Yeah, a wonderful story.

You know, this story is the first fanfiction I've ever read. Over the years, I came back to it several times. Including today. And it's still one of the best. After all these years, you might not even be at the receiving end of these reviews anymore, but just in case, what a story, thanks.

This was so well thought out and written. You should be proud of yourself :)

Thank you. Thank you for writing this story. It is beautifully written. This is the second time I've read it and you've made me cry again. I love how the story developed and how you gave just enough information so that we knew what was going on but not so much detail to overwhelm us. The only thing I would even consider changing... And I kinda don't wanna even think about cause this Tory is sooooooo good ... Is the pairing for CJ... I liked Will in the show but I love Danny and I love him and CJ together, so I was a little sad that they didn't end up together... But overall this was brilliant. Thank you again.

The idea of starting to read a 25 chapter story was daunting to say the lease. I started reading this story because, well, I just did. And my friend, I am really glad I did. What a wonderful story. So well crafted and smart. It was kind of like watching the show again. Thank you. I cried three times. I'll let you figure out which three times. It truly is a favorite of mine and I'm glad I have spent the last 3 hours reading it on this Friday night. Thank you again.

AW!

"It only took me a month to piss of the Speaker of the House (who was a Democrat) which meant the Lyman Administration spent the next six months paying for it. Sam, who was Chief of Staff, told me often that I was more trouble than President Bartlet. I would retort that Leo McGarry never had any trouble keeping me in line to which Margaret would snort derisively from her place at what used to be Delores Landingham's desk. Donna would usually breeze in at about this point of the conversation and just shake her head before informing me of some familial obligation for which I was late. Sam assembled a crackerjack staff for our Presidency. Toby resigned as Andrea's Chief of Staff to become my Senior Policy Advisor. CJ came on board as Director of Communications. Sam's Deputy was his chief clerk in the District Court: Charles Young, esquire. The family was together again." - Yay!
"Priorities are really hard to keep straight in Washington and, when you have the top job, it can be downright impossible-unless you have a First Lady like Donna. She rewrote the job description. She orchestrated the first major structural and cosmetic renovation of the White House since the Kennedy Administration. Everything, from wiring to plumbing to carpet to lace, was updated or restored. It was begun in March of 2019 and completed during the final months of our second term. Yes, our second term. Donna didn't just limit herself to renovating old houses-despite the fact that the best-received joke at the 2019 Correspondents' Dinner was that the only way I'd gotten Donna to agree to return to Washington was because I'd found this great fixer-upper at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. She tackled women's issues on a worldwide scale. She continued to champion causes that supported education, the environment and children. She was more like Eleanor Roosevelt that Jacqueline Kennedy and she did it all while raising four teenagers who were just as apt to slide down the bannister as walk down the stairs (figuratively, of course)." - Yay! for Donna.
"She was more like Eleanor Roosevelt that Jacqueline Kennedy and she did it all while raising four teenagers who were just as apt to slide down the bannister as walk down the stairs" - "slide down the banister".
"The extended White House renovations were somewhat of a blessing in disguise: the disruption gave us an excuse to escape to the mill as often as possible. Increasingly, visiting heads of state would request to conduct our private meetings at the mill before the public announcements at the White House. Part of the reason was the renovation but the rest of the reason was personal. In the years since the Treaty of Riyadh, most of the delegates had risen in their respective governments- many to the throne or chief executive. Others were prime ministers, senior advisors, members of the ruling households-and we'd stayed in touch through the years. For most, the official trip to the mill was a return visit. And so Mill Pond Diplomacy was revived-with surprising success. This aggravated the State Department, but, then, I aggravated the State Department. By nature it is a lethargic beast and there were times, especially when the Middle East situation turned grave again in '24, that quick action was needed. I called a summit and the leaders responded. In seven grueling days we'd hammered out a preliminary agreement that led to the Treaty of Ankara in 2026-the negotiating team was led by Charlie Young." - Yay!
"In seven grueling days we'd hammered out a preliminary agreement that led to the Treaty of Ankara in 2026-the negotiating team was led by Charlie Young." - "gruelling days".

"the House debated the Child Health Care Reform Act of 2014. You may remember we fought this battle once before but the mandate had to be renewed and, again, the Republicans were hanging all sorts of odd amendments on it. The Democrats had selected some milquetoast kid to represent them on Capitol Beat and I (actually Donna, too; they didn't call us JoshandDonna for nothing) was called on to represent the Foundation. The pundits batted the issue back and forth zinging us questions occasionally before I finally lost my temper exclaiming, "Why are we the only nation in the industrialized world that values its animals more than its children?" Donna cringed at that, but it was what I thought." - LOVED Josh's honest thought there.
"Josh," Andrea hesitated only a moment. "The leadership wants you to consider running for President." Donna's plastic glass thumped on the soft brick, lemonade splashing her now-empty chair. "In fact," Toby fidgeted with his glass, "they're a little surprised you hadn't come to them with the idea." I stared into the darkness, trying to identify the owners of the shouts and whoops emanating from it, idly rubbing my thumb through the condensation on my glass before taking a gulp. I looked at Sam, whose eyes begged permission, which I gave with a nod, before quietly stepping through the keeping room and up the stairs to our bedroom. Donna leaned wearily by the window, one arm wrapped in front of her, other arm propped on that, fingers sliding across thin lips. She turned her head slightly when a popping board indicated my entrance. "They don't know, do they?" I sat in the rocker next to her. "Sam's telling them now." "Why now? I thought he told them years ago. I thought . . ." I shook my head." - AW!
"Why do they say those things about us?" Noah asked his cohorts as they relaxed around a picnic table at Arkansas Post State Park. "They don't understand us," Kennedy began. "They don't understand that we're not about winning." I sat up in my chair behind a shade tree, interest piqued at this little exchange. "Then what are we about?" Moss crunched her favorite barbecue chips. "We're about hope," Pixie explained. "What's hope?" Samuel squeezed in between Abigail and William. "Hope is the evidence of things not seen," Isaac explained. "That's faith, Ziegler," Will disagreed. "Then what is hope?" Abigail asked. The only sound for a few minutes was chips crunching then Moss spoke. "Hope is having four kids when you could die any day." I nearly gasped. Although we'd disclosed all my medical conditions at the outset of the campaign, I didn't know if they really understood. "Hope," Pixie talked around a pickle, "is believing a three-month-premature baby can be anything she's willing to work hard enough to be." "Hope," sixteen-year-old Noah offered, "is daring to fall in love when you've watched three thousand people die." "Hope," Will brushed the hair out of Samuel's face, "is raising your kids on your own even though your heart is broken." Abigail nodded. "Hope," John Leo Butterfield said quietly, "is giving up everything to follow someone you believe in." Ron had retired from the Secret Service to run security for the campaign. "Hope," Isaac Ziegler playfully shoved Will Sawyer, "is believing the people will respect you for saying what's right instead of what they want to hear." "Hope," Kennedy stared at the behemoth in which we traveled, "is putting your ten kids on a bus, getting to know America and letting them get to know you, and believing that they will vote for you because you are the right people for the job." "Do you think we'll win?" Abigail asked. "It doesn't matter," Noah shrugged. "Why not?" Samuel asked. Noah, Kennedy, Will and Isaac looked at each other but Kennedy replied, "Because we're doing the right thing. And we're trusting that America will, too." - AW!
"Two months later, on a bitter but clear day, my wife held the Bible while my children and my friends watched me, the first Jew to hold the office, swear to uphold the Constitution of the United States. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the Assistant Director in Charge of the President's Security Detail, my old friend Vladimir Lurcael, smile." - Hey there, assistant director Lurch! Good to see you once more!

"After Mallory's death Sam just went through the motions, doing what was expected but without his usual fervor. I spent as much time as I could in Washington but, by March it was obvious that, between single fatherhood and a broken heart, he just didn't have the spirit for his Congressional post. Luckily a seat opened up on the United States District Court for the District of Columbia and somehow (with considerable work by a number of elves) his name topped the list. The hours, combined with the quiet nature of the job, appealed to him and he jumped at the chance-developing a reputation, in a few short months, of being the judge poorly prepared lawyers loved to hate. You didn't dare step into Judge Seaborn's courtroom unless you had every little thing by the letter and straight up." - Yay! for Sam.
"On the last Friday in May, as I was returning to New Hampshire from DC, I called and informed the jurist that I was, basically, kidnaping Abigail and Samuel and he could come and get them at the mill. Toby, Andrea and Isaac rode up with me and CJ and Will flew in on Saturday. On Memorial Day, 2011, eleven fishermen, including John Leo Butterfield, greeted me when I took the President his coffee on the pond bank beginning a summer tradition that we have kept for sixteen years now: Camp Runamok. It was, to put it mildly, chaos. The kids were sort of like the Lost Boys with Jed Bartlet as Peter Pan (without the flying). In fact, he did read Pan to them that first summer. They'd fish, they'd hike, they'd collect all things that skittered and slithered, they'd explore, they'd do anything. And the President was right in the middle. He'd appear at the pond, early in the morning, and romp and play until I'd drive him back to the farmhouse, so weary I'd have to help him up the stairs. And the next day it would start over again. It was a pace that rivaled that of the White House at its most hectic but we didn't mind: it was good to see the President so vital again. It was a golden time." - It sounds like it.
"kidnaping Abigail and Samuel and he could come and get them at the mill." - "kidnapping Abigail".
"I remember the last day-how clear it and his mind were-golden, rare and precious. We talked business, we talked politics, we talked family. He laughed a lot, I remember, smiling at Mrs. Bartlet when she chided him for not eating his green beans. After lunch I helped him to his study to a wing chair by a sunny window where he often read for hours, Peter Pan on the table nearby. Despite the sun he was chilly and Mrs. Bartlet covered him with a quilt given to him during the first Presidential campaign in 1998. I followed her back to the kitchen, where we talked about Elizabeth, Eleanor and Zoey while washing dishes. After about an hour she slipped back to the study to check on him. When she didn't return I followed and, rounding the corner, I spotted her, kneeling in front of him, her hand cupping his placid face. I paused a moment, laying my hand on her shoulder, before stepping to the phone to begin again the business of burying a friend. Like Brigadoon, Camp Runamok rose from the mists New Hampshire every June but it was not the same. Pan was gone and, try though they did, the new pans-Ron, Sam, CJ, me and even Toby-just couldn't fly like Peter." - AW!

"Sam was running for Congress. I know what you're thinking: I was running his campaign. Well, much to my chagrin, I wasn't. But I was consulting, much to the chagrin of the guy who was running the campaign. While campaigning, Sam was also promoting his just-published biography of President Bartlet who, by the way, loved the book." - AW!
"Sam was running for Congress. And, of course, he won. Not surprising since he was Sam Seaborn and savvy political wife Mallory O'Brien Seaborn had chosen that time to be pregnant with their second child. So you had a smart, attractive, intelligent candidate with smart, attractive, intelligent and pregnant wife (let's not forget the virtually perfect Abigail, either)-how could they not win? Unsurprisingly, Mr. Seaborn went to Washington." - Yay!
AW, poor Sam and Abigail and the newborn little boy and the rest of the adopted Bartlets.
"We picked up the baby from the hospital and his first trip was to his mother's funeral. I'll never forget the sight of my friend, baby son in his arms and daughter by his side, kneeling at his wife's grave. Try though they did, the vultures, the press could never capture the abyssal depths of that grief." - A very subdued and sad lower case yay! for the press not capturing that moment.
"I got a lot of second chances," he smiled at Andrea. "You will, too." He shrugged slightly, putting just a little distance between us. "I know you're right," he admitted, "I just can't see how it will happen." CJ took his hand. "It will, Sam, I promise it will." Sam survived, raised two great children, had a successful career, a reasonably happy life, but he never ran for office again, never had quite the same spark. Many people asked us-Toby, Andrea, CJ, the Bartlets, Donna and me- about it but we never revealed the truth. If the person had to ask the question, they didn't know Sam well enough to be privy to the answer. But we knew. How could he have been the same when half of his soul was missing?" - AW!

"Clever CJ called it Mill Pond Diplomacy. Sam occasionally referred to it as Itemized Deduction Diplomacy (although they were eliminated in 2003) but trust wiseacre Toby Ziegler to coin his own wry appellation: Wormicide Diplomacy (he was, at the time, baiting a hook for Isaac while discussing child labor with a prominent Pakistani businessman). Whatever it was called, it worked: we were able to negotiate agreements that raised either the standard of living or the educational opportunities of nearly a third of the world's children-including the ones in the United States." - LOVE all the names, but Toby's best of all.

"Eleanor was there . . ." "With some old coot of a brain surgeon," the President growled his way to the stairway to the second floor. "He had to have been at least forty." The older man crooked his eyebrow my direction. "That's a young man, Mr. President." I grinned, following him up the stairs, my hand gently steadying his ascent." - Thank God she did not marry that icky dweeb of a fruit fly guy from show canon.
"Josh," Sam's voice preceded him through the door, "have you seen Abigail?" "Good morning, Sam," the President greeted and I couldn't help but smile because Sam was currently rendered speechless. Sam's daughter's name is Abigail and that's what they call her-never Abby, always Abigail. They dress her like an Abigail-exquisite dresses, elaborate hair ribbons that my girls would leave behind in about five minutes, perfect little shoes, demure little earrings, in short, like a china doll. As I said before, Pixie had assumed the solemn task of worm-wrangling. I forgot to mention, however, that she had recruited an assistant who had spirited away Sam Seaborn's considerable powers of speech. Her assistant, of course, was the doll-like Abigail who, dressed in her perfect little shorts, perfect little sneakers, perfect little hair bow, ran to her father grinning a perfect little grin holding in her perfect little hand an absolutely perfect earthworm. Sam looked perfectly sick." - Sam's reaction was SO funny.
I felt desperately sad for Josh that (and at what) he had to tell Sam.

"My own personal transition, on the other hand, was not quite as easy. "So what do you want to be when you grow up?" Sam had asked with mock earnestness. CJ and Toby, who'd also hung around after the Senior Staff meeting in Leo's office, chuckled. "That would require that he actually grow up," Donna ribbed but gave me a short, sweet kiss before she left the room. "I know the Whip has offered you his Chief of Staff position," Toby fished. "And I'll be over on Andrea's staff . . ." "I thought you were taking that position at Yale then running for the Senate," CJ leaned forward, glasses perched on her nose. "Before that he's taking a vacation, then coming to California to manage my campaign for judge," Sam said confidently. "Then you can visit William and me in Napa," CJ's voice rose. "Guys," I held up my hands, "Donna and I have gotten a lot of offers but we have to decide what's best for the family." I studied the scar on my palm. "Maybe it's time for us to get out of the fishbowl of politics and give the kids a normal life." "I'm glad to hear you s-say that," the President leaned against the door jamb to the Oval Office. "A moment, Josh?" - AW, what a sweet and sad conversation.
"I followed the President while the Senior Staff went their way. The President waved to his desk. "They're after me to make a decision-about the library." "It's January, sir, and . . ." "I don't want a Presidential Library," he cut me off. "That's little more than a crypt filled with books." I chuckled. "Then what do you want?" "I want," he sat in his chair, feet on the Great Seal and I perched on the sofa, "I want to take the money we'd spend on some great stone edifice and really put it to good use. I want to . . ." "We want to create the Bartlet Foundation, Josh," the First Lady strode into the room and sat on the arm of the President's chair. "And we want you to run it." I looked from the President to the First Lady and back again. "There's a mill on the back side of the farm in New Hampshire. It would be a great place to raise a house full of kids and we've already had it cleaned out for you." "There are meadows and orchards and cows and horses. The slower pace and lower-stress will be great for the kids." "You've been talking to Donna." I ran my index finger across my lips. "I don't have to, Josh," the First Lady said quietly. "If that seems too bucolic for you, it's close enough to Boston for you to commute to that teaching position you've been offered at Kennedy," the President prompted. "We could car-pool to Boston," the First Lady said slyly. "We need you, Josh," the President leaned forward. "We need you to get this thing off the ground." I studied the Seal and swallowed hard. Donna and the kids deserved this chance at a normal life. "What would we do?" "What would you want to do? What do you want the Bartlet Foundation to be?" I gazed out, across the balcony, at the blue skies, my mind tunneling back through years of memories to a watershed day in Nashua, New Hampshire. "'Surely the code of our humanity is faithful service to that unwritten commandment that we will give our children better than we ourselves received.'" The First Lady smiled, then slid her arm across her husband's shoulder before he spoke, "I can't imagine a better legacy, Josh, for any of us." The cold wind was as bitter as the taste in my mouth as I stood among the silent sentinels on a Virginia hill overlooking the Potomac. "So, it's off to scenic New Hampshire for the Lymans-me, Donna, Mom and all the offspring." The stone before me listened silently. "I'll be teaching at Harvard, too." I chuckled. "Pity the poor students." I buttoned my coat against the chill and shifted my weight. "I don't know when I'll be back this way again." I could see Donna, sitting patiently with our family in the requisite Suburban. "I just wanted you to know that," I could feel the tears rolling down my face, "I don't think I ever told you," I kneeled in front of the headstone, dug into my pocket for a small stone I'd brought from Riyadh, placing it directly above the chiseled cross. "Thank you, Leo. Thank you for my life." I stood and walked back to my family, certain I could feel Leo's comforting hand on my shoulder. Sliding into the driver's seat, Donna covered my hand with hers. Words did not exist for how I felt. With one last glance I sighed, squeezed Donna's hand and slid the selector into gear. The pavement crunched beneath the tires as we left the Arlington Cemetery," - AW!

"We never saw the photographer, but the picture of our not-so-little family, was picked up by Reuters and appeared in worldwide newspapers the next day-September 11, 2006. At first we lived in the Embassy, which Donna said was like living in a dormitory, but after a week we moved to a comfortable home near the Embassy. Celebrating the Shabbat meal on Friday evenings was, in the beginning, pretty scary because we were, in essence, breaking the Saudi law against the public practice of any religion other than Islam. Blessedly, the mutawah left us alone." - Take THAT, the mutawah!
"How about your ladies?" "Ladies" was his collective name for Donna and my Mom. "They have become quite the social doyennes. The wives of the representatives have organized play dates, shopping trips, moms' day out, dinner parties-Sunday night we're fixing cabrito for the Saudi delegate who happens to be a grand-nephew of the king." "What in the hell is cabrito?" "Barbecued goat," I explained. "Hoynes sent his recipe." "Can they eat goat?" "We're substituting lamb, just to be sure." "You do that," he warned. "How's it going, with you and Donna, I mean?" "Good, Leo. For the first time, in a long time, it feels like we're really together." "You two make a good team," he blurted. I chuffed. "It's a shame I had to come half-way around the world to make it right." "Well, don't screw it up." "Donna and me or the treaty?" "Both," he replied gruffly and hung up." - AW! what a sweet phone call.

AW, poor Leo!