Sam sits at his desk, willing his body to remain still and his eyes to stay dry, and somewhere he hears Rachmaninoff being played, lightly, rolling, and it aches.

There is tension in his breathing, his lungs have shrunken in size, and he wonders how long it will be until his heart stops beating, shrivels, and shrinks, becoming half of what it once was.

They are waiting, he knows, for everything to crash down around their heads. They are waiting for his control to crack, just as Josh's did months ago on a winter afternoon, to the soundtrack of Christmas carols and Yo-yo Ma. They are waiting for his emotions to explode and his heart to break, because they think at some point, everyone has to embrace reality.

He doesn't think he has been lying to himself all this time, all these years. But now there is doubt, and he's afraid he believes because he wants it to be real, so desperately, that he has bought into this illusion of dances and fears.

And now, as the piano notes of Rhapsody on a Theme of Paginini sear into his skull, he wishes someone would just crack him open. Pull their finger from the hole in the dyke, and let the flood wash over him, swallowing him, drowning him.

He is afraid, suddenly, that he is not strong enough for this, that his political knowledge is inferior to those around him, that he should be in the basement where no one could find him and no one can hear him. He's terrified that everything is wrong, that this is the point in his life where he looks back and regrets everything.

He's simply not strong enough to fight every battle and win, and somewhere along the line he learned that you can lose all the battles and still win the war. But he knows, deeply, that the tide has turned and they have lost the war. They lost it when they weren't looking, when glass shattered against carpet and the world kept spinning. They have lost, but they are still fighting and Sam thinks he might be the first casualty.

He wonders if he really is falling apart to his own quiet Russian soundtrack, slowly slipping between the notes, fading with the tempo into the next movement until there is nothing left, because everything has an end eventually.

Sometimes it's sharp and sudden, and sometimes it's slow and fragrant. This is the way life moves, he knows, unfairly and randomly, sliding and slipping and crashing through time and fate until an outcome appears. It could take months or years, but there is always a finale, an eventual judgement.

It will come. Endings are inevitable, especially in Washington. But Sam is not Josh, he never will be Josh and he will listen to Russian composers without thinking of falling.

The music soars into a crescendo, and Sam closes his eyes.