Why are you yawning?"

Sam stifled another yawn. "I didn't get much sleep."

"What were you doing? You went home early."

"Tommy is sick. I stayed up with him half the night."

Josh shook his head. "Don't you have a nanny?"

"Josh, when my kids look back on their childhoods, I want them to remember that I was there. I want them to know that their dad loved them and took care of them even if it meant that he missed out on sleep."

"It just looks bad-you yawning in the Oval during Senior Staff when the President knows that you went home at seven last night."

"The President's kids aren't that much older than mine. I'm sure that he'll understand."

Josh huffed. "Well, I don't understand."

"Have children, Josh. It'll all make a lot more sense."

March 2007

"Mr. President?" Josh said as he walked into the Oval Office.

"What is it?" President Santos asked as he looked up.

"Sam called."

"And?"

"Abigail Josephine Seaborn was born at 7:30 this morning."

"Abigail Josephine?"

"For Abigail Adams, Abigail Barlet, and HMS Pinafore," Josh replied. "She has dark brown hair, she's twenty inches long, and she weighs eight pounds, nine ounces."

Matt smiled. "Make sure my wife knows. She'll want to know. And please give Sam and Ainsley my congratulations. That's wonderful news."

And what happened after that, the reader may wonder. Well, the transition from working parents of two to working parents of three was hectic for Ainsley and Sam, but they made it work. The transition two years later to parents of four at the birth of Mabel Jean was harder, but they made it work. They continued to serve at the pleasure of the President of the United States. Nora, Tommy, Abby, and Mabel grew to know the White House and its inhabitants well.

Donna and Josh married just before Christmas and just after the midterm election in Santos's first term. Joanie Lyman was born the following October. Her younger brother Tobias was born two days after Santos was inaugurated for his second term. The name prompted Toby Ziegler to inform Josh that he was decidedly a bad Jew because "if you were a good Jew you'd know that you should not name your children after the living." Josh had sighed and replied, "Can't you just accept that this is my way of say that you're still my brother?"

Mabel was six, Abby eight, Tommy almost ten, and Nora thirteen when Matthew Santos left the White House. Two years later, the Seaborn family was back in Washington when Sam was elected as Senator from California.

Six years after that-in 2023, a wheelchair bound Jed Bartlet grinned broadly as the newly elected President Samuel N. Seaborn took the oath of office alongside his Vice President Charles Young. Josh Lyman grinned gleefully as he saw Peter Santos and Nora Seaborn dancing together at the first of the inaugural balls that night. "See, Sam," he whispered in the President's ear. "I told you that they were about the same age."

"He's more than three years older than her," Sam told his Chief of Staff. "It works far better now that she's in law school and he's a Naval pilot than it did when she was in preschool and he was in third grade."

"But aren't you glad that you listened to me and had dinner with his family?"

Sam looked at his wife as she came to stand next to him. "I'm far happier than Leo knew that President Bartlet liked smart people who disagreed with him and hired Ainsley to work in the White House."

Ainsley smiled up at her husband. "We owe them everything."

"And one day, Peter and Nora will say that they owe us everything."

"Oh get over yourself, Joshua," his wife said. "You're the worst yenta I've ever met."

"But you still love me."

"Amazingly," she sighed.

"President Seaborn," Ainsley said. "What do you say about getting away from those two and spinning me around the dance floor?"

"That sounds lovely," he replied as they joined their daughter and her boyfriend on the dance floor. "Ainsley, did you ever imagine that we'd end up here when we first met?"

"On Capital Beat?" she asked. "I never wanted to see you again."

"I'm so glad that Leo didn't let that happen."

"So am I, Samuel. So am I."

The End.

A/N: I hope you enjoyed my dabbling into the world of The West Wing. Thanks for reading!