"And are we absolutely certain that it's the right course of action?"

A small group of people were gathered in the Oval Office in the White House, intently discussing the agenda for the morning briefing. Press Secretary, Linda Barnett, turned to Director of Communications Alison Hawkins to see what her reaction would be. Alison nodded, catching the eye of her deputy Geoff Westwick. He was in complete agreement as she had known he would be.

Carrie Dalgleish took in the glances of the people around her and turned to face The President.

"We're in agreement Madam President."

President Andie Wyatt was relieved. The initiative had taken a long time to pull together, needing bipartisan support in both Houses, Congress and Senate. Now it looked as though it would go ahead.

Carrie turned to her own deputy, Dan Hardacre, and nodded.

"Alright. Set up the calls."

Dan was wide eyed, looking like a rabbit caught in headlights. His too long blond fringe fell haphazardly into his too young face. For a moment, he looked a good decade younger than his twenty-seven years of age.

"Me?"

"No… the President of Pakistan." Carrie suppressed a roll of her eyes with great difficulty. "Yes, you, go on, go…"

Dan gathered up his papers, dropped half of them in the process, recollected them, and departed from the room sprinkling messy apologies as her went.

Carrie caught Andie's eye in a wry second of amusement.

"Alright," Andie turned to the room. "What's next?"

"Nothing…"

"We're done Madam President."

"Marvellous. Let's get started."

Linda, Alison and Geoff left the room in a more orderly fashion than Dan.

Carried stayed for a few minutes, turning to face Andie as she sat at the imposing desk to one side of the room. Andie sighed and looked up to Carrie.

"Are you sure we haven't just promoted a post turtle?"

Carrie burst into laughter. "A what?"

"A post turtle. Oh, it was on one of those twitter memes, Molly showed it to me. There's a photograph of a turtle is balanced on a fence post and underneath was a spiel saying that every administration has a post turtle. You have no idea how he got to that position, he must have had help to get there, he's elevated above his ability to function and he had no idea how to get out of the position."

Carrie sighed, trying to suppress her laughter. "He's young. He'll learn. It's not like we're at war or anything, and in the worst case scenario, I'll have Rachel back in a few weeks time once she's done given birth."

"If she comes back…"

"When she comes back. I'm not letting her quit. She's got too good a brain to waste on years of unrelenting nursery rhymes. I'd rather put a crib in her office and get sound proofing than do without… ooof..."

Andie looked up at her chief of staff, one of her closest confidants. Carrie was wincing, a hand suddenly clutching her side.

"Are you feeling alright?"

"Just a stitch… I think… I've been getting them recently. Probably need to get a bit more exercise."

"Like you don't get enough walking up and down the halls of this place for fourteen hours a day."

Carrie didn't look good actually. Pale, with dark shadows under her eyes, and a facial expression which belied a great deal of hidden discomfort.

"You sure you're alright? Don't need to send out for any antacid or anything…"

"I'll be fine, Madam President. Nothing a sit down and a glass of water won't fix."

"Off you go then…"

"Thank you Madam President."

As Carrie left to go into her office through one door there was a knock at the other. Andie's chief secretary, Rose, opened it and announced "Your ten o'clock is waiting, Madam President…"

"Right, yes, Secretary McGarry, send her in…"

Mallory McGarry came in, looking slick and professional in her new suit. Three months into her new role as Secretary of Education, she was growing in confidence and stature in a way that would have made her father proud.

"Mallory…"

"Madam President…"

"Please, come in. Have a seat. How are the negotiations going, is everything up to…"

Behind the Chief of Staff's Office Door, there was a rumbling sound, followed by a thud and a sound of smashed glass.

Andie rushed over to the door and yanked it open, to see her chief of staff, Carrie, on her knees on the floor, sweat pouring from her face, which was lily white beneath her damp dark hair.

"Carrie… Carrie…! ROSE!"

"I can't breathe… I can't … I can't… " Carrie passed out onto the floor as Andie shrieked at the top of her lungs for someone, anyone, to help.

…

2 hours later

In a white building over at Columbia University, a lecture was in full swing, and students were busy taking notes, scribbling into notebooks and tapping furiously into new mac books and laptops. But the walls of the old hall occasionally rang with laughter and reverberated with lively and spirited debate.

The lecturer was popular, established and his classes were often oversubscribed. Known for his tetchy temper if people didn't keep up with the reading, most of his cohort did their best to stay one step ahead. To date, nobody had succeeded in this attempt.

Suddenly, a cell phone ring tone pierced the lighthearted atmosphere of the politics lecture.

Toby Ziegler's face snapped shut into a frown.

"Whoever's that is, please turn it off. You know my expectations about cell phones in lecture halls."

The students turned to face each other, checking their phones in pockets and bags, as the ring tone became louder and louder.

"Quickly please…"

The noise terminated abruptly.

"Thank you. Now, as I was saying…"

"Professor Ziegler…"

Toby turned to see his assistant Mary hold his own mobile phone, a look of panic on her face.

"Yes?"

"Professor, it was your phone, you need to take the call."

"I'm in the middle of…"

Mary hurried closer and spoke in a harried, frantic whisper. "It's the White House… they're saying it's a call from the President…"

Toby's face changed again, becoming all at once still. These calls came rarely during his working day, and never in less than a dire emergency. He turned to the students watching him.

"I need to take this call. Apologies. Class dismissed."

With that, Toby took the phone and abruptly marched out of the side door. Mary was left to close his laptop and gather up his briefcase before scurrying after him, through an increasing sea of confused and concerned commentary, as the students packed up their own belongings and speculated wildly about what could have pulled the most work conscious Professor away from teaching one of his favoured classes.

…

Outside in the corridor, Toby lifted the phone and released the hold function.

"This is Professor Toby Ziegler."

"Professor, please hold for the President."

A few clicks and beeps and Andie's voice came onto the line.

"Madam President?"

"Oh Toby…"

"Are the kids…"

"The kids are fine. It's not the kids."

"Oh thank God."

"Toby … it's Carrie."

"Carrie… your chief of staff?"

"She's had a heart attack."

Toby went through a doorway into a quiet stairwell and crashed down onto the bottom steps.

"No way…"

He knew Carrie. Had gotten to know her well since Andie's campaign had started out around three years ago. She'd been an excellent campaign manager, a seasoned operative with the DCCC. Only in her early forties, she'd been a wonderful chief of staff to Andie during the first two years of her presidency.

"Toby, it was awful, she collapsed in her office this morning, right after staff briefing."

"Where are you now?"

"At the residence."

"What do you need?"

"I need you."

"I'm on my way. I'll get the first flight out."

"Eric will be at the airport to meet you."

Abruptly, Toby hung up and began walking swiftly over to his office. On his way, he called Mary.

"Mary, I'm going to be gone for the rest of the day. Could you please cancel the rest of my classes and post notices for the afternoon lecture.

…

At Dulles Airport, Eric Banshaw waited at the Arrivals gate with the usual sign saying 'Prof Ziegler'. In his dark suit and coat, with close cropped hair and youthful face, he looked like any of the other dark suited limousine and private car drivers that littered the concourse, but Eric was no driver.

Toby came through the gate, briefcase in one hand, overcoat slung over his other arm.

"Eric."

"Professor."

Eric lifted the little recording device in his hand to his lips and softly stated the time and location, noting that he had collected Mr Ziegler from the flight in from New York.

"Boarding Pass?"

"Here you go." Toby handed over the stub, which Eric photographed using a camera phone.

"Thanks. Lets go."

The two men walked over to the exit where a private car with a driver waited for both of them. This habit had become ingrained over the last two years or so, and while it grated upon Toby's nerves, he understood and accepted the need for it.

"Still haven't passed this job off to any other junior White House Counsellor I see, Eric?"

"Nobody else would put up with you, Professor Ziegler."

"Are we going in the front door?"

"Back door. President's request."

Toby breathed a sigh of relief. Less press, less check points and less books to sign in and out of. As the car drew up at the rear gate, and then passed through to the part at the rear of the White House, Eric murmured the time and location once more into the little recording device, before opening the door and ushering Toby inside.

It was an interesting pantomime, but one that had long since become routine to Toby. Irritating perhaps, but routine nonetheless.

With Toby having been charged with treason and removed from the White House after leaking classified information, there had been a number of legal headaches to overcome when Andie took office at the White House. Huck and Molly were just fourteen years old when Andie took office, and would be living with Andie in the White House residence during her time in office, at least until they went to college. Toby was their father and would need access to his children and to confer with Andie, as co-parent, from time to time. To have Andie, and the children, meeting him on neutral ground, motorcade and all, would be impossible in terms of privacy. He had to come to the residence.

Obviously, Toby could not be allowed access to any restricted areas and was barred from ever being issued with a security clearance at any sort of government level. Even though he had been pardoned by Bartlett, his presence in any restricted area would have been political suicide, not to mention the tipping point of a potential constitutional crisis. How could he pass through one of the most secure building in the world without hearing or seeing anything at all, in a way which would satisfy everyone as to his deafness and blindness?

Over chinese food and beers, during the transition period, Andie and Toby had discussed with various friends and colleagues how they could achieve this while still keeping the public happy and the lawyers comfortable. Eventually, Toby grumbled that he should just be given a watchdog to report on his every movement and, once the gales of laughter had subsided, people realised that it wasn't such a bad idea.

Eric Banshaw, ten years out of law school at Georgetown, proud Republican party member and the most junior lawyer in the White House Counsel's office, had been given a new role as Toby's official escort whenever he was on the premises at the White House. If Toby was travelling in to see Andie or the kids, Eric would collect him, escort him, sign him in, hustle him through the building so that he could not speak to anyone there in an official capacity and deposit him at the door of the residence. All through this, Eric kept a tick tock on his digital recorder, which was then transcribed and written up by a clerk on the Counsel's office. An accurate to the nearest second record of when and where Toby was on his journey into and out of the White House.

Once into the residence, Toby didn't need an escort, and Andie refused adamantly to discuss policy, work or anything approaching national security. No official documents came into the residence during her tenure there, and no meetings were ever held there. This way, Toby never ran the risk of accidentally reading or hearing something he wasn't supposed to have access too. The same went for the children.

It wasn't a new precedent. Bartlett had insisted upon the same distinction in his home and personal life, especially when Zoe was still living with him before going to college. Matt Santos had kept up the same rule, partly to allow for his often lightweight and unreliable brother to occasionally visit his niece and nephew. And now, it allowed for Toby to visit his children at the White House official residence.

At least, that was the official story behind his visits.

Toby and Andie's relationship, resumed during the midterms where she had lost her seat in Congress, had continued, but not been reaffirmed in any legally recognised sense. In the cold light of day, Andie's wildly romantic proposal and declaration that she wanted Toby in her life if she ran for office, had to be examined by political minds without a vested interest in the emotional side of things.

The short answer, from every focus group and legal meeting and quiet piece of advice from political operatives, was that Andie would lose if she and Toby remarried.

Toby, while disappointed, had been realistic, and restated his offer to Andie that he would wait for her for however long it took for her to reach the pinnacle of her political career. Until then … well, they still had each other, if a little more distantly and less frequently. They would just have to be a little more discreet about it and re-emphasis his role as father to Molly and Huck when anyone questioned his presence in the background.

At the back door to the residence, a secret service agent stood guard, not much smaller than the door he was guarding.

"Good afternoon Wyatt."

"Good afternoon Mr Banshaw."

Eric turned to Toby. "I'll leave you here now. Ring when you're ready to leave."

"Good night Eric."

As Toby passed through the door, he heard Wyatt speak softly into his personal microphone.

"Papa Goose is entering the Residence."

Toby sighed. He supposed there were worse code names.

Andie was in the kitchen, sitting at the table, a mug of coffee in her hands.

Toby deposited his briefcase and coat and came over to take her in his arms. A long silent hug refreshed and sustained both of them.

"Coffee?"

"I can get it," Toby motioned for her to sit down. "How's everything, generally?"

"Carrie's in surgery."

"What happened?"

"A pulmonary embolism. A clot."

"Dear God…"

"She's having a bypass as we speak."

"Prognosis?"

"Serious, but hopeful."

Toby had located a mug, spooned in the sugar and topped up his coffee from the percolator. He came to sit with Andie.

"The kids?"

"At school. I'll tell them later."

"Won't they see it on their cell phones?"

"Sidwell doesn't allow students to use cell phones during class time."

"Well that's something."

Toby sat at the table. Andie was leafing through scribbled notes on several pieces of paper.

"What can I do?"

"You can help me figure out what to do about a new chief of staff."

"Can the Deputy act up?"

"In a word, no."

"Oh dear."

Andie sighed and put her head in her hands.

"The deputy, Rachel, is about to give birth. Any minute now. So of course she's on parental leave, and has the right to take…"

"Oh…"

"Yeah…"

Andie had campaigned hard on the promise of parental leave for new families. Her own Deputy Chief of Staff had been one of the first White House Staffers to take advantage of paid parental leave with the promise of getting her job back once her baby was old enough to leave with a child care provider. Andie had popped Champagne the night that the deal had been signed and had been so proud of Rachel for taking up the opportunity as a flag bearer for the new provision. Now though… now Andie was being hoisted up her own flag pole.

"What about her replacement?"

"He's been in the job for two minutes, and it's been two minutes too long. Carrie thought she could train him but..."

"But that's not an option. Alright. Who's left out of your staff?"

"We're scattered thin, which is a major problem. I've got delegations all over the place. I'm going to have to look to bring someone in. My first thought was CJ, but that's not possible right now."

"No. Obviously."

Toby shook his head over the recent crop of misfortunes that had befallen his old sparring partner.

"What about Sam?"

"In Russia."

"Has he gone to take care of…"

"Yes."

"Good. But not good for this."

"He should be landing today, I'll speak to him in a few hours."

Sam had been made Secretary of State earlier in the year when the previous holder of the position, Arnold Vinick, finally retired due to ill health. Early on his his role working for President Bartlett, Sam had accidentally ended up in the middle of a diplomatic communication from President Pyotr Chigorin, then newly elected president of Russia. The Russian President had taken a liking to Sam and often asked after him in his dealings with President Bartlett and had been delighted to see him return to public life after Matt Santos was elected to the White House. In the aftermath of the US involvement in Khazakstan, as Deputy Chief of Staff to Matt Santos, Sam had opened a dialogue of negotiation with the President, managing to develop the fragile trust between the two countries, and as Secretary of State this was now high on his agenda to continue. He had just this week been dispatched to Moscow to discuss the future of Khazakstan with President Chigorin. The visit had taken upwards of six months to set up and bringing Sam home again at this juncture was simply not possible.

"I won't deny Toby, I thought long and hard about that one. There are few people I'd rather have next door than Sam right now, but I need him where he is. In all the years they were in communication, this is the first time he and Pyotr have met in person, and it's been a long time coming."

"Alright … who else…"

"I need every bottom on every seat in Congress and the Senate. The margin is too narrow. I can't risk an empty seat."

"And they're all so young…"

"It says a lot when Charlie and Billy are now looking like old hands… and Charlie's got to go back to the polls in a few months time."

In the wake of the midterms which had elected Charlie and Billy to Congress and Senate, the New Blues movement had grown in strength, with more and more people aged under 30 being elected to Congress, and more and more people under 35 making strong runs for Senate. Across the aisle, the Republican youth movement, shepherded by Ainsley Hayes, had swept a new broom through the GOP. The Fresh Reds had their own hashtag and agenda and were running their own impressive show right now.

But that meant the margins had grown tighter and tighter and control of the House of Representatives was on a razor thin edge. This was not the time to pull their allies out.

Tony started crossing names off the list.

"No… No… No, too many enemies… No… Not this one…"

"Amy Gardiner? I had her in mind…"

"She got married. Moved away..."

"That doesn't mean she can't…"

"... to Australia."

"Oh. That would put an end to that idea, then."

"What about Will Bailey?"

Andie put her coffee down in disbelief.

"You… are suggesting Will Bailey? Are you feeling alright?"

"I'm feeling desperate."

"He's heading up the re-election campaign at the DCCC."

"Not re-contesting his seat in Oregan?"

"You're out of date. He missed Washington too much. Decided to chuck in the seat and come home. Harris is in the seat now."

Toby shook his head, his memory catching up.

"I knew that, I'd just forgotten. At least it's still Blue. Hang on a second…"

Toby grabbed the sheets and started leafing through.

"What…? Toby, what?"

"There's a name missing."

"Which one?"

"Lyman."

"Donna? She's heading up the taskforce on Equal Pay over at Treasury. She says she still wants her money back."

"No, not Moss-Lyman. Lyman. Where's Josh's name?"

Andie and Toby raised their heads and looked at each other, eye to eye.

"Do you think he would?"

"Do you think he wouldn't?"

"I don't know…"

"I'll be honest, neither do I…"

"Well … I supposed we'd better find out."