It was thirty seconds of one face, and then he turned and walked away.

The face, and its body, remained, tainted, disbelieving. Infinitely saddened. Back bent forward, eyes narrow. Three words repeating silently in the room.

He did not seek comfort, though. He felt hardened, able to withstand fire and sandstorms. He went past the open office, and he went home.

It was cold.

*

"You didn't call last night," Josh said delicately.

"Nope."

"He...he did tell you, right?"

"Yes."

A couple of moments of confusion, then the answer came to him. "Did you talk to Toby, then?"

"No."

Josh didn't understand. "You didn't talk to anyone?"

"I went home."

"You went home?"

"Yes."

"How could you just go home...?" Incredulity pitched Josh's voice higher.

He paused, looked off into the middle distance, hands pressed to his desk. "How could nobody tell me?"

There was an awkward second where the assumption was that he couldn't be trusted on one hand, and that he couldn't handle it on the other. "It wasn't my decision, Sam."

"Yeah. It never is. But you're still my friend, right?"

Not sure what the right answer was, Josh said, "Yes," slowly.

"Go away, Josh. I have work to do."

*

He had gone home. He had unlocked his door and stood just inside the apartment for some minutes, not looking at anything in particular. Thinking in loops of images and phrases, trying to decide if he should have figured out something was going on. Then he had torn his coat off and gone in search of a book.

*

"Leo..."

"Doesn't know what happened. He wasn't there." He had walked out, casually, at the description of the symptoms, as if thinking he'd seen this part and it was a good point to get some coffee. But he didn't return.

"Oh."

"I'm still working, okay?"

Josh waffled in the doorway for a second. "I'll be back."

*

The corners of the book were rubbed bare of paper and the cardboard was flaking away.

Opposite the fly page, written in smudged black ink, was a paragraph in a dead language. Beneath that ancient benediction, was a newer inscription, in blue, in English.

'Read this, and then teach Josh. You both need it.'

A tense, stressful scrawl, Jed Bartlet.

He opened it to the famous phrases section and skimmed down the pen-marked list of legalese and Caesarisms, looking for the words he had said. As if to ensure that they had come from this book, not from some deeper well of knowledge in himself.

As if to read them again would take them back.

*

He did come back, two hours later, two muffins on a plate in his hands. A new tactic. "What did you say to him?"

"Non dolet, erus."

"What?" Josh set the plate on the desk and tore a piece of muffin away.

Crumbs scattered across his paperwork. "Non. Dolet. Erus."

"I appreciate the fact that you're upset, Sam, but you really do need to speak in English, kay?" Josh replied, chewing.

"That's what I said to him. Non dolet, erus."

*

The words of a woman to her husband as he stabbed her in the heart. She had trusted him with her life, to protect her from her insane stepfather...but in the end it was her guardian who had murdered her.

*

Ever-patient, Josh prompted, "And what does that mean?"

*

He had driven the knife deep, from behind, and kissed her softly, his unmurderous hand pulling clasps from her hair to hide the blood on her dress.

As if she wouldn't notice she was dying.

His anguished voice in her ear. "Does it hurt, Arinna?"

*

"It doesn't hurt, my lord."

"Ouch."

"You didn't have to see his face."