DISCLAIMER: If they were mine, I'd have shown this stuff in the first place. ;)

SUMMARY: dithyrambic: any wild, frenzied, or emotional speech or writing.

THANKS: To Jo, for the wonderful comments, and for cracking me up with the seeds of the satirefic. And I blame this entirely on Morgan, for jokingly suggesting that I round out the trio of post-ep viewpoints. You, my friend, are evil. :)

Dithyrambic

Ryo Sen

My fellow Americans, good evening. I'm so grateful to have this chance to explain why I--

*

Sam paused, staring at the blinking cursor on the computer screen. He needed a verb. Every sentence needs a verb. Every political speech needs an appropriately ambiguous verb to conceal the true motives of the speaker.

He scanned the scant words, then glanced down at his hands, noting with a sort of detached interest that they were poised above the keyboard, shaking.

He flexed his fingers, curling them into tense fists, then stretched them back to their proper position. Fascinated, he watched his hands tremble and wondered, What the hell am I doing here?

"Sam?"

In his seat, Sam winced at the sound of his name. Then, blithely ignoring the fact that he'd acknowledged the greeting by flinching, he attempted to will the man standing awkwardly in the doorway away.

"Sam? Are you--" Toby stopped, shuffled his feet, tried again. "Did you talk to the President?"

"The President," Sam answered bitterly, "as per usual, did the lion's share of the talking. Of course, once he said 'I have M.S.,' I was too floored to come up with much in the way of witty repartee."

Toby shifted a bit, edging into the office. "Sam," he said, his tone low and full of warning.

Fed up, Sam finally stood and faced Toby. "Oh," he said, "right. I'm not supposed to get mad about this. Sam doesn't get mad. Sam's Mr. Happy Guy, so we can just not tell him for, like, days while he wanders around here, clueless so we can snicker at him--"

"Sam," Toby interrupted sharply. "That's not why."

Hands on hips, Sam glared. "Then why?" he demanded, his voice still on the skinny edge of shouting. "Why didn't the President sit us all down at once when you started sniffing around this? Hell, why didn't *you* mention your suspicions to me?"

"I did," Toby answered quietly. "I asked you and Josh about Hoynes offering--"

"To smack down Big Oil," Sam scoffed with a wave of his arm. "You didn't tell us about the polling. You didn't tell us you thought Hoynes was gearing up to run."

Toby watched him for a long moment, then nodded. "I didn't."

"Why didn't you *tell* us?" Sam shouted.

Toby blinked. Then he said, very quietly, "Is it really me that you're mad at, Sam?"

Sam shook his head. "I don't want to talk about this right now."

"Sam--"

"No, Toby," Sam insisted. "Not now."

Toby stood there for a moment, considering, then nodded.

Sam watched him go, then turned his attention back to the white screen and reread his work. He held down the backspace key with grim pleasure and wiped out what he'd written.

*

My fellow Americans, I wanted this opportunity to speak with you tonight so that I could explain something to you, something that perhaps I should have explained during my campaign for the Presidency. So that you would be able to understand why I--

*

Sam scrubbed a hand over his face and slumped back in his chair.

He can't do this, he thinks, not tonight.

Not with Toby huddled in the next office, listening for sounds of distress, or anger, or sorrow.

Not with CJ gone home early--CJ, leaving early!--to contemplate the possibility that she could be the Bartlet Administration's sacrificial lamb.

Not with Josh wandering around, secretive and quiescent instead of swaggering and boisterous.

Not with Leo and the President being so goddamned naïve--

Decisively, Sam pressed alt-F4 and closed the word-processing program entirely, relishing the idea of his pedantic attempts being stranded, small, unloved ones and zeros wiped from the hard drive. Then, his movements precise and almost brittle, as if he were overcompensating so as not to lose control, Sam closed his laptop and pushed it away.

Eyes closed, he rested his face in his hands and concentrated on breathing. In. Out. He didn't have to think about anything, so long as he just stayed focused on breathing. In--

"Sam?"

"Go away," Sam answered tiredly.

"Sam, I want to talk to you."

"Well, that's just too damn bad, Josh, because I don't want to talk to you. Why don't you go chat with Batman there," he answered, one hand swinging in the general direction of Toby's office.

Josh almost grinned. "Batman?"

"Josh," Sam warned.

"I was right where you are now five days ago," Josh persisted.

Sam jerked his head up. "Fine," he said, "come back in five days and maybe I'll be ready to talk. Right now, I have work to do."

Josh hovered in the doorway, brow furrowed. "I thought the Chicago thing--"

"Chicago's done, Josh," Sam answered angrily. "I'm not talking about--Someone needs to write the President's admission."

Josh's mouth tightened, but he shook his head. "Statement, Sam."

Sam shrugged carelessly. "Semantics. Do you know how many synonyms I can come up with for 'lie'?"

"Sam--"

Sam shoved his chair back, standing to face him. "Falsehood. Untruth. Prevarication. Farrago. Yarn. Tall tale. Exaggeration. Fraud. Swindle. Humbug. Fabrication. Concoction. Disinformation. Disingenuousness. Perversion--"

Josh took two steps into the office and closed the door behind him. "Sam--"

"Confabulation. Mendacity. Misstatement. Canard. Distortion." He shrugged. "A crock of shit."

Josh watched Sam, breathing hard after his recitation, and said quietly, "You can't use any word that implies dishonesty, Sam."

Sam sneered. "Josh, I'm not an idiot." He was too far gone to care that the person he was angry with was not in the room. Josh was convenient enough. "I've been doing this a little while. I understand how it works. I could sit down right now and write ten statements that would leave you with ten wildly different impressions of the same set of events."

"Sam--"

"No, Josh. I could write a weak man who just wanted to be President. I could write a man whose judgment--and, consequently, brain function--is questionable at best. I could write a couple different versions of a man whose strings are controlled by others--his wife, possibly his old friend who convinced him to run for President. Or, my personal favorite, I could write you a scheming, Machiavellian bastard whose ambition and lust for power far outweighed his morals."

Josh stared at Sam in the sudden silence. "That's not true."

Sam laughed mirthlessly. "None of it's true, but it doesn't matter. I don't need to write those versions, because the Republicans have their own speechwriters."

"I know," Josh said, glancing away.

Sam nodded to himself. "But you know what I can't write?"

Josh shook his head in lieu of an answer.

"I can't write a good, honest man who made what probably looked like a small decision, but which now looks more like a massive, deliberate fraud against the American public. I can't write that, Josh, because it's unbelievable. Implausible." Sam stopped, suddenly out of words, and leaned one hip against the desk.

"He's not a saint," Josh said after a time. "People make mistakes."

Sam just glared at him. "I'm not an idiot," he repeated. "And I never expected him to be a saint."

Josh held Sam's gaze for a moment, then nodded. "I'll be in my office."

Sam stared in the direction of Josh's retreating back, then glanced at his desktop. He grabbed a pad from the blotter and a pen from his pocket.

*

My fellow Americans, I have always tried to live my life as an honest, decent man. Growing up in rural New Hampshire, my parents and my priest instilled in me values I hold sacred to this day. Thou shalt not lie, my parents told me, and I have done my best to follow their teachings. I am, though, only a man, and I believe that I have erred. In my desire to draw distinct lines between my personal and professional spheres, I have kept the facts to myself about something that may, I now believe, be relevant to my professional life.

Eight years ago...

*