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Chapter Text

Donna couldn’t feel her hands as she hung up the phone.

The bullpen whirled around her as people went about their day, running the White House and doing what they could to accomplish some productive governing, but Donna couldn’t hear it. No cohesive thoughts passed across her mind as she tried and failed to process the tidal wave that had just crashed down on her life.

And then the phone rang.

“Josh Lyman’s office,” she answered, working on autopilot and hearing what came flowing through the phone lines but not absorbing any of it. Her hands were shaking.

She was trying to write up a call slip and her hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

Donna couldn’t feel anything but the pain in her chest as she hung up the phone.

She grabbed the stack of call slips on her desk, pushed back and out of her chair on unstable, untrustworthy legs, and walked the handful of feet to Josh’s office. She briefly wondered why she wasn’t crying yet, but then she had to still her hands enough to knock on the doorframe of the open door and the thought passed without second consideration.

“Yeah?” Josh asked without looking up from the file on sugar subsidies or clean energy or whatever the hell was on his schedule that week. Donna could usually rattle it off in a series of concise bullet points but she couldn’t, for the life of her, remember what they were working on this week.

Donna took a couple steps closer, door still wide open behind her as she started reading off her call slips in the order they’d come in.

“Leo wants you to meet with that guy from Agriculture tomorrow; There’s an issue with an amendment on the education bill,” she rattled off thing after thing after thing as Josh zipped around his office.

“Where’s that thing?” he asked.

“On your chair,” Donna said without breaking concentration on her call slips. She just had to take it one step at a time, had to read him his messages and then go back to her desk and go from there. “I got you five minutes in the Oval at five tonight; I need three days off to go to Wisconsin next week; and Senator Collins is requesting a meeting.”

She was gripping the pink slips too hard, injecting them with the sweat from her hands and crumpling them in between her fingers unintentionally.

She was still shaking.

“Wait what?” Josh asked with a laugh. “You’re asking for time off?”

“Yes,” she said quietly without looking up at him, feeling like she was standing on the edge of a precipice and might very well stumble forward at any moment.

“Donna,” he said in that teasing tone that normally fired her up but was hitting her ears dully in that moment. “In case you hadn’t noticed we’re trying to govern a nation here, and we can’t just--” he cut himself off when he caught sight of her, or maybe it was because she hadn’t cut him off yet with some inane trivia or witty excuse for asking at all.

His face fell, because she looked lost in that office she knew better than him; his heart sank, because her shoulders were slumped and she was practically trembling in a very un-Donna-like fashion.

“Hey,” he said softly. “You okay?”

“It’s only three days,” she responded and, okay yes, her voice was shaking and cracking in places that most certainly should not have been on a regular, uneventful Thursday afternoon. “I’ll work extra hours before and after, and I’ll make sure to find a good temp--”

“Donna--”

“I’m really sorry and,” she didn’t notice Josh closing the door softly behind her and moving to stand in front of her. “And I know you’re in the middle of a lot right now--”

“Donna stop,” he cut in, decisively. Donna took a few uneven breaths. “What’s going on?”

“I have to go to Wisconsin next week,” she said simply.

“Okay,” he nodded slowly, walking a tightrope he’d never practiced before. “What do you need to go to Wisconsin for?”

Donna hesitated a moment, eyes blankly staring somewhere in the middle of Josh’s tie. If you asked her what color it was, she couldn’t have told you.

“There was a car accident,” she breathed. Josh took in a sharp breath through his nose. “My sister…”

“No,” Josh shook his head, willing himself to be jumping to conclusions. “Donna--”

“My sister was…” she trailed off because she couldn’t breathe properly anymore. Her chest was tight and Josh was right there in front of her but she couldn’t see him. “She’s-- She’s-- She’s dead,” Donna finished, breaking into a sob and sinking to her knees without ever deciding to do so.

“Oh my god,” Josh held her by her shoulders, helped her onto the ground and crouched in front of her.

“Josh,” she sobbed, dropping call slips into a scattered pile on the floor and clutching onto him instead as he wrapped her up in his arms.

“I’m right here,” he murmured into her hair. “I’m here, I’m so sorry, I’ve got you.”

She couldn’t stop crying and felt absolutely sick to her stomach. Not enough air was going into her lungs and it was as though her brain hadn’t fully processed what was going on but her body knew far too well. Her lungs knew she was devastated, and her heart knew how badly she was meant to be hurting, but her mind was just blank, a fuzzy, uncomfortable static that she couldn’t ignore and made it impossible to think.

So she clung to Josh and continued to sob into his shirt as he rubbed her back in small circles, and wondered if the dampness she felt in her hair was from Josh’s tears or her own.

“I’m so sorry, Donna,” he said quietly, pulling her farther into his lap as he leaned back against his desk and let her nestle against him in between his legs. “I’m so, so sorry.”

As he said it, flashes of baby pictures, of a young girl who loved the Ave Maria, crossed Donna’s mind and she cried harder. Because, as much as Donna had always sympathized with Josh’s loss, it wasn’t until that moment that she could have even begun to understand it.

And god, was she beginning to understand it.

She eventually started to catch her breath and could hear Josh’s phone ringing on the desk above them, but couldn’t figure out how to get all her limbs to work together and get herself upright once more.

Her hands were still shaking, but she pushed herself far enough off of Josh’s chest to be sitting up on her own. Josh’s hand traced down from where he’d be holding her shoulder, across her bicep, her forearm, her wrist, to hold her hand. The phone stopped ringing.

“When do you need to leave?” Josh asked softly, thumb running soothingly back and forth across her knuckles.

“I, um,” Donna took an unsteady breath, free hand gripping the fabric of her blouse over her stomach as if trying to keep it in place. “I’m not sure. I have-- I have to call the, uh, funeral home, and,” she paused again, trying to maintain a steady heartbeat and wiping tears and snot from her face. Josh let her take her time. “My parents asked if I could put together the, um--the service.”

“I’ll help you,” he said without hesitation, not an offer but a definitive statement.

“No, Josh,” she shook her head and started pushing herself up off the floor. “You have too much here--”

“C’mere,” Josh helped her up and into the chair across from his desk without ever letting go of her hand.

“I can handle it,” she continued as he pulled as second chair closer, keeping her knees sandwiched between his as they sat facing each other. “It’s just a few phone calls-- As long as you’re, I mean,” she looked up and met his eyes for the first time, confirmed that he had, in fact, been crying. “If you’re okay with me doing it from my desk. Only during lunch, obviously, but--”

“Donna, I’m not gonna keep you at the office through all of this,” he said decisively. “You can take as much time-- Hell, I’ll help you get a flight back home tonight if that’s what you need--”

“No,” Donna cut him off, shaking her head emphatically. “I can plan everything from here. I can keep working--”

“You don’t have to--”

“Josh, I swear to god if you don’t let me have some sort of distraction--” she was raising her voice at him, pushing desperation out into the air between them. “I need to keep doing something, I need--”

She was cut off  this time, not by Josh, but by a loud knock on the door and Toby Ziegler storming into the office in quick succession.

“Josh, what the hell are you doing? The majority leader has been waiting on you for your meeting for ten minutes!” Toby cried out without care for anyone who might be listening in the bullpen.

Donna pulled her hand out of Josh’s.

“Toby, not now,” Josh said, standing up, in between him and Donna. Toby’s face fell at the seriousness in Josh’s tone, at the decidedly solemn scene he had burst in on.

“What’s going-- Donna, are you okay?” he asked, voice immediately softening.

“I need you to take that meeting for me,” Josh intervened.

“Josh,” Toby looked at him questioningly, equal parts concern and is this going to be a thing?

“Later,” Josh said quietly, already pushing him out the door and shutting it behind him.

Donna sat in the exact position, staring at the same place in the seat of Josh’s chair, as she had been when Toby had made his entrance, only now she was picking at her cuticles and pulling at the skin around her fingernails.

Josh watched her for a moment before he sat back down, and Donna could feel the worry, was forced to let it mix with every other unidentifiable emotion swirling around inside her ribs. She wondered if maybe crying had been easier.

“I’m sending you home for the rest of the day,” Josh said, back in his seat and reaching out to take Donna’s hand once more, making her stop picking at her fingers.

She didn’t have it in her argue, instead deciding to just nod slowly along with his request.

“Take a cab,” he continued, pulling out his wallet, only letting go of Donna’s hand to pull out a handful of bills. “I don’t want you driving right now.”

“I can pay my own fare,” she said softly with a hoarse voice.

“Next time,” he responded, pressing the money into her sweating hands. “Are you okay to get back on your own? Do you want me to come with you?”

“I’m okay,” she said.

“I can grab CJ, or Carol, or someone else--”

“Josh, breathe,” Donna cut him off. “I can get myself home.”

“Okay,” he let out in an exhale. “Come on,” he pulled her out of her seat and back out into the bullpen, where he wordlessly helped her to gather her things and put on her coat.

“You don’t need anything else from me today before I…” she trailed off as Josh started pulling her down the hallway and towards the exit, one arm draped across her shoulders as if trying to hold her together.

“It’s okay,” he said, coming to a stop by the front entrance. “Call your family, take a nap, whatever you need. I’ll come by as soon as I’m done here, okay?”

Donna wanted to protest, didn’t want to feel like a burden on him, but also couldn’t find it within her to deny herself of the one person who knew her well enough to calm her down if it, quite inevitably, got bad again.

“Okay,” she said.

“Call me on my cell when you get to your place.”

“Josh,” she sighed.

“Humor me, please,” he insisted, pressing a soft kiss to the crown of her head, not caring who might see or what rumors might be spread. Not on that day.

Donna just nodded and stepped away, out the doors and down the street towards the nearest taxi stand.

She couldn’t feel her hands.

___

The phone on Donna’s desk was ringing as Josh hurried past it towards Leo’s office. He let it ring.

“Margaret, I need to see him,” Josh said as he approached her desk.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in a meeting with--”

“Now, Margaret,” Josh insisted.

It must have been something in his eyes, or the way he was holding himself, or the utter urgency in his voice and stance and breath that made Margaret concede so easily, not usually so quickly convinced.

“Leo?” she said, opening the door to Leo, deep in thought over a briefing memo with his glasses low on his nose. “Josh wants to see you.”

“Yeah,” Leo motioned for him to come in, and Josh waited for the door to close behind him, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “What d’you need, kid?”

“I’m gonna need to borrow a couple of junior staffers from your office,” Josh said, deciding that leading with the easy stuff would, hopefully, be easier.

“Donna drop the ball on something?” Leo raised his eyebrows from behind his desk, clearly seeing something in the way Josh continued to stand that intrigued him.

“No, never, of course not,” Josh said hurriedly, almost offended at the mere suggestion of it.

“Then why do you need my guys?”

“I sent Donna home for the day,” he explained, feeling a certain tension in his muscles that he desperately wanted to work out.

“Josh?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s going on over there with your staff?” Leo questioned.

“Her sister died,” Josh said, straight to the point, unable to figure out a way to lessen the shock of it. “A, uh, car accident.”

“My God,” Leo’s face dropped and he sat back in his chair as he took off his glasses. “Today?”

“She just got the call, maybe half an hour ago,” Josh said, finally collapsing into a chair across from Leo and running his hands over his face.

“Does she need time off?” Leo asked.

“She’s planning the funeral-- on her own apparently,” he said with a bitter laugh. “So she’ll be gone for that. But she’s convinced she’s gonna keep working until then.”

“That’s why you need the guys,” Leo nodded. “Lightening her load?”

“I don’t know if any amount of assistance is gonna make this easier for her,” Josh shook his head.

“Do we need to send her back to Wisconsin?” Leo asked. “Get the President to sign an executive order?”

“I already mentioned it, but Leo,” Josh sighed. “Isabel-- her sister-- was the one in the family that really got her, I dunno if it would even be the right place for her right now.”

“Fair enough,” Leo nodded. “She live alone? We need to send someone over?”

“I’m gonna head over as soon as I finish a few things up,” Josh said. “As long as you’re okay with me leaving early.”

“If you’re not out of here by seven, I’ll kick you out myself,” Leo said, putting his glasses back on, signalling the conversation was coming to an end.

“Thanks, Leo,” Josh said, pushing himself out of his chair and heading for the door before turning back momentarily. “Oh, and I don’t know if she’s ready for this to be, you know, public knowledge.”

“Got it,” Leo nodded solemnly. “Keep an eye on her, Josh. You know better than anyone what this can to do a person.”

“Yeah,” Josh breathed. “I’m on it.”

___

Donna wasn’t sure what to do, or maybe more accurately, she wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do.

Her apartment was too quiet when she got home, so she turned on the television as background noise to some program on the food network she didn’t, couldn’t, absorb in any sense. The curtains were drawn tight and she didn’t bother changing before she curled up in the corner of her couch, staring blankly at the television with her work shoes discarded on the floor and a blanket clutched between her shaky fingers.

The first time she moved was the startled jump she made at the sound of her cell phone ringing from somewhere inside her purse on the ground next to her. She had no idea how long she had been sitting there, but dug around for it nonetheless, pretending some level of neural function.

“Hello?” she answered, trying to keep her voice even.

“Donna, when are you planning to fly home?”

“I’m not sure yet, Mom,” Donna sighed, sinking deeper into her seat and wishing momentarily that she had decided not to pick up.

“Well have you talked to the funeral home about selecting a date yet?” Terry Moss asked. “You’ll need to make sure you run it by us before you finalize it with them, you know.”

“I know,” Donna said patiently. “I haven’t had a chance to call them yet, I just got home from work.” And I just found out my sister is dead.

“Alright sweetheart,” she softened slightly, but only slightly.

Donna had seen her mother grieve before, and although she was usually a perfectionist, usually thrived with control, tragedy only exacerbated her more tedious qualities. There was a reason Donna wasn’t going back to Wisconsin until she needed to, she had a complicated relationship with her family, and none of this was going to make it any easier.

“Mom, can I call you back tomorrow?” Donna asked. She felt like there was concrete in her lungs and needed to get off the phone before it hardened.

“Of course,” Terry conceded. “But before you go, start thinking about what we should put on her headstone.”

“I’m sorry?” Donna’s brow furrowed.

“There’s space for her in the family plot,” her mother continued as Donna’s blood began to boil.

“She wanted to be cremated, Mom,” Donna said, no hesitance in her tone.

“We have a beautiful space where we’ll all be able to visit her--”

“It’s not what she wanted,” Donna insisted, picking at the cuticle of her left hand with her thumb hard enough that it started to bleed. “She hated the idea of being buried.”

“Well, I guess that’s something we’ll have to discuss,” Terry said.

“No, it’s not,” Donna fired back. “She wanted to be cremated and have her ashes scattered, that’s the decision made.”

“We’ll talk about this later, Donna. Someone is at the door.”

Donna hadn’t heard a doorbell.

“Okay,” she conceded anyway. “Love you, Mom.”

“Love you too, sweetheart.”

Donna had to resist the urge to throw her phone across the room before falling sideways against the couch and settling in once again to the sounds of Emeril explaining a pasta dish to her.

___

Josh knocked at the door once before using the spare key Donna had given him for emergencies to go ahead and let himself into her apartment.

He saw her the moment he entered, curled up, practically in the fetal position on her couch, eyes closed as the television played quietly across from her. Assuming she was asleep, he closed the door quietly behind him, and set the bag of food he had brought on the small table in the entryway while he discarded his coat and shoes.

Josh considered letting her sleep, figuring that it would be a rare commodity for her during this time, but ultimately figured she probably hadn’t eaten and that nutrition needed to be as much of a priority, so he padded across the room in his socks, placed the take out on the coffee table, and sat down on the couch next to her feet.

“Hey,” he said softly, resting a hand on her calf and letting his thumb smooth back and forth over the fabric of her pants. He shouldn’t have been surprised that she hadn’t changed.

Donna cracked open her eyes to look at him, wide awake, clearly had been for a while.

“I brought food,” he said hopefully, but she settled back into the pillow under her head and stared at the TV numbly. “Donna…”

“I’m not very hungry,” she said softly, voice hoarse.

“You don’t have to eat very much,” he said, already pulling a foil container out of the bag and popping the lid off. “Just a few bites,” he grabbed the plastic fork from the bottom of the bag and stuck it into the pasta: ready to go.

Donna looked at the food but didn’t move, so Josh placed a hand on her shoulder and gently guided her into a sitting position.

“Here you go,” he pressed the dish into her hands, her legs still tucked to her side and pressing up against his thigh now.

“Are you eating?” she asked.

“Yep,” Josh nodded and grabbed his own meal out of the bag.

Donna stared at him as he propped his feet up casually on her coffee table and started to eat. Josh could understand the feeling of feeling a little bit less than a fully functioning person, so he was miles away from complaining about her slow reaction time, her seeming inability to remember how to go about completing a task as basic as eating dinner.

His heart soared when she took a bite, and then another, and another.

“Try mine,” he said with a mouthful of food, offering up his pasta to her. She silently reached over and stabbed a couple of penne pieces onto her fork and chewed on them thoughtfully.

Ultimately, she ate less than half her meal before she set it back down on the coffee table, but Josh considered it a success. It was when she started to curl back up on her side that he felt the need to intervene.

“You wanna go change?” Josh suggested. “If you get more comfortable, maybe you could get some sleep.”

“Hmm?” Donna hummed absentmindedly, as if she knew she was supposed to respond to him but hadn’t committed to memory what exactly he had asked.

“You wanna put sweats or something on?” he asked again patiently.

“Oh,” Donna looked down at her suit. “Right. I forgot-- I forgot I was still wearing this.”

“I’ll put this away,” Josh started gathering their leftover food to put in the fridge. “You go get comfortable.”

She watched him clean up with a furrowed brow, because this being taken care of thing, it was new to her. Donna wanted to accept it, wanted to ask him to hold her hand again, but simply wasn’t used to being on that side of the equation.

She could feel herself flip flopping minute-to-minute, one second feeling justified in needing him and ready to accept everything he gave her, but guilt-ridden and uncomfortable with the idea of him actually giving her anything.

“Josh,” she called out to him as he made his way into the kitchen, having to look over the back of the couch to see him. “You don’t-- You know you don’t have to stay, right? I don’t expect you…” she shook her head.

“I know,” he said, secure in his convictions. “Go change, I’ll be out here when you’re ready.”

___

Donna’s bedroom was a mess.

That morning, Josh had called her into work early to help him prepare for a breakfast meeting, but as she stared into her drawer of t-shirts, that felt like a decade ago.

Her blouse stuck to her skin as she peeled it off, tears and sweat mingling on the fabric to form some sort of melancholy adhesive against her abdomen. Letting her pants fall down around her ankles and unclipping her bra made her feel like she had a little bit more space to breath, because the longer she had for it all to set it, the more it felt like the grief was setting up camp in her very skin.

She pulled on the loosest t-shirt and loosest pair of pajama pants she owned, trying to sooth the feeling of it with soft fabric and as much breathing room as possible.

Her hands were still vaguely shaking as she pulled her hair into a messy ponytail and scrubbed smudged makeup from her face, leaving it puffy and red and tender. The act of looking at her own reflection, at a face so clearly mourning and with far too much resemblance to a woman, just two years older than her with an entire future ahead of her, made Donna’s knees feel weak.

She couldn’t look away.

She gripped the edge of the sink with white knuckles as tears began to spill from her exhausted eyes. It was quickly becoming the longest day of Donna’s life, and she wanted nothing more than for it to be over as she slid to the ground and leaned back against the bathtub with her legs clutched close to her body in a tangled pretzel of limbs.

Her sobs grew harder and her breath shallower, and yet still, it felt like some cruel parody of her life, like it couldn’t be real, this couldn’t be real.

She didn’t hear the first time he called for her, and she didn’t hear the first time he knocked, but she did hear the door to the bathroom crack open.

“Donna, I’m coming in,” he said, and in a moment he was on the floor next to her, for the second time that day.

Donna pushed away the consideration of how pathetic she looked and let him wrap her up in his arms, let herself pull him close and bury her face in the crook of his neck.

“Josh,” she sobbed against him. “I can’t-- I can’t,” she tried to formulate what she was feeling but he just hushed her softly.

“I know,” he said against her hair. “Just try to breathe.”

She wanted to stop feeling it, decided that the numbness was better than the pain in her lungs, that if she had to live at one of two extremes she would rather stop feeling all together. There was so much left to do and so many people left to call, and how was she supposed to do any of it if she couldn’t stop crying into Josh’s chest?

Eventually she managed to catch her breath, still crying quietly and still gripping Josh’s shirt, but breathing more regularly again.

“Is there someone I can call?” Josh asked softly. “Someone you want to talk to?”

“No,” Donna shook her head and mumbled into him. Her hip was starting to ache against the tile but she wasn’t ready to move. “Just please… Please don’t go.”

It was the first time she had asked for his help all day, and it would be far from the last, but the way he held her tighter when she said it made her feel like maybe that was okay. Maybe she was allowed to need him and all his eternal comfort, at least, that was the side of the internal argument she was on for the moment.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “I’m right here.”

___

Josh fell asleep on the couch that night, with his feet propped up on the coffee table and his hand in Donna’s hair where she was curled up with her head in his lap. His neck was bent at an awkward angle and the Food Network continued to play quietly in the background, so it wasn’t the best night sleep he had ever gotten, but he had no doubt it was better than whatever snippets of rest Donna had managed to get.

He woke up with a start to the sound of the landline ringing. Donna was no longer in his lap and he could hear the hairdryer running in the other room, but a blanket that hadn’t been there when he’d fallen asleep was tucked around him.

A melancholy smile crossed his lips briefly, because even on the worst day of her life, Donna was taking care of him.

Still half asleep, and trying to work out the crick in his neck, he didn’t fully think through his actions before picking up the phone on the side table next to him.

“Hello?” he answered sleepily.

“Who is this?” a woman’s voice asked, accusatory. “Where’s Donna?”

“I’m, uh, Josh Lyman,” he said, scrubbing his free hand over his face. “Donna’s drying her hair, I can go--”

“Josh Lyman?” she questioned. “Her boss?”

“Yeah-- I’m sorry, who is this?” Josh was just starting to wake up all the way. “I can tell her to call you back.”

“This is her mother.”

Josh’s eyes got wide. He was officially awake, sitting up straighter as if Terry could see him slouching in a rumpled undershirt.

“Mrs. Moss,” he said. “I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine what you’re going through.”

He heard the hairdryer turn off in the other room.

“Thank you, Mr. Lyman--”

“Josh,” he said hurriedly. “Just Josh is fine.”

“I’m sure it is,” she deadpanned, but Josh didn’t have time to analyze it because Donna was walking into the room, dressed in all her work clothes except her suit jacket and looking at him quizzically.

He mouthed your mom and motioned to the phone, which had Donna racing across the room and snatching it out of his hand before Terry could even continue.

“Mom?” she said. Josh couldn’t help but notice a slight furrow to her brow that always appeared during discussions of her parents. “No,” Donna rolled her eyes and turned her back to Josh, lowering her voice slightly. “He slept on the couch.”

It wasn’t a lie, but Josh couldn’t help but blush sightly at the high school-esque loophole. It wasn’t as if anything had happened, but he wasn’t about to pretend he wasn’t aware of the impropriety of a boss and his assistant sleeping in as close quarters, in as intimate position as the two of them had the night before.

“I haven’t talked to them yet,” Donna continued, voice a forced sort of calm that few people outside of Josh, Isabel, and probably CJ could pinpoint. “Yes. I promise I’ll call you later once I have a list of dates… We’re not burying her, Mom… I don’t care that you have a spare--”

Josh could hear her start to break, just the slightest bit, and he reached out from where he was still sitting on the couch to hold onto her free hand. She gripped it in her own unashamedly, and he relished in the fact that she was letting him be there for her, letting him offer her support in the small ways he knew how.

“David is going to want a say, Mom,” Donna continued softly. “You can’t cut her fiance out of this process… I know… Yeah, okay… Can we talk about it later, please… Love you too, bye.”

Donna hung up the phone with a click and a breath, letting go of Josh’s hand as she moved towards the kitchen.

“You should get dressed,” she called over her shoulder. “We’re going to be late.”

Josh bit at his bottom lip, thinking about the state she had been in just a few hours ago and the state she was in now and coming to the conclusion that she was far too good at pushing things down. He didn’t want to micromanage, but it was maybe too far embedded in his DNA to ignore completely, so he pushed up off the couch and followed her into the kitchen.

She was making coffee.

“Donna,” he began, leaning in the doorway with his arms crossed.

“I’m serious,” she said without looking up. “I need you to drive me because I left my car there overnight, and I don’t want to be late.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to reconsider staying home today?” he asked, deciding that diving in was the only way to get her to listen. “You can make the calls you need to make or just relax, and I can come by at lunch and help you get in contact with the funeral home--”

“You have a meeting with Jacobson at lunch,” Donna said, leaning back against the counter and sipping her coffee.

“Did you even get any sleep last night?” he asked.

“You’re going to have to stop worrying about me at some point,” Donna said, nearly pleading but managing to sound more stable than she had since he’d arrived the night before.

“It’s been less than twenty-four hours and I found you sobbing on the bathroom floor last night,” Josh fired back. “So I think maybe that time limit is a little ways off.”

Donna’s gaze dropped to her coffee, and for just a moment, he could see the protective walls she’d built up behind her eyes in all their cracked and mended glory. He wanted them to stay down, he wanted her to stay home, and ideally he wanted to stay with her, even though he knew that wasn’t possible.

“Go get dressed,” Donna said as she pushed past him back into the living room and began putting her things together to leave. “I picked up your dry cleaning a few days ago and I laid it out on my bed for you.”

Josh let it go.

___

Donna had figured that being at work would be a worthy distraction. After all, a regular day for her was overflowing with things to do and people to talk to, barely giving her a spare moment to breathe or be alone with her thoughts.

That was what she had signed up for when she went into work that day, but it wasn’t what she’d gotten.

Somehow, Josh had taken two-thirds of Donna’s workload off her desk, and still expected her to believe he wasn’t responsible. In fact, it took her all of seven minutes to notice the lack of things on her schedule, ask Margaret two questions, and find out that two junior staffers in Leo’s office were helping Josh with a whole handful of assignments that had once been hers.

Which is how she found herself with nothing to do except think about everything else she needed to do.

She sat at her desk, all of her current tasks already completed, and stared at her phone. Just the thought of picking it up made her start sweating, and she wished that Josh was in his office so she could reprimand him for trying to lighten her load.

She glanced at his empty office, and back at the list of phone numbers she’d made herself, and had a minor epiphany.

After all, who would ever question Donna working out of Josh’s office?

And so, door closed behind her and list of phone numbers in her hand, Donna took a seat in Josh’s chair and picked up the phone.

___

“We don’t want it to look like we’ve lost complete control over Congress,” Josh said, standing in the doorway to CJ’s office while she paced back and forth in search of a very specific folder.

“Is that not exactly what’s happening?” CJ asked.

“We don’t want the American public to think--”

“Yeah, yeah, I got the language already,” CJ brushed him off. “But we’ve totally lost control of Congress on this bill, right?”

Josh hesitated with a huff, but CJ shot him a look.

“Yeah,” he shrugged with exasperation.

CJ nodded at him as if to say I knew it as she found her folder and pushed past him into the hallway. Josh chased after her as they made their way past the communications bullpen and towards his own office.

“When you brief today,” Josh continued as they walked. “Don’t forget to--”

“Josh, you do realize I’ve been doing this for a few years?” CJ deadpanned.

“Alright, I’m just saying,” he mumbled.

“Hey,” CJ’s voice dropped slightly as they walked through the bullpen outside Josh’s office. “How is Donna doing?”

“Does everybody know?” Josh furrowed his brow.

“Leo just filled me and Toby in just in case, you know,” she shrugged. “Some tabloid somewhere decided to care.”

“Right,” Josh sighed.

“And also because we’re her friends and we care about her a great deal,” CJ added.

“Right.”

“So?”

“She’s…” he hesitated. “She’s holding it together surprisingly well. She’s actually in today,” he glanced at her desk as they paused by it. “I’m not actually sure where she went--”

He was cut off by a loud crash coming from inside his office, followed by the distinct sounds of yelling filtering through the door. Josh wondered briefly if people had always been able to hear him that well.

CJ reacted quicker than he did, pushing her way into the office with Josh hot on her tail. He closed the door behind them and barely had time to take in the scene before CJ was acting.

“I’m a member of the family!” Donna yelled into the phone, unfazed by the room’s new occupants or the broken mug at her feet. “There is no reason for you to be holding those details so closely! You’re the fucking police department, I as a citizen have a right to--”

CJ snatched the phone out of her hand and held it to her ear, while Josh made his way around to the other side of the desk, towards Donna.

“I’m sorry officer, we’re gonna have to call you back,” she said, calm under pressure as she hung up.

“CJ, I was talking--”

“Yeah,” CJ raised her eyebrows. “The whole building could hear you talking.”

Donna opened her mouth to respond, but Josh cut her off with a hand on her bicep.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he said softly, despite his pounding heart. He could feel the slightest tremble to Donna’s figure even just as she stood there, so he pushed her down into his chair.

“I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t have used your office but--”

“No, Donna,” Josh crouched in front of her. “You shouldn’t be working right now. I’m taking you home.”

“Josh--”

“He’s right,” CJ chimed in. “And you know how that grinds my gears.”

Josh’s heart was breaking just at the sight of Donna’s face. She was flushed and her hair was out of place; her eyes were seconds away from spilling over with tears and he had no idea how she was still holding them in against all laws of physics.

He had the undeniable urge to wrap her up in his arms and never let her go.

“Josh,” CJ said, motioning towards the door. “I need one minute before you go.”

“Yeah,” he said before turning to Donna. “Wait here, I’ll grab your stuff for you.”

“Sure,” Donna said, not bothering to keep the frustrated tone out of her voice. Josh couldn’t blame her, but he also didn’t love it.

He closed the door behind them when he and CJ walked back out into the hallway.

“What do you need?” he asked.

“I love her, I love you,” CJ said carefully. “And I absolutely hate that this is happening. But I need you to help me keep it from becoming a thing. We can’t have a White House senior assistant screaming expletives at law enforcement.”

“I know,” he sighed.

“Does she have someone who can stay with her today?”

“Not that I know of,” he shook his head.

“No friends that can take a day off?” CJ asked skeptically.

“Do you have any friends that don’t work in this building?” Josh raised his eyebrows at her.

She shot him a look before a vague look of realization passed across her face. She sighed.

“Well, that’s quite the pathetically rude awakening,” she deadpanned.

“CJ…”

“Yeah?”

“Just a heads up,” he hesitated, and she looked at him expectantly. “I’m gonna try to convince her to let me go to the funeral with her. She shouldn’t have to do all this alone.”

CJ took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “No, she shouldn’t.”

“I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t think--”

“I know,” CJ said, with genuine understanding in her voice. “As a friend of Donna’s, I think it’s the right move. As Press Secretary, I’m just-- I’m just trying to figure out how to make it sound like anything other than a secret affair.”

“I know.”

“Get her home,” CJ said as she continued her path down the hallway with long strides. “You make taking care of her a priority, and I’ll make anything that comes from that work.”

She said it with the confidence of someone who had been flying by the seat of her pants long enough to trust that it would be okay in the end, that they could make it be okay in the end.

Josh leaned back against his closed door and took a deep breath to gather himself. For a brief, barely-there, passing moment, he wished they didn’t work in the White House.

He wished he could take care of his best friend without getting questions that he had all the wrong, all the inappropriate, all the make-middle-America-riot answers for.

He wished he could love her in peace.

Chapter Text

Donna knew that there was more than one discussion about her going on back in the White House while Josh drove her home. She was grieving and she didn’t have her head entirely on her shoulders, but she wasn’t stupid.

She knew she had created a spectacle of herself in the middle of the most monitored building in America and that letting Josh continue to coddle her certainly wasn’t helping matters.

She just couldn’t find it within herself to care all that much.

“What did CJ need to ask you?” she asked, staring straight ahead in the passenger seat of Josh’s car.

Josh’s head whipped to glance at her, surprised that that was the first thing out of her mouth since they had left the White House.

“Nothing important,” he lied. “We’re uh, not getting that bill passed. She wanted to go over some things before her briefing.”

Donna nodded, because she didn’t have the energy to go ten rounds with him over this when she knew in her heart they had been talking about her and her inappropriate outburst.

“Can I ask you something?” Josh glanced between her and the road.

“You’ve never asked permission before,” Donna said simply, picking at her cuticles in her lap.

“Donna,” he chewed on his words for a moment. “Why were you talking to the police?”

“It’s not important.”

Josh wasn’t the only one who could lie.

“Come on,” he sighed.

But apparently he was the only one getting away with it that day.

“I was trying to get a look at a witness’ statement about the accident,” she said. “I thought-- I guess, I thought I wanted to know what it looked like.”

“Do you still?” Josh spoke softly.

“I don’t know,” she shrugged.

Josh studied her out of the corner of his eye, and even in profile he could see how much pain she was in, with eyes downcast and fingers aggressively picking at her fingernails in her lap.

He took one hand off of the wheel, reached across the consul, and pulled Donna’s left hand into it. He almost felt guilty about how his heart soared when she let him.

“You should keep both hands on the wheel,” she said softly, gripping his hand tighter in both of her own.

“Yeah,” he said.

He made no effort to let go the rest of the ride.

___

Donna had only gone to work for half a day, but by the time Josh dropped her off at home, she was thoroughly exhausted.

Her coat slipped easily off of her shoulders and she stepped out of her heels the minute she was inside the door, leaving all of her things in a disorganized pile in a way that held severe juxtaposition to the neatness of the rest of her apartment.

Actually, as she looked around, she could start to see a number of instances where things had started to slip out of place. There were blankets on the couch from where they had slept the night before, water glasses on the coffee table and Donna’s coffee mug (still half full) on top of the television.

She could see it all, but didn’t bother to clean any of it up.

Donna turned the television on, not really caring what channel it was playing, but appreciating the dull background noise as she went into the kitchen and put her tea kettle on the stove. Her stockinged feet were chilly against the tile of the floor and her suit jacket felt stiff around her arms, so she padded to her bedroom, pulling it off as she went.

The bed was still made from two mornings ago, and Donna hated to disrupt the smooth, pulled-tight covers, so instead dropped her clothes on the floor as she searched the drawers of her dresser for something more comfortable to wear.

She blatantly ignored the photographs around the room, the bridal magazines on her bedside table, and the knit blanket folded neatly at the foot of her bed, a years-old gift that had suddenly become far too sentimental.

By the time she’d landed on simply sliding back into the pajamas she’d worn the night before, her tea kettle was whistling in the kitchen.

It all felt so regular, the simple acts of base-level humanity, but every decision felt like a major feat to overcome.

What kind of tea did she want to drink? What should she be wearing? What should be playing on the television? How often did she need to call her mother? Why couldn’t she keep any sort of handle on how she was feeling, or what she said, or her ability to sleep?

Donna curled up with her hot tea on the couch as a commercial for an erectile dysfunction pill played. She glanced at the phone, considering doing something remotely important or productive, but instead pulled Josh’s blanket from the night before up to her chin and slid farther down on the couch.

Ten minutes later, her tea was half empty on the coffee table and Donna was sound asleep on the couch at two o’clock in the afternoon.

___

Josh had to really focus his energy more than he was used to in order to get even a single thing done when he returned to the office. Everything felt a little bit more out of order than usual, and it might have been because Donna wasn’t there, or it might have been because his whole world just felt a little out of sorts, but either way he seemed to have misplaced every single memo he needed.

He heard a knock on the frame of his open door while he searched through what felt more and more like endless stacks of files on his desk.

“CJ, I’ll be there in a minute I just can’t find this fucking memo.”

“Typical.”

Josh’s head shot up.

“Amy?” he gaped at her, stalling the work on his desk when he saw her standing in his doorway and subconsciously preparing himself for confrontation.

“Hey, J,” she gave him a small smile, a surprising lack of combativeness to her tone or posture. “Can I come in? It’ll only take a minute.”

“I-- Yeah, sure,” he nodded to the seat across from him and Amy sat down. “What are you doing here?”

“Good to see you too,” she teased with that little smirk that he knew all too well.

“I just meant...” he shook his head and leaned back in his chair. “I didn’t think you were fighting with us on anything right now.”

“I’m not,” she said simply.

“Then?”

Amy hesitated, and Josh could see a softness to her that he barely recognized, that hadn’t even been there during the best moments of their contentious relationship. He had always known she had the potential for it-- basic human kindness-- but the blatant presence of it sitting across from him in his office threw him for a loop.

Josh didn’t particularly want to spend more than a couple minutes at a time in her proximity because it more often than not ended with a hoarse voice and negative consequences, but all the same, she was worth listening to if she was like this.

At the end of the day, Amy Gardner could be a good friend when she put her mind to it. Either that or she was a good friend at heart and just got a little bit too much joy out of keeping people on their toes.

“I heard about Donna’s sister,” she said, catching Josh by surprise and making his shoulders go stiff.

“Yeah,” he breathed.

“I know she has you,” Amy continued. “And I’m sure there are plenty of others who love her too--” Josh didn’t miss the subtle insinuation. “But if you could pass along how sorry I am...”

“You could tell her yourself,” Josh said. “If you want.”

Amy shook her head definitively. “I’m sure she’s getting dozens of phone calls a day from people she barely knows. She doesn’t need me adding another one on top of that.”

Josh hadn’t fully considered that, the fact that she was fielding calls from people back at home at that very moment and he wasn’t there to help, even if he logically knew it wasn’t something in the midst of which he could be particularly useful.

Amy pulled him out of his little spiral.

“If you could also tell her that, um,” she bit her lip and gathered herself. “If she ever needs to talk to someone-- a woman-- who gets it--”

“A woman?”

“Listen to me for a minute would you? This isn’t exactly a fun conversation for me,” she shot back at his raised eyebrows. He held his hands up in surrender and Amy took a deep breath. “I lost my best friend in a car accident when I was in my twenties. I know how this specific type of bullshit affects a person.”

“I-- I didn’t know that,” Josh said quietly. “Amy, I’m sorry.”

“It’s been a while,” Amy brushed him off. “I’m much farther along in the process than Donna is right now, it’s okay.”

Josh nodded. “I’ll tell her,” he said certainly, because the longer Donna’s situation went on, the more he realized that his particular brand of grief-related trauma was eternally different than hers.

Josh had been so young when Joanie died, and had found himself inundated with grief and guilt where Donna, and apparently Amy, had to deal with a different type of shock. Both were painful, both were impossible to ever let go of entirely, but both came with a very specific set of demons. Donna had learned to understand Josh’s demons over the years, and maybe it was time for Josh to meet hers.

And maybe, just maybe, Amy was right in the sense that talking to a woman about it might bring a different sort of comfort.

“Thanks, J,” Amy said, already standing up from her chair and moving towards the door. “Take care of that girl,” she said in the doorway before she was out of his sight once more.

He could tell she meant for longer than just the current struggle.

He could tell she meant more.

___

Donna was on the phone when she heard Josh’s key in the lock.

Apparently, he had decided to stop knocking and Donna couldn’t have cared less. She was going through Hell and actively putting herself through more Hell in the shape of planning a funeral on her own and arguing with her mother on an hourly basis, and she had decided to let herself indulge in his presence.

She had no way of knowing how long it might last, how long Josh was willing to put up with the personal dramas of a broken woman, but Donna felt like she was unraveling, and couldn’t help but notice that Josh was the only one looking out for her as she tried beyond all hope to look out for everyone else.

“Thank you for doing that,” Donna said into the phone, giving Josh a small wave of acknowledgment as he shut the door behind him and slipped off his shoes. She could see him hanging up the coat and purse she had left in a pile on their hooks by the door, tucking her shoes against the wall next to his.

“I don’t know if she’ll listen to me any more than she has you,” David, Isabel’s fiance, replied on the other end of the line. “But I think you’re right about this.”

“Yeah,” Donna sighed, twisting to look over the back of the couch and watching Josh carry a brown paper bag into her kitchen. “I’ve been on the verge of just doing it behind her back since she brought up that fucking plot, but if we can just make her see that being cremated was important to Isa…” she trailed off.

“How are you holding up?” David asked. “Is there anything I can do to help with everything?”

“I’m getting through,” Donna said, studying Josh as he pulled out Chinese take-out and started piling it onto plates. She wondered when he had learned the layout of her kitchen so well. “And I’ve got two dates from the funeral home, so I’m gonna talk to my mom tomorrow and finalize that. If you could just talk to her about this burial nonsense that would be a big help.”

“Of course,” he said. “I’m sorry that you’re alone out there, you’re welcome to fly back and stay with me in Madison until the funeral.”

“I’m not alone,” Donna said. “I’ve got a friend that keeps insistently bringing food to my house and force-feeding me.”

Josh’s mouth twitched into a small smirk at that, confirming Donna’s suspicions that he had been listening the entire time.

“Well, thank them for me,” David chuckled.

“I will,” Donna replied. “I’ll let you go, but I’ll call tomorrow, okay?”

“Sounds good, bye Donna.”

Donna set the phone back in its receiver, but didn’t emerge from the cocoon of blankets she’d burrowed into on the couch.

“My sister’s fiance says thank you,” Donna called out across the small apartment to Josh as he picked up the plates and walked towards her.

“For what?” His face was a cross between intrigued and amused.

“Taking care of me,” Donna said, taking the plate offered to her and balancing it on her knee. Josh hummed in acknowledgment as he sat down next to her and they began to eat.

They ate in relative silence as the television played in the background. Josh had piled a solid portion of food onto Donna’s plate, and it was more than she could stomach, despite being her favorite order from the Chinese restaurant she loved in between her apartment and the White House.

She wasn’t trying to self destruct, her appetite was simply thrown off, maybe by the abnormal sleep schedule or maybe by the way grief was sitting heavy in her stomach, but she forced down half of it before setting the plate on the coffee table. She readjusted so her back was leaning against the arm of the couch and her feet were on the center of the cushion in between herself and Josh.

He looked at her discarded plate, seemed content that she had eaten enough not to comment on it, and placed his next to it

“Amy stopped by my office today,” Josh said, breaking the comfortable quiet.

“Really?” Donna looked up from her hands to meet Josh’s gaze on the other side of the couch.

“She heard about Isabel,” he said as way of explanation.

Donna’s face fell ever so slightly. “So it’s gotten around, huh?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Right, because it was definitely your fault,” Donna deadpanned. “I mean, it definitely wasn’t because I was screaming like a maniac in your office earlier today.”

She gave him a small smile and he snorted.

“So,” Donna continued. “What did Amy want?”

“To offer up an ear, actually,” Josh said and Donna looked a little bit baffled. “Only if you want it, obviously.”

“That’s very kind,” Donna said, not quite knowing how else to respond.

People had always assumed that Donna hated Amy for various reasons, and although there had been a number of occasions in which the two women hadn’t seen eye to eye, Donna had never wished ill will on her.

Amy was a sharp woman, and sometimes that meant people around her had to be careful to stay on the dulled edge of her, but she was strong in her convictions, and Donna had always respected that at the very least.

“She said that her best friend died in a car accident about ten years ago,” Josh said. “It might be worth considering, if not Amy just, talking to someone who understands.”

“I have you,” she responded simply, sweetly, softly. Josh’s mouth curled up briefly in a breath of a smile.

“I might be too close to the situation,” he said. “You can’t complain about everything I’ve done wrong so far to me.”

“Of course I could,” Donna teased, pointing out a foot to poke his thigh, a good alternative to pulling his pigtails.

When she placed her foot back on the couch in between them, he smiled at her, letting his hand fall on top of her arch.

“I might give her a call,” Donna said finally, more serious again.

“I can give you her number,” Josh nodded.

Donna raised her eyebrows at him. “I think I’ve already got that, actually.”

“Right.”

She could’ve sworn she saw him blush.

Donna hadn’t considered the fact that maybe she would need to talk about it eventually, that she would definitely have to talk about Isabel eventually, and the thought of it made her throat feel like it was closing up, keeping the words physically inside her chest.

Donna was slowly realizing that this wasn’t the type of thing you got past. It was something that you waded through, day after day after day for the rest of your life. Sometimes it was up to your knees and thick as mud and maybe some days, one day, it was just a puddle that left the bottom of your shoes wet and had you tracking it along with you, but it would always remain, no matter how shallow, always too wide to step past.

“So you’re close to having a date for the service?” Josh asked carefully, knowing they were entering sensitive territory.

“Next Thursday or Friday,” Donna nodded. “My mom wants me to run it by her before I finalize it though, so I’ll call her in the morning.”

“We can get that done tonight if you want,” Josh suggested. “It’s not late yet.”

“I talked to her earlier,” Donna’s hands started fidgeting in her lap, and she didn’t even notice as she started picking at her nails which were getting shorter and shorter with every passing day. “She’s struggling today, I shouldn’t bother her.”

“If she’s struggling, wouldn’t hearing from you help?” Josh asked and Donna’s jaw tightened because, yeah, it should help.

“Let this one go, Josh,” she said bluntly, feeling her mood dipping from pleasantly numb into increasingly irritated. Maybe not with Josh, maybe not even with her mother, but with her own physical presence in the world.

For the moment, she would try and take it out on her chapped and broken cuticles, but it was bubbling inside her ribs and the thought of it finding a way out scared her.

“Are you leaving the day before?” he asked, at the very least taking her mother out of the conversation.

“Probably.”

“Can I come with you?”

Donna’s gaze shot up to meet his eye. He looked so earnest and normally it would make her heart melt, but in that moment, all she could see was the pity and all she could feel was how much she resented it.

“Why would you want to come to my sister’s funeral?”

“To be with you?” he said as if it was obvious, matching her snark beat for beat.

She scoffed.

“It’s not exactly gonna be a party, Josh.”

“You can’t go alone, Donna,” Josh insisted as though it was a matter of legality. Donna clenched her jaw.

“I can’t?” she cocked her head to the side, suddenly enraged at the mere suggestion that she was doing anything other than letting him help her. “I’m not an unaccompanied minor that you need to walk through the airport, Josh.”

“You aren’t yourself right now,” he pushed back.

She hated that he had a point and hated that she hated it. It was as if someone else was inside her head, someone angry and combative who picked fights with her best friend when he was only trying to help in his own clumsy way.

“Yes, I am!” she raised her voice, pushing blankets off of her so she could stand up and face him. “I’m not about to listen to you try to convince me that I’m not capable of taking care of myself just because I’m sad!”

“Sure,” he deadpanned. “All the yelling is definitely gonna convince me you’re okay.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Donna shook her head at him, knew he was working her up to try to get through to her, but stubborn enough to only let him accomplish one of those things. “My sister is dead. Maybe this is who I get to be from now on-- Maybe this is the Donna Moss you get from now on.”

“It won’t feel like this forever--”

“Stop trying to explain this to me!” Donna cried with exasperation, on the verge of letting angry tears spill down her cheeks but refusing to let him see her cry again. “I’m living it, Josh! I don’t need your commentary on how I should be feeling or what I should be doing or whether or not I can take care of myself!”

“All I’m saying is, it’s not a bad thing to slow down and ask--”

“Shut up!” Donna cut him off, frustrated tears finally falling of their own accord. “You can micromanage me all you want at work, fine, whatever. But you don’t get a say in how I cope with this.”

“Donna…” He stood up and took a few hesitant steps towards her, but she dug the heels of her hands into her eyes and shook her head.

“Don’t.”

“I’m sorry,” he said softly.

“No you’re not,” she said, pulling her hands away and taking an unsteady step backward when he tried to place a hand on her shoulder. “I think you should leave.”

“I’m not leaving.”

“Get out of my apartment, Josh,” she fought back, voice low and cold and tear-stained.

He looked at her with his stupid big eyes that made her heart do things she didn’t always let herself feel, and she could see the hurt there alongside a maddening amount of understanding. She wanted to get in a real fight with him and he wasn’t pushing back enough, he wasn’t raising his voice like she knew he could.

She wanted him to yell at her until he was spitting and she wanted to shove him in the center of his chest and she wanted to throw that stupid coffee mug that was still on top of her television directly at his head, but he just wasn’t cooperating.

“I don’t want you here,” she said quietly.

Josh bit at the inside of his cheek as if to keep himself from saying something and nodded.

Donna didn’t move from her spot in the middle of the living room with her arms crossed tight across her chest and tears streaming quietly down her face as she watched him put on his coat and sling his backpack over his shoulder.

He turned around to look at her before he let the door fall closed behind him.

“Call me if you need anything.”

And then he was gone, and Donna sat down right on the floor, still angry about everything and nothing, still crying, still wishing she could pinch herself and wake up.

She really wanted to break something, but instead just laid down on her side and tried to wait for it to pass.

___

Josh cried in his car.

He couldn’t stand the fact that he didn’t know what the right things to say were, that he couldn’t tell what it was she needed from him. He had always known, had always found the right way to show his appreciation for her, so what had changed?

That was easy, he figured, as he leaned forward on the steering wheel and buried his face in his arms. The only thing that had changed, after all, was everything.

Inevitably, and considering it was barely nine o’clock, Josh found himself back at the White House, showing his ID in the lobby, and walking the familiar, if not nearly-empty halls. Josh found a certain level of peace in the building when it was empty, an equal and opposite sensation to a full day of break-neck speed work. The light was dimmer and there wasn’t the underlying sound of printers and fax machines, phones and people.

But still, ever in the air, was that breath of hope that something could be made better when he was in that building, the persistent optimism that maybe, just maybe, they could make a difference.

The light in CJ’s office was on.

“You’re still here?” he leaned in the doorway, backpack still on his shoulder and coat still on. He probably looked like he had been crying, but couldn’t find it in himself to care all that much.

CJ’s head shot up and her brow furrowed at him in amusement, and then curiosity, and then concern.

“What are you doing back here?” she asked, taking off her glasses and leaning back in her chair.

“Just, you know, doing the rounds,” he said unconvincingly.

“Josh, what happened?” she said it more as a command for information than an actual question. “Is Donna okay?”

“Yeah-- Well-- She just,” he bit his lip and took a second to gather his words so he could stop floundering. “Would you mind calling her in a few minutes? Just to check in and make sure she doesn’t need anything?”

“Weren’t you just over there?” CJ wouldn’t drop it, needed to know why a clearly emotionally spent Josh was in her office when he should have been with Donna.

“She kicked me out,” he said with a shrug and a forced grin, trying to play it off as something less intense than it had been. “Bound to get tired of me hovering eventually, right?”

“Josh…” CJ said quietly, too much pity in her tone for his liking.

“Yeah-- Just,” he pushed off the doorframe, ready to make a run for it. “Call her, will you?”

“Of course,” CJ nodded. “You’ll be...?”

“In my office,” he pointed in its direction, gave her a grateful smile, and walked away.

He didn’t start crying when he finally collapsed into his office chair, but he didn’t start working either. He was heartbroken in ways he didn’t feel he had any right to be and wished he could be an impartial aid to Donna when she really did need someone despite her reservations.

He wanted to be that person for her, because she had been that person for him endless times before.

But he was at work instead. And his heart was breaking.

___

Donna felt like an overused cliche, laying on the floor and crying like that. Her head was pounding when she eventually pushed herself back up into a seated positions with her legs crossed under her.

She ached for a lost sense of decisiveness, for a reason to get up, for the energy to do something as simple as taking a goddamn shower.

She nearly jumped out of her skin when her phone started ringing.

Under the assumption that it was Josh-- a man whom she wasn’t yet ready to apologize to or hear an apology from-- she let it keep ringing and ringing and ringing until the machine picked it up, still sitting, ever sitting, on the hard cold floor.

“Donna, it’s CJ,” her voice filtered through the speakers, catching Donna by surprise. “If you’re there, could you pick up so I know you’re okay?”

Donna took in a deep breath and let it out in a huff as she pushed herself, finally, off of the ground.

“If you don’t pick up, I’m gonna have to send out a search party,” CJ continued. “And I have access to the Secret Service, so you know they’ll track you down--”

“Hi, CJ,” Donna picked up the phone and curled up in the corner of the couch, a spot that was becoming particularly familiar.

“Hey, you,” CJ let out what sounded like a sigh of relief. “Thanks for picking up.”

“Yeah,” she replied.

“How are you doing tonight?” CJ asked, and if Donna didn’t know better, it might have even sounded cautious.

“Why are you calling, CJ?” Donna asked, dodging the question.

“Just figured I’d check in.”

A beat.

Donna chewed on her lip.

“He told you to call,” she deadpanned. It wasn’t a question, she wasn’t looking for an answer, because she already knew it was true.

“Donna--”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Yeah,” CJ sighed. “Listen, I don’t know what happened tonight, but whatever he did, I know it was just his backwards way of trying to help.”

“He’s insufferable sometimes,” Donna ran a hand over her tired eyes. “Sometimes I just can’t stand him.”

“Oh, trust me,” CJ chuckled. “ That I understand.”

Donna smiled softly at that and let out a small huff of air through her nose in a parody of a laugh.

“I can’t imagine what you’re feeling right now,” CJ continued, serious once more. “But try not to be too hard on him. He’s just trying to figure out this new dynamic.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve been his rock for years,” CJ explained simply and without judgment. “As much as you’re learning to let him help you, he’s learning how to be what you need right now.”

Donna chewed on that, considered it for a breath of a moment, not having quite realized the stark flip in their roles over the past two days. She was so used to keeping Josh on schedule, of making sure he had everything he needed from memos to research to phone numbers to therapists, and to now be the one in need of something was dizzy-making.

“Right,” she breathed.

“Try to get some sleep, okay?” CJ suggested.

“I will,” Donna nodded. “Thank you.”

“Call me if you need anything.”

___

Josh had spent more than one night at his office, that wasn’t abnormal for him. Not doing so in order to get more work done, however, was the part he wasn’t accustomed to.

That’s not to say he wasn’t trying to be productive. If he was going to be there, he might as well read something or write something or find a solution to one of the problems that had gotten dropped off on his desk in the few hours he’d been gone.

But instead, Josh just found himself staring at the piles of work in front of him, unable to think of much of anything except the tears streaming down Donna’s face when he’d closed her door behind him.

“I heard you were back here,” Leo appeared in his doorway, startling him back to reality. “Didn’t quite believe it though.”

“I wanted to-- I’m just finishing up, the um, the…” Josh floundered for an excuse, but Leo just gave him an exasperated look as he sat down in the guest chair across from him. “Yeah.”

“You wanna talk about it?”

“Not particularly,” Josh groaned, humiliated enough as it was.

“Then go home,” Leo ordered. “Get yourself together, and I’ll see you Monday.”

“Monday?” Josh furrowed his brow.

“It’s the weekend, Josh.”

“But--”

“I’ll call you if I need something,” Leo said with just a bit of exasperation that it could be so difficult to get through to Josh sometimes. “Go home.”

Leo got up out of his chair and started walking towards the door.

“Thanks, Leo,” Josh said, stalling the older man where he stood in the doorway.

“You’re not alone in this, kid,” Leo said. “You know that right?”

“Yeah.”

“Either of you needs anything…” he trailed off, the offer clear and present without having to be said.

“Yeah,” Josh nodded.

“See you Monday,” Leo said, already around the corner and on his way back down the hallway before Josh could respond.

He went home.

___

Donna couldn’t sleep.

She was curled up on the couch, had even brought in a proper pillow from her bed to try and make it more comfortable, genuinely wanted to try and get some rest, but found herself incapable of turning off her brain.

She couldn’t stop thinking about her sister, about her family, about David and the funeral director and the police officer who’s name she couldn’t remember but would probably never accept a call from her again. She couldn’t stop thinking about how it had only been two days and how she had already lost count of the number of times she’d hit rock bottom.

She couldn’t stop thinking about Josh.

He had genuinely only wanted to help her, and his sincerity had simply come up against Donna’s anger in a moment when all she wanted to do was get in a fight. Donna wanted to be angry at anyone for what they were putting her through, and because she couldn’t be angry at Isabel, she had chosen Josh simply based on proximity.

She was still incensed as she laid there, still wanted to put her foot through a wall, but regretted treating Josh that way all the same.

The phone was in her hand, she was sitting upright, and she was calling his cell number before she had a chance to second guess herself.

“Hello?”

He picked up after three rings with a hoarse, sleep-infected voice and Donna’s heart dropped. She looked at the clock.

2:45 A.M.

“I woke you up,” she pinched the bridge of her nose. “This was stupid, go back to bed.”

“Donna?” He suddenly sounded more awake. “No, it’s fine. Are you okay?”

“I’m sorry,” she breathed.

“I promise it’s okay,” Josh said hurriedly. “I don’t mind being woken up.”

“No, I meant,” she chewed on her words, voice quiet but full of something heavy. “I meant about earlier.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t be.”

“Josh,” she sighed. “It wasn’t fair. I was upset about-- about everything-- and I took it out on you because you were there and not because you had actually done anything wrong.”

He was quiet for a beat, and Donna wondered whether or not she had said something wrong right up until he spoke again.

“Thank you for calling me,” he said in all sincerity.

“I woke you up,” she said again.

“It’s okay.”

“I was trying to get you to fight back,” she said softly.

“I know,” he replied, still a little groggy but voice clearing up with every passing second that they shared.

“You wouldn’t go along with it.”

“No.”

Her heart clenched in her chest and she took in a shaky breath, staring at her left hand in her lap and noticing that her thumb and middle finger both had spots of dried blood filling the U of her cuticles.

“I want to break things, Josh,” she said before she could stop herself. “I’m so mad, I just-- I wanna hit something or throw something or…”

She trailed off, but she could hear Josh’s breathing stall on the other end of the phone.

“Can I come back over?” he asked in a voice that sounded painfully close to begging.

“It’s late,” she was speaking quieter than she realized was possible, as if any higher level of volume might send her into another tailspin.

“I don’t care,” he insisted.

“Go back to sleep, Josh,” she said with a melancholy smile. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Donna could feel him hesitate, even with all that space between them, even with only his voice in her ear and not with his body on that couch beside her where she couldn’t help but think it belonged.

“Donna,” he let out a huff of breath. “If that urge to break things gets even a little bit stronger, you call me, okay?”

“I’m not actually gonna break anything,” Donna said, shaking her head as if that would help convince him of the fact. “I’m not gonna do anything stupid.”

“Because you’re gonna call me before it gets that bad,” Josh pushed. “You can yell and scream at me all you want until it passes, but I’m not letting you set a glass down a little too hard over there by yourself, you understand?”

Donna’s heart dropped a level lower inside her ribs, because she hadn’t even considered what he was talking about, hadn’t considered that her simple comment was maybe hitting a little too close to home for Josh.

“Donna?” he asked when she didn’t reply.

“Yeah.”

“Promise you’ll call,” he said. “I’ll stay away for tonight, just promise you’ll call.”

She absentmindedly chewed on the side of her thumb, breaking open the scabbing skin so it started to bleed.

“I promise,” she breathed.

She stayed on the line with him until she fell asleep, but there was a small dot of blood on the blanket when she woke up next morning.

The skin around her fingernails ached.

Chapter Text

Nine o’clock on a Saturday morning wasn’t a busy time on Donna’s street, and she appreciated the quiet of it as she sat down on the front stoop, hot cup of tea in her hands and still wearing the same pajamas she’d essentially been wearing for two days.

It was a bit chillier than she had expected it to be, but she didn’t want to have to get back up to go inside and put on a jacket, so she just held her tea close to her chest and let the steam envelope her face.

She needed a shower, that much she knew, but she had already called her mother and confirmed the funeral date, so hopefully she would stop receiving phone calls from distant relatives seeking out information every twenty minutes. She should call David as well, make sure someone was keeping him informed through everything and clean her apartment which was looking more and more like a college dorm with every meal she ate and every night she spent on the couch.

The clouds passed slowly above her, and she watched them travel across the grey sky as she sipped her tea. Autumn, Donna had always thought, was the best of the seasons, with its cool breezes and brightly covered leaves. As she looked down the street, however, she could see that winter was falling upon D.C. as there were very few leaves left to fall and the breeze was more cold than brisk.

Autumn never lasted quite long enough for Donna’s taste.

She wasn’t surprised when his car pulled up in front of her building, and she watched him parallel park just a handful of yards down from where she was curled in on herself on the steps.

“Why aren’t you wearing a coat?” he asked before he even had the car door closed behind him, immediately making his way towards her and slipping his own jacket off on the way.

“Forgot,” she shrugged as he slipped his jacket over her shoulders. She hadn’t realized how cold she was until she could bask in the warmth he had created in the sleeves of his coat just with remnant body heat alone.

“You’re gonna get frostbite,” he grumbled.

“You’re gonna get towed,” she motioned to the parking meter next to his car that he hadn’t bothered to pay.

Josh studied her face for a beat, watched as she pulled his coat tighter around her shoulders.

“Right,” he said before he turned back the way he had come.

Josh bounced on his toes impatiently while he dug through his wallet for quarters and dropped them into the meter. For a man that had grown up in Connecticut, he had never really had all that much tolerance for cold.

“Are you not going in today?” Donna asked once he started his short walk back to her.

“What?”

“You’re wearing jeans,” she pointed out.

“I wear jeans to work sometimes on weekends,” he said, sitting down next to her, shoulder to shoulder.

“Sometimes.”

“Yeah,” he nodded. “Sometimes.”

“You’re not going in today?” she turned her head slightly to look at him and he gave her a small smile.

“If they need me, I have a phone.”

He glanced in her mug and saw that it was nearly empty. Donna didn’t fight him when he gently took it from her hands.

“Let’s go get you a refill,” he said, already standing up and holding out a hand for her to take.

Donna just stared at it for a moment, studying his long fingers and smooth cuticles, nails that probably needed to be trimmed or filed but at the very least weren’t jagged like her own.

“Come on,” he urged. “It’s cold out here.”

She took his hand.

___

Josh could feel the heaviness of Donna’s universe the moment he stepped back inside her apartment. He was so used to an exquisite tidiness from her, but every time he came back it seemed to get just a little bit closer to utter chaos.

Her first steps were towards the couch, but Josh placed a steady hand in the center of her back and guided her towards the kitchen and into a seat at the table.

“I’m gonna make you breakfast,” he said when she looked at him quizzically.

She snorted, and when he turned around from setting a bag of groceries on the counter, she was covering her mouth with her hand as if to hide a grin. She schooled her face into a more serious countenance so he wouldn’t think she was making fun of him, but his heart soared at even that small clue that there was still the potential for joy somewhere inside of her.

“Hey, I can cook,” he said with mock offense.

“Yeah, of course,” she deadpanned.

“I can,” he insisted, getting an amused look out of her once more.

“Joshua, when was the last time you made something that you didn’t purchase from the frozen food section?”

He couldn’t help but absolutely, positively beam at her, because, as simple as it was, they were talking on relatively solid ground. The teasing and back-and-forth, that was where they were the most at ease, and something about that morning had her back there, if even just for a moment.

“I’m being very generous with my culinary talent,” Josh joked. “Do you want to mock me or do you want to eat a delicious meal?”

“I want to mock you,” she nodded definitively, pulling her legs up into her chair with her.

“Then maybe I’ll just make these for myself,” he pulled a tin of Pillsbury cinnamon rolls out of the bag and Donna’s eyes widened for a moment before she neutralized her expression once more.

“That doesn’t even count as cooking,” she pressed. “They’re already made, you just have to preheat the oven.”

“So,” Josh furrowed his brow at her. “You don’t want any cinnamon rolls?”

She scowled at him. “Of course I do, you monster.”

He grinned. “Thought so.”

Soon enough-- and with very little effort on Josh’s part-- the smell of warm cinnamon was filling Donna’s apartment; and soon enough, the two of them were quietly reading different sections of the same newspaper at the kitchen table while they ate breakfast.

It was the closest to peaceful that Josh had seen her since the entire ordeal had begun, and he wondered if she was genuinely feeling better or if she had become a star actress overnight.

He desperately hoped that it was the former.

“What do you need to get done today?” he eventually asked, when they had finished eating and traded articles back and forth a couple of times.

“I need to take a shower,” Donna said with a grimace as she looked down at her clothes. “And put some different clothes on.”

Part of Josh wanted to laugh but part of him was downtrodden by the fact that something so simple had to be put on the list at all as something in need of effort rather than a taken-for-granted part of life.

“Doable,” he nodded. “What else?”

“Um,” she chewed absentmindedly on the side of her thumb. “I’m not… I don’t know.”

“Should we call your mom?” he suggested gently.

“I did that already.”

“Do you still need to confirm the date with the funeral home?”

“I did that too,” she nodded. Josh furrowed his brow.

“When?”

She looked up at him sheepishly and let her hand fall into her lap.

“I’ve been up for a while,” she shrugged. He couldn’t tell if her eyes looked the way they did out of embarrassment or just pure exhaustion.

“Okay,” he replied. “So, um, how about you go take a shower and we regroup from there?”

Donna tilted her head to the side while she looked at him, as if taking in and cataloging every aspect of his character, of his being, before deciding to speak up again.

“Why are you doing this, Josh?” she asked quietly.

“Doing what?” he asked, genuinely unsure of to what she was referring.

She let out a heavy breath.

“I’m not gonna hurt myself if you leave me alone for more than two hours at a time,” she said bluntly.

And then it was out there, the conversation they hadn’t had after a night of high-strung screaming and tension and concerning off-hand comments. Thinking about it again put Josh so on edge that he could practically feel his blood inside his veins, moving underneath his skin. There really wasn’t a single part of the entire experience so far that hadn’t royally sucked.

“I don’t think you’re gonna do that,” he responded, sincere and serious.

“Then what is all this about?” She motioned vaguely around the kitchen, only for her eyes to lock right back onto his.

Josh opened his mouth, closed it, chewed on his words, and then:

“Do you remember when my dad died?”

“Of course,” she said softly.

“Do you remember arguing with Toby for an hour about whether or not he’d let you follow me to the funeral?” Josh raised his eyebrows and Donna’s face fell.

“You weren’t there for that,” she shook her head.

“I’ve got eyes everywhere,” he joked, but not without a solemn edge to his words. “You should know that by now.”

“Josh…”

“I came back from that funeral and I was off my game,” he continued. “I could barely tell right from left and up from down, and if you hadn’t grabbed ahold of me and pointed me in the right direction, if you hadn’t put a cup of coffee and a sandwich in my hand, if you hadn’t told me to take a walk every time I stopped remembering to breathe…” he trailed off, but didn’t drop his gaze, didn’t drop eye contact. “Donna Moss, you’re the reason I survived that. So, if you think I considered, even for a second, letting you go through this alone,” he shrugged instead of finishing the sentence and then picked up his coffee and took a sip while Donna absorbed everything he had just put on the table.

“I’m gonna go take a shower,” she said quietly as she stood up. “Will you…?”

“I’ll be here when you’re done,” he nodded at her and received a small, slightly baffled smile in return.

He crossed his legs, opened the paper, and listened to the shower running in the other room.

___

There had been a few times in Donna’s life when she was aware of the full restorative powers of a good, hot shower: When she fell off her bike in the fifth grade and had bruises and scrapes covering the entire left side of her body; when she was on her feet for a nearly 24 hour work day on the second Bartlet campaign; when she had slept in a chair in Josh’s hospital room for three nights in a row.

Usually, the hot water soothed tense muscles and aching joints and was exactly what was needed after a too-long day or, in many cases, days.

On that day, though, it felt less restorative to stand under the stream of water, and more as if it was some sort of preventative measure. Donna didn’t feel healed when she soaped up her hair and she didn’t feel more alive when her skin pinkened under the temperature of the water, she simply felt like she was putting on another layer of armor to protect herself from the rest of the world.

Because maybe, if she looked the part of a regular, non-grief-stricken adult, maybe then she could more easily find her way to being one.

Fake it ‘til you make it, right?

Maybe a shower was Donna’s first step towards faking it.

When she was done, she rooted through her closet and found the most comfortable clothes she owned that could also be worn out in public and braided her still-damp hair out of her face before rejoining Josh out in the living room.

She chose not to comment on the fact that he had quite obviously cleaned up some of the messes she’d been leaving in her wake.

“What are you watching?” she asked, sitting down on the opposite end of the couch from him and curling her legs up and off of the floor.

Josh didn’t look away from the television set, but cocked his head to the side with an ever growing look of perplexion on his face. She hadn’t even looked at the movie playing yet, but she knew his face was probably (certainly) more entertaining.

“This woman is some sort of undercover cop,” Josh said. “But she’s in a beauty pageant?”

Donna’s head whipped to look at the screen and she snorted.

“Are you having this much trouble grasping the premise of Miss Congeniality?” she questioned teasingly.

“I came in halfway through,” he shot back in defense of himself.

“I can’t believe we let you run the country,” she deadpanned.

“Let me?” he said, voice rising in pitch as he turned to face her with a broad smirk on his face.

“Margaret and I could stage a coup any day,” Donna teased. “And we’d be successful.”

“You’ve discussed this?” he chuckled.

“Of course we have,” she shot back.

“And tell me,” he cocked his head to the side. “Was this discussion held within the walls of the West Wing?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” she grinned.

“It’s a miracle we ever got elected,” Josh shook his head.

“Twice,” Donna said as she stood up off the couch and walked towards the front door.

“Where are you going?” Josh asked, spinning around in his seat to watch Donna pulling on a pair of sneakers.

“I want to get out of this apartment,” she said simply, because she had already made the decision and wasn’t in the mood to argue it with Josh. He looked at her quizzically for a beat, but didn’t argue, and eventually stood up to join her by the door.

“Wear a coat this time,” he said, grabbing his own off the hook and sliding it on.

Donna shot him a look out of the corner of her eye.

She put on her coat.

___

They ended up at the grocery store.

Josh wasn’t sure what the logic behind the decision had been, but Donna was adamant that she wanted to go grocery shopping, and so, grocery shopping they went. It felt oddly domestic, Josh thought, as he pushed the cart and Donna grabbed everything off the shelves from boxes of tea to frozen pizza to more fruit than one person could possibly eat in a week.

He managed to talk her down from purchasing an entire sheet cake, but only barely.

It was the most awake that Donna had seemed in days, the most lively, and certainly the most active. Josh hoped beyond all hope that it was a good sign and not one that pointed towards an unhealthy level of denial.

They ended up spending longer in that store than Josh had ever spent on a single grocery trip in his life, and by the time they were back in the car, he could see Donna starting to fade. Whether from being out of the house or carrying regular conversation so long or some other reason he wasn’t sure, but he was getting good at noticing when she needed a break, so he immediately directed the car back towards her apartment.

“I’m gonna go back to work on Monday,” she said out of the blue, about halfway back as they were sat at a stoplight.

“What?” Josh looked at her with a furrowed brow. She kept looking out the windshield.

“You can’t put me on permanent vacation time, Josh,” she insisted. “I have this weekend and I’ll have a few days off for the funeral, that’s all I need.”

“Donna--”

“You have a green light,” she motioned towards the road, pulling his attention back to the task at hand. He started driving again, but was gripping the steering wheel a little tighter than he needed to.

“It’s too soon,” he said. “No one's gonna think less of you for taking time off.”

“I didn’t think they would; I want to work,” Donna shrugged. And then, without taking a breath, as if it was part of the same thought: “And I want you to come to Madison with me.”

Josh’s breath stilled in his lungs momentarily.

“Really?” he asked, voice soft and just a little bit uncertain.

“I’m leaving Thursday and coming back Saturday,” Donna continued. “And I know that’s a lot of work for you to miss--”

“I don’t care--”

“But I don’t want to go alone,” she finished softly, still refusing to look at him.

“Okay,” he said certainly and without even the slightest hesitation. Josh was ready to jump off a cliff if Donna asked him to, was thrilled at the mere prospect that she was at a point where she could admit to not wanting to be alone through everything.

“Okay?” she questioned. He could see her picking at her fingernails out of the corner of his eye.

“We’ll buy plane tickets tonight,” he nodded.

“Okay,” she said, a mixture of disbelief and gratitude coloring the simple word.

When they returned to her apartment, Josh double parked so they could get all the groceries up and put away, and then rushed back down the steps to find a proper parking space a few blocks away.

Donna was asleep on the couch when Josh got back in a turn of events that he found predictable even if he didn’t completely understand it. He presumed that maybe sometimes, there weren’t logical answers when it came to a loss like Isabel, a loss like Joanie, or a loss so all-encompassing that there was no room left for common sense.

Josh wondered, as he draped a knit blanket over her, whether or not they should have stopped at the pharmacy and picked something up that would help her start sleeping through the night again. He tucked the idea away in the back of his mind as an option for if her sleep schedule got more chaotic instead of less, and stepped back outside to make a phone call.

The phone rang three times before he got an answer.

“Hello?”

“Hey, CJ,” Josh said as he leaned back against the wall right outside Donna’s door.

“Josh? What’s wrong?” She immediately fell into the role of concerned friend, not expecting to hear from him at all over the course of the weekend.

“Nothing,” he assured her. “I just wanted to let you know that Donna and I are flying to Wisconsin on Thursday, the funeral is Friday, and we’ll be coming home on Saturday.”

There was a beat of quiet while CJ absorbed what he was telling her, and then she let out a deep breath.

“Okay,” she said simply, somehow filling the single word with understanding and support.

“They’ve been accusing me and Donna of things that aren’t true for years, we can handle one more instance of it,” Josh continued. “This is more important than dodging some rumors that don’t have any actual grounds and I’m not about to let the fear of the goddamn White House press corps stop me from doing what I need to do right now, CJ, this isn’t something I’m just gonna--”

“Josh!” CJ cut him off. “I agree with you, you don’t gotta convince me of this one.”

“Right,” he said, running his free hand over his face, pinching the bridge of his nose along the way.

“How is she?” CJ softened.

“Who’s asking?” Josh snorted.

“Your friend CJ,” she deadpanned. “And your friend Toby, and your friend Leo, and your friend--”

“She’s coming back to work on Monday,” he cut her off with a level of impatience he knew she didn’t deserve.

“Really?” CJ said in concerned disbelief.

“Yeah, so maybe spread the word that people shouldn’t make it a thing around her,” Josh suggested, sliding down the wall to sit on the floor because he was suddenly overcome with exhaustion.

“I’m just surprised is all,” CJ replied. “It’s still so soon.”

“Yeah,” he sighed. CJ didn’t respond right away, and Josh could practically feel her holding back from asking more questions simply for the sake of his sanity. “Am I completely fucking all of this up?”

“Josh…” she said, a hint of reprimanding in her tone.

“I’m serious,” he said emphatically. “Everyone thinks that because I lost Joanie that I know what to do, or how to help, or what she needs,” he scratched at the nape of his neck restlessly. “But it’s so different, and Donna is so different, and I just feel like I’m flying by the seat of my pants trying to get her through this when there’s nothing I can do or say to make it better.”

“Can I be blunt with you?” CJ asked. “I’d really like to be blunt with you.”

Josh snorted. “Go for it.”

“It doesn’t matter that you don’t know what you’re doing,” she said simply. “She doesn’t need someone to fix it, because there’s nothing left to fix, Josh. Her sister is dead and you can’t ever change that, but you love her--”

“Okay--”

“You love her, Josh,” CJ pushed forward. “And you’re there to hold her hand and remind her to eat and listen when she wants to cry or tell stories about her sister. That’s why you’re there, so don’t go getting confused and try to put the pieces back together for her. Donna Moss is a tough cookie who will be able to build herself back up, she just needs someone to love her right now. Got it?”

“How do you manage to sound supportive and combative at the same time?” Josh asked, already feeling his heart settle down as it absorbed the truth of CJ’s words.

“It’s a skill,” CJ deadpanned. “I’m very skilled.”

“Thank you,” Josh said quietly.

“You need anything, you let me know, okay?”

“You’re my first call?” Josh teased as he let his head fall back against the wall with a small thump.

“You got that right,” CJ fired right back. “Talk to you later.”

Josh stayed sitting there for a couple of minutes after he hung up, just staring at the place where the ceiling met the wall. A small, empty spiderweb had been spun in that corner, abandoned and blowing softly in the air provided by a nearby vent.

When he eventually went back inside, he picked up Donna’s feet and placed them in his lap, propping his own up on the coffee table and flipping channels on the nearly muted television until he reached CNN.

His hand rested on Donna’s calf over the blanket and his heart squeezed itself in next to hers inside her ribs. She hadn’t realized it yet, but she had been carrying it around on and off for him for years, keeping it warm and safe and beating through everything.

Even then, even as she succumbed to exhaustion in the middle of the afternoon, his heart would always find its home inside of her chest.

___

On Monday, Donna was back at work and feeling more and more capable of carrying her weight on her feet again. On Tuesday, she got through the entire day without crying. And although there were still pins and needles in her lungs on Wednesday, and even though she wasn’t fully present at every moment of every day, Donna felt like she deserved some credit for nearly three full days of mediocre work.

The trick was, you see, that Donna had figured out something of a system to keep herself from completely breaking down every time she started to get overwhelmed or thought too long and hard about her sister or the reason she needed to fly back to Wisconsin on Thursday.

The system was as follows.

Donna Moss only worked from her desk in the middle of the bullpen for part of the day, alternating locations between her own desk, Josh’s and whatever conference or meeting room may have been unclaimed for an hour here or there throughout the day. This way, she wasn’t always in the direct line of fire of having to talk to people who didn’t actually require her social energy, and could save it for the tasks that were actually vital to her job.

The second order of business, was that Donna forced herself to get up and go outside at regular intervals, because staying inside for that long felt a little too much like being stuck, made her feel a little too claustrophobic, and a little too much like her head might explode.

Other than that, Donna had the watchful eyes of Josh and CJ, and a surprisingly thoughtful Toby who may not have said much, but had quietly left a stack of pamphlets that covered how to cope with grief on her desk one morning. More than one of her new rules came about from ideas those very pamphlets gave her.

So, overall, Donna felt like she wasn’t just putting on a pretty good show, but was actually finding a way to push herself forward despite everything pulling her down, heavy and exhausted and incapable of speech.

At least, for the most part.

“Hey, Donna,” Will said on Wednesday, pausing in front of her desk. “I didn’t know you were back already?”

“I’ve been back all week,” she gave him a small smile and looked back down at her computer screen. It had been a long day, it had been a long week, and she didn’t need to be entering into a how-are-you-doing conversation with Will when she was already a little too close to the edge.

“Oh, I just figured Josh would’ve let you stay home a while longer,” he shrugged.

Donna bit her tongue to keep herself from saying something she knew she’d regret, because Will was truly only trying to be friendly.

“It was my decision to come back,” she said certainly, trying to keep the twinge of spite out of her voice.

“Right, of course,” he nodded. “I don’t think I ever said how sorry I am--”

“It’s fine, Will,” she said quickly. That was another rule-- avoid talking about it in public, because that led to crying in public, which led to somehow even more humiliation than she’d already experienced in the past week.

“A car accident,” he didn’t take the hint. “I can’t even imagine how much of a shock that must have been.”

“Big shock,” she nodded.

“I mean, what even happened?” he questioned. “Was she alone in the car?”

“Um, she was...” she could feel herself shutting down, couldn’t even make eye contact with him anymore, but couldn’t make her fingers keep typing either. “It was a, um, poorly lit street.”

“God,” Will shook his head as if to say what a shame and, for a flash of a moment, Donna wanted to punch him so hard it dislocated his jaw. “Did you ever talk to the police about it?”

“Briefly,” she forced out, tasting bile at the back of her throat.

On instinct, she tore a piece of paper off of her notepad, jotted down a single sentence, and folded it in half.

“What did they say--”

“I’m sorry, Will,” she stood up abruptly. “I’ve gotta take a message to Josh,” she motioned to the note apologetically, and Will, none the wiser, just smiled and nodded.

“Talk to you later, then,” he waved her off.

“Yep!” she said over her shoulder, a little too far past cheery and nearing on unsettled.

The walk to the Roosevelt room felt longer than it ever had and Donna’s legs felt unsteady beneath her weight, as if they had been built to carry a person that she no longer was and they had to learn to work with her brain all over again.

She held the note in her hand tight, like a lifeline, and took a deep breath as she approached the door, letting it out a little shakier than she would have liked as she knocked twice and entered.

Josh was in the middle of a meeting with a Senator or a Congressman or some other white guy that worked in the government, Donna couldn’t put a name to his face right at the moment and instead put all her energy into walking across the room and placing the note in Josh’s hand.

He took it, giving her a small smile as he continued to babble on about this or that or the other thing.

Donna noticed that Josh’s voice didn’t falter when he opened the paper and read her note, but upon seeing the words I have to go home written in her handwriting, his grip on it tightened ever so slightly.

“I’m sorry, Senator,” he said. “This’ll just be a minute,” he motioned to the note, already on his feet, with his hand on Donna’s back, and moving her towards the door.

She wondered if he could feel the way she was holding her breath.

“Hey,” he said softly as he closed the door. “What’s wrong?”

“You know how we said I could come back to work as long as I didn’t lie to you about how I was feeling?” she started hesitantly, making eye contact with his left ear instead of his actual, you know, eyes.

“Yeah,” he nodded. “You need to leave?”

“I was about thirty seconds away from stapling one of Toby’s pamphlets to Will Bailey’s forehead just now,” she deadpanned.

“Well, that’s not that abnormal,” Josh said, clearly trying to lighten the mood. “I feel like doing bodily harm to that guy every time I see him.”

“Josh,” she breathed, finally meeting his gaze in time to watch his teasing expression fall and be replaced by kind eyes.

“What time is it?” he asked.

“You have two more meetings and Leo wants to see you before you head out,” Donna said. “You can’t leave yet.”

“Right,” he said, running a hand through his hair quickly-- a stalling tactic as he figured out what to say next. “Go back to my place, there’s food in the fridge if you get hungry and some of your clothes are still in the bottom drawer of my dresser.”

“I appreciate the offer,” Donna gave him a small smile. “But I have to go home and finish packing anyway.”

Realization passed across Josh’s face. He had always had the type of eyes, the type of mouth and cheeks and brows that would tell anyone who bothered to look exactly how he was feeling, and in moments like that one, Donna was grateful she’d learned to speak the language of his countenance many years prior to their current dilemma.

“Right,” he coughed awkwardly. “I knew that.”

“I’m sorry to bail,” she said softly.

“You haven’t left early all week,” Josh shook his head. “This is gonna take a while and I’m just… I’m just glad you’ve started talking to me about it.”

Donna took a deep breath and held it in her lungs for a moment before speaking.

“You should get back to your meeting,” she nodded towards the door.

“Yeah,” he breathed.

“Talk to you later?” she asked, somehow still uncertain of how present Josh was going to be, still waiting for the day when the other shoe inevitably dropped.

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” she said definitively, a punctuation on the conversation before she spun around and walked herself back the way she’d come.

She could feel Josh’s eyes on her until she rounded the corner.

___

It took a few rings on Josh’s office phone before he realized that he didn’t have anyone covering Donna’s desk and that it was his job to answer his own phone.

“Hello?” he asked, holding the phone in between his shoulder and ear and rolling back over to his computer to finish typing up a position paper.

“Josh Lyman, are you answering your own calls?”

“Sam?” Josh stopped typing and leaned back in his chair with a furrowed brow.

“I guess you would have trouble recognizing my voice since you never call anymore,” Sam deadpanned and Josh rolled his eyes.

“You wanna stop channeling my mother there and tell me why you’re calling?” Josh snorted in amusement.

“Just checking in,” Sam said casually.

“What do you want?” Josh asked skeptically.

“What? A friend can’t just call to catch up?” Sam replied: indignant.

“Sam…”

“I just haven’t talked to you since this whole thing with Donna started,” Sam sighed. “I worry about you two.”

“There it is,” Josh muttered.

“How is she holding up?” Sam ignored Josh’s minor annoyance at the conversation.

Josh chewed on his words for a moment, contemplating lying to his friend before realizing that Sam Seaborn knew him too well to pull that off.

“Is it terrible if I can’t give you a solid answer to that?” he eventually sighed.

“I think it’s just honest more than anything,” Sam said with understanding in his tone.

“She left early today,” Josh said simply.

“She’s working?” Sam sounded absolutely gobsmacked. “You’re letting her do that?”

“If you think I have any say in the decisions Donnatella Moss makes,” Josh laughed. “You really have been gone too long.”

“You know what I mean.”

“She has some sort of system she’s operating under,” Josh explained. “And at least this way I can keep an eye on her.”

“Is it true that she was screaming at a police officer?” Sam questioned.

“How the hell has that gotten all the way to you?!”

“You’re not the only one I know in the building,” Sam deadpanned.

“You shouldn’t worry about us too much,” Josh said.

“I’ll worry just enough then,” Sam combatted.

“Yeah,” Josh let out in a short huff of breath. “Listen, I gotta…”

“Go, govern or whatever it is you’re doing over there these days,” Sam brushed him off.

“I’ll call more often.”

“Sure,” Sam chuckled.

“Bye, Sam,” Josh hung up the phone and had to take a moment to gather his thoughts before he could get back to work.

Josh wanted to believe that everything was going to be okay, wanted to believe that Donna wouldn’t be permanently operating under a careful set of rules just to get through the day, wanted to believe that one day he could hold her hand just for the comfort of it and not because either one of them needed the support just to feel grounded to reality.

He couldn’t be sure that any of it would happen, but he wanted to have faith that the universe would let them find joy again, wanted to have faith in her.

Josh would call Donna when he got home from work that night, would sit on the phone with her while she packed her suitcase and listen to her jump from topic to topic like the agile conversationalist he knew her to be. One minute she would be giving him an in-depth analysis of something Margaret had told her at lunch and the next she would be asking just how long he thought her eulogy could be before people booed her off the podium.

The juxtaposition of it gave him whiplash, but eventually she slowed down and eventually she dozed off while he was still on the other end of the line.

He listened to her breathing for a full two and a half minutes to make sure she was actually asleep before he hung up, packed his own suitcase, and crawled into bed.

___

Donna met Josh at the airport check-in counter, suitcase handle gripped in one hand and boarding pass gripped in the other with joints locked as tight as if it was her first time flying and she was afraid she might do something wrong and not be allowed on the plane.

“You have everything?” she asked Josh once they had both finished checking their bags.

He patted his pockets a couple of times and adjusted his backpack on his shoulder.

“Yeah,” he said certainly.

“Boarding pass?”

He held it up.

“And your ID?” she asked.

“Wallet,” he patted his front pocket.

“And you brought more than one dress shirt just in case?”

“I did,” he nodded.

She could feel him appeasing her nerves but couldn’t stop herself.

“And Leo and CJ and Toby know how to reach you if--”

“Donna,” he said, cutting her off with a hand wrapped gently around her wrist. She didn’t take her eyes off of him.

“We have to go now?” she asked quietly.

“We have to go now,” he nodded.

“Okay,” she took a deep breath, pulled her purse up higher on her shoulder, adjusted Josh’s grip so he was holding her hand instead, and walked towards security.

As they went through TSA, as they found their gate and settled in and looked out the window at lines of airplanes, Donna wondered if anyone could sense why she was there. The idea that she could be going on the worst trip home of her life, that her entire world had been ripped to shreds by one accident, and that she didn’t look any different? That was unsettling to her.

It should have scarred her physically, should have left a bruise or a mark or taken something from her so that people could tell she was forever changed just by looking at her. There should be more than the hole in her heart and the labor in her breath to prove that the world had stopped spinning.

Donna said hello to the flight attendants and buckled herself into her seat and she couldn’t help but be baffled that no one had asked. Part of her wanted them to, just so she would have a reason to say aloud: I’m on my way to my sister’s funeral, please see how much I’m hurting.

And maybe that was the crux of it, because Donna had spent a week covering up her grief from everyone except Josh, and a piece of her felt fraudulent. If she didn’t perform the ache in her chest publicly, where everyone could see it and hear it, was she even grieving at all? Did it count if she was the only one aware of how much she was hurting?

Was she a bad sister if she pretended to be happy?

Was she a bad sister if, one day, she figured out how to actually be happy?

She really wasn’t sure as the plane took off, but Josh was holding her hand on the armrest, so at least she didn’t have to figure it out alone.

___

Josh fell asleep for a chunk of the plane ride. When they had first met on the campaign, Donna had hounded him for tips on how to sleep during air travel, and although he wanted to give them to her, it always came down to the fact that it was just something he didn’t have any control over.

He woke up when the pilot announced their descent, groggy and with his head tucked awkwardly against Donna’s shoulder, but hand still held tight in hers.

She had a book in her lap but was staring out the window instead of reading it, and Josh wondered if she had ever gotten past the page it was currently open to as he pulled himself up into a sitting position and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.

“Hey,” he said, and then cleared his throat because it came out hoarse and quiet and unpleasant.

She turned to look at him, as if she had only just noticed his movement.

“You’re awake,” she said simply.

“We’re landing,” he nodded out the window.

“Welcome to Wisconsin,” she deadpanned, taking a deep breath and letting it out in a huff.

He briefly wondered if the plane ride had given her a chance to prepare herself for what was to come, but quickly realized that maybe that was a stupid line of thought. Just looking at her in profile, she seemed zipped up and put together in a very strange way, as if she’d packed all her grief and all her Donna-ness alike up into some small corner of her being, like a shoulder or the big toe where it wouldn’t get in the way when she didn’t want it to.

It made Josh think that death may have taken Isabel, but grief was well on her way to taking Donna.

He ran a thumb across her knuckles. Maybe she was hiding it all away in there, at least then he could wrap it up in his hands and keep it safe.

“Josh?” she turned to look at him once more.

“Yeah?”

“Thank you.”

“Yeah.”

And then suddenly, they were back on the ground, and Josh didn’t know if she was ready.

Chapter Text

“This one?” Josh asked, craning his neck to look out the window at the small house as he pushed down on the brake of their rental car.

“Yeah,” Donna said, barely even glancing at the home with its chipping paint and driveway still covered with snow-- the only one on the block that had yet to be shoveled after the overnight snowfall. “Just park here,” she motioned to the curb and Josh did as he was instructed.

She watched as he shifted the gear into park with gloved hands and turned the key to shut the car off, chewing at her lip all the while because her fingers were locked away inside her mittens and she couldn’t chip away at her nails.

“Ready?” he eventually asked, trying to tilt his head to meet her downcast gaze.

“I need to warn you of a few things,” she blurted out.

“Okay,” he responded hesitantly.

“My mother has, um-- She’s made some assumptions about you,” Donna said, unable to keep the discomfort out of her voice. “And you’re not gonna love them.”

“What kind of assumptions?” he asked, and when she pulled a skin tag on her lip in between her teeth instead of responding, he reached his hand across the consul to rest it on her knee. “Donna?”

“You shouldn’t touch me in front of her,” she said definitively, and Josh pulled his hand back quickly.

“Right,” he said simply.

“It’s just that-- I was, um, very unqualified when you hired me,” Donna floundered. “And she might have convinced herself that we’ve been having an affair for the past five years.”

“What?” Josh squeaked, voice cracking slightly with the pitch of it.

“I’ve told her that’s not true, obviously,” Donna said hurriedly. “But she doesn’t always-- I mean, she’s just…”

“She doesn’t believe you?” Josh asked, not bothering to keep the utter disbelief out of his tone.

“She’s just a naturally skeptical woman,” Donna brushed him off with a forced laugh. “And I mean, you know as well as anyone that my decisions regarding the men in my life aren’t always the smartest.”

“Donna…”

“You know what, it’s fine,” Donna shook her head and unbuckled her seatbelt. “It’s not your job to convince her of anything, let’s go.”

She was out of the car and slamming the door behind her before Josh could even wrap his mind around what had just happened. He tried to grapple with the new realization that maybe Donna’s relationship with her mother was somehow more contentious than he had ever expected.

All that time, he had always thought it was a simple matter of disagreement between mother and daughter, but for Terry Moss to blatantly accuse her child of lying not only to her, but to the nation as a whole? It baffled him.

Josh had to hurry to catch up with where Donna was trudging through the snow piled up in the driveway to reach the front door, reaching her side just as she was ringing the doorbell.

Alan Moss answered the door.

“Donna,” he said with a small smile, tears in his eyes that had either sprung up quickly or had been there already, lying in wait.

“Hi, Dad,” she took a step forward and wrapped her arms around his middle, letting him hold her close to his chest.

“It’s good to see you, kiddo,” he said, clearly choked up.

Josh stayed right outside the door frame, hands in his pockets and wishing he could give them more privacy.

“How are you doing?” Donna asked as she pulled away. Josh didn’t miss the strength and steadiness in her voice that hadn’t been there just moments before. It almost scared him how quickly she could put on a brave face like that. He wondered if she had ever used it on him. He wondered if there had ever been a time when he hadn’t noticed.

“Oh, you know,” Alan shrugged, clearly not a man of many words. “Your mother is… She’s in the bedroom. You should go say hello.”

“Right,” Donna nodded, and then, turning to look over her shoulder and meeting Josh’s soft gaze as if she had almost forgotten his presence. “Dad, this is Josh Lyman,” she grabbed Josh’s wrist and pulled him into the house, closing the front door behind him.

“Mr. Moss,” Josh held his hand out. “I’m so sorry for your loss, I can’t imagine what you’re going through.”

“Josh,” Alan ignored Josh’s hand and instead pulled him into a tight hug that had Josh floundering slightly with his hands for a moment before he could remind himself to hug back. “Thank you for keeping an eye on our girl.”

“Yes, sir,” Josh nodded emphatically as the older man pulled away and wiped at his teary eyes.

“Call me Alan,” he said with a small smile.

“Dad?” Donna cut in. “Is she…?”

“Bedroom,” Alan nodded.

“Yeah,” Donna breathed, barely a word. “Josh, are you okay if I--”

“Josh can help me put together lunch,” Alan cut in, but Donna didn’t take her eyes off of Josh, as if she was the one looking after him in that situation.

He took a step forward and started helping her out of her coat.

“Go ahead,” Josh nodded, taking her coat and her mittens into his arms and pushing her gently down the hallway with a large hand spread between her shoulder blades.

Donna glanced over her shoulder only once as she crossed the familiar living room with its worn out couch and boxy television set. All of the rooms in the small house were only a few paces away from each other and the off-white walls were thin and there was a cat curled up on the windowsill.

It was chilly despite the heater running on overdrive and it smelled slightly musty-- as if it had been too long since anyone had dusted or vacuumed.

She knocked twice on the door to her parents’ bedroom before turning the knob and stepping inside.

“Mom?” she said softly to the dark room.

The curtains were drawn and her mother’s small figure was being swallowed by at least four blankets on the bed where she was sat up and leaning back against the headboard. The laundry hamper was overflowing ever so slightly and the wastebasket was filled to the brim with tissues. Donna’s lungs were trembling inside her ribs.

“Mama?” Donna repeated, closing the door as quietly as possible behind her and taking a few steps towards the bed.

“Donna?” Terry looked up, only just realizing her daughter’s presence. “Dear, you startled me. You can’t sneak up like that.”

She held a hand to her chest as if clutching a string of pearls that no one in their family had ever been able to afford, a stilted parody of something Donna didn’t have the energy to place.

“I knocked,” Donna replied under her breath.

“Speak up, Donna,” Terry sighed. “No one can understand you when you mumble.”

“How are you doing?” Donna raised her voice slightly but stayed a few steps away from the bed with her hands behind her back, itching to bite at a skin tag at the corner of her right thumb. She settled for sticking the nail of her index finger underneath it and pushing until it hurt.

“I am devastated, what do you expect?” she fired back. Donna’s index finger slipped with the pressure and she could feel the corner of her thumb start to bleed. “Where is your father?”

“He and Josh are putting together lunch,” Donna kept her voice casual, put everything she had into keeping her voice casual. “Have you eaten anything today?”

“Josh is here?” Terry raised her eyebrows.

“I told you he was coming,” Donna said with a faint breath of exasperation.

“To the funeral,” Terry said. “I wasn’t aware he would be coming over during our limited time as a family.”

“I asked him to come,” Donna said.

“Of course you did.”

“Mom--”

“We so rarely get to see you, Donna,” Terry cut her off. “I’d like to spend some time as a family.”

“He’s family to me,” Donna said certainly. “And he’s just here to help.”

“Fine.”

“Mama, can we please not get into this,” Donna sighed. “Just for this trip, can it not be about that?”

“I’m not the one that invited him,” she snapped with an air of superiority that made Donna’s stomach churn with uncomfortable familiarity.

“I’m going to help them with lunch,” Donna said, already moving towards the door. “Would you like to join us or should I bring you something in here?”

“I’m not particularly hungry, dear.”

“Okay,” Donna nodded and stumbled out of the door with shaky hands and shaky knees.

Once the door was closed behind her, she looked down at her thumb, dripping a small trail of blood down past her first knuckle. She stepped into the bathroom across the small hallway and ran her hand under cold water for a few seconds, scrubbing the red stain from her skin and trying to catch her breath.

If Isabel had been there, she would have made a joke, she would have imitated their mother’s incessant dramatism and found a way to make Donna feel less like the unwanted disappointment she had always been.

But Isabel wasn’t there, and Donna’s finger wouldn’t stop bleeding.

___

Alan Moss was a quiet man, but had a kind, empathetic heart. In the few minutes that Josh had spent with him in the kitchen, he had shown interest in Josh’s work, offered sympathy for every tragedy he had learned of second-hand from his daughter in the past five years, and made Josh the strongest cup of coffee he had ever drank.

There was a stack of frozen meals in their freezer-- lasagnas and casseroles dropped off by friends and neighbors who didn’t know what else to offer in ways of support for something so terrible, and Josh slid one that looked like it had at least an inch of cheese on top into the oven just as Donna returned from her mother’s bedroom.

“What can I do to help?” she asked, passing where her father was seated at the unobtrusive kitchen table to stand next to Josh as he closed the oven.

Her shoulders were tense, practically up by her ears, and Josh wanted to reach out and soothe out the knots with his thumbs, dig in and relax them with his knuckles until she was breathing easier again.

He met her eye as she looked at him expectantly. He mouthed a simple you okay? to which she simply nodded.

“You weren’t in there very long,” Alan said taking a sip from his coffee while Donna filled a tea kettle and put it on the stove. Josh sat down in his seat at the table and watched her carefully. There was a bandage around her thumb that he hadn’t noticed earlier.

“She was tired,” Donna said simply.

“Donna,” Alan said warningly.

“She didn’t want me in there, Dad,” she said, tone nothing but exhausted.

“She’s grieving just like you are, cut her some slack,” he said gently. “She needs her daughter right now.”

“Yeah, which one?” Donna said with a humorless laugh, leaning back against the kitchen counter and crossing her arms over her chest. “We’ll stay for a few hours if she wants to talk, but we need to go see David later.”

“I wish you hadn’t talked to him,” Alan said. Flipping subjects at the drop of a hat seemed to be genetic.

“I’m sorry?” Donna raised her eyebrows.

“Roping him into ganging up on your mother about the cremation was the wrong move, sweetheart.”

“We didn’t gang up on her,” Donna shook her head. “She was being unrealistic, and she eventually agreed with us, so I don’t see what the problem is.”

“She feels guilty for ever having suggested it,” Alan insisted.

“Of course she does,” Donna muttered.

“Donna, don’t use that tone when talking about your mother.”

Josh could see Donna’s knuckles going white with the grip she held onto her bicep, could practically feel the way her fingernails were digging into her sweater, into the fleshy part of her arm.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly, eyes glued downward.

“That’s okay,” Alan nodded, standing up and striding across the room to her. He wrapped her up in his arms and Josh couldn’t help but be a little bit jealous as she rested her chin on his shoulder, even though he knew he had no right to be.

Alan pulled away when the tea kettle started to squeal.

“Sit down with Josh,” he said. “I’ll bring you your tea.”

Donna simply and wordlessly did as she was told, pulling a chair just a hair closer to Josh’s as she sat down. Josh wondered if Alan could see the way her eyes had glazed over, wondered if he was questioning the fresh bandage around her thumb and the chipped and cracking fingernails she continued to pick at in her lap, or if that was just Josh.

He reached out while Alan had his back turned, pulling tea bags out of the cabinet and steeping one in a large mug, and placed a steady hand on top of Donna’s.

She flipped her hand over and intertwined their fingers, gripping him tightly enough that he could feel her shaking next to him, only to let go a few seconds later as Alan turned and placed her tea in front of her.

Josh’s hand wrapped around his coffee mug instead, feeling helpless to the weight on Donna’s shoulders.

He really wanted to dig his knuckles into her muscles.

___

By the time she was trudging through the snow in her parent’s driveway back towards the rental car in the street, Donna felt like her lungs might explode. She was holding a blood-curdling scream inside her ribs and it was starting to physically ache as she collapsed into the passenger seat and slammed the car door behind her.

Terry and Alan Moss were nothing if not stilted conversationalists, and Donna had taken the brunt of their grief onto her shoulders during the short visit. Her mother hadn’t even left her bedroom, hadn’t bothered to greet Josh in an act of defiance for her daughter’s assumed transgressions of impropriety.

Josh climbed into the car quietly beside her and turned on the engine, cranking the heat up in the frozen space.

It was quiet for a moment as Donna tried and tried and tried to gather herself, jaw clenched and fists tight and muscles straining to hold herself together.

She lifted her now mitten-less hands up to her eyes and pressed her palms into her sockets-- not having put on makeup to worry about in the first place.

“Fuck,” she let out in a choked voice before using both hands to smack the dashboard in front of her with her palms. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

She punctuated each word with a stinging slap of her hands until she felt Josh’s arm wrap around her shoulders.

“Hey,” he said quietly as she began to cry. She felt like she was having some sort of tantrum, a toddler in the grocery store who was too tired to keep shopping and just wanted to go home.

“No!” Donna said through her sobs, trapping her own hands underneath her thighs and leaning forward so her chest was resting on her knees and her forehead was bumping up against the glove compartment. “No, no, no, no--”

“Donna, you have to breathe,” Josh insisted. She could barely feel the way his hand was rubbing up and down her back. She just tucked her hands farther underneath herself as if trying to become as small as possible.

“They can’t-- They can’t stand me,” she said with her eyes screwed shut and breathing ragged. “I keep messing it all up.”

“That’s not true,” he insisted, pushing her hair out of her face. She just lowered her head more, tucking it so her nose was pressed up against her knees. “Donna, please, you have to sit up,” he begged.

When Donna didn’t respond-- couldn’t respond-- he let out a frustrated breath and unclipped his seatbelt. She barely registered him getting out of the car except for the blast of cold air until the passenger door opened and he was pulling her up by her shoulders to be sitting more upright.

“Come on,” he said gently as she collapsed into him, gripping his coat and trying to catch her breath. “I’ve got you,” he had to bend awkwardly at the waist to hold her close to him, but that was clearly not much of a deterrent.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly, breath fogging in the cold air despite the fact that she was sweating.

“You did so good in there,” he responded into her hair.

She didn’t respond, just took in the feeling of him pressed up against her, the warmth that always radiated off of him and the kindness in the sound of his voice. Slowly but surely, she figured out how to breathe again and he pulled away just enough to look at her.

“That’s better,” he said with a small smile, using a thumb to brush a few tears off of her flushed cheeks.

She cleared her throat. “We should-- We should get going,” she pulled away from him and started to buckle herself into her seat. “David is expecting us.”

“We can be late if we need to be,” Josh insisted.

“Get back in the car, Josh,” she said gently, meeting his gaze with red-rimmed eyes and tear-stained cheeks that she wasn’t even bothering to wipe away.

He looked at her for a moment and she felt like his heart was out in the open air between them, like she could reach out and squeeze it in her fist if she wanted to and he would just let her, no matter how much it hurt him. Donna lifted a hand and cupped his jaw, a little bit scruffy with his mouth hanging open just the slightest bit, and ran her thumb across his cheekbone in a mirror of what he had done just moments before.

Josh leaned into her touch, so imperceptibly that had Donna not been fully in tune with their physical closeness for years at that point she might not have noticed. He lifted his own hand and wrapped his fingers around her wrist, holding her there for a beat as if needing to remind himself she hadn’t yet disintegrated into the same fog that made up their mingling breath.

He pulled away and got back in the car.

___

“Oh my god,” Donna said as she leaned over and reached into the bottom of the cardboard box on the floor in front of her. “I can’t believe she kept this.”

She was sat on the couch with Josh by her side and David in the chair across the coffee table from them. David’s house-- Isabel’s house-- was small but beautiful, with every piece of furniture handpicked and the photos and artwork filling the walls bringing nothing but joyous energy into the space.

That house felt more like Donna’s home in Madison than the one she had grown up in, but something about being there without her sister made her very being ache with a sacred sort of emptiness.

“I have at least half a dozen more albums like that in storage,” David said, motioning to the heavy photo book in Donna’s lap. “I’ll mail them to you as soon as I get around to sorting through everything, I just-- I haven’t--”

“No, of course,” Donna met his gaze with a kind, understanding smile before looking back down at the album and running her hand across the faux leather cover. It was a forest green and splitting at the corners and was the most impeccable thing on which she had ever laid her eyes.

Her fingers itched to open it, but it was as if she was paralyzed, staring at the cover as her body shut down limb by limb, starting with her hands.

“There are some really good shots in there,” David continued. “I figured you’d want to have them.”

Donna bit down hard on the inside of her cheek because she could feel warmth at the back of her eyes and was convinced if she started crying again she might never stop, not while she was in front of two men whom she trusted so deeply and so fully.

“Donna?” Josh said quietly, leaning his shoulder slightly against hers to get her attention.

“I’m gonna go to the restroom,” she blurted out in response, placing the photo album in Josh’s lap and racing down the hallway, barely hearing the quiet okay that Josh let out at her sudden departure.

She shut and locked the door behind her, searching for some peace in the solace of a bathroom-- the true nature of womanhood if you asked her. Donna leaned back against the door, pressing her entire body into the wood and wishing she could turn on the shower and dunk her head under streaming cold water, douse her hair until it was dripping and all she could feel was the cold deep in her bones.

She wondered, sinking to the ground with her knees pulled tight against her chest, if her stomach would always feel like it was full of wasps, if her chest would always feel empty, if her head would ever calm down and take a breath.

It felt melodramatic, it felt pretentious, it felt wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

She could make it stop, she just needed to catch her breath.

She just needed to catch her breath.

___

Josh watched Donna turn the corner into the bathroom for longer than necessary, photo album clutched in his lap with a ferocious protectiveness.

“It’s nice to finally meet you,” David said, pulling Josh’s gaze back to where he sat facing him.

“I’m sorry?” Josh felt as though he missed some part of the conversation in his incessant need to just simply look at Donna.

“I mean, after all of Donna’s stories,” David shrugged.

“Donna tells stories?” Josh’s eyes got softer as his brow furrowed.

“Have you met her?” David chuckled. “There’s nothing Donna and Isabel loved more than trading the most ridiculous stories back and forth.”

“Donna tells ridiculous stories about me?”

“You know, Isa and I were planning a trip out to DC,” David ignored his obvious confusion on the subject. “She was so excited to see the White House and get to meet you.”

“I’m sorry,” Josh said sincerely. “I would’ve liked to know her.”

“Yeah,” David said, taking a deep breath as if trying to gather himself. For some reason, Josh didn’t feel awkward in the presence of so much emotion and a near-stranger. “Donna’s a sister to me,” David continued.

“I’m sure,” Josh nodded.

“Even though we’ll never technically be related, she’s always going to be a sister to me,” David explained. “What I’m trying to say is, I have so many people here-- an amazing family and great friends to look out for me through all of this-- But I’m worried about Donna. She’s all alone out there on the other side of the country.”

A small smile captured Josh’s lips, a maybe inappropriate bubble of amusement in his lungs.

“No she’s not,” he shook his head.

“I’m not-- I’m not saying you haven’t helped a great deal,” David said hurriedly.

“No, I know,” Josh nodded. “But no matter how many stories she’s told you, apparently she forgot to mention how many people out there would lay their lives on the line for Donnatella Moss. I’ve been fielding phone calls and emails from some of the most powerful people in this country who care enough to step away from matters of national security to check in on your sister.”

___

Donna didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but when she heard Josh speaking so confidently in the living room, she worried that if she stepped out from around the corner that he would stop.

She really didn’t want him to stop.

Josh hadn’t sounded particularly confident about much in the week leading up to their trip to Wisconsin. He thought he was hiding it well, but Donna could tell he was trying as hard as her to make sense of it all. She could see him-- feel him-- being strong for her sake, and she could sense his mild trepidation and the way he put it to the side just so he could be a steady shoulder to lean on.

One day Donna would thank him for it, once everything felt okay again.

“Isa was right about you,” David said around the corner. “About you and Donna.”

“How so?” Josh’s voice filtered down the hall immediately following.

“You already know,” David laughed softly and Donna took that moment to start moving again, stepping around the corner and entering the living room, a little more stable than she had been when she’d left.

“Hey,” Josh smiled at her. “Come show me these pictures, I wanna make fun of your baby cheeks.”

Donna smirked at him as she joined him on the couch. “I’ve seen your baby pictures, Joshua,” she deadpanned. “I was objectively the cuter child.”

“I have no doubt,” he chuckled, handing the photo album back to her and watching her carefully open the cover to the first page.

She treated it as though it might disintegrate in her grip at any moment, handing the entire book back and forth between the three of them as she told stories of her childhood instead of risking the safety of each polaroid by taking them out of their sleeves.

Her heart was pounding in her chest and her voice shook during a few stories, but the memories were happy and they brought a warmth to her stiff joints that she had been missing.

The mud around her ankles felt like it was being washed away, even if only for a moment.

___

Josh was only half dressed the next morning when he was startled by urgent knocking at the door of his hotel room. He almost tripped with only one pant leg on and the other wrapped around his ankle, hopping around comically until he could get the dress pants properly fastened around his hips, belt hanging loose.

“Josh!” Donna called through the door. “Are you okay in there?”

“Coming!” he yelled back, buckling his belt as he rushed to open the door. “Good morning,” he said, breathing a little heavily as he took her in where she stood.

Her hair was pulled up off of her neck and her black dress fit her unfairly well. Black tights clung to her legs and she held a pair of buckled heels in one hand and a steno pad and pen in the other.

“Hi,” she said, glancing down at his chest briefly and reminding Josh that he was still in his undershirt and needed to finish getting dressed.

“Are you okay?” he asked when she didn’t immediately launch into whatever had her knocking on his door thirty minutes before their pre-arranged departure time.

“Hmm?” She met his eyes once more. “Yes, right,” she pushed into the room, dropping her shoes next to the closet and turning her attention to her notepad. “I talked to the reception venue this morning and everything seems to be lined up-- They aren’t gonna be able to make caesar salad because of that recall, but I replaced it with just a regular house salad and that should be okay, right?”

“Yeah,” he nodded, shutting the door and trying to absorb her rapid-fire tangents.

“David and his family are bringing the flowers and they already have the urn at the funeral home so we don’t have to worry about that,” she didn’t look up at him, continuing to read from what he assumed was a checklist. “I have my eulogy all written out but I didn’t memorize it, do you think that’s okay?”

She glanced up at him with big eyes and his heart felt tight.

“Of course that’s okay,” he said certainly.

“You need to finish getting dressed,” she crossed the room in just a few steps and pulled his shirt from where it hung in the closet, pressing it into his hands. “And I want to get there early to make sure everything gets set up properly because my parents are notoriously late to everything--”

Josh slipped his dress shirt on, but didn’t start buttoning it up.

“Oh!” she exclaimed dropping her notepad on the bed and moving towards the door as if to leave. “I almost forgot the guest book, it’s still in my suitcase--”

“Donna,” Josh deftly wrapped a hand around her wrist as she passed him. “Slow down.”

“I have to…” she motioned towards the door with her free hand, the one not trapped in Josh’s grip.

“We’re ahead of schedule,” Josh insisted. “Take a second to breathe, okay?”

“I’m breathing,” she said certainly. “I’m okay, Josh.”

He looked at her skeptically, but despite how quickly she was moving and talking, there wasn’t any waver to her voice, no tremble in her hands.

“I know,” he nodded. “But it’s gonna be a long day. You’re allowed to pace yourself.”

She hummed in acknowledgment of what he was saying, but pulled her hand away from his grasp and started buttoning up his shirt slowly, methodically. Josh looked at her, studying the tops of her downcast eyelashes, the caked layer of mascara she was wearing over the fine fan of fibers.

He wanted to touch her, wanted to put his hands on her waist and run his thumbs across her hip bones, but instead, he watched with a pounding heart beneath her nimble fingers.

“Promise to stay nearby,” she said quietly as she finished with the last two buttons, smoothing down the fabric covering his chest with the flat palms of her warm hands.

Josh lifted his hands and placed them on top of hers, stopping their motion right around the top of his abdomen, holding her against him.

She looked up, eyelashes fluttering, and met his gaze.

“I promise.”

___

The service felt like it lasted thirty seconds and it felt like it lasted six hours when ultimately Donna was only seated in that funeral home for not much longer than ninety minutes.

She sat in between Josh and her father, with her mother just two seats over on the other side of Alan. A disintegrating tissue remained clutched in her hands for the entirety of the service, because she was sat in the front row and couldn’t clutch onto Josh’s hand and thus needed a substitute.

Donna cried silently during her father’s eulogy, spaced out briefly when a priest stood up and read bible verses, and was sweating profusely the entire time because of how tensely she was holding her body.

Although Josh would lean into her shoulder and tell her that was beautiful after her short speech, Donna wasn’t entirely convinced that her voice hadn’t been shaking too hard for anyone to actually understand a word of what she said.

It all passed like nothing and was the longest moment of her life, and then they were at the reception and Donna was on her third plastic cup full of wine and her Uncle Lewis was telling her about the vintage car he was fixing up and all Donna wanted was to be really, really drunk.

Her entire extended family was trapped in the back room of a small Italian restaurant, eating garlic bread and spaghetti buffet style and Donna hadn’t eaten a bite of it, but she had drunk almost an entire bottle of white wine by herself, so at least she was accomplishing something amongst the platitudes.

“Sweetheart, we’re so sorry.”

“Donna, my dear, if you need anything let us know.”

“What a tragedy, you must be devastated.”

“She was a good person.”

“What a good person we’ve lost.”

“Isabel was so good.”

Donna drank more wine.

There was so much kindness amongst those people, so many condolences, so many hugs and well wishes and I’m sorry’s . But Donna never asked for any of it, this multitude of uninvited, eulogistic epiphanies of who Isabel had been. Donna knew her sister better than any of them, and she resented the idea that anyone would feel the need to remind her that Isabel had been a good person.

Isabel had been wondrous and kind hearted; she had been made from stardust and honey and just enough spite to be interesting. She hadn’t been perfect and she hadn’t been an angel, she had had a quick tongue and a quicker wit and Donna had learned how to be a person from her.

Donna had learned how to fight back from her, and maybe it was that passing thought that had pushed her towards her breaking point.

“I can’t imagine how you’re feeling right now, Donna.”

“No, Aunt Sheryl,” Donna laughed humorlessly. “I’m sure you can’t.”

The older woman was trying to be kind, and Donna knew that, but she was pissed off so deep in her soul that she was at a loss for any more proper, polite responses than the ones she’d been spewing all day.

“Oh,” Sheryl looked taken aback.

“This is a very unique experience,” Donna continued, unperturbed and slurring a little bit. “You should really try it--”

“Can I steal her for a second?” Josh cut her off with a steady hand on a lower back, turning her away from Aunt Sheryl and towards an empty table before the woman could even respond.

“Joshua, I was talking,” she protested, but let him push her gently down into a chair where a plate of food was waiting.

“Eat something,” he sat down next to her and pushed a fork towards her.

“I’m not hungry,” she shook her head and lifted her cup of wine up to her lips.

She was intercepted by Josh’s hand taking the glass straight out of her grip. “Eat,” he insisted, not unkindly but also not taking any shit.

“Josh,” she whined with a furrowed brow.

“Donna, you’re drunk and you’re gonna make yourself sick,” he said quietly, leaning close to her so she could hear him over the chatter of the room.

“If I puke, do you think some of the bad feelings will go away?” she asked innocently, almost like a child. Despite the blatant inebriation, she felt like she was watching Josh’s heart breaking in real time. Something about that made a crack through all the fuzziness.

“Please eat,” he practically begged her, placing a hand on her thigh in total disregard of what anyone in her family thought.

“I’m not the lightweight here,” she poked him in the chest, hard. He squeezed her leg tighter.

“And I’m not the one drinking profusely on an empty stomach,” he retorted.

She looked at his face, at the worry painted thick across his nose and eyelashes, looked down at the plate of food in front of her, and finally picked up the fork.

Donna ignored the sigh of relief that Josh let out when she slid a piece of broccoli into her mouth and chewed.

“Thank you,” he said softly and Donna just continued to eat in the back corner of that room, praying that no one would walk over and try to talk to her while she was a sitting duck.

“I’m so embarrassing,” she said, stabbing harshly at piece of penne and stuffing it into her mouth. “Mom’s gonna be pissed.”

“Try not to think about that now,” Josh replied, but Donna just snorted. “I know,” he sighed in response.

“I should be up there,” she motioned vaguely to where her teary-eyed parents were talking to person after group of people after person again.

“You should be eating,” Josh said simply.

She laid her free hand over where his still rested on her thigh, a silent thank you that she didn’t have the mental capacity to verbalize. Her brain was fuzzy with more than just the wine and she wanted nothing more than for Josh to wrap her up in his arms and to hug her so tight that it snapped her sternum in half.

Donna glanced at the muscles of his arms and wondered vaguely if he could actually pull it off.

___

She ate food and she stopped drinking, and Josh considered that a win at the very least.

At some point, after a quiet break in the back corner of the room, Donna had gathered herself once more and joined her parents on the other side of the room. He watched from a distance, giving them space to be a family as he sipped on a coke.

The way she held herself felt so out of place to him. This was a different Donna than the one that chased him through the hallways of the White House, a different Donna than the one that could hold her own in front of the President of the United States, a different Donna than the one he had fallen for hard and fast.

This Donna was quieter, held her tongue, and seemed to live inside of herself instead of out in the world. This Donna was different but he could see the underlying strength there, and that he recognized.

Donna was practically holding her mother up with a hand around the petite woman’s frame, kept handing her a glass of water or a tissue as they were needed, and stood tall despite the frustration Josh knew she was feeling. Donna had more empathy than anyone Josh had ever known, a bigger heart than he knew was possible, and it made him wonder whether her strength had been borne from her unlimited capacity to love or if it had been the other way around.

“Hey, Josh,” David pulled up a chair next to him, sitting down with a heavy breath.

“David,” Josh turned to him, somewhat startled out of his own internal monologue. “How are you doing?”

Josh wanted to cringe at his own question, knowing it was idiotic.

“Just taking a break,” David said. “Can we look like we’re talking but not actually discuss anything serious for three minutes?”

“Yeah,” Josh grinned. “I think we can manage that.”

David nodded gratefully and took a sip of his drink. They were quiet for a moment, and Josh couldn’t help but let his gaze drift back to where Donna was now nodding along to something a sobbing woman was saying with emphatic hand movements.

“So,” David pulled him out of his moment casually. “Your assistant, huh?”

Josh just gave him a baffled look, knew immediately what David was insinuating, and felt his heart rate pick up because of it.

“Predictable,” David smirked at him with a shrug.

“This isn’t a serious discussion?” Josh asked, voice reaching an embarrassingly squeaky pitch.

“Not for me,” David chuckled. “And we’re at my fiance's funeral, so you should probably go along with it.”

“That’s extortion of a high level government official,” Josh responded light heartedly.

“I’ll take my chances with you, Lyman.”

“Okay,” he laughed awkwardly, earning him a grin from David.

Josh really did like that man, was impressed by his ability to hold himself together through all of it, and was grateful to share a protectiveness for Donna’s wellbeing with at least someone in that town.

“Have you talked to Terry at all?” David asked curiously.

“Uh, not really,” Josh glanced across the room at Donna’s mother. “I don’t think-- She’s not my biggest fan.”

“That’s not surprising,” David said, letting out a slow breath of air. “Her and Donna have a complicated relationship.”

“Would it be out of line for me to ask what that’s all about?” Josh questioned hesitantly.

“From what I understand as a fellow outsider,” David began, sitting forward in his chair and clearly relieved to be talking about something other than his would-be wedding and his lost love. “Isabel was kind of a golden child for her mother. Perfect, proper kid; valedictorian and a ballet dancer who got a crazy amount of scholarships for college but chose to stay close to home and become a teacher after she graduated.”

“And Donna wasn’t that?”

“She was just different, I think,” David shrugged. “She was louder and liked playing in the dirt and Terry had no idea how to handle this kid who was clearly very smart but struggled in school because they kept trying to put her in a box and make her do things their way instead of the way that worked for her.”

“That sounds… exactly like her,” Josh said, contemplative.

“Isa told me once that Donna had to bring home a math test in high school and get it signed by a parent because she’d failed,” David said with an amused grin. “She’d gotten every answer right, but she’d used a different method so she didn’t get any of the points. Terry was livid and it was Isabel-- who was also still a teenager-- who went with her baby sister to talk to the principal and get the issue resolved. That was the woman I was gonna marry.”

It made so much sense to Josh that he could feel a whole slew of unanswered questions fade from the back of his mind. There was this era of Donna that he’d never gotten to know, the opinionated high schooler who was so intelligent but whose methods weren’t taken seriously and was mirrored perfectly in the woman who organized files in a way that had never made sense to Josh but made sure that not a single one had ever been misplaced.

That was Donna, through and through, changing her major six times in college because she wasn’t willing to settle for doing something that didn’t feel right; Donna who drove off to New Hampshire on a whim because it did feel right.

Donna, who had lost the only person that had had her back from the very beginning.

Josh turned to look at David.

“I’m glad she has you,” he said sincerely.

“Don’t let this ruin her, Josh.”

“I’ll do what I can.”

He had every intention of doing just that. For the rest of his life.

___

Donna and Josh were the last two people to leave the reception, because Donna had to stay to wrap everything up and pay for the venue and the food. She was exhausted deep in her bones and that pure level of tiredness was putting her more and more on edge the longer she had to be around people.

By the time she and Josh got back to the hotel, her lungs felt too big for her ribs and her shoes too small for her worn-out feet and Josh was barely keeping up with her as she raced through the lobby.

All she knew was that she needed to get out of a public space before she broke down completely.

Donna stormed out of the elevator once the doors opened on their floor, fumbling through her wallet for her keycard as if speed was of the essence. She supposed, maybe it might have been, because she was feeling more and more like she might implode if she stayed at that memorial any longer.

She practically skidded to a stop in front of her room, Josh close behind her, still carrying her coat in his arms awkwardly. He leaned against the door frame as he watched Donna struggle to get her key card to work, red light and faint buzz again and again as she grew more frustrated.

“This goddamn door,” she muttered to herself. Josh took a step closer, almost pressing his front up against her back.

“Gimme that,” he said softly, reaching out for the key.

“I can do it,” she fought back, trying once, twice, three more times before handing it over with a huff.

Josh silently placed a hand on her back and unlocked the door in one try, surprising even to him, but Donna just pushed it open hurriedly.

She dropped her purse unceremoniously on the floor and started pulling at the buckles of her shoes nearly frantically without bothering to actually sit down.

Josh hung up their coats before leaning against the wall and watching her kick off her shoes with a contemplative stare.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Donna asked, only meeting his eye briefly as she tossed one shoe and then the other in the vague direction of her suitcase.

“I’m trying to figure out how to talk to you while you’re like this,” he said honestly and without malice.

“What exactly do we need to talk about?” she furrowed her brow at him and placed her hands on her hips, an entire room spread out between them. She was maybe still a little bit drunk and a lot loud and on the verge of being just as combative as the night she had tried to get into a fight with Josh.

“Donna…”

“She’s gone, Josh!” Donna yelled. “And nothing is ever going to be the same again!”

“I know--”

“She was my best friend-- She was--” tears started to stream down her face, but her volume didn’t diminish. “She was the most phenomenal woman I have ever met, and I know CJ Cregg,” she laughed bitterly.

Josh stopped trying to intervene, stood out of Donna’s way with his hands in his pockets as she paced the brown carpeting and screamed at the off-white walls.

“She had so much left to do,” Donna continued. “I was helping her plan her wedding! I still have bridal magazines on my bedside table at home, and now she’s just-- she’s just gone!”

She was sobbing now, felt like her ribs were caving in on her lungs.

“And none of those people understand,” her voice was breaking as she pointed at the door, coming down, turning from blinding rage into a searing guilt on a dime. “None of them get that not a single one of us deserved to outlive her, not when she had so much left. ”

“Donna…”

“She was a teacher!” Donna threw her arms up in exasperation. “She tutored kids for free on Thursdays because she knew they needed help and couldn’t afford it. She fought for what she believed in and now she’s gone, and what’s the world left with? How’s it supposed to keep turning with-- with out her?”

Donna sat down heavily on the edge of the bed, halfway unzipping her dress because it felt as though it was suffocating her. Josh took a few slow steps towards her before sitting down next to her, watching her catch her breath.

“You want to know what the world is left with?” he asked quietly. Donna looked up at him questioningly, eyes bloodshot and bleary, hair matted down with sweat in the front and frizzy in the back. “You,” he said, so softly that Donna would have barely heard it had she not been able to see his lips moving.

Donna slid her hand an inch or two across the mattress and placed it on top of Josh’s, slotting her fingers into the spaces between his.

“She’s gone and it’s a tragedy,” he continued slowly. “But, Donnatella Moss, you’re still here. I never knew your sister, and I’m not going to try and tell you what she would have wanted, but I think you know. And I don’t think tearing yourself down because you feel guilty is it.”

Donna didn’t know how to respond. She wanted to be angry at him or scream a little bit more at him for making assumptions about what Isabel might have expected from her in this situation; she wanted to stop crying; she wanted to cry until she was out of tears; she wanted to feel warm and whole and not alone.

So, she lifted her free hand up to cup Josh’s jaw, ran a thumb across his stubbly cheek while he looked at her with warm, curious eyes, and pressed a gentle kiss to his cheek. He leaned into it, letting her linger longer than could be considered entirely friendly, and then she pulled away and tucked herself into his side, letting her head nestle itself in the crook of his neck.

Josh placed one hand on her upper back, right above the strap of her bra where her dress was unzipped, and used the other to pull her legs up and across his lap. He held her unashamedly close, he rubbed her back, and he breathed her in.

“I can’t help but think,” she said softly, wrapping her arms around his neck. “Nevermind,” she shook her head.

“You can tell me, Donna,” he responded, scratching her back lightly with his short fingernails in the most satisfying way she could have imagined. She wanted him to scratch harder and she wanted him to leave marks, but the softness of it was filling her heart with warmth and that was enough for the moment.

“I just-- I can’t help but think that,” she started again. “That the wrong daughter--”

“Don’t,” Josh held her instinctively closer. “Don’t say that.”

“You asked,” she laughed humorlessly, pulling away so she could look him in the eye.

“Don’t you ever imply…”

“That I deserved to go instead?” Donna finished his sentence, face so close to Josh’s that her eyes had to scan back and forth to maintain eye contact with him.

“Yeah,” he breathed.

“You didn’t know her, Josh,” Donna said, almost wistful in her sadness. “She was better than-- Better than all of us,” she shrugged. “And to think that she deserved this nightmare--”

“She didn’t,” Josh said definitively. “Of course she didn’t. This was a tragedy and an accident, and had nothing to do with what she deserved.”

“It’s not fair,” Donna said, silent tears falling slowly down her cheeks and pooling in the concave spot right in the middle of her collarbone.

“It’s not,” he shook his head, tears brimming in his own eyes because just the sight of her, there in his lap, as vulnerable as anyone had ever seen her was enough to send him reeling.

“Isabel, Joanie, your dad,” Donna pushed her hands up into Josh’s hair, letting it fill in the spaces between her fingers and holding on tight. Josh leaned into her touch. “And then almost you at Rosslyn, and almost the President, and almost Zoey.”

“The universe hasn’t given us a lot of good recently, huh?” Josh raised his eyebrows and gave her a watery smile.

Donna laughed quietly through her tears and pulled him forward by his hair so she could rest her forehead against his, letting her eyes slip shut in the process. The intimacy of it should have had her shaking, but it was the most steady she had felt in a week.

“No,” she said softly, unashamedly affectionate. “But it did give me you.”

And then she kissed him. Donna kissed Josh and it was slow, and soft, and tasted like tears. And Josh kissed her right back, nose pressed up against hers and with one hand on her thigh while the other remained on the bare skin of her back.

It was overwhelming, because it was one of the worst days of Donna’s life, she was slowly but surely falling apart, and kissing Josh was so completely the opposite of all of that. It was warm and good and right. It was so very, very right in ways she hadn’t even imagined it could be on her loneliest nights and everything and nothing hurt and she was still crying.

Donna tried to pull him impossibly closer, hands still tangled up in his hair and he sighed into her mouth, going along with the pure feeling of it right up until he wasn’t.

“Donnatella,” he breathed as he pulled away, just far enough to have use of his vocal cords and not far enough that Donna had to let go of him.

She breathed heavily for a moment taking in his face, his oh so readable face. Her heart sank, and she knew he could see it in her as well, the realization that it wasn’t nearly as simple as it was right.

“Oh god,” she pulled her hands off of him abruptly, holding them aloft in a frozen moment before pushing herself off of his lap and into a standing position on the other side of the room. “I’m so stupid,” she covered her mouth with her hands.

“Donna,” he began, standing up and moving towards her but she put up a hand to stop him.

“No, don’t,” she shook her head.

“Come on--”

“Josh, I’m wildly humiliated,” Donna said with a humorless laugh. “So if you could just give me a minute before lecturing me.”

“I--”

“Joshua!”

He stopped in his tracks, just a handful of steps away from her but leaving them miles apart. Donna ran her hands over her face, spreading tears across her rosy cheeks and smearing what she had thought to be waterproof mascara in the process.

Her dress was still open in the back, and she knew he could see her flushed skin in the mirror behind her, that the sleeve was slipping farther down her right shoulder.

“I can’t-- I can’t believe I did that,” she floundered. “I thought there were-- Hell, I thought I saw signs, but I’m just so stupid--”

“Donna, please--”

“Can we never talk about this again?” she laughed uncomfortably. “Please?”

Josh took a couple more steps towards her.

“You’re not stupid,” he said, meeting her eye certainly.

“I am,” she pushed back.

“You’re really not,” he responded with a soft, barely-there laugh.

“I thought…” she trailed off and chewed on her bottom lip.

“You were right,” he shrugged. “God, of course you were right.”

“Then why?” she asked, realizing that if anyone was listening to that conversation that they wouldn’t understand a single bit of it, that the two of them, even in their most stilted moments, understood each other entirely.

“Not like this,” Josh responded softly and something in Donna’s heart snapped into place. “Not on the day of your sister’s funeral, not while you’re still a little bit drunk and we’re both crying, not when neither of us have the energy for me to show you just how much I--”

He cut himself off, snapping his mouth shut but not breaking eye contact with her. Both of them still had tears on their faces. Both of them thought the other looked beautiful.

“Okay,” she breathed.

“Yeah?”

There was concern etched on his face, a nervous sort of bouncing in the balls of his feet, but a care so deeply ingrained in the depths of his eyes that Donna knew he was being honest with her, that maybe they were finally starting to be honest with each other. She nodded.

“Do you want to get room service for dinner?” she asked simply, as if it was any other night on the road. “I’ll change and meet you in your room?”

“Sure,” he said, as if his entire world hadn’t been sent askew with the feeling of her lips on his.

They got pizza.

Chapter Text

Josh woke up with the sun the morning after Isabel’s funeral.

He was curled up on his side with his face pressed into the plush, white hotel pillow, and the first thing he was aware of as he rose to consciousness was Donna’s body pressed up against his back. Her breath was even and soft against the back of his neck, tickling at a few of the curls there, and her arm was draped over his waist.

Even as she slept, he could feel her desire to keep him close. Her hand was pressed up against his chest, and he couldn’t help but think about the scar that it was covering, just a thin piece of cotton keeping her from touching it directly, subconsciously protecting it from the rest of the world.

Josh placed his hand on top of hers, lining his own fingers up in between hers and held her there. You would have thought that he was the one in need of comfort the way she was wrapped up around him, but knowing Donna as he did, Josh knew that nothing was quite as comforting to her as being able to take care of the people she loved.

The sensation of being wrapped up under the covers with her in that way was new, but the sensation of being fully and completely surrounded by her was most certainly not.

“What time is it?” she mumbled, barely waking up.

“About seven,” Josh replied, voice still crackling with sleep. Neither of them tried to move from their entanglement, and Josh was certain it was because they were both in the process of convincing themselves that the whole situation was a bad idea but hadn’t quite made the final conclusion yet.

They knew how they felt about each other, had known for longer than either wanted to admit, but there was a reason they had chosen to never broach the subject. Josh wondered if that hotel in Wisconsin was the only piece of the universe where it would ever feel real, ever feel present outside of the confines of their own imaginations, or if they would find their way back to that same position one day.

He held Donna’s hand closer to his chest, because he didn’t have the answers.

“I should go pack,” she sighed into the nape of his neck, making his hair stand up on end.

“Yeah,” he agreed without bothering to move. Maybe if he didn’t look at her, time would stop and they wouldn’t have to leave that room, in that state, in that constructed form of reality where she would have never had to book two separate hotel rooms to begin with.

But Donna let out a heavy sigh and flipped onto her back, so Josh turned over and took her in. There she was, staring at the ceiling and looking like maybe she had actually gotten some decent rest.

She was wearing a baggy t-shirt and flannel pants and the sight of it made Josh want to say fuck it and kiss her again.

He couldn’t stop thinking about how it had felt to kiss her.

But then she sat up and some part of the spell was broken, because although they were still in bed together, he couldn’t see her eyes anymore.

“Donna--”

“I don’t think I’m ready to talk about it,” she said simply, waiting a beat before she looked over her shoulder to meet Josh’s gaze. He propped himself up on his elbows and tried to act as though a shard of his heart wasn’t poking him in that very same surgical scar she’d been pressing back together with her fingers just a few minutes prior.

He wasn’t sure whether or not she was buying it.

“Yeah?” he asked with a faux casualness.

“I’m sorry,” she shook her head and clutched the blanket in her lap tighter between her fingers. “I’m… I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” he responded quietly. Josh knew that he meant it, knew he was being genuine, but something about the way she turned away again to look at her hands made him think maybe Donna didn’t. “Donnatella--”

“Don’t call me that right now,” she said, standing from the bed abruptly and pulling on a pair of socks she’d tossed on the floor some time during the night.

“What?” Josh sat up all the way and couldn’t keep the twinge of hurt out of his voice. “Why not?”

She stood up straight and dug the heels of her hands into her eye sockets.

“I need to go pack,” she grumbled to herself.

“Donnatella,” Josh pressed, earning him a groan as she made her way to the door. “Hey, wait a second,” he scrambled out of bed and across the room, putting his hand on the doorknob and blocking her path.

“Josh,” she said sternly, giving him a head-on view of her face for the first time all morning.

Her eyes were bloodshot and there were remnants of makeup she hadn’t managed to get all the way off smudged across her skin and her hair was in a sloppy braid, halfway falling out in frizzy bits around her face and he really wanted to kiss her.

“We went to your sister’s funeral yesterday,” he started without really knowing how he was going to finish yet. “And I’m not gonna push you to talk about last night right now, but why on Earth am I suddenly not allowed to call you by your name?”

Donna bit at the inside of her cheek, scanning his face in that way she did that made him feel so truly seen.

“Because we don’t have plausible deniability anymore, Joshua,” she said: definitive and nervous all at the same time.

His heart skipped a beat.

“No,” he breathed, unable to do anything but notice how close they were standing to one another. “We don’t.”

“I have to go pack,” she said quietly. The glance that she gave to his lips had Josh completely and utterly lost inside his own heart.

“Sure,” he agreed, opening the door a crack. She continued to study him for a beat before she managed to take a deep breath and push past him out into the hallway.

Josh shut the door behind her and pressed his forehead into the wood, listening as she entered her own room and let the door slam behind her on the other side of a thin hotel wall.

They didn’t have plausible deniability anymore.

He really needed to pack.

___

They ate a quiet continental breakfast at the hotel before loading their bags into the rental car and heading out.

The plan from the beginning had been to go straight to the airport, but at some point the night before, Donna had convinced herself that she needed to stop by her parent’s house before leaving the state. It had something to do with an off-handed comment Josh made about not really getting to meet her mother and had spiraled from there, but she wasn’t about to give up on the decision in the light of day.

Donna loved her parents, but she had always clashed with them temperamentally. Donna was a little louder than her mother approved of, a little bit more opinionated than was considered ladylike, far too independent, and far too far away to be the favorite child.

But Isabel was gone, and Donna no longer had any excuses to try to appease her parents from a distance or ignore their disapproval. She was what they were left with, and if the strength of her older sister had ever taught her anything, it was that she was to never change herself for the sake of someone else’s comfort.

She told Josh to wait in the car.

The snow in the driveway had begun to melt and Donna was certain it would only freeze over once again, but she decided that it wasn’t her problem and that she wouldn’t accept it as her responsibility. So, she trudged up to the front door, and rang the doorbell.

“Donna,” her father said in surprise when he answered the door. “I thought you were flying back today.”

“We’re on our way to the airport,” Donna responded simply, already pushing her way into the house. “Where’s Mom?”

“She’s in the kitchen, but--”

Donna didn’t wait for him to finish, didn’t take off her coat, and just strode straight into the other room where her mother was sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and wrapped in a faded pink robe.

“Mom,” she began, not wanting to let any amount of courage she had built up overnight fade away before she had the chance to actually use it. “I’d like to talk to you.”

“Aren’t you and Mr. Lyman leaving town today?” Terry raised her eyebrows.

“Yes.”

“It’s rude to just drop in on people like this, Donna,” her mother said with an air of superiority that didn’t help Donna’s already elevated frustration.

“You’re my mother,” she said with a small but bitter laugh.

“And that means I don’t deserve your respect?” Terry raised her eyebrows.

“It means you need to start accepting that I’m never going to be who you so desperately want me to be,” Donna said, proud of herself for how little fear was injected into the statement.

“Donna, your sister just died,” Terry reprimanded. “I don’t have the energy for one of your ramblings.”

Donna could feel her father appear in the doorway behind her and chose to ignore his presence for the time being.

“Mama, I’m leaving today,” Donna insisted. “I’m going back to a career that I love and a city I adore, and it is so important that you hear what I have to say before I’m gone.”

“Gone?” Terry questioned. “Are you planning to never come back?”

Donna took a sharp breath through her nose and let it out slowly as she held her hands in front of her and absentmindedly picked at her left thumbnail. The movement drew her mother’s gaze.

“Are you back at that?” Terry questioned, disappointment and disapproval apparent in every aspect of her being. “I thought you’d quit with that nonsense years ago.”

Donna stuffed her hands into her coat pockets.

“I need you to have more respect for me,” Donna blurted out, losing any sort of plan that she had outlined in her head.

“I’m sorry?”

“I know that I’ve disappointed you a lot over the years,” Donna continued, feeling her lungs in her throat. “And through it all you always had Isa. She was perfect, and I know that at least we can always agree on that, but I will never be her, and I need you to find it in yourself to love me anyway.”

There was a beat of heavy quiet in the kitchen when Donna finished speaking, and she felt herself stop breathing.

“Donna,” Alan said from the doorway, forcing her to turn to look at him. “Of course we love you.”

“ Like me then,” Donna said, feeling the beginnings of tears in her throat. She wondered if she would ever stop crying at the drop of a hat, or if that was just a new personality trait she was going to have to tolerate. “ Accept me.”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re getting at,” Terry said with a huff, standing from her spot at the kitchen table and moving towards the sink.

Donna’s blood boiled while she watched her mother begin to wash dishes without even offering her a glance.

“Of course not,” she said softly, and then, with just a little more confidence: “I have a plane to catch.”

“Have a safe flight, dear,” Terry said over her shoulder.

Donna pushed past her father and across the living room with her hands still deep in her pockets.

“Donna…” he began.

“I’ll call you when I get home,” she said, one hand already on the door knob.

“Okay,” he nodded and she met his gaze briefly, saw the slightest bit of understanding mixed in with a cowardice she recognized all too well.

She walked out.

Josh watched her closely as she climbed back into the car and buckled her seatbelt, all the while refusing to look at him and sniffling a little bit too much for it to be just from the cold.

“Are you--”

“Let’s go,” she cut him off before she would be forced to lie about her wellbeing. “We don’t wanna miss our flight.”

Josh took a deep breath.

He pulled away from the curb.

That night, when Donna was finally back at her apartment, she didn’t bother to unpack. She left her suitcase in the living room and kicked her shoes off by the door, thoroughly and utterly exhausted.

She trudged into her bedroom, shedding clothes as she went until she was in only the t-shirt she’d been wearing all day and her underwear.

She stared at the bed.

Two nights in a hotel had reminded her just what a proper mattress could do for a good night’s sleep after a week of restless nights on the couch.

Donna had become accustomed to having the television on while she slept, had found comfort in the glowing, flickering colors and the soft voices when her head was too full and needed a more intense white noise than just the fan in her bedroom. But she really wanted to tuck herself under the sheets and she really wanted to sleep through the night, so she put on her determined Donna hat, strode back into the living room and started unplugging her boxy television set.

It was heavy, and it took a significant amount of time to drag and push it along the carpet until it was positioned in the corner of her room. Donna left it on the floor, plugged all the necessary cords back in, albeit sloppily, and switched it on.

She was going to sleep, and she was going to be self-sufficient if it killed her.

For the first time in a week, she actually believed it might not.

___

Everything, strangely enough, went almost immediately back to a forced sort of normalcy.

Josh and Donna didn’t talk about the kiss, they didn’t talk about what it had felt like to sleep in the same bed; he went back to being her boss and she went back to being the jack-of-all-trades assistant he so desperately needed, because work at the White House ramped up once again, as it always did, and there was no time for personal dilemmas.

Nearly two weeks passed of that mutually self-prescribed regularity, and Josh watched as Donna found her footing again. They might not have discussed it, but she did seem to be sleeping better again, and at some point he stopped having to place food directly in front of her face to remind her that a lunch break was meant for eating.

But that didn’t mean that something still wasn’t just a little bit off.

Josh started mentally cataloging the differences, was able to separate some of Donna’s personality into distinct before and after boxes. For instance, she was quieter in the after and her moods were less predictable. The banter of before remained but with a little less fire behind it and a little bit more cautiousness.

She stopped asking for his help, which he figured fit into both boxes because her public, outward vulnerability had really only been there for the during.

But Josh still wanted to help, still wanted to offer himself up to her totally and completely and still wanted the honesty that she had let slip out in that hotel room to show its face again. He just wasn’t sure how to find it, wasn’t sure if she was ready for him to start looking.

“Josh Lyman,” he answered his phone as he walked back towards the White House from a meeting on the Hill.

“Joshua, I have a bone to pick with you.”

“Mom?” he questioned, feet stuttering slightly beneath him as he was caught off guard by the tone of his mother’s voice that meant he was about to get reprimanded.

“Who else would it be?” she scoffed.

“I dunno how I doubted you,” Josh teased. “The motherly love is so palpable.”

“Josh, I’m serious.”

“Okay, sorry. What’s wrong?” he asked, falling into a less joking place.

“Why didn’t you tell me about Donna’s sister?”

Josh’s breath caught in his throat for a brief moment, every logical excuse he could have brought to light suddenly fleeing to the farthest, darkest recesses of his mind.

“Oh,” he said dumbly.

“ Oh, is right,” she fired back.

“How did you find out?” he asked with a furrowed brow.

“Sam Seaborn mentioned it,” Rachel responded as though it was obvious.

“You talked to Sam?”

“I called to check in with him, yes.”

“Oh,” Josh said again, really a man of few words on that day and in that context.

“Josh, is she okay?” Rachel asked soberly.

“I…” he took a deep breath, stuffing his free hand deep into his coat pocket. “I think so.”

“You think so?”

“Yeah,” he shrugged to himself. “The first week was-- It was really hard. And then she just sort of zipped it all up and put it away somewhere and… And I think she’s okay but I can’t know for sure.”

“Well,” Rachel said with a quiet determination. “Find out for sure, would you?”

“Ma--”

“Don’t let her run away from this, Josh,” Rachel insisted. “That only makes it worse.”

“I know.” Of course he knew.

“You’ll talk to her?”

“I’ll try,” he sighed.

“I’m gonna hold you to that.”

___

He stopped calling her Donnatella.

Of course, she had asked him to do just that, had insisted upon it in some strange attempt to convince herself that… Well, of what she wasn’t entirely sure, but it should certainly do something to help ease their transition back from the comfort of a shared hotel bed to a boss-assistant dynamic.

It’s safe to say that she didn’t find that course of action completely effective.

Donna was restless and she was frustrated, wrapped up around herself with a picture of her sister silently judging her from the corner of her desk. Every time Donna walked into her boss’s office she wanted to wrap her arms around his neck and smash her face up against his, wanted to kiss him in the least romantic, least soft, least visually appealing way possible just so she could get close and hold him tight and feel him again.

It was distracting, to say the least, because not only that but she was also becoming more and more disenchanted with her job with every passing day.

She loved what she did, had loved it for years, but every time she wrote up dozens of notecards on a deep-dive into whatever subject Josh was concerned with that day, Donna found herself wanting more.

Maybe she wanted to write more or maybe she wanted to have more of a voice; maybe she was finding pieces of Isabel in the back of her mind and wanted to stride up to the principal’s office and say this is what needs to happen next .

No matter the cause, something was itching at her to take a step out of where she was and into something more.

Donna also knew she needed to get a handle on it-- on all of it-- because it had been a month and there was no way the world would continue to be patient with her indefinitely. It had already been too long and the simple understanding of Donna’s going through something had started to fade.

She couldn’t grieve forever, or at least couldn’t let people know she’d be grieving forever, and so maybe it was time to start talking about it. If Donna talked about it in a casual setting, with someone who understood, without her mother’s eyes on her and without trying to prove anything to anyone or feeling the urge to jump anybody’s bones, then maybe she could start taking steps forward.

Donna waited for Josh to leave for a meeting on the Hill to do what she knew she needed to do, not because she thought he would disapprove, but simply because it wasn’t a conversation she was quite ready to have with him yet.

The East Wing was a longer walk from her desk than she remembered.

“Donna?” Amy sat up straighter behind her desk to see the woman in question stood hesitantly in the doorway.

“Hi,” she said awkwardly. “Can I…?” she motioned into the room.

“Yeah, come in,” Amy shook herself out of her momentary shock and pointed to the chair across from her desk. “Sit down.”

“No, this won’t take long,” Donna shook her head and remained standing. “I just need to set up a meeting with you.”

“A meeting?” Amy questioned. “I didn’t think I’d done anything to piss the West Wing off this week,” she snorted. “What does Josh want?”

“It’s, um, not a meeting for Josh,” Donna fiddled with her hands in front of her bellybutton, picking at her nails anxiously. “It’s a meeting for me?”

“Oh,” Amy said softly.

“If you’re too busy...” Donna shook her head. “Josh just told me you might-- But it’s not a big deal.”

Amy looked down at the schedule on her desk briefly.

“You have any free time this afternoon?” she asked, looking back up to meet Donna’s gaze expectantly.

“Yeah,” Donna nodded with her eyebrows up by her hairline.

“How’s three o’clock?”

“Perfect.”

Amy gave her a small smile as she scribbled in the new appointment. “See you later, then.”

Donna just nodded before she turned around and walked back out the way she came. The path from the East Wing back to her desk passed too quickly for her to really consider what she was doing, and as she sat back down amongst her lists and her binders, she put it to the back of her mind.

She had some things to get off her chest, and maybe she was nervous about putting her trust in someone to whom she’d never been all that close, or maybe she was nervous about talking period.

But at the end of all of it, she did feel a little bit brave, because for the first time she was acknowledging that there was a future beyond her grief. If Donna had to stick around and keep living, she was going to really live, and nothing was going to stop her.

Not even her own head.

___

“Hey, you wanted to see me?” Josh stepped into the doorway of CJ’s office, one hand on the door frame and the other holding the strap of his backpack high up on his shoulder.

“Yeah,” CJ looked up from her work. “Close the door, would you?”

“Is something wrong?” he asked, but did as he was told before sitting down across from CJ at her desk.

“I want you to be aware that I did not have to do this for you,” CJ looked at him intently. “And I deserve to be acknowledged as a good friend.”

Josh snorted at her. “Okay.”

CJ just rolled her eyes at him and handed over a folder wordlessly. Josh looked at her curiously, but she just motioned for him to open it.

Articles.

Not many, none longer than a couple hundred words, but articles nonetheless.

“They’re mostly from gossip blogs,” CJ explained. “No reputable news sources care at all, but I didn’t want you to stumble upon this stuff and invariably start yelling at anyone in the near vicinity about it.”

“Star crossed-- Illicit-- Lyman’s Liasion?” he got louder with every piece of scanned-over gossip that he read. “Claudia!”

“Which is why we closed the door,” she deadpanned, more to herself than to Josh.

“People can’t write this-- this sort of-- garbage!”

“Joshua, my dear, they can write whatever they want,” CJ said, trying to placate him. “But no one is taking any of this seriously because there’s not anything to corroborate it.”

“If Donna sees even a single one of these, I’m gonna--”

“Listen to me!” CJ said with enough exasperation to shut him up. “No one actually believes you’re screwing your assistant. There aren’t any photographs, there aren’t any bribes, you’ve never shared a hotel room…” she trailed off when she noticed his reaction to that, eyes a little wider than usual and breaking eye contact immediately.

Josh really never had had much of a poker face, it’s why CJ had walked away with a significant chunk of the man’s money over years of Friday night card games.

“Joshua,” she said warningly.

“Yeah?” he looked up at her with faux innocence. His pulse was thrumming heavily under the thin skin of his wrists.

“There’s nothing for them to uncover, correct?” she asked slowly, and Josh couldn’t help but notice it was the voice she used when she already knew the answer to her question and she was not happy about it.

He hesitated, chewed on his own tongue for a moment, opened his mouth to speak and closed it again.

“Josh!” she slapped a hand down on her desk and leaned forward with wild eyes.

“Nothing illicit is going on!” he said hurriedly. “I swear , CJ-- I’m not-- We’re not--”

“Oh my god,” she groaned. “Of course this was the breaking point, of course.”

“There’s no breaking point!” he said with a sort of crazy-sounding laugh. “There is no point to break.”

“Tell me-- and I swear to god don’t even try to lie because I will be able to tell and I will end you,” CJ pointed an accusatory finger at him. “Did you and Donna do or say anything on your trip to Wisconsin that I should be made aware of?”

“Nothing happened,” Josh said on instinct, but CJ just gave him that ever-effective look of hers. “One-- Okay, one thing might have happened,” he said awkwardly. And then, when CJ raised her eyebrows: “Two things, max.”

CJ took a deep breath. “Okay,” she said evenly.

“We…” he was practically blushing now, he could feel it. “We briefly-- briefly, CJ-- Briefly kissed.”

“Briefly?” she raised her eyebrows at him with a hint of amusement and just how much he was floundering over the thing of it.

“That’s what I said,” he nodded. “Briefly.”

“I so badly want to quit my job so I can gush over this,” CJ said, unable to keep from grinning. “But I really need you to tell me point-blank what happened.”

Josh groaned, slid down in his chair and looked up at the ceiling.

“Rip the band-aid off, Josh,” CJ insisted, making him meet her gaze again indignantly.

“We kissed--”

“Briefly.”

“Yes,” he nodded. “And then we ate pizza, and watched the news, and went to sleep. That’s it.”

“Did you have sex?” she asked with a smirk. Josh was definitely blushing after that.

“No,” he said emphatically.

“But you stayed in the same hotel room?” CJ clarified.

“We slept in the same room,” Josh sighed. “But it’s fine because we booked two rooms.”

“Are you kidding me?!” CJ cried out. “Are you kidding me?!”

“What?!” Josh replied with equal indignation.

“That looks worse!”

“How could that possibly look worse?!” Josh matched her tone for tone, outrage for outrage.

“Because if you have two hotel rooms and choose not to use them,” CJ said slowly, as if trying to get a point across to a child. “It looks like you’re covering something up!”

Realization passed across Josh’s face and settled on his shoulders, because CJ was right, because of course CJ was right, because why on Earth did he ever doubt CJ’s rightness.

“Okay,” he said calmly, doing his best to bring the tone of the conversation back down. “But nothing actually happened, and nothing is going to happen, so there’s no reason for anyone to be looking that closely at anything.”

“ Nothing’s-gonna-happen my ass,” CJ muttered as she leaned back in her chair.

“It’s been weeks, CJ!” he exclaimed. “And there have been no further instances of-- Of-- Well--”

“I swear,” CJ muttered. “You are so good at your job, but sometimes you’re so emotionally inept that I don’t know what to do with you.”

“Thanks,” he deadpanned.

“Here’s what’s gonna happen,” CJ ignored his sarcasm. “The minute you so much as consider kissing Donna Moss again, you have to call me.”

“CJ--”

“You have to,” she insisted. “Not because I want to be all up in your business--”

“You do--”

“But because I don’t want Mary Marsh to go on television and crucify you,” CJ pushed on with raised eyebrows. “And I especially don’t want her to go after Donna, who has done nothing wrong and who has been through enough. Understand?”

Josh let out a heavy breath.

“Why do you think I told you this much to begin with?”

“ Nothing’s-gonna-happen my ass,” she shook her head, but not without a faint amusement, a touch of care and giddiness in her tone.

CJ needed to stop being quite so right all the time.

___

“I know this is kind of weird,” Donna said apologetically, settling back into one guest chair while Amy sat across from her in the other.

They had been talking for nearly an hour, a genuine and heartfelt conversation about the way grief feels and about the way one might cope with it long enough to get by on a day-to-day basis. Donna was almost surprised by the amount of actual good advice that Amy had passed along without judgment.

That was the thing that Donna was discovering about Amy, her blunt honesty was often framed as a flaw in politics, was unhealthy when used improperly in relationships, and didn’t always have a place in polite conversation. Despite all that, it was the bluntness itself that was helping Donna, because for the first time since Isabel died, someone wasn’t trying to sugarcoat it, wasn’t telling her how much they believed in her or how sorry they were.

Amy was telling her the simple truth, letting her know it would always hurt, and was giving her a roadmap on how to navigate the pain of it all.

“What, because I’m mortal enemies with your boss-slash-best friend?” Amy teased lightly.

“There is that,” Donna said with a small smile and a breath of a laugh. “But I really do appreciate you doing this.”

“I don’t talk about it very often,” Amy said with a mix of sincerity and ever-present humor. “My old shrink would be proud of this conversation, though.”

“Wanna call her up?” Donna motioned toward the phone. “I can tell her how well you’re doing.”

“You’re a bit of a smart ass, Donna Moss,” Amy chuckled.

“How do you think I’ve survived in the West Wing this long?” Donna fired back.

“Ah,” Amy nodded. “Touche.”

Donna let out a heavy breath, the anxiety that had been in her shoulders when she had arrived in that office dissipating and being replaced by a very specific sort of exhaustion.

“Y’know, everything I do now, I’m overcome with wanting to tell her about it,” she said as casually as you can say something like that. “Even something like this, I wanna call her up and talk about it and it’s the worst.”

“Yeah,” Amy sighed. “But there’s gonna come a day where you don’t think about her, and the moment you realize it… There’s no greater guilt you could feel than that.”

“Can’t wait,” Donna said bitterly, earning her a small grin from Amy.

“I really am glad you decided to talk to me, Donna,” Amy said sincerely.

“Yeah,” Donna nodded. “Me too.”

“You’re tougher than anyone gives you credit for,” Amy leaned back in her chair, studying Donna but in a purely curious way, no malice to it. “You’re gonna be okay.”

“I don’t know if you know this, Amy,” Donna grinned. “But you’re not the monster everyone makes you out to be.”

“Careful,” Amy smirked at her. “I’ve worked long and hard to fabricate that reputation in this town.”

“I know,” Donna laughed softly. “I’ve watched you.”

Amy grinned, clearly amused by the easy way they could talk about it all, from their grief to their less than smooth history, as if they’d been friends for years. Donna was a blunt woman who used her honesty to somehow make people feel more comfortable in her presence. Amy had no clue how she managed it, but damn if she didn’t admire it, hadn’t always admired it from afar.

“Look,” Amy leaned forward again into a proper pitching stance. “This might not be the right time to bring this up, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot. I like the way you do things, Donna Moss.”

Donna’s brow furrowed slightly and she shook her head. “I don’t…?”

“The way you talk to people, the way you get impossible shit done and manage to make people like you more along the way,” Amy explained. “You’ve been Josh’s trump card for years, and I think you deserve some credit for that.”

“Thank you,” Donna said with an air of surprise but pride swelling in her chest. She knew that she was valuable, but she wasn’t entirely used to having her strengths laid out in a row like that.

“I’ve been looking for a deputy,” Amy said quite simply.

“A deputy?”

“I think you’d be good for it,” Amy nodded.

“Amy…” Donna hesitated, a little bit from shock and a little bit from the sudden warm thumping in her chest. “I have a job, and Josh--”

“This isn’t about Josh,” she insisted. “I’m not trying to poach you to get back at him and I’m not trying to use you to get in his head.”

Something about the way she said it made Donna genuinely believe her, but the hesitance was still there.

“I’m honored,” Donna said sincerely. “But I’m an assistant. I don’t think that I’m qualified--”

“Donna,” Amy cut her off. “You have been more than an assistant since the moment you got hired on the Bartlet campaign. Josh is gonna need two people to fill in half of the job you’ve been doing for him all this time, and if that isn’t proof enough that you should be doing more…” she shrugged as though it was obvious.

“I don’t know what to say,” Donna said with a nervous smile.

“Say you’ll think about it,” Amy suggested casually.

“I should talk to Josh,” Donna nodded.

“That’s another thing-- and I don’t really want to get into this,” Amy laughed softly. “But there are certain avenues you can’t explore until you no longer work for Josh Lyman.”

Donna blushed outright, cheeks flushed and chest burning. She couldn’t pretend that she hadn’t considered it, more and more through the years, more and more since their trip to Wisconsin and the kiss that still seared her lips every time she so much as thought about it.

“Think about it,” Amy said simply, standing from her chair and moving to open the door for Donna.

“Of course,” Donna replied, following her quickly so as to not burst whatever surreal sort of bubble she’d found herself in.

She had made up her mind by the time she got back to her desk.

___

Josh was working late that night, which wouldn’t have been out of the ordinary except for the fact that when he told Donna to head home, she turned him down on three occasions.

She sat out there, at her desk, fussing around with something or other while Josh spoke with Toby about this or that or the other thing in his office, the clock ticking slowly towards midnight.

It wasn’t until Toby stepped out to grab something from his own office that Donna appeared in the doorway, arms crossed over her chest as if preparing to defend herself before Josh had even started to say anything.

“Okay,” Josh said with a hint of amusement in his voice. “I’m gonna say it one more time because you seem to have not heard it the first three times: You can go home.”

“I heard you,” she said with a small nod.

“Because I don’t need you here for this stuff with Toby,” Josh continued unperturbed. “But if you’re gonna be around, I can definitely find something for you to do.”

“Josh--”

“I mean, for one, I’m gonna need some bullet points on that new thing they’re trying to hang on the budget--”

“I need to talk to you about something--”

“Or you could reorganize the education binder for me--”

“Would you please--”

“I know, I know, I shouldn’t have taken any pages out in the first place, but hear me out when I say--”

“Josh, I need you to listen to me,” she said, cutting him off with a strong and decisive tone to her voice.

The look he gave her was one of anxious uncertainty, because he knew something big was coming but hadn’t been able to figure out what. His reasoning for vamping like that almost always had to do with stalling until he could puzzle something out, and that night was no exception.

“Okay,” he replied quietly.

“I got a job offer,” Donna said with all of her energy going into keeping her voice steady. She knew that if this was going to go even remotely smoothly, that Josh needed to see her standing on solid ground, needed to know that she wasn’t grasping at straws and that this was actually something she wanted.

“A job offer,” he repeated, not a question but an attempt to absorb her words.

“I think I’m going to take it,” she nodded.

“You want to leave?” he asked, a sharpness in his voice that Donna had expected but pissed her off all the same.

“Please don’t frame it like that,” she said softly, stepping fully into the office.

They were both grateful that the bullpen was empty.

“How do you want me to frame it?” Josh asked incredulously. “Are you giving me your two weeks notice or will you be gone by the time I get here tomorrow?”

“Do you see me holding a letter of resignation?” Donna threw her empty hands up in the air as if to demonstrate their emptiness. “I’m trying to have a conversation with you about this.”

“Where’s the job?” Josh crossed his arms over his chest and walked to the other side of his desk, leaning back against it in just about the most defensive posture he could manage.

“I have learned so much working for you, and I am so grateful for all you have done for me,” she pushed forward, ignoring his question. “But we knew I was going to outgrow this position eventually.”

“Donna--”

“And then after Isabel, I just-- I just don’t have it in me to hold back anymore,” she insisted. “I know that I can do more than this.”

He studied her for a beat.

“Why are you avoiding telling me where you want to work?” His face was unreadable as he asked, a perfect mask for a man in search of answers.

Donna took a deep breath. “I’ve been offered the position of Deputy Chief of Staff to the First Lady.”

Josh expelled a breath of a dry laugh.

“Amy,” he nodded to himself. “You want to go work for Amy.”

“I want to go work for the First Lady,” Donna said emphatically. “A woman for whom I have a great deal of admiration and respect.”

Josh softened just enough to meet her gaze. “Is this reactionary?”

“Yes,” she said simply. “But I don’t see why that’s a problem.”

“It’s Amy!”

“Don’t look at me with that face like I’m supposed to know what that means,” Donna crossed her arms over her chest with a determined sort of scowl.

“She’s my ex-girlfriend,” Josh said, practically whining in his own loud-mouthed way.

“I’m aware.”

“She’s gonna use you to get to me and get what she wants!” Josh cried.

Donna clenched her jaw.

“Right,” she nodded tersely. “Because that’s the only reason that she might want to hire me.”

“I didn’t mean--”

“I know what you meant,” she fired back without letting him even begin to backpedal.

“Donna, you would be incredible in that job,” Josh insisted. “But Amy Gardner wouldn’t be using you to your full potential.”

“Oh my god,” Donna laughed bitterly. “Would you hop off your elitist pedestal for one minute, Josh?”

“What are you--”

“This isn’t about you!” she exclaimed in an act of matching his decibel and his mood all in one fell swoop. “This isn’t about Amy, and this isn’t about your inability to get past your stunted emotional capacity and see anyone that has ever wronged you as anything other than pure evil!”

Josh felt his heart slow down, because Donna Moss was yelling at him. Donna Moss had been angry with him before, Donna Moss had been cold with him before, Donna Moss had pitted fights against him before, but Donna Moss didn’t yell at him, especially in his office.

He forgot how to speak.

“God, have you ever even stopped to think about what everything looks like from her side of it?” Donna continued, barely taking a breath. “Have you ever stopped to consider that doing this sort of job is hard enough without everyone automatically assuming you’re less competent if you’re wearing a skirt? Have you ever considered that any sort of passion is automatically construed as bitchiness and have you ever considered what extended exposure to an environment like that might do to a person’s social skills?”

Josh hesitated, but she was pausing and clearly looking for him to give her an actual answer.

“No,” he said quietly.

“No,” she agreed. “Amy has made a lot of mistakes, I don’t even always like Amy, but look at what you’ve messed up, and what Toby has messed up, and what every man in this administration has messed up and notice that we aren’t still burning them at the stake for it. Please.”

They were silent for a beat, because Josh could feel that she wasn’t finished and Donna was starting to come back to rational thought after her outburst.

“I could be good at this, Josh,” she pled, and then, when he looked down at the floor instead of responding, when he refused to acknowledge her wants and needs: “Whatever.”

She was on her way out of the door before he could begin to formulate a response, passing a startled Toby in the doorway and ignoring Josh’s faint call out to her as she returned to her desk, returned to her work.

“Josh?” Toby asked hesitantly, watching him take a deep breath in some attempt to gather himself.

“Leo has the numbers?” Josh asked in a huff of breath, righting himself and grabbing a file off the stack on his desk.

“Yeah,” Toby nodded as Josh strode past him.

It was moments like that in which Josh was grateful for Toby’s discretion, because Donna wasn’t at her desk when he walked past and his heart was in his throat and he thought he might end up vomiting or punching a wall before his next meeting was over.

Josh had lost all of his words right at the wrong moment, and for that he was sure he was going to suffer. Then again, he genuinely wasn’t sure whether the idea of Donna working for Amy actually bothered him or if he was just so terrified of what came-- or didn’t come-- next for them after her resignation that he’d fallen into old but familiar patterns of self sabotage.

He really wasn’t sure.

Chapter Text

The next morning, Donna came into work late so she could get a manicure.

She was frustrated and hadn’t slept and her cuticles were all sorts of torn up around nails that had never been shorter, so she took the morning off. Donna knew Josh well enough to know that he would spend the morning avoiding her anyway, so she didn’t feel too guilty about the choice.

The woman who painted her nails commented more than once on the state of them, making offhand comments about cuticle oil and stressful week? It took just about everything Donna had not to bite her head off right there in the salon.

She was frustrated at Josh for not hearing her out, that was obvious enough, but more than that Donna was mad at herself. There had a been a moment, in between her meeting with Amy and talking to Josh, when she had really believed that a new job-- a promotion-- may be the answer to all of her problems.

It was stupid, she was realizing, to think that one month and a new title could put her back together again and make her forget the missing piece still raw in her chest. It was stupid to think she could ever actually pull it off.

And so she was upset and she wished she could take the whole conversation back, but at least her nails were pink and there was a new barrier between them and her ability to tear them to shreds.

Later, as she was walking into the White House, she kept her gaze down in some attempt to avoid any level of conversation or social interaction that might include a question as to why she was late. Donna was never late to work, had only missed directly following Isabel’s death, and did not in any way, shape, or form want to explain her abnormal behavior on that morning.

“Donna, hey,” Toby called out as she passed his office, effectively slowing her down as he began walking alongside her. Donna wondered what she had done wrong to bring on so much bad luck.

“Morning,” she responded simply.

“Where have you been all morning?” he asked inquisitively. Toby wasn’t looking at her, flipping through a file in his hands, but she felt like he was about to grill her all the same.

“I took the morning off,” she answered vaguely.

“Did you talk to Josh about that?”

“Did he say something to you about it?” Donna dodged the question and raised her eyebrows and got shot a curious look from Toby in exchange.

“No,” he said cautiously. “He just runs around like a lost puppy when you’re not here.”

And that did it for her, that really pushed her over the edge as they approached her desk.

“God,” Donna scoffed in exasperation. “The man could survive without me taking his messages!”

Toby stopped walking, watching with intrigue and maybe a little bit of concern as she hung up her coat and dropped her bag on her desk with a huff.

She took a moment and stared at the pictures on her desk for a moment before letting her shoulders fall and release some of their tension.

“Toby,” she sighed, resting her hands on the back of her chair. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to snap at you.”

“You know he would never do anything to intentionally hurt you, right?” Toby asked, voice quiet and discreet but a certain level of insistence to it. “Unintentionally, sure, but never on purpose.”

Donna bit at the inside of her cheek and averted her gaze towards the stack of folders and binders left on her desk from the night before.

“I gotta…” she motioned to the work in front of her and Toby just nodded, turned, and continued on his path in the other direction.

Donna collapsed into her seat and turned on her computer.

___

When Donna wasn’t at her desk when he arrived that morning, Josh almost expected to find her resignation letter on his desk.

He didn’t know where he had quite so suddenly gone wrong, from being the person she was clinging to for dear life to the one she wanted to leave in the dust, but it was consuming his brain during every high level, decidedly important meeting he went to that morning.

Of course, he wasn’t entirely stupid when it came to matters of adult communication contrary to outward appearances, he just figured he had no real use for those skills on a regular work day. Okay, so maybe he was a little stupid.

Josh was aware that Donna didn’t like being ordered around and he knew that she took pride in her independence. After all, this was the same woman who hadn’t stopped talking about it for weeks when she had finally saved up enough to no longer require a roommate.

He knew that all of those things contributed to the possibility of her wanting to move on to a new job, and he knew that she would be great at it-- genuinely great at it-- but maybe he just wasn’t ready to accept a world in which Donna wasn’t forced to spend time with him.

Maybe part of him was afraid that her job was the only thing keeping her by his side, and maybe that insecurity was making him all the stupider.

He froze mid step as he walked back into the bullpen from a meeting with CJ, because Donna had finally arrived and was hard at work at her desk. Josh swallowed thickly and then continued moving forward, playing at some faux casualness that he had never quite mastered.

“Hey,” he said awkwardly, as he came to a stop next to the glass wall of her cubicle.

“You need something?” she asked without looking up.

“Uh-- I-- Nope,” he floundered, but didn’t move to leave.

“Do you know what you want for lunch?” she continued with stilted formality that he really didn’t recognize.

“I’ll just grab something in the mess,” he responded.

“Fine,” she said, still refusing to so much as send a glance in his direction. Josh couldn’t help but think about how any other day she would be bothering him more about it, how she would insist that he not simply forget because she wasn’t there to put food in front of him.

“Donna…” he began uncertainly and finally, finally she looked up.

Josh thought maybe he should have let her keep ignoring him with the way her eyes were full of frustrated disdain.

“I’ll have the Michaels stats ready in a few minutes,” she said. “You don’t have to supervise.”

Josh’s jaw locked around any number of things he could have said, and instead he just let out a simple, terse:

“Right.”

He shut the door to his office behind him.

___

“Mama, I paid for the catering already,” Donna said quietly into her phone, counting on the bustle of the bullpen to drown her out from any prying ears.

“We got a bill from the funeral home, Donna,” Terry huffed.

“I know, I’m sorry, I told them to send it to me and they must have gotten the addresses mixed up,” Donna continued. She was slouched over the paperwork on her desk and pinching the bridge of her nose, just trying to maintain her composure.

“You know how difficult this has been for your father and I,” Terry said, clearly perturbed. “And you promised to handle this one thing, for us Donna. One thing and you can’t even keep that straight.”

“I’m calling them later today,” Donna went to chew on the side of her thumb but stopped when she saw the nail polish there. Instead, she wrapped a chunk of hair around her first two fingers and pulled it tight at the root right by the nape of her neck. “I’ll get it all sorted out and they won’t bother you again, okay?”

“They shouldn’t have been bothering us in the first place,” Terry reprimanded. “I just wish you could take our feelings into account with all of this, Donna.”

The piece of sanity inside of Donna’s head that was keeping her calm immediately snapped at that, turning her vision red.

“Jesus Christ, Mom, I’m paying for an entire funeral on a government salary, so I’m sorry if one of the payments was late,” Donna snarked.

“Don’t use that tone with me, young lady,” Terry snapped right back and Donna took in a sharp breath through her nose.

“I’m sorry,” she send tersely, but her mother just hummed discontentedly. “Mom, I have to get back to work--”

“Of course you do.”

“But I’ll call once I get this all sorted out,” Donna continued, trying not to let the interruption make her stumble.

“I would hope so,” Terry sighed.

“I will, Mama,” Donna insisted. “I promise.”

“I know you’re busy,” Terry said. “But that doesn’t mean you get to stop calling home.”

“I’ll call,” Donna repeated. “I love you, Mama. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Okay.”

Donna hung up the phone and just sat there looking at it for a beat, because just a few days earlier and a conversation like that with her mother would have been aggravating, would have made her feel frustrated and tense and in need of a shower, but on that day it was different.

On that day it made her feel lonely, because for a moment she felt like she had no one to turn to. For a moment she was standing out amongst the wreckage all alone, wading hip deep in the mess of it all, and she didn’t even have a hand to hold.

Where the feeling could have softened her, made her want to reach out and fix the complicated entanglement she had fallen into with Josh, it instead made her just that much more desperate for the day to be over so she could go home.

It just made her want to run.

___

Josh eventually did go down to the mess for lunch.

He waited until the bulk of the rush was over, bought himself a sandwich and a side of fries, and sat himself down at a small table as far away from other people as he could get. It hadn’t been a bad day, after all, he’d successfully flipped multiple votes in their favor and solved an issue he’d been struggling with for nearly a week.

It hadn’t been a good day either.

Josh was the kind of man who wore his mood on his face, right there in his eyes for anyone that bothered to look, and thus everyone had pretty much been staying out of his way all day. It was easy to tell when he was frustrated or pissed off and so it wasn’t really any sort of surprise that his coworkers would be extra accommodating.

All of them except Donna of course. Donna, who had fallen into a parody of professionalism that lacked any of her usual fearless mockery. That alone was enough to make Josh sulk while he ate his lunch alone in the mess with a file open next to him that he wasn’t actually reading but hoped would keep anyone from bothering him.

If only that strategy worked.

“Little late to be having lunch.”

Josh didn’t look up when he heard Amy’s voice, didn’t grant her his gaze as she slid into the seat across from him. You barely would have known he noticed her at all had it not been for the slight tightening of his jaw.

“ You’re down here,” Josh pointed out.

“Just looking for you,” she responded casually.

He shot her a look. “Amy--”

“Are you aware that you’re an idiot,” Amy cocked her head to the side mockingly. “Or are you still in the dark on that particular piece of information?”

“I’m aware that you think I’m an idiot,” Josh fired back as he set down his water bottle and raised his eyebrows at her.

“Good,” she smirked at him. “I’m glad.”

He rolled his eyes and picked up a fry, using it to push the other fries around his plate absentmindedly.

“What do you want, Amy?” he cut straight to the chase, and felt more than saw her lean back in her chair: cocky.

“Oh, I think you know.”

He shot her a look.

“Could you, for once in your life, talk like a person instead of a snarky, cryptic fortune cookie?” he accused with a humorless laugh. If there was one thing he wasn’t in the mood for on that day, it was Amy showing up to somehow make an even bigger mess of an already messy situation.

“Calm down, J,” she said with dismissive bluntness. “I’m here to help you.”

He snorted at that. “You’re here to help you.”

Amy presented him with a familiar smile, the one that she used when she knew she had been caught but didn’t really care because she also knew that everything was going to work out in her favor.

“Yeah,” she shrugged. “Me and Donna Moss.”

“Donna doesn’t need you making major career decisions for her,” Josh said in a voice that might have been menacing to someone who wasn’t Amy.

“See, you’re getting us confused,” Amy motioned between the two of them and leaned forward with her elbows on the table. “I’m offering her an opportunity for advancement. You’re the one making decisions for her.”

“You don’t get to play with Donna just to get back at me,” Josh fired back. “And you don’t get to hire her out of pity because her sister died. You don’t get to treat her like that, Amy.”

Amy gaped at him, an actual expression of stunned curiosity on her face.

“Do you doubt her that much?” Amy asked, accusatory. “Or are you really that big of a coward?”

“Coward?” Josh’s pitch rose in tandem with his eyebrows.

“You are so afraid of losing her that you’re willing to push her away all on your own,” Amy said simply. “You don’t even need my help with that, you’re well on your way.”

“What did she tell you?” Josh asked, all the more on edge at the mere consideration that Donna had started confiding in Amy instead of him.

“She didn’t snitch on you, Josh,” Amy said with a laugh. “You really don’t know her if you think she’d do that. But I do happen to know you pretty well, so I was able to read between the lines.”

“It’s been a month,” Josh insisted, not actively trying to change the direction of the conversation but accomplishing it nonetheless. “She’s only had a month.”

“I didn’t come up with this out of nowhere,” Amy pressed on. “I was going to offer this job to her before Isabel died, but then I waited until Donna had her feet back under her. You’re not the only one in this building who has any understanding of grief, Joshua.”

“She needs longer!” he exclaimed more in tone than in volume for once.

“How long?” Amy challenged.

“Until she’s-- I don’t know, until she’s back to normal?” he was stumbling over his words, not quite believing them even as they flew from his mouth. That was often where he got into trouble, actually, when his mouth moved faster than his brain.

“Back to normal?” Amy scoffed. “She was someone’s sister and now she isn’t! She’s not going back to who she was before.”

“She’s stronger than you think she is,” he said defensively.

“I’m not saying she’s not strong,” Amy continued. “She’s incredibly strong, and that’s exactly why she’s changing. Because she’s learning how to be this new version of herself and she’s learning how not to let it eat her alive.”

Josh met her eyes when she said that, and for the first time, really started to see the pure humanity of Amy Gardner. Not only that, but he started to see exactly what Donna had been trying to explain to him the night before-- a woman who had good intentions and shitty communication skills to get them across.

“Josh,” Amy sighed. “You have to have faith in her. You have to have faith that she’ll come to you if she needs help and you have to have faith that she isn’t less than she was before this all happened.”

“I do have faith in her,” he said sincerely.

“Then why are you so afraid that she’s gonna leave you behind?” Amy asked frankly.

Josh stared at the food on his plate.

“Because I have faith in her,” he responded simply. “And I have faith that she’s gonna keep growing until one day she outgrows me.”

“I’ve got some news for you, J,” Amy looked at him contemplatively and gave him an almost melancholy smile.

“What’s that?”

She let out a breath of a disbelieving laugh. “I think maybe you’re growing too.”

It wasn’t until she said it that he really heard his own words, the overwhelming honesty to them, said out loud in the world to someone that existed outside of his own head. The fact of it grabbed him by his lungs and squeezed until he could feel them on the verge of bursting.

And then he took a breath.

“I fucked up,” he mumbled, mostly to himself but equally for Amy’s benefit. She deserved that much.

“Yeah,” Amy chuckled, pushing up out of her chair and made to leave. “But what else is new?”

She was gone before he could even begin to think of a response. His brain was too busy accepting that he was wrong and finding a way to make it right, after all.

___

By the end of the day, all Donna wanted to do was go home. She needed a strong drink or a scalding shower, maybe a bottle of nail polish remover to dunk both of her hands in up to the wrist.

She knew that it had been naive to think it would be a linear process, the grief, but that didn’t make it any less frustrating to find herself so easily pushed two steps back after weeks of pulling herself together.

Logically, she knew that it wasn’t entirely Josh’s fault, that she hadn’t given him a proper chance to talk through it and that she knew better than anyone that dropping sudden change in Josh’s lap never ended in anything but conflict between the two of them. Donna knew all of that, and yet, she found herself more annoyed with him than she could remember being in recent years.

At nine o’clock, she knocked on his door frame as she put on her coat.

“You need anything else?” she asked, more out of professionalism than an actual offer. “I’m heading out.”

“You’re leaving?” he looked up at her with those stupid eyes and she had to push down the urge to grin at him, to tease him, to hear him out.

“It’s nine o’clock,” she said in lieu of an answer.

“Would you mind hanging around for just a little longer,” he began hesitantly. “I wanted to talk to you about--”

“Josh, it’s been a long day,” Donna didn’t let him finish. “I’m going home. We can talk some other time.”

Not even tomorrow. She hadn’t even suggested they could talk when they inevitably saw each other the following morning, instead deciding to be as vague as possible, put off his milquetoast apology until she was in a place where she could blame all her mixed up feelings on someone else.

“Donna, please,” he stood up, closing a file that was on his desk.

“God, I’m not going anywhere,” she said with snippy exasperation. “I still work for you. You’ll see me tomorrow.”

And with that, she turned on her heel and walked down the hallway and out of the bullpen towards the exit. He didn’t try to stop her.

___

Josh had no idea what his next move was going to be, or maybe more accurately, what his next move should be.

It was rare that he and Donna had disagreements that lasted longer than twelve hours, and it was even rarer that Donna was the one giving the cold shoulder. Josh was used to being the petty one, he was used to taking the low road and bitching about something that didn’t concern him, but he wasn’t used to being fully aware of what he had done wrong or the immediate, all consuming desire to make it right.

He stayed in his office until nearly midnight, stewing his self pity in piles of paperwork and sifting through words in his head in search of the right ones.

Josh strode through empty hallways, past a maintenance worker with a vacuum, and into the front seat of his car as he reminded himself again and again and again to just make it right.

By the time he parked in front of Donna’s apartment, it had become a sort of mantra.

He knocked on her door before he could second guess himself.

The sounds of faint fumbling filtered through from inside of the apartment, followed by a clattering and the sound of a sink running before footsteps finally started making their way closer.

“It’s late,” Donna said when she opened the door and saw him standing there with his hands in his pockets. She was wearing pajama pants that were at least two sizes two big and rolled up three times at the waist with an oversized Wisconsin Dells t-shirt with sleeves hanging halfway down her biceps. Her hair was in a messy ponytail and the sink was still running in the kitchen.

“I know,” Josh responded, suddenly at a loss for words. “I’m sorry.”

“If you needed me to do something you could’ve just called,” she said without opening the door wider than necessary or giving him a peek into her apartment.

“I didn’t-- Donna, I wanted to--”

“Whatever it is, would you just say it?”

“I talked to Amy today.”

Donna looked at him blankly, as if trying to determine his motives just by studying the color of his eyes, the flush of his cheeks, and the specific state of mussed that his hair was in that night.

She didn’t say anything, but she sighed softly, turned around, and walked back into her apartment, so Josh accepted it as the closest thing to an invitation he was going to get and followed.

It was a mess.

Not a hoarder-level disaster mess, but a mess nonetheless, and it made Josh wonder if she was doing worse again, if it was getting harder for her again despite appearances that she’d been improving. The thought of it, that steep backslide she might have stumbled into, made his chest ache as his hands itched to help her just fold a blanket at the very least.

“Where’s your TV?” Josh asked instead, still stood in the living room while Donna walked back into the kitchen and started washing a small stack of dirty dishes.

“In my bedroom,” she called out over the sound of the water.

“You moved it?” he asked in obvious confusion, pulling his gaze away from the messy stack of newspapers on the coffee table that were usually so well organized. Donna loved to read the paper, respected it with everything she had, and kept them in neat stacks right up until it was time to recycle them.

“Yeah,” she replied. Josh stood in the doorway to the kitchen, just watching her.

“That thing’s massive,” he said in disbelief.

“Maybe I’m stronger than you think I am,” she deadpanned.

Both of them caught the double meaning, even if it hadn’t been entirely intentional. Donna glanced at Josh over her shoulder briefly, sighed, and shut off the faucet. She leaned back against the counter and dried her hands on a nearby dishrag.

“Donna, I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

“For what?” she asked, seeking more for him to actually talk about it than anything because, of course, she already knew.

“Yesterday, I didn’t mean to…” Josh shook his head in some attempt to straighten out his thoughts. “It’s just that Amy and I have a weird history.”

“And I’m not doing this to try and make things weirder,” Donna insisted. “I didn’t think hmm, what’s the best way to get under Josh’s skin , and I wasn’t trying to put you in an uncomfortable position, and for you to accuse me of--”

“You didn’t,” he sighed. “I’m the one that was making it uncomfortable.”

Donna looked down at her bare feet and bit her lip briefly, both afraid of and counting on the possibility that they might fall into disarray once again at the drop of a hat. The tile was cold against her toes and the dishrag in between her fingers was fraying on the edges.

“You brought up some stuff that I,” Josh continued. “That I hadn’t considered.”

“Yeah,” she said softly.

“I’m glad you did,” he responded, and when she looked up he was taking her in with an earnest intention in his gaze.

“Really?” she asked in disbelief.

“How are you supposed to get better if no one points out the bad in you, right?” he shrugged.

Her heart was physically aching with the way he looked so disappointed in himself, because that had never been her intention. Donna had needed to be angry with someone, Donna had needed someone to blame everything on, and that was for her and her only. It shouldn’t have ever affected his psyche.

“You’re not bad, don’t call yourself--”

“Stop trying to apologize,” he cut her off with a quiet laugh. “I’m the one that tried to guilt you into staying when I had no grounds or right to.”

“I’d appreciate it if you stopped cutting me off, Joshua,” she said, voice low and even.

He inhaled sharply through his nose, understanding passing across his face.

“I’m sorry.”

Donna chewed on her words for a beat, full to the brim with conflict and confusion and trying to figure out the best way to push it out into the world.

“You know, I’m not sure you understand how much your opinion influences me,” she eventually said. “How much your validation or disapproval can affect my personal outlook on my accomplishments.”

“I… I don’t…”

“I hate that about myself too,” she said with a chuckle as she studied her fingers where they pulled strings from her rag. “I hate how much I care about what you think of me because then we have conversations like yesterday and suddenly I have to take a step back and actively remind myself that I am good enough for that job. I am, Josh, no matter what you think, but that doesn’t make it any less frustrating to hear my best friend tell me I’m not!”

Josh looked up at the ceiling briefly before meeting her gaze again, opening and closing his mouth repetitively as if stunned into silence.

Donna took a deep breath. “I would be good at this, Josh.”

“I know that,” he nodded. “And nothing I said had anything to do with whether you’re good enough because you are, but Donna it’s-- It’s just still so soon.”

“And I know that,” she responded fervently.

“Are you ready to-- I mean if you stay you have-- You have--”

“You?” Donna cut him off, tossed the dish towel aside, and crossed her arms over her chest as if trying to protect herself from the unpredictable direction the entire conversation was going.

“A safety net,” he corrected her.

“Josh,” she took a step closer to him, could feel it all start to sink in. “You can’t be my safety net and my boss at the same time.”

“What have we been doing then?” His eyes were searching hers and he dropped his arms so they were no longer crossed defensively over his chest. Something in his already honest face had opened up to her, and Donna briefly wondered how anyone had ever not understood exactly what was going on inside his head.

“You know it’s not sustainable,” Donna shrugged, reaching a hand up to cup his jaw gently and run a thumb over his cheekbone, simply unable to resist. “But I go work in the East Wing and I get to take on a bigger job, I get that sense of forward motion, I get to do something new,” she leaned forward and pressed a slow, chaste kiss to the corner of his mouth. “And we get to be each other’s safety nets.”

She lowered her hand and took a small step back to study Josh’s face, bafflement and hope written all over his countenance like a lovesick puppy. She smiled.

“You’re sure about this?” he asked, and she knew he meant about more than just the career move.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever be sure about anything again,” she chuckled. “But this feels right to me.”

“Yeah,” he nodded. “It... it does.”

“I don’t want you to feel like I’m abandoning you,” she added.

“I don’t--”

“Josh,” she deadpanned.

“Yeah,” he sighed.

“I’m not moving to the East Wing tomorrow,” she continued. “Amy knows that if I accept I’ll need a little bit of time to train someone new, but I want this, Josh, and I refuse to believe I have unlimited time for anything anymore.”

Josh gave her a once over, and she could feel him contemplating the situation, determining whether or not she was in a place stable enough to be making such a major decision, not that he wouldn’t take her back the moment she asked in a scenario where it all went wrong.

He let out a breath.

“Start putting together a list of names,” Josh said, adjusting his posture both physically and conversationally to fill the shoes of Deputy Chief of Staff once more, flipping back from personal into professional. “We’ll start interviewing people tomorrow.”

Donna grinned as he took a few steps backwards out of the kitchen and towards the front door.

“Yeah?” she looked at him questioningly and he finally, finally smiled at her.

“Yeah,” he replied certainly. She followed him towards the door.

“Okay then,” she nodded, opening the door for him. “On it, Boss.”

He paused in the doorway, gripping his backpack at the top of his shoulder and looking at her like she was the only thing in the world that could save him. From what, she wasn’t sure, but he was looking at her like she was his lifeline.

“Donna?” he breathed. She tilted her head and looked at him expectantly. “I’m really proud of you.”

She preened under the validation, cheeks warming to a glowing pink.

“You should be,” she said, pushing her shoulders back and her chin up and pushing gently at his shoulder. “I’m very impressive.”

She could hear Josh laugh brightly as she closed the door behind him.

She watched him walk down the hallway through the peephole.

___

Donna had a list of candidates for her job on Josh’s desk by the end of the following day.

One day after that, they started holding interviews and the news of Donna’s promotion started to infiltrate every level of the White House. Josh figured about ninety percent of the staff heard directly from the mouth of Margaret the way she was screaming Donna’s praises from the tops of her lungs all across the beltway.

Every time Josh went out to Donna’s desk, someone new was offering congratulations and more than a few stopped by to ask him how he was dealing with it. He wasn’t sure why no one believed him when he said he was thrilled.

Maybe it had something to do with the fact that none of them understood what Donna not working for him anymore actually translated to in Josh speak. He was okay with that for the moment.

After all, CJ did know, and she had sat him down to give him a severe talking-to about not screwing up, so he didn’t really want to know what Leo or-- god forbid-- Margaret would have to say to him.

At the end of the day, maybe he didn’t care because Donna was so ecstatic. When she plopped down in a chair behind his desk for their first interview, she was absolutely beaming and Josh realized just how much he had missed that toothy, manic sort of grin.

The selection of candidates was less than what Josh would call ideal, however. There were a handful of applicants whom he had written off immediately, simply because of how intimidated they were the moment they walked into the office, a few he couldn’t stand because the sound of their voice was grating, and one that was so unamused by all of his jokes that it genuinely took his ego down a peg.

Even Donna started getting frustrated as the task wore on, and Josh could see her losing patience in all the people she deemed incompetent to handle him-- incapable of taking care of him. When one young man started to bring up Rosslyn, Donna had him by the ear and was dragging him out of the room before he could even finish his sentence, mumbling something about how that is the Deputy Chief of Staff to the President of the United States and you’ll have a little more respect for him than a gossip columnist.

At the very least, he got to discover that Donna’s fire was back in full force, if not somehow stronger than it had been before. As much as he was anxious about the day she would inevitably move to the other side of the building, he was equally excited. Donna’s own enthusiasm about the step was starting to rub off on him, and after four days of scattered interviews, it seemed they had finally found the woman for the job.

Molly Maxwell was twenty-nine years old, a genuine college graduate, organized and funny and unwilling to take any shit.

Donna was enamored with her. Josh thought maybe he could tolerate her.

They were learning how to compromise.

___

Ultimately, they made the final decision over dinner. Donna knew that Josh was inviting himself over to her house out of some lingering hint of a hero complex he carried on his shoulders, but she couldn’t find it in herself to even begin to be peeved by it.

They ordered in pizza (Donna’s half without mushrooms) and ate off of plates from the drying rack; Josh helped her do the dishes when they were finished eating, drying them and putting them all away in their proper places (even the ones that had been sitting in the sink for days on end, especially those ones).

Donna wanted to invite him to stay, to turn on the news and fall asleep in his lap like she had just a handful of weeks previously, but her television was on the floor in the middle of her bedroom and she had to stop taking advantage of Josh’s endless comfort at some point.

The end of the night was quickly coming upon them, however, as Donna slid the last of the silverware into its drawer, and she just wanted to say something.

Because Donna wanted to curl up with him and live inside a bubble with him and just be with him, but she knew that there was so much more to say before any of that could be possible. She needed to give him an out, and she may not have been sure about how to exactly go about doing that, but she figured if she just started somewhere that it would all come out the right way eventually.

Or at least that’s what she hoped.

“I haven’t been treating you fairly, Josh,” she said, as if it was a fact of life, as if she expected him to already know and to agree with her.

“What?” he balked, turning from where he was drying his hands on a dish towel to look at her, across the room and sliding a drawer closed by leaning backwards against it.

She took a deep breath. Maybe she should have thought the plan through a little bit more.

“Donna, what are you talking about?” he prompted.

“I feel like-- Well, ever since Isabel died-- I had this whole mental breakdown and I took advantage of your kindness when none of that was your job,” she expressed emphatically, but staring at her socked feet. “You got stuck listening to me when I still have both my parents, when I’ve never been in mortal danger because a couple of teenage Nazis decided to take their shot, when I have been nothing but lucky for my entire life,” she shrugged. “I just want you to know that I realize I’ve been putting too much on you, and I’m gonna work on it moving forward.”

“I don’t understand where this is coming from,” Josh said softly.

She was being so sincere and he could see the genuine guilt that resided behind her eyes, and he couldn’t wrap his head around why. Ironic of course, based on his own track record as the posterboy of guilt.

“You’re my boss,” she said: soft, simple.

“Donna--”

“You’re my boss, and you were practically living with me there for a while, and if anyone found out about Wisconsin…” she trailed off with a shake of her head. “I’m just sorry for putting you in that position just because I didn’t know how to handle everything like an adult.”

Josh had the sudden urge to leak a couple of things to the press, just for the hell of it, just so it could all be out on the table and they could stop running from it, just so Donna would stop looking at him with those big, soft eyes that told him everything he needed to know about why she had felt the need to clear the air on that night.

“I refuse to believe,” he began slowly. “That you would run away from something that hasn’t even started yet just because you’re afraid of what people might say.”

“I’m not running away from anything, Josh,” she sighed, running her hands over her face in frustration.

“Then I really don’t have any idea what we’re talking about,” Josh responded honestly.

“Because I’m not explaining myself well enough,” Donna said, wishing she could just broadcast what she was feeling to him rather than having to find the right words to express it.

“Donna, just…” he chewed on his words for a moment. “Just start from the beginning.”

She studied his face, could see that he wanted to understand despite being so lost in the dark of her directionless platitudes. Donna nodded.

“When we were in Madison,” she said, slower now, more methodically. “You were the one that pulled away. Josh-- I mean, we keep hinting at what’s going to happen when I move to the East Wing, but if you don’t actually-- If you’re worried about what people are going to say I want to nip it in the bud before we go any further.”

Josh gaped at her.

“Is that what you’re worried about?” he asked with a disbelieving expression. “That I’m going to be embarrassed by what people are going to say? Donna, you were drunk, I wasn’t going to--”

“I was tipsy, Joshua, not blackout drunk. Not to mention, once again, that you’re the one that stopped it.”

Josh let out a huff of breath and ran a hand over his face in blatant exasperation.

“Were you sober enough to recall that none of my reasons for stopping-- none of them,” Josh pressed. “Had to do with what people were gonna say? Has that thought crossed your mind at all?”

“Don’t talk to me like I’m stupid,” she said concisely. “Don’t talk to me like I’m someone else.”

“I wouldn’t be admitting to any of this, if I was talking to someone else!” Josh cried out, tossing his hands up into the air and letting them fall down hard against his thighs. “There are options for us, Donna. This isn’t simple but it’s also not impossible, and I know that the timing is bad and I have no qualms with waiting, but you won’t be working for me much longer and I don’t give a shit what people--”

“Josh, please--”

“And we can’t close the doors on this,” he said, pleading with her because he didn’t quite know what else to do. “We’ve waited too many years for us to both stumble into the courage and the honesty necessary just to take one step, and we’ve done that, so we can’t close the doors yet. We can’t.”

Donna took a deep breath, held it in her lungs a moment, and pushed it out slowly, breathing patience and awe out into the air around them. Josh could see her hesitance, but he could also see her feet shuffle slightly, as if she was about to take a step closer and thought better of it.

“Why’d you never try your hand at speech writing?” she asked simply, and it threw Josh a little bit off balance, sent a surprised bubble of a laugh up and out of his lungs. She smiled at him.

“I think maybe that’s not quite the kind of thing they’re looking for in the State of the Union,” he smiled right back.

Her face softened and she held both of her hands tight across her abdomen as if trying to keep all her pieces together.

“Josh,” she breathed, because he wasn’t taking the out and yet there was still more to say.

His heart sank.

“I know.”

“No,” she shook her head with a small laugh. “I think for once in your life you don’t know what I’m gonna say.”

“Tell me.”

She took a deep breath.

“I think what it comes down to is… I don’t know who I am right now,” she said, and Josh started to notice that her tone did not in fact, sound like that of a woman who was letting him down easily.

There was apology there and there was nervous energy, but there was also a great deal of heart.

“I don’t know who this Donna Moss is,” she continued, motioning vaguely to herself. “I don’t know who this woman is who can’t sleep without the television playing and picked up a middle-schooler’s nail biting habit; I don’t know my own trajectory anymore and I know I’m moving into a new era of my life but not how , and Josh,” she took a shaky breath and he could see tears brimming in her eyes as she spoke with insistence and passion.

“Yeah?” he prompted.

“Josh, I know where you fit in,” she said. “I have always known where you fit in, but everything is a brand new puzzle right now when I’d only just begun to figure out the rules of the last one, and I think I need to go at the pace it’s asking me to.”

And somehow, amidst all the convoluted imagery that was oh so very Donna, Josh understood. He understood what she meant and where she was headed and why she needed the things that she did. He understood her, and there might have been tears in his eyes too.

“Well,” he said clearing his throat. “Contrary to popular belief, I’m actually pretty good at moving slow.”

“Yeah?” she grinned at him.

“Oh, yeah,” he said with mock cockiness. “I’m a regular sloth.”

“I think we’re going to need to talk about this at some point, when I’m not your assistant anymore,” she said, and he had to remind his heart to calm down its initial reaction to the mere suggestion of change, because maybe this was the good kind. Maybe, for the first time in his life, everything could blow up and land someplace new and it would be good.

Maybe the new Donna and the new Josh, the post-Wisconsin versions of themselves who no longer had to grapple with a workplace power dynamic, were a little less stuck in their ways, and maybe that was okay.

“Whenever you’re ready,” he said certainly, with a level of steadiness that he didn’t quite feel yet but he sincerely believed was right around the corner.

When he saw the way that made her smile, he thought he just might wait a century if she asked.

Chapter Text

Donna wasn’t moving on.

Yes, she was getting a promotion, and yes she would no longer be working for Josh Lyman, but every time someone mentioned that they were happy to see her moving on she felt herself grimace.

Moving on indicated that she was leaving something behind, that she was brushing five years as a senior assistant in the White House under a particularly dusty bed next to an unfinished college degree and numerous failed relationships.

Donna resented the mere suggestion of such a thing.

Donna was not moving on. She was taking her experience as Josh Lyman’s assistant and she was putting it up on the highest shelf to keep it safe, right next to nearly-endless memories of being someone’s sister, and she was cherishing all of it with the utmost respect.

She was framing it and putting it in an organized scrapbook and keeping it safe for future perusal and she was most certainly, most definitely, quite definitively not moving on.

She was simply moving forward.

“Your job is to do what he needs,” Donna explained. “And that’s not always going to line up with what he wants. ”

“What do you mean?” Molly asked, pen poised above her steno pad and watching Donna with rapt attention.

“Okay, for example,” Donna leaned against the glass wall next to her desk in a position that was familiar to her from a very different perspective, and looked at Molly seated at her desk-- their desk-- a desk. “Sometime soon, he’s gonna ask you to schedule a meeting on the Hill at a time that will only give him ten minutes to get there because he’s convinced he can make it on time, when in fact, we know that the minute he walks into that building he’ll be held up by at least three congressmen and two senators trying to chew his ear off about something which will, without fail, make him ten minutes late.”

“So make him leave twenty minutes before a meeting on the Hill?” Molly asked, already making note of it on her list of do’s and don’ts that Donna had been explaining for the past three days.

“Exactly,” Donna nodded. “Josh is convinced everything is going to take half as much time as it actually will, except for press obligations which he will complain about and blow out of proportion for days until they’re over.”

“I don’t know how I’m gonna manage this without you,” Molly said quietly, shrinking slightly in her chair. “I’m barely keeping up as it is and you’re here to help with everything.”

“You have to remember, Molly,” Donna said with soft understanding. “You don’t have to keep up with anyone. You set the pace around here, you set the schedule, you set the organization and system and the tone.”

“I do?”

“Yeah,” Donna grinned. “And once you convince yourself of that, you’ll be able to convince Josh, and once he understands who’s in charge he’ll start to really trust you. From that point on you’re a team.”

“He doesn’t trust me yet?” Molly asked. Donna could feel her nervous energy and recognized it so thoroughly, was in fact feeling it herself as she prepared to gather her things and walk the endless distance to the other side of the building.

“Josh doesn’t trust many, and you’ve only known him for a week,” Donna shrugged. “But stay on top of everything and don’t let him push you around. That oughta do the trick.”

“Thank you, Donna,” Molly smiled at her. “I’m gonna try not to let you down.”

“You’re gonna be great,” Donna brushed her off. “I’ll let you keep getting settled, I need to talk to Josh before I leave,” she motioned towards his office, unable to avoid looking at how different her old desk already looked.

All of Donna’s things were in a box, ready to be carried over to the East Wing, and had instead been replaced by Molly’s own system. It was strange, to look at something she’d known so intimately for so many years and see it completely differently, but standing there, in that small cubicle, already felt like going back in time to Donna.

She let out a slow breath and walked to Josh’s door, knocked twice, and entered.

“Hey,” Josh looked up at her as she closed the door behind her.

“Hey,” she smiled back, leaning against the door as her heart pounded in her chest.

“What’s up?” he asked, and they both knew that he was perfectly aware of exactly what was up.

“It’s almost noon,” she said simply. Her stomach was filled with butterflies and there was nervous energy radiating off of even the farthest of her extremities in quantities previously unknown to her.

Josh glanced down at his watch with a furrowed brow.

“I’ve got 11:40,” he said in a teasing tone.

“Your watch sucks,” she said simply, but with more emotion than the comment deserved. Or maybe, just enough emotion so that Josh would know her departure was affecting her just as much as it was him. “It’s 11:52.”

“Maybe,” he shrugged noncommittally. And then, a little more serious, a little more heavy with the monumental nature of the quiet moment on a regular Wednesday afternoon: “You have everything ready to go?”

“Yes, Boss,” she cocked her head to the side, just taking in the sight of him-- her boss-- for a few more minutes.

“Molly feeling confident?” he asked.

“She’s gonna kick your ass,” Donna chuckled.

“Can’t wait,” he deadpanned without dropping the smile from his face. “Come here, I wanna give you something.”

Donna furrowed her brow at him. “What?”

“I got you something,” he laughed softly.

“You got me a present?” she brightened.

“I did,” he nodded at her. “Now, get over here,” he motioned for her to join him behind his desk and she complied with a small spring in her step.

“You didn’t have to get me a present, Boss,” she said innocently.

“Is there a reason you’ve called me Boss more in the past two days than in the past six years combined?” he looked up from where he was reaching under his desk with a curious expression on his face.

“Making the most of it before the expiration date,” she responded.

“Okay,” Josh laughed softly and finally straightened up and set a shopping bag down on his desk. “I didn’t have time to wrap it,” he said sheepishly. “But they put the tissue paper in it at the store so…”

“This is why I’m in charge of presents,” Donna teased.

“Only for five more minutes,” Josh fired right back. “Go ahead,” he motioned to the bag.

Donna looked at him, at the slightly nervous countenance gracing the planes of his cheeks and the hopeful earnestness in his eyes. He was beautiful.

The tissue paper was a little bit crumpled from having been stuffed under his desk for who knows how long, and Donna had to drop it on the floor to avoid disrupting the files open on Josh’s desk, but the minute she reached into the bag and saw her gift, none of it mattered.

“Josh,” she breathed, pulling a leather briefcase out and cradling it in both of her hands. It had a silver clasp holding it shut and it was black and soft and was probably the nicest accessory-- certainly the most thoughtful accessory-- that anyone had ever given her.

“I know I’m not great at fashion,” he floundered. “So there’s a gift receipt in there if you want to get a better one, and--”

“It’s beautiful,” she looked up at met his gaze so that he would know she was being serious.

“Yeah?” he let out a relieved breath.

“Yeah,” she nodded, tears threatening to spill out onto her cheeks. For once, Josh didn’t seem to care how emotional she was getting, maybe because he was right there with her.

“There’s um, if you look at the inside flap…” he trailed off awkwardly, helping Donna open it and look inside.

“Oh my god,” she said softly when she saw her name-- Donnatella Moss-- inscribed right there in the fabric. “Joshua,” she looked up at him.

“You like it?” he questioned uncertainly.

“Of course I do,” she said with a watery laugh. “Thank you, Josh. Really,” she insisted sincerely.

“Thank you,” he responded.

“What for?”

“Sticking around all these years,” Josh smiled softly at her and the butterflies fluttered a little bit harder against the lining of her stomach.

“I’m gonna miss you,” she said, feeling the watch on her wrist tick closer and closer to noon without having to even look at it.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said in a voice so quiet and loud and rough and smooth that Donna could feel it vibrating in the air between them.

“You know, I had this whole speech prepared,” she said with a wry smile. “But it didn’t feel very us-- the watery goodbye when I’m only really moving down the hall.”

“What would be more us?” he asked, cocking his head to the side with the beginnings of a smirk on his face.

“Well,” Donna said with mock seriousness. “Ideally there would be some sort of massive scene made in the bullpen. I’d obviously end up quitting very loudly--”

“Or I’d fire you,” he chimed in cheekily.

“Would you, though?” she teased with a grin.

“Maybe not,” he shrugged, and they both softened.

“Josh…” she breathed, not on the verge of tears but on the verge of something.

“Yeah?”

“You’ve changed my life,” she said simply, watching the color of his eyes deepen intently.

Josh scanned his eyes across her face, seemingly trying to capture every aspect of it as though he may never see it again.

“Ditto,” he said eventually, making Donna immediately laugh.

“What time is it?” she asked, grinning.

Josh didn’t say anything, just reached out and took the briefcase out of her hands so he could wrap his fingers around her left wrist and hold up her watch so they could both see it.

12:01

“You better get out of here,” he said, voice mixed up with a teasing sort of sincerity. “Don’t wanna be late to your first day of work.”

Donna nodded at him mutely, picked up her new briefcase, and moved towards the door. She turned to look at him with her hand on the knob.

“Dinner later?” she asked.

“You-- You wanna have dinner later?” his eyes went soft and his eyebrows shot upward.

“Josh,” she laughed at his reaction. “If you--”

“No, no, yeah,” he floundered. “Dinner. Let’s have dinner later.”

She smiled at him, the kind of smile she hadn’t felt herself use in months, the kind of smile that was looking forward to something rather than just trudging on through each moment as it came.

“Good.”

___

“I can keep the press at bay for now,” CJ said, addressing the senior staff meeting from a seat across from Leo’s desk. “But someone’s gonna have to talk to Republican leadership.”

“They don’t wanna hear it, CJ,” Toby mumbled.

“When has that ever stopped us before?” she fired back. “We need to get in front of this before--”

“It’s fine, I’ll do it,” Josh said from where he was leaning against the wall with his arms across his chest.

“Thank you,” CJ said with a pointed look to an indifferent Toby.

“I’ll just have Don--” Josh cut himself off with raised eyebrows without meeting the many eyes that were now trained on him. His eyes got wide at the realization that he was blanking momentarily at the name of his new assistant and he could feel CJ smirking at him for what felt like an eternity before: “Molly! Molly-- I’ll have Molly call and set up, you know, an appointment.”

“Your entire world is just shaking isn’t it?” CJ teased, clearly trying to hold back a laugh.

“Okay,” Josh rolled his eyes. “You know what, funny lady--”

“Are we done?” Leo cut him off, just exasperated enough to put them all back in their places. “Then get out of here,” he motioned for the door.

The three of them made to leave with a chorus of “Thank you, Leo,” but Josh was stopped in his tracks when Leo looked up once more.

“Josh, hang back a minute.”

“Leo, I…” Josh motioned over his shoulder towards the door.

“Sit down,” Leo deadpanned. Josh could have sworn he almost saw the man roll his eyes.

“Yeah,” Josh closed the door to the office behind his coworkers.

“So,” Leo started once Josh was seated across from him. “Donna left today?”

“She didn’t-- She didn’t leave,” Josh said. “She’s just, I mean, sort of in a new office.”

Leo raised his eyebrows at Josh in a way that was far too familiar to the younger man and always felt a little like getting told off by a teacher in grade school.

“She doesn’t work for you anymore though, right?” Leo questioned, slowly, again as if speaking to a child. “You understand that?”

“Yeah,” Josh squeaked defensively. “Yeah-- I-- Of course I do.”

“Josh,” Leo sighed, leaning back in his chair.

“Trust me, Leo,” Josh said. “I am well aware that Donna is no longer my assistant.”

Leo just shot him a look before shaking his head and putting his glasses on to read a file open on his desk, or at the very least pretend to.

“Are we gonna need to work around your office for a few days during the transition?” Leo asked. “Take a bit of the workload off until the new girl gets settled?”

“Donna spent all of last week showing her the ropes,” Josh insisted. “You don’t have to bench me just because I’ve got a regular assistant now instead of, you know, superwoman.”

Leo gave him a curious look which Josh couldn’t quite read.

“Okay,” he shrugged. “Just get your house in order, would you?”

“My office isn’t gonna fall apart, I promise,” Josh insisted.

“That’s good to know,” Leo deadpanned without looking up. “But I didn’t mean your office.”

A sense of realization overcame Josh and he couldn’t help the small smirk playing at the edges of his lips as he leaned back in his chair with an amused air to the cock of his head.

“Leo,” he began almost mockingly. “Are you trying to give me dating advice?”

Leo let out an exasperated huff. “I’m just trying to remind you how good at being stupid you are so you might avoid the idiocy this time around,” he said bluntly, but Josh just kept grinning. “Get out of my office.”

Josh nodded once in a conceding fashion, stood from his chair and moved towards the door.

“Leo?” he said with his hand on the doorknob.

“What now?”

“I’m not gonna screw this one up,” Josh said seriously.

Leo met his gaze with an understanding, supportive sort of expression. “Good,” he said simply. “Get back to work.”

“Yes, sir,” Josh said.

There was a little extra bounce to his step as he made his way back towards his office.

___

Donna had walls. And a door. And her very own window.

It wasn’t that she hadn’t expected to be given an office with her promotion, but she simply hadn’t considered it long enough to absorb the fact that she was going to have her own office.

With walls.

She was meticulous with where she decided to set all of her personal items up throughout the small room, trying to convince herself all the while that the whole situation wasn’t some big, absurdly cruel prank and that the rug would be pulled out from underneath her at any moment.

Donna had experienced her fair share of Charlie Brown moments. This wasn’t going to be one of them if she had anything to say about it.

And so, she organized her books on an empty shelf by topic, placing those that had relevance to her new job at eye level and keeping the ones that were just nice to have around higher up. There was one particular copy of The Art and Artistry of Alpine Skiing that she had decided belonged by her side for this little leap of faith, a reminder of where she’d come from and that someone out there believed in her. That book specifically was on one of the higher shelves.

On her desk, she carefully placed all of the same photos that had always taken up residence next to her computer monitor, with one new addition.

Donna had been spending an awful lot of her free time flipping through the old photo albums that David had finally sent her, sitting in bed at night while the television played softly on the other side of the room and learning how not to burst into tears at the sight of those polaroids.

She was keeping a small journal as she slowly made her way through every page, taking note of each photo, the date it was taken, and anything she could remember about the events of that day. It was painful and cathartic and maybe exactly what she needed to organize all of her feelings down into writing.

The new photo on her desk had been from one of those albums and Donna had gotten it specially framed so she could bring it with her to work. It featured the two sisters at some point in middle school, laughing their heads off and drowning in the two suit jackets they’d found in their father’s closet.

Donna distinctly remembered walking around the house with Isabel, carrying on the bit with mockingly deep voices and joking about budget reports and yelling at one another to get me the numbers, Alan!

The memory made her smile, it made her feel lighter, and it made her wish that Isabel could see her now: sitting at a desk inside four walls with her very own budget reports to review.

It felt nice to have her there, even in such a small capacity.

“Getting settled?” Amy appeared in the doorway just as Donna finished tucking her briefcase underneath her desk.

Donna glanced around at her office. “It would seem so, wouldn’t it?” she said with an anxious laugh.

“Don’t be nervous,” Amy said with a smile as she stepped farther into the office. “You’re gonna be great at this.”

“You have my first assignment for me?” Donna asked, brushing off the compliment. She didn’t want to feel as though she needed reassurance to accomplish her job, she just wanted to do it, to prove to herself and to everyone else that she could be so much more.

“We’ve got a meeting this afternoon with the NOW,” Amy said casually, sitting down in the chair across from Donna’s desk. “There’s some stuff you’ll need to be briefed on before we head over, but it’s nothing you probably don’t already know.”

“Sounds good,” Donna nodded. “Where should I pick up the briefing information?”

“Ryan should have it all organized by now,” Amy assured her, but Donna just looked at her with utter confusion.

“Who’s Ryan?” she asked, eyebrows furrowing.

“Your assistant,” Amy said with a slight, disbelieving smirk.

“I have an assistant?” Donna balked.

“Yeah,” Amy chuckled.

“I have an assistant named Ryan,” Donna stated, still trying to wrap her brain around the fact.

“You’re Deputy COS, Donna,” Amy said, insistent but amused all the same. “Did you think you weren’t going to have an assistant?”

“I don’t-- It’s just-- Well, no one mentioned…” she said with a humorous sort of defensiveness.

“We would have let you hire one yourself,” Amy explained. “But the kid’s uncle is Senator Pierce and he’s kind of been on our staff for a while without any real job to do.”

“He’s a Pierce?” Donna raised her eyebrows. “Like, a Pierce Pierce?”

“Hence our inability to get rid of him,” Amy cocked her head to the side with a self deprecating grin.

“That bad?” Donna grimaced.

“He can be a pain in the ass but he puts in the time,” Amy shrugged. “And it’s not like you aren’t used to working with kind of assholish, Ivy League, frat boys.”

Donna snorted and Amy grinned at her. “Fair enough.”

“He should actually be here by now,” Amy glanced over her shoulder at the ajar door to Donna’s office. “Ryan!”

Donna could hear a bit of scrambling filter through the door and shared an amused look with Amy before the door swung open and a young man poked his head in. He barely looked old enough to have finished high school.

“Yes?” he asked eagerly, with the sort of boyish liveliness of someone who had yet to be beaten down by the long hours they all kept. It was almost refreshing in a way.

“Come meet your boss,” Amy said as both women stood up.

Ryan entered the room, vibrating at his own young-person frequency and meeting Donna halfway to shake her hand.

“Ms. Donnatella Moss,” he said brightly, as if impressed with himself for knowing her full name.

“Just Donna,” she laughed at the odd way her name sounded on such a different voice.

“I’ll let you two get acquainted,” Amy said as she headed for the door. “Come talk to me once you’ve read the NOW information.”

“Sure thing,” Donna nodded to her before turning back to Ryan. “So, you’re my assistant?”

“Yes,” he said, clearly trying to look at ease but unable to hide the unavoidable anxiety of a young person at their first serious job.

“I’ve never had an assistant,” Donna said, feeling that very same anxiety. “I mean, I was you until about…” she glanced at her watch. “Forty-five minutes ago.”

“Well, I’ve only been an assistant for about forty-five seconds, so…” he shrugged.

“So, neither of us really have any idea what we’re doing, huh?” Donna laughed. “Let’s maybe keep that to ourselves for now.”

“Well, I mean,” he looked at her curiously. “Weren’t you the one that bailed out Senator Stackhouse during his filibuster a few years ago?” he asked as Donna gaped at him. “And didn’t you, like, save social security during the shutdown?”

Donna just studied him, absolutely shocked. “How could you possibly--”

“I listen,” he shrugged.

“Okay then, listener boy,” Donna said, realizing that he was going to be okay and she was going to be okay, and maybe she really did deserve to be there. “You ready to brief me for my meeting with the NOW?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, already rushing back towards the door towards his own desk.

“Ryan?” she stopped him at the door and he turned and looked at her expectantly. “Don’t ever call me ma’am again.”

“Sure thing,” he nodded, and then disappeared around the corner.

Donna sat back down in her chair, behind her desk, inside of her four walls, and took a deep breath.

Isabel smiled up at her from behind a thin pane of glass.

___

Josh was distracted for most of the day.

As small of a transition as it technically was, it was a massive transition for him to get accustomed to, and he found himself quite simply thinking about it in every moment of quiet he came across.

In the middle of a meeting with Toby, as he wrote up a memo for Leo, as Will or CJ or Kate Harper stopped by to ask him a question or brief him on some new situation to be dealt with, Josh couldn’t keep his mind from drifting back to Donna on the other side of the building.

Donna and the way she’d hired herself, Donna and the years of loyalty she’d given him, Donna and her undying love for people and humanity and the world, Donna and the way her eyes shone bright when she’d asked him to go to dinner with her.

Donna kissing him, Donna wrapped up in his arms, Donna cradling his gift of a briefcase in her hands as if it carried the secrets of the universe.

His heart was so pleasantly warm and it was so very, very distracting.

So, he stared at the first piece of research that Molly had ever put together for him, unable to focus long enough to really grasp anything it said and tapping a pen restlessly against the desktop. He glanced at the clock every two and a half minutes in the hope that it was almost time to leave but nervous for that moment to come around all the same.

Josh ultimately pushed back out of his chair, dropped his pen unceremoniously on top of the briefing materials, and strode down the halls of the West Wing.

“Hey, you busy?”

CJ looked up from where she was sat behind her desk and shot a look at Josh, standing awkwardly in her doorway.

“What is this,” she deadpanned. “A trick question?”

“You know any good restaurants?” he asked, ignoring her look of vague exasperation as he plopped down in the seat across from her desk, his legs spread wide and slouching like an unrefined teenager.

“Well, as concierge of this establishment,” CJ continued drily. “I have a list ranked by price range for your perusal.”

Josh raised his eyebrows at her. “Do you actually?”

“No!” she exclaimed, making him put his hands up in an act of defense. “No, I do not, Joshua!”

“My mistake,” he said, awkward but unbothered nonetheless.

“There has got to be something more important for you to be doing right now,” CJ insisted.

“You would think so,” Josh muttered distractedly.

CJ rolled her eyes at him and pushed her glasses up on her head in some final act of defeat that she would get anything productive done while Josh was still in the room.

“What’s going on?” she asked, or more appropriately, demanded.

“What do you mean?” he furrowed his brow at her.

“You’re acting strange,” CJ said.

“No I’m not!”

“Is this about Donna?” she asked skeptically

“CJ--”

“Because I know it’s probably weird for you to not have her around anymore--”

“ CJ--”

“But I thought you were okay with it!” CJ ignored his protests. “You were going on and on last week about how you were ready for Josh and Donna two-point-oh and that you weren’t gonna be weird about it, but--”

“It’s not about Donna!” he exclaimed at a pitch that he figured dogs could probably hear.

CJ just shot him a disbelieving look.

“Really?”

Josh met her challenging gaze for a moment before rolling his eyes and sinking lower in his chair.

“It’s a little bit about Donna,” he conceded.

“Josh…” CJ softened with a sigh.

“We’re going out to dinner tonight,” he said, just a little bit of anxiety making its way into his eyes. CJ sat forward in her chair and looked at him with intrigue.

“Is it a date?” she asked, suddenly far more invested in the conversation as a whole but making Josh regret that he’d chosen her for this particular line of questioning. Toby, for instance, would not have cared if it was a date.

“I… don’t know,” he said, slow and honest and now with a little bit of panic tossed into the mix.

“You don’t know,” CJ repeated.

“No?” Josh’s face melted into a neon, flashing cry for help.

“Did you ask her on a date?” CJ questioned slowly, as if speaking to a third grader.

“Well, she asked me,” Josh explained. “But just to dinner. The word date was never used.”

“You two really are hopeless,” CJ stated simply.

“Okay--”

“No, seriously,” she pressed. “Everything’s all teed up for you and you still can’t manage to make a move.”

“I should go,” Josh started to get up out of his chair.

“Sit down,” CJ said, an exasperated sort of order but an order all the same.

“Okay,” Josh said awkwardly as he collapsed back into his chair.

“I’m gonna ask you something and you’re gonna be honest with me, okay?”

Josh swallowed thickly. “Sure.”

“Do you want this to be a date?” CJ asked, managing to remove nearly all of the accusatory tone out of her voice. “Like a real date where you argue over who gets to pay and then you walk her to her door at the end of the night?”

“CJ…” Josh sighed.

“No, listen,” CJ insisted. “I’m not talking to you as Press Secretary anymore-- although, I do have a briefing in about fifteen minutes I’ll need to get ready for-- but she doesn’t work for you, Josh! You work in opposite wings of the building and the chains of command are completely separate, so you don’t get to play the inappropriate card of avoidance anymore. So, do you want this to be a date?”

“Yes,” Josh said without hesitation and feeling his face heat up with equal parts embarrassment and giddiness. “Yeah-- Yes, I-- I do want that.”

CJ smiled at him as though he was a baby who’d just said his first words: a little bit patronizing but genuinely proud and happy enough for that not to matter.

“Then take her on a goddamn date, Joshua!” she cried. “Wear something other than your work clothes, and take her some place that isn’t connected to a sports bar, and pay the tab.”

“That’s all it takes?” he asked with big eyes and still flushed cheeks.

“You’ve been on dates before,” CJ chuckled with a shake of her head.

“Not dates with Donna!” he pressed. “Not dates that are gonna matter for the rest of my life!”

CJ cocked her head to the side and gave her that same proud-mom grin.

“You’re off your rocker, Josh,” she said. “But you really are very sweet.”

“That’s not helpful information to me,” he deadpanned.

“You’re gonna be fine,” CJ brushed him off. “Now, get out of here so I can do my job.”

“But, CJ--”

“Nope,” she stood up and started moving around the room, gathering things for her briefing.

“Where should I take her?” Josh stood up, voice eager and nervous and excited all at once.

“Do I really need to do all the work for you?” CJ said with faux exasperation despite clearly enjoying the whole ordeal. “Figure it out, you stunted idiot.”

“The confidence boost is really, very helpfu--”

“Get out!” CJ cried out through a burst of laughter. Josh immediately walked towards the door.

“Yeah, yep, going,” he said, only pausing at the door to look back at her once more before leaving. “CJ?”

“What else?” she groaned.

“Thank you,” he said with a small smile, receiving one in return from CJ.

The woman really was always right.

___

Donna had a busy first day and was pretty well exhausted by the end of it.

She had jumped from meeting to meeting, both alongside Amy and on her own, and found that when given the chance to speak up she was actually quite well-spoken with an eloquence of which she hadn’t realized she was capable.

At seven o’clock, Donna was finishing writing a memo about an organization that helped homeless children that she wanted to bring to the First Lady’s attention when she heard voices filtering through her door which was held ajar so she could shout to Ryan if necessary.

“Do you have an appointment?” Ryan asked in what Donna was learning was his professional voice. This was different from his trying to make a point voice, which was in turn different from his I’m trying to impress you voice.

“I-- What?” That was Josh’s who the hell are you voice. “Who are you?”

“Ryan Pierce,” he responded simply. “Do you have an appointment?”

“No, I-- I’m sorry, who are you?” Josh asked. “Am I gonna have to answer your riddles three to see Donna?”

Donna very easily could have gotten up and ended the whole ordeal by simply walking out into the outer office, but she was enjoying the moment a little bit too much for that.

“What’s your name?” Ryan asked and Donna had to hold in a snort. “I’ll check for you on the schedule.”

“What’s my…?!” Josh was starting to bubble over with exasperation. “I’m Josh Lyman, I’m the Deputy Chief of Staff to the President of the United States, and--”

Donna stood up and started walking towards the door.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Lyman, but I don’t have you down on the schedule--”

“Oh for the love of--”

“Joshua, go easy on the kid,” Donna said as she stepped out of her office, handing Ryan the legal pad she’d been writing on. “Type those up for me tomorrow, but you’re done for the night.”

“Is this your assistant?” Josh asked with a hint of amusement to his voice replacing the indignation that had been there just moments earlier.

“Yes, he is,” Donna grinned at Josh with her head held high.

“You should really teach him the names of the people that work in this building,” Josh said, the teasing part of his words directed at Donna but the perturbed tint to the words aimed at Ryan.

“First of all, how many people in your own bullpen do you know the names of?” Donna raised her eyebrows at him. “And second of all, he knows who you are.”

“No, he didn’t,” Josh fired back.

“Yes, he did,” Donna chuckled, smiling somehow wider as she watched realization pass over Josh’s face.

“You put him--” he turned to Ryan with an accusatory finger pointed at him. “She put you up to this.”

“I was really hoping you’d say Do you know who I am,” Ryan said, pulling on his coat.

Josh barely acknowledged him, instead just looking over Donna, taking in the radiant way her smile took over her entire body and had her standing taller and stronger and lighter than he’d maybe ever seen her.

“So, I take it you’re getting settled in alright?” he asked her with a smirk.

“I believe I am,” she said with a cheeky grin.

“And this is your office?” he motioned to the door still open behind her.

“Want a tour?” she asked in such a giddy voice that there wasn’t a chance in hell that he’d take that opportunity away from her, that moment to show off how far she had come. In fact, Josh wondered briefly what it would take to get the whole staff in there to see her truly thriving.

“I can go home, right?” Ryan chimed in, pulling the two of them out of their moment.

“Yeah,” Donna said at the same moment that Josh rolled his eyes with a simple: “Get out of here.”

And then she was leading him into her office, a space that was yet to be lived in and yet to truly absorb the utter essence of Donna that she brought with her everywhere, but made his heart stutter nonetheless.

Because she had done it, she had really done it and she was beaming at him as she held her arms wide as if to say look at what I’ve done, I’m so excited to share it with you.

“Well go on,” Josh motioned towards the desk. “Get back there.”

“What?” Donna chuckled at him.

“Sit at the desk,” Josh insisted. “I wanna see something.”

Donna looked at him quizzically, but crossed behind the desk and sat down anyway, propping her feet up on the desk in a comical parody of Josh’s own favorite posture.

“So?” Donna questioned curiously.

“Yeah,” Josh grinned softly. “You look good back there.”

“I look good everywhere,” she teased, but was blushing brightly enough that Josh knew she was touched.

“True,” Josh conceded, pulling his backpack off his shoulder and unzipping one of the pockets as he spoke. “But this is especially cool,” he shrugged as he pulled out a disposable camera.

“You brought a camera?” her eyes softened and there was a certain level of awe melting across the planes of her face.

“I… Yeah,” Josh floundered. “I just-- I know you’ve been going through those albums and I figured-- I mean, you shouldn’t stop keeping record of the important stuff just because you’re not a kid anymore,” he shrugged.

“You brought a camera,” she said with a soft, emotional smile.

“Okay, it’s not a big deal,” he brushed her off and started winding up the camera in question before lifting it to his eye.

“Josh…” she sighed with a look on her face that made Josh’s heart flutter even as he watched her through the viewfinder. She looked so utterly happy and in that moment he wanted nothing more than to continue making her just that very happy for as long as he possibly could.

He snapped the photo and the flash went off and he lowered the camera to meet her gaze.

“You ready to go to dinner?”

___

Josh ended up suggesting a nearby Italian restaurant, and they decided to walk there because it was the first warm day of the year and they spent far too much time indoors on a day to day basis.

They walked, shoulder to shoulder and side by side, matching each other’s stride with the ease of endless practice. There was no discussion but an unspoken agreement to turn their walk into a stroll, a languid, easy pace, because they were in no hurry.

There had always been a certain level of comfort to the fast-paced, rushed, staccato sort of way the two of them moved through the world, creating space for themselves and each other as they went. But on that evening, basking in the fresh air and in the glow of a setting sun, Josh and Donna both came to the conclusion that it was a moment worth relishing.

They had been rushing for so long, running with all their might, and maybe the purpose of that had always been to get them to that night, on that stroll, on their way to an Italian restaurant.

Maybe now they could finally find it in themselves to enjoy the slow.

“Josh?” Donna spoke up after a few minutes of comfortable silence.

“Yeah?” he looked to her with his full attention.

“Did you change your clothes?” she asked, not quite accusatory but knowing the answer already.

“Uh, I…” Josh hesitated, watching a small smirk grow on Donna’s face. “Yeah.”

“Why?” she asked with a small chuckle. “What could you have possibly done-- Did you spill something on yourself again?”

“I didn’t spill something on myself,” he fired back with a snort. “I’m not in the third grade, Donna.”

“No, but you’re very easily distracted,” she teased. “And clumsy. Don’t forget clumsy.”

“I never will with the way you love to remind me,” he grinned at her.

“Tell me why you changed your clothes!” she demanded with amusement.

“We’re going to dinner!” he matched her indignation with an exclamation of his own.

Donna tilted her head in curiosity, studying Josh’s profile as he walked beside her and a warmth filled her chest.

“You changed to go to dinner with me?” she asked, quieter. Josh glanced at her with soft eyes and opened his mouth as if to speak before closing it again silently. “That’s very sweet,” Donna said, turning to face the sidewalk in front of them again but extending her hand the small distance between them and gently taking Josh’s.

Something in the way he squeezed her fingers, pressed their palms just a hair closer to each other, made Donna feel steadier. Something in the way he looked down at their joined hands showed her what comfort was.

“That’s the place,” Josh motioned towards a little, illuminated sign just a few yards ahead of them, but Donna pulled him to the side of the walkway and leaned her back against a street lamp, all without letting go of his hand. “Where are you going? It’s right--”

“Josh,” she drew his attention back to her with the single syllable, catching his eyes with her own.

“Yeah?”

“Is this a date?” she asked simply, just a little bit of hope sneaking it’s way into her words.

“It’s…” he floundered, maybe a little bit lost in her eyes and the way the streetlight sparkled in them. “It’s, you know--”

“I just want to know going into this,” she continued, pace steadily increasing with every word. “I mean, it’s totally fine if it’s not, I just wasn’t sure-- And you changed your clothes, and like, the walk--”

“Donna,” Josh let out a breath of a quiet laugh.

“I know it’s weird to have to ask,” she pushed onwards. “But everything with us-- The signals have never meant what they’re supposed to mean, and it’s never been entirely clear--”

“Donnatella,” he said: simple, soft, and with a quirk of a smile on his lips.

Donna drew in a breath through her nose and really looked at him for a moment, because with one word he had settled it all-- every question and insecurity was suddenly given a sense of clarity that she could feel swelling right in between her ribs.

“Okay,” she breathed. “That helps.”

Josh beamed at her and didn’t taken his eyes off of her as she lifted her free hand to rest along his jawline, thumb gracing carefully across his cheekbone. She leaned forward, all the way into his space with a chaste kiss to his lips.

It was shorter than their first kiss, simpler, and brought with it a promise of time.

Time for more, time for longer, time for deeper. All together. Always together.

When Donna pulled away, she could see her own inner monologue reflected on Josh’s open book of a face, all of the care and promise and inevitable love right there, unspoken but understood.

“Hungry?” Donna asked, beginning to walk backwards towards the restaurant and tugging a somewhat awestruck Josh along with her.

“Yeah,” he nodded eagerly, following her as if she would show him the very secrets of the universe.

“Me too,” she grinned as they began to walk side by side once more.

The moon was rising in the sky and Josh’s heart was settling into Donna’s chest.

“Hey,” he spoke up. “Is your assistant a Pierce Pierce?”

“If you were thinking about my assistant when I kissed you just now,” Donna deadpanned. “I’m gonna suffocate you with a dinner roll.”

Josh had to fight back a grin as they fell right back into an easy, painless, wonderful humor.

“Fair enough.”

He walked her to her door at the end of the night.

Chapter Text

Donna woke up before her alarm.

She watched as the flashing colon on the digital clock counted down the slow seconds towards six o’clock, glowing red in the pitch black of an early winter morning.

5:58. Tick, tick, tick.

It was the second time that particular day had come around, a date on the calendar that would forever be embedded in her memory, would forever have control over her internal clock in an eternal memory of the moment she had become an only child.

5:59. Tick, tick, tick.

Her right cheek was sweating against the palm of her hand which was trapped in between the side of her face and a too-warm pillow. She was grateful for a moment that she wasn’t waking up in her own apartment, the same one she hadn’t moved out of even two years later, the one in which she sometimes still found moments of pure grief within drawers and between sheets and couch cushions.

Then again, maybe that was exactly what Josh had been thinking when he asked her to stay the night.

6:00.

The alarm beeped loudly, and Donna’s heart stuttered despite having counted down the seconds because it was time to stop wallowing and start the day.

It was only a day on the calendar, it was only a day on the calendar, it was only a day--

“Morning,” Josh’s voice was hoarse as he rolled onto his side, pulling himself close up against her back.

His arm wrapped tight around her waist, noticeably tighter than usual, holding her close enough that he trapped his own hand between her ribcage and the mattress. Donna shut off the alarm and then placed her hand on his arm, letting her eyes slip shut as he buried his nose in her messy hair, as he pressed languid, loving kisses to her shoulder.

Josh knew the date, because of course he did, because he hadn’t been there on the first anniversary of Isabel’s death and had a scar of guilt scorched into his heart for not finding a way to take the Santos campaign back to DC just for that one day. Just so he could have been there, just so he wouldn’t have received a phone call that night from the woman he loved, unable to catch her breath on the floor of her bathroom after a too-long day of trying to ignore it.

Of course, he had been perfect in Donna’s eyes, had talked her down and helped her find her footing even as just a voice on the other end of the phone. He had reminded her to drink water, had made sure she wasn’t at the point where she was making herself bleed or pulling her own hair out of its roots, had told her he loved her, he loved her, he loved her.

When Donna opened her eyes once more, the clock read 6:04 and Josh was still holding her just as tight with an unwavering support emanating from his chest and into her back.

“We have to get up,” she said, clearing her throat to get past the sleep caught in it that was maybe just a little bit more than sleep.

“Donna,” Josh said softly as she rolled onto her back. He propped himself up on an elbow so he could look at her face, free hand splayed across her stomach right below her ribs. “We can still call in and--”

“Stop that,” she sighed, pushing herself up to a sitting position and flicking on the bedside lamp.

“I don’t think I will, actually,” he said, sitting up in tandem with her and studying her face as she avoided eye contact.

“I’m gonna make some coffee,” Donna pushed herself out of bed definitively, and although she wasn’t looking at Josh’s face, she could feel the exasperation coming off of him.

“Yeah, okay,” he deadpanned, watching her pull on a pair of socks quietly, but hopping out of bed and following her the minute she walked out of the room.

Donna ignored him and busied her hands with making a pot of coffee while he leaned in the doorway of the kitchen in his boxers and a t-shirt, arms crossed and clearly on the verge of reprimanding her or comforting her or something on the endless spectrum in between the two.

“There is nothing wrong with taking a day off--”

“There it is,” Donna said with a mocking chipperness.

“I’m being serious,” he insisted.

Donna stilled her movement for a moment and took a deep breath, because as much as she wanted to avoid the topic with anyone at all costs, she knew that Josh wasn’t just anyone. He was her partner in everything, even on the bad days on the calendar.

“I know,” she breathed and turned to look at him. “But I’m okay, Josh,” she said, trying to put as much certainty into her voice as she could muster.

Josh shook his head slowly. “Last year…”

“You have to stop feeling guilty about last year,” Donna said with a soft laugh. “You did everything you were supposed to do and you were right there for me when I called and pulled you out of a meeting with your candidate. We both know that’s no small thing.”

“I just…” Josh let out a huff of a breath. “I don’t want you to think you have to prove something to me by putting up this tough front.”

“I don’t,” she responded earnestly.

“You can pretend this day isn’t significant around everyone else,” Josh pressed onwards as he pushed off the doorframe and walked across the tiled floor towards her. “You can be tough and unaffected around everyone else, but I swear if you don’t let me help you when it gets to be too much...”

He trailed off, fingers playing absentmindedly with the hem of her t-shirt and invading her space with his rumpled, early morning warmth.

“C’mere,” she said softly as she lifted a hand and threaded her fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck, pulling his face towards her and kissing him deftly. Josh kissed her back with his thumbs running gently over her hip bones as he pulled her just the slightest bit closer.

“Donnatella,” he breathed as they pulled away, nudging his nose against hers before leaning back and looking at her. There was such clear concern in his eyes that Donna could feel her heartstrings straining against themselves.

“Last year,” she said quietly, but with determination. “I got wrapped up in the day. I tried to ignore it and I pretended that it wasn’t important and that’s why it all caught up to me,” she let her hands press flat against his chest, fiddling absentmindedly with the fabric of his shirt as she spoke. “But today, I’m gonna let myself be sad, and I’m gonna miss her a little bit extra, and I’m gonna do it all without letting it own me. Okay?”

Josh gave her a small nod. “Yeah,” he said with understanding as he pulled her into a tight hug against his chest and buried his face in the crook of her neck.

“Love you,” she muttered into his shoulder, arms wrapped up around him in the same comforting way as his were around her.

“Love you,” he responded in a breath, squeezing her tighter one more time before pulling away and pressing a kiss to her forehead.

Donna met his eye when he finally looked at her face, giving him a small smile that he really couldn’t help but match.

“Come on,” she pushed him gently back towards the bedroom. “Let’s get ready so we can go staff a White House.”

___

Josh held her hand as they walked into the OEOB.

At one point, he had briefly worried about how their relationship might be picked apart once they both threw themselves so readily into the public eye. He had spoken to Lou about what it would look like if Helen Santos just happened to hire the Chief of Staff’s girlfriend to run the First Lady’s office, had found himself concerned that people might cry nepotism or that Donna’s own credentials would be brought into question.

However, then he had seen Donna sit down with Helen, explain to her the different directions she could direct the office of the First Lady during her tenure with all the grace and intelligence of the woman he had fallen in love with but just that much more confidence after training under the watchful eyes of Amy Gardner and Abbey Bartlet.

He had been easily convinced that Donna was meant to be doing exactly what she now was-- Chief of Staff to the First Lady of the United States. And so he held her hand and didn’t bother himself with the opinions of gossips. He held her hand and kissed her cheek as they parted ways and glanced back at her one more time before he turned the corner.

As he walked down the corridors towards his temporary office, Josh considered the fact that the worry he felt for her on that day had become so rare. He had so much faith in her, so much trust in her strength and her ability to tell him when she needed help that he’d managed to find his way out of the blind concern that had once been all encompassing.

Their lives weren’t perfect and some days were difficult, but in two years of togetherness their shorthand had stretched back out into proper, full-fledged adult communication, so when Donna told him that she was going to be okay he really did believe her.

But in the same way that she was going to allow herself to be a little extra sad, Josh was going to let himself be a little extra worried.

Just a little bit. Because he loved her.

___

“If we focus our platform on education, is that going to get in the way of what Matt is doing?” Helen asked.

Donna felt her heart leap, because she never got used to being a source of advice when it came to policy, and she never got used to a woman as important as Helen Santos being the one asking for her opinion.

They were sat in Donna’s office in the OEOB as the East Wing was going through renovations, both of them in the two guest chairs across from the desk and a small end table with a tray for coffee in between them.

“Not necessarily,” Donna said. “We can always come at it from a different direction than the West Wing policy makers.”

“What kind of direction?” Helen asked, a genuine curiosity in her tone as she sipped her coffee. Donna pulled a large binder into her lap and started flipping through the ideas she had already written up in anticipation of their meeting.

“Special education reform and funding; education for women and girls; gun control as it affects students or simply support for survivors of school shootings,” Donna rattled off. “Ultimately it’s up to you, but there are dozens of branches to education that the President Elect won’t be able to address, especially with a republican Congress.”

“Wow,” Helen breathed, eyes wide as she looked at Donna’s binder.

“I know it’s overwhelming,” Donna tried to present an air of confidence that would hopefully help Helen settle further into her new role.

“Is that entire binder about policy?” Helen raised her eyebrows and met Donna’s gaze with a bit of amusement.

“Um… Yes?” Donna responded hesitantly, feeling the teasing coming just from the look the First Lady was giving her.

“You know, the first couple of times I met you I didn’t see it,” she said with a glint in her eyes. “But Josh was right about you.”

“Oh no,” Donna said with a breath of a laugh. “What did he tell you?”

“That you’re a dork,” Helen chuckled.

“He’s one to talk,” Donna said with a good-natured roll of her eyes and a grin on her face.

“Josh?” she questioned disbelievingly. “A dork?”

“Oh yeah,” Donna laughed. “He might put up a good front, but he’s really just a big softie.”

Helen narrowed her eyes at Donna. “I’ll have to take your word for it.”

“You’ll see,” Donna said knowingly. “Just give him a little time and he’ll grow on you. In the meantime,” she flattened her palms on the pages of her binder. “An education policy.”

“Could I look through that?” Helen motioned to the binder and Donna immediately handed it over.

“There are a lot of options in there,” she said as Helen flipped through the pages. “But I want you to focus on what speaks to you and not on what will help or hurt the President-Elect. That’s my job.”

“How do you know this much about education?” Helen asked absentmindedly, not even noticing the way Donna tensed slightly at the question.

“My, um, my sister was a teacher,” she said, clearing her throat awkwardly and wishing she was still holding the binder so she would have something to do with her hands.

She wasn’t going to ignore the tightness in her chest and she wasn’t going to ignore the sudden sadness stuck between her ears. That was the promise she had made to herself, made to Josh, made to Isabel silently in the quiet minutes before her alarm had gone off that morning.

“Oh, really?” Helen looked up at her with a kind sort of interest on her face.

“Yeah,” Donna laughed softly, dropping her gaze to her lap briefly. “She used to talk my ear off about all that stuff,” she nodded to the binder.

“Does she do something different now?” Helen asked. “Maybe we could use her expertise if we actually pursue any of this.”

“Oh, she, um,” Donna floundered slightly but spoke with what she hoped was a casual syntax. “She actually passed away.”

She said it simply because over the course of two years, Donna had realized that skirting around it in veiled implications did nothing but drag out the conversation and force her to listen to even more weighty condolences. It was the condolences that she had trouble processing, because it had been too long for people to still be apologizing.

But then again, maybe she just needed to get used to it. She would, after all, be the woman with a dead sister for the rest of her life, and maybe accepting condolences was just going to have to be a part of that.

Donna knew that somewhere in her heart, but part of her still wished that the only time she got to talk about Isabel wasn’t in sadness and grief and stilted apologies from people who had never even known her.

“Oh, God,” Helen looked up, slightly stricken as Donna smiled at her awkwardly. “That was so insensitive of me.”

“You couldn’t have known,” Donna shook her head in an effort to ease the situation back into a state of normalcy. “Don’t worry about it.”

Helen studied her for a moment before letting out a breath and leaning back in her chair.

“She was a teacher?” she asked, and somehow Donna knew that for once the curiosity about her sister was in no way morbid.

“Yeah,” Donna said with a breath of an easy smile.

“Well, then I guess we better do right by her,” Helen turned back to the binder and continued to read while Donna’s heart turned to mush.

In that moment, Donna’s grief felt natural instead of like a spectacle; in that moment, she wasn’t performing and wasn’t overcome with worry that said performance wasn’t tame or loud or beautiful enough to those that were watching.

It was simply a part of life, one which could be discussed without losing her natural humor and without falling into immediate disarray.

That very well might have been the moment that Donna decided she was well and truly ready to serve at the pleasure of Helen Santos.

“Yes, ma’am,” she said as a grin spread across her face. Donna sat farther forward in her seat and looked over Helen’s shoulder at the binder.

They started making plans.

___

On that day, and during those weeks in between the election and the inauguration, Donna was technically working two jobs and while she stumbled into moments of overwhelming task on top of overwhelming task, she was finding that at some point along the road she had built the tools to remain cool and collected through it all.

Donna could remember her first days as Josh’s assistant all those years ago, could remember a nervous fluttering in her heart and a shakiness that never really left her hands as she chased after knowledge that she never knew was in her reach. She could remember high school and all the boxes outside of which she functioned so much more productively.

She could remember being seven years old, walking in the front door covered in mud with twigs in her hair and questions of why can’t you be more like your sister?

She remembered a sister who was overjoyed by their differences.

And so, yeah, she was working two jobs, working towards a new title and a new life, but maybe Donna had finally come to an understanding about her own scattered, circling, train of thought and maybe she had found a way to stand strong and use it to her advantage.

Maybe that’s why the hard stuff had started feeling just that much more manageable.

“When’s my next meeting?” Donna asked, stopping in her tracks in front of Ryan’s desk and dropping a handful of files in front of him.

“Twenty minutes,” Ryan responded with a nod, already beginning to put away said files in their proper places. Donna held back a grin as she noticed he was still using the system she had taught him nearly two years prior.

“Anyone need me right now?” she asked.

“Not right now,” he said. “But who knows how long that’s gonna last.”

Donna nodded as if to say fair enough.

“Give me ten minutes without interruptions,” she said as she moved towards the door of her office. “I need to make a phone call.”

“Who do you want me to get for you?” Ryan turned to look at her, already picking up the phone and fingers poised to dial.

“I got this one, Ryan,” she gave him a small, amused smile.

“It’s no problem, I can do it,” he said with a shrug.

“You wanna talk to my mother that badly?” Donna tilted her head at him and his eyes got a little bit bigger. Ryan had only spoken to Terry Moss once or twice in passing before, but the woman just had that effect on people.

“No, thank you,” he said, putting the phone back down and sliding into his seat.

“Good call,” she chuckled as she stepped into her office and shut the door behind her.

Donna sank into her chair as she dialed the familiar number, taking a moment to breathe deeply and run through the answers to all of the questions she knew her mother would ask as she waited for an answer.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Mama,” Donna said, quieter and more proper in tone than anything she had used so far that day.

“Donna,” Terry said with a note of surprise. “Shouldn’t you be at work?”

“I am at work,” Donna responded without mockery. “I just have ten minutes and wanted to check in on you today.”

“Yes,” Terry sighed. “Of course.”

“Are you doing okay?” Donna asked, knowing for herself that she was being genuine, that she really cared, but never really certain that her mother could tell.

“Well, it’s not an easy day for us, Donna,” Terry huffed. “You know that.”

“That’s why I’m calling, Mama,” Donna sighed. “Please don’t get defensive, I just wanted to talk.”

“ Donna--”

“One conversation a week,” Donna cut off the reprimand before it could even start. “One phone call where we don’t argue about petty things. That was the agreement.”

She heard her mother take a deep breath and let it out slowly on the other end of the line, because Donna was right, that had in fact been the agreement they’d made a year previously in some attempt to reacquaint themselves with each other. After a dozen arguments about Donna’s relationship, about Donna’s busy schedule, about Donna’s refusal to call home only to feel judgment pouring through the phone lines, they had gotten tired of all their love being mixed up with all sorts of petty conflict.

And thus the agreement.

“I’m sorry,” Terry eventually said evenly. It triggered Donna’s tear ducts, but she took in a lungful of air in order to keep the tears at bay.

“It’s okay,” Donna replied softly.

“I just…” Terry let out a frustrated, emotional huff of air. “I just miss her a great deal.”

Donna’s heart constricted and she let her eyes fall shut, feeling her shoulder blades melt into the back of her chair as she leaned into it more heavily.

“Yeah,” she eventually breathed. “Me too.”

It wasn’t perfect, they weren’t perfect, and they never would be. Donna would always know the tension of a mother who didn’t understand her and a part of her would always question her enoughness, but she could also appreciate a mother who was trying.

And maybe, with so much goodness in life and so many people who weren’t afraid to love her loudly, trying could be enough.

Maybe that was Donna’s way of trying too.

___

“Hey, Otto,” Josh called out as he strode across the bullpen towards his office. “Any messages for me?”

“Babish called back to confirm your meeting for tomorrow,” Otto said, immediately trailing Josh on his quick-paced path and flipping through the call log in his hands. “Another twenty congratulations calls; President Bartlet wants to meet with the President-Elect tomorrow afternoon; Donna wanted me to tell you she went home; and Lou said something about the Inaugural but I’m really not sure--”

“Wait, what?” Josh spun to look at Otto, dropping a stack of files on his desk and leaning forward on his hands.

“Lou has a list of topics she wants to cover in the Inaugural but she didn’t leave them with me so I need to call her back--”

“No, stop,” Josh waved his hand to quiet Otto in all his eagerness. “What did Donna say?”

“Oh,” Otto said with an expression of realization. The poor kid never really had figured out how to talk to Josh about his personal life. “She just wanted you to know that she left so you wouldn’t wait for her.”

Josh’s heart sank in his chest at the thought of Donna stopping by his office while he was in a meeting, the thought of her potentially needing him and not being there for the second year in a row.

He started pushing things around on his pigsty of a desk in search of his cell phone.

“How long ago?” he asked absentmindedly.

“Um, I’m not sure--”

“Ballpark, Otto,” Josh said with agitation.

“An hour?” Otto shrugged. “Did you want me to go through the rest of the calls or--”

“In a minute,” Josh said, finally finding his phone and beginning to dial.

Otto stood there awkwardly for a moment, just staring at a suddenly jumpy Josh with his phone pressed to his ear and his free arm crossed tight over his chest with a different sort of tension than anyone on the campaign recognized.

This type of tension, this type of worry, was of course reserved for the woman he was trying to get on the phone.

“Leave me now, Otto,” he said, not cruelly but without any room for argument either.

“Right,” Otto said with big eyes and nervous energy before turning and rushing out the door, shutting it behind him.

Josh wanted to roll his eyes, but instead just fell into his chair as he waited for the call to go through.

“Hello?”

“Donna,” he said in a relieved exhale of breath, letting his elbows fall onto the desk. “Hey, is everything okay?”

“Yeah,” she said, just a slight air of confusion in her tone. “Why? What’s going on?”

“I just-- I didn’t see you before you left and--” he floundered. “I don’t know, Otto said--”

“I told Otto not to make a big thing of it,” Donna said. “Did he make a big thing of it?”

“Are you sure you’re alright?” Josh ignored her question and ran a hand through his hair.

“I’m sure,” she said softly.

“I mean, with today and-- You should’ve gotten me out of my meeting--”

“Josh, hey, slow down,” she cut him off with a calm cadence to her words. “I promise that I’m okay, it would have been stupid to pull you out of a meeting just to tell you I was done with my work for the day.”

“I know,” he sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“But it’s sweet that you were worried,” she said in addendum.

He couldn’t keep a soft smile off of his face at that.

“I’ve been told I can be very sweet,” he said, finally brushing some of the concern off his shoulders.

“Don’t push it,” Donna teased him.

“I’ll be home in an hour,” Josh promised. “The President-Elect left so I just have to wrap a few things up.”

“Okay,” she said softly. “Good. That’s good.”

“You’re at my place?”

“Yeah,” she said, but Josh could hear her chewing on her words for a beat before she spoke up once more: “Josh?”

“What’s up?”

“I really am okay and everything,” she said, just as calm but just a little more tiredness in her voice. “But I could really use a hug.”

“Yeah,” Josh breathed. “I’ll be home soon.”

___

There was music playing when Josh entered the apartment.

It was quiet enough that he didn’t notice until he had stepped fully into the entryway, but as soon as he did the sound of it stopped him in his tracks.

He would never, after all, be able to shake the full-body experience that Ave Maria had always triggered in him. When Josh entered the living room and saw Donna curled up in the corner of the couch with her head resting on the back cushion and her eyes closed, he couldn’t resist breathing the moment in.

The melody playing from a CD player in the corner paired with the sight of her so comfortable in his space was making his heart swell with something he was positive there were no words for. Donna didn’t acknowledge his presence, just kept breathing deeply, and Josh thought for a moment that she had fallen asleep there.

But then she spoke up.

“I think I finally get it,” she said quietly, and to no one in particular as she opened her eyes to look not at Josh, but at the speakers from which the music was emanating.

Josh slipped off his shoes and made his way to the couch. He sat down next to her wordlessly, just letting the music wash over them as he leaned back against the armrest and pulled Donna against his chest.

“I missed you,” he said with a soft but long kiss to her shoulder as he wrapped his arms around her.

Donna hummed quietly in agreement and worked with him to get comfortable in their new lounging position.

“You know, I don’t think I ever really understood it,” Donna said quietly once she was securely settled in Josh’s arms, leaning back against his chest.

“Understood what?” he asked, comfortably nuzzled into her neck and breathing her in with his eyes closed and his ears wide open.

“This piece of music,” she responded, simply, but with a magnitude to her words that had Josh squeezing her just a bit tighter. “I mean, I’ve always known why it’s important to you, and I’ve always understood why it’s so personal for you, but I was never as religious as my parents and never as artistically inclined as my sister, so I think I spent a lot of years missing something.”

Josh let her words situate themselves in between his ears for a moment, breathing deeply at the feeling of her hands on top of his where he held her around her waist-- comfortable entanglement.

“It doesn’t have to affect you the way it does me,” he said earnestly and Donna nodded, an almost imperceptible movement.

“When you first told me that story about Joanie, I did a little bit of research,” she said, catching Josh a little bit off guard with the direction of her monologue.

“I don’t know why I’m surprised by that,” he said with a soft chuckle that vibrated against her back.

“ Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus,” she recited from memory, slowly and with the emphasis of someone who knew the Bible better than either one of them. “That’s the first part.”

“You memorized that?” Josh asked, teasing but also with recognizable awe in his tone.

“Yeah,” she exhaled.

“Why?” he questioned with a genuine curiosity because something about the way she had spoken the words made him feel as though they meant something to her, held significance to her.

“You were out of reach and I wanted to know you better by any means necessary,” she said honestly. Josh could have sworn he heard the slightest bit of self deprecation in the chuckle that followed, but he softened at his very soul at the admission.

“What’s the second part?” he asked, deciding that it wasn’t the moment to relish in the fact that he had ever been that distracting for her in the way she had always been for him.

“Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and in the hour of our death. Amen,” she said without preamble.

“Now and in the hour of our death,” Josh repeated, feeling a pang of something unidentifiable right in the center of his chest.

“Yeah,” Donna breathed. And then, in a tone of voice that implied relevancy: “I never finished college.”

“Right,” Josh said, not understanding the connection but having faith that she would come back around in the end, as she always had, as she always did.

“I never finished college and so when I started working for you I started learning as much as I could,” she said. “I asked endless questions of you and CJ and Sam and anyone that would give me the time of day, and I intellectualized all of it to death just to prove that I could. Because I never finished college.”

“You know you never had to prove anything to me, right?” Josh asked, genuinely concerned at the prospect.

“I was trying to prove it to myself,” she assured him with a squeeze of his hand. “I was trying so hard that I intellectualized it when you got shot,” she shrugged as if the memory had a fraction of the pain laced into it as it did. “I watched them cut you open and I had Dr. Bartlet explain every step of the procedure to me. I created the most unwavering set of rules I could think of while you were in recovery and did hours of research on Neo-Nazis.”

“I know,” he breathed, because he did, because the parts of it he hadn’t been present for they had since discussed in some step towards a shared life.

“When Isabel died,” she took a shaky breath, some of her resolve crumbling for the first time in the entire conversation.

Josh kissed her temple and Donna leaned into it before she pushed herself up so she could turn on the couch and look him in the eye, taking his hand as she did so. There were tears in her eyes, tears he hadn’t been able to hear until they were right there on the verge of falling, and as much as Josh could see the pain behind them, there was something else there too, something newer.

“Keep going,” he pressed gently, knowing that the moment was profound in Donna’s own acceptance and knowing the moment was a clue as to just how far she had come, just how far they had come.

“When she died, there was nothing to intellectualize,” she said, finally letting the tears fall. She still hadn’t crumpled though, hadn’t collapsed, was simply crying because sometimes crying was all there was. “There was no motive, it wasn’t intentional-- There was-- There was nothing to fix, nothing to do except to feel it in its entirety and without the protection offered by a layer of logic.”

A beat passed. And then:

“You intellectualized the song,” Josh said as realization finally struck him, as he finally saw the path that Donna had gone on to come full circle.

It always amazed him, how she did it, because on first sight it made so little sense, but in hindsight it was always the most poetic way she could have made her point. Screw a concise narrative, Josh wanted to listen to Donna talk circles around him for the rest of his life.

“Yeah,” she smiled at him through tears and Josh lifted a hand to wipe them away with his thumb.

“And you think you finally get it now,” Josh said conclusively.

“It’s a feeling,” she said with a watery laugh, speaking passionately and crying without shame. “It’s a big, convoluted mess of feeling that there is no word for and can only be understood by those of us who have felt it. And it’s here,” she lifted a finger as the music swelled around them, letting her eyes fall shut as she really heard it. Really felt it. “Right there.”

Josh didn’t know what to say.

He watched her feel the music, watched her feel the loss of her sister, watched a small smile spread across her face while her eyes remained closed and tears slipped down her cheeks and into the hollow of her collar bone, unburdened.

Josh watched her and his throat felt tighter and his eyes were burning and his heart felt so very, very full as he got to simply experience her presence in all her miraculous glory. He lifted his hands and placed them steadily on both of her cheeks, prompting her to open her eyes and look back at him.

There was so much waterlogged clarity, right there in her tears and in the periodic sniffles of her reddened nose, and Josh couldn’t help but lean forward and kiss her soundly.

Donna leaned into it with her arms around his neck and her heart trapped in the small space between their chests where she had decided to keep it, trusting him not to squeeze it too hard and not to pull far enough away that it would fall into the empty space between them.

Josh could taste tears on her tongue and her cheeks were flushed underneath his palms but she was laughing softly with a grin on her face when he finally pulled away with a contented sigh.

“I think we should move in together,” Josh said, as if it was the casual progression to their previous conversation.

In many ways, maybe it was. Maybe the only possible, the truly inevitable next step to everything they had been through in their years of friendship, of their years of falling in and being in love, was this.

And maybe Donna wasn’t even surprised by it, maybe she had seen in coming, and maybe it wasn’t nearly as abrupt as it would look to an outsider because no one else understood as well as Josh and Donna that they were meant for the good things, they were destined for the good things, even on the bad days.

“You want me to move in here?” Donna asked, eyes softening as his hands fell to hold hers in between their seats on the couch.

“I want to buy a house with you,” he said certainly, with all the confidence of the White House Chief of Staff and all the gentle care of the love of her life.

“Josh,” she breathed, tilting her head to the side as she tried to absorb the moment in its entirety.

“I’m serious about this,” he insisted, brow furrowing slightly at the prospect that maybe she was doubting him.

“A house is a bigger commitment than… I mean-- Joshua, buying a house could be longer term than…”

She trailed off, because as much as they had both grown and as much as they knew they were living their end-game every day that they spent together, it was still a step and it still made her stomach jump.

“Yeah,” he breathed. “But maybe I’m serious about you too.”

Donna’s entire being went visibly soft at the words, eyes getting just that much wider and shoulders dropping enough to leave comfortable space for her long neck.

And then she smiled.

“I’m gonna need a nice bathtub,” she said, a faux demanding tone to her words but laughter and excitement in her breath. “One of those ones that are big enough to stretch out in.”

“Yeah?” Josh raised his eyebrows, a grin spreading across his face.

She nodded eagerly, letting out a joyful squeal as Josh tackled her backwards onto the couch and kissed her fully, meaningfully, finally.

“I’m serious about that tub,” she said the moment he pulled away for air and he rolled his eyes, still propped up above her and still smiling like a maniac.

“Don’t worry,” Josh laughed. “I’ve never doubted your seriousness about baths.”

“Good,” Donna grinned at him, pulling him down to lay on his side so they were facing each other.

She tucked her head under his chin and he held her around the waist to keep her from rolling backwards off the couch and they stayed there in comfort, letting the music play out and fade out until the CD spun to a stop and they were draped in a blanket of empathetic quiet.

“You know I love you, right?” Josh spoke up eventually, pulling back and tipping her chin up with a finger so he could look her in the eye. “More than anything?”

A soft smile took over every inch of Donna’s face.

“Yeah,” she breathed before kissing him chastely. And then, leaning her forehead against his and keeping her eyes closed: “You too. With my whole heart.”

___

Donna slept soundly that night, with Josh’s hand resting lazily on her stomach and his breath in her hair. Donna slept through the night with a warmth on her skin and in her chest, and in the morning everything was fresh again.

The clock blinked out the seconds and Josh took a little too long in the shower and three news stations played quietly in three different rooms and Donna got dressed, drank her coffee, and melted into the dichotomy of joy and chaos.

The two of them walked into the OEOB hand in hand and they parted ways on the path towards their individual offices and individual tasks, comfortable in the knowledge they’d be walking out that same door, hand in hand, at the end of the day.

Donna’s office during the transition was small and out of the way, would only technically be hers for a handful of months. Nevertheless, she had brought all of her little intricacies into the space-- stacks of books in the corners and photos on the desk.

Two smiling middle schoolers wearing suits meant for men three times their size cackled up at her from the corner of her desk. Donna traced the frame of it with her fingers, a little worn out and scratched around the edges from being moved from boxes to shelves and back again, but clearly loved and clearly cared for just as much as the memory it housed.

There had been a time when Donna thought she knew everything her life had to offer. She thought she would hunker down in Wisconsin, thought she’d marry a doctor and be a housewife, thought she’d spend holidays in the home her sister was building with the love of her life.

Never had she expected to find the courage to up and leave, up and walk away from the only world she’d ever really known in favor of chasing long-shots and underdogs across the country. That was not the living that Donna had ever understood.

As it turned out, even after years in Washington and perpetual singledom and a passionate work ethic, there was a type of living that Donna still had yet to experience. As it turned out, outliving was just as unpredictable as its predecessor, and as it turned out, it was just as complex to manage.

On some days, Donna felt herself wading through sludge, stuck in a swampy fog as she tried to see some sort of lighthouse in the distance. It was dim and it was far, but it was always there, always waiting for her to find her way out of the storm and into the warmth of its light, always with a steady hand on her lower back.  

And yes, Donna’s heart still ached when she thought about Isabel, and Donna still missed her sister every day, but Donna was happy in her day to day life and finally had the confidence to acknowledge that all of those things could coexist inside her ribs.

She was sad, but she wasn’t going to let that stop her from being happy.

Donna looked around her office and took a deep breath before sitting down behind her desk. She was just opening her briefcase and mentally cataloging the list of things she needed to accomplish when the phone rang.

Donna reached out and picked up the receiver, a small, barely-there smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

“Donna Moss,” she answered.

Her hands were steady.