Life after Paradise
by Chai

Rating: Mature

Category: Post-ep for "Transition" and beyond

Spoilers: Through S7

Feedback: Yes, please. I'll do almost anything to get it:
chai4anne@yahoo.com

Notes: I know it's pretty late in the day for a post-ep
for "Transition," but it's taken this long for me to get one
written. . . . I should probably attach a warning to it: WARNING: If
you think everything was just perfect in those last episodes of the
show, or if you like reading about a perfect Donna or a perfect Josh
in your fanfic, this story is not probably not for you. On the other
hand, if, like me, you were disturbed by the way the show left things
between our favorite couple and wanted to see more resolution to the
problems that have beset their relationship, then maybe you'll find
something to enjoy here. The story is finished; I just don't know
yet how many chapters it's going to break into. I'll worry about
that as I proofread and post.

I owe even more debts than usual to other fic writers in this one.
Obviously there have been a lot of post-eps for this episode, and I'm
sure I owe something to every one of them. My greatest debts,
though, are to Aim's "Forgive Us Our Trespasses"; the episodes about
Colin Ayres' gallery show in the Fantasy Virtual Season Eight that
was posted on this list last year-Shelley's "Pure and Useful Living"
and Jen Wilson's "Rain"-and to Sally Reeve's "Unspoken," which, like
the FVS8 episodes, was built around the idea of Colin mounting a show
of his pictures from Gaza. The idea of Donna being asked to write
text to accompany Colin's pictures in a gallery show was a particular
point of inspiration in Sally's fic, but I'm afraid I've cribbed a
lot more than that from her, as will be all too obvious to anyone who
reads this. My apologies to Aim, Shelley, Jen and Sally for what
I've borrowed, and thanks for the compelling and inspiring reads.
And still more thanks to Liz and Mistletoe for all their
encouragement and help: Liz in particular researched many points for
me, and both of them read it over and urged me to keep going whenever
I was ready to quit. Without them this would never have been
written, and it's a much better story than it would have been without
their input, but its faults are entirely my own.

I've learned better than to say "never again" now, but really, this
had better be my last gasp. I don't think I've got another one in
me, and my family would be very happy if I started to give my time to
other things. So, please, feed me with your feedback-I'll be
starving soon enough.

* * *

Life after Paradise
Part 1-

"Hello, Donna."

Louisa D'Amato smiled with professional welcome at her visitor, who
was folding up her umbrella and balancing it awkwardly in the corner
behind the coat-rack, trying to find a way to keep it from leaving a
wet mark on the wall.

The woman turned towards her and tried to smile in return.

"Hello, Louisa. How are you?"

"I'm fine, thank you, Donna. How are *you*?"

The slim blonde made her way to the chair facing Louisa's desk. She
was slimmer than ever, Louisa noticed: thin, in fact. Thin enough to
look as though she might break when she bent at the waist to sit down-
though, to Louisa's mind, she'd never been far from looking that way,
anyway. She'd lost weight-not a lot of weight, but then, she hadn't
had any she could afford to lose. Her cheekbones stood out painfully
in her white face, and her eyes looked dark and shadowed. Loss of
appetite, lack of sleep-Louisa ticked the symptoms off silently, her
mind already forming the diagnosis and deducing the probable cause.

Donna forced a brighter smile, and ignored the question.

"How's Robbie, Louisa?"

"He's doing well, thanks, Donna. Working harder this semester,
getting some good grades. He's fine."

"Great. That's great. And Katie?"

"She's fine."

"That's great. And Megan?"

"Just fine, thanks, Donna. We're all very well. But how are you?"

Donna's smile dimmed.

"Me? Oh, um, well. . . ."

"It's been a while since you were here last," Louisa offered,
neutrally. She was used to having to break the ice to get the
occupant of the chair opposite her to start talking.

"Two months," Donna said, automatically. "Or a little less. Six
weeks, I think. And a couple of days."

She had a head for detail; it was one of the most striking things
about her, Louisa had always thought. That she still had it
suggested that, whatever the problem was that had brought her here so
suddenly this afternoon, it hadn't been going on very long. Physical
appearances could be deceptive: with that fair skin and slim figure,
even a few bad days were bound to have a visible effect. But it
wasn't like her to call at the last minute the way she had today;
something was obviously bothering her quite a lot, even if it had
just come up recently.

"It was before the show, wasn't it?"

"Yes." Donna hesitated. "I called you afterwards, though, I
think."

Her tone suggested that it was really Louisa's memory she was unsure
of, not her own-another sign that she was not, in fact, as close to
the brink of a crisis as someone with less experience than Louisa
might have guessed from the urgency of the woman's voice when she had
called an hour ago and asked if Louisa could possibly fit her in
today. She had had the good sense to come in early, before things
got out of hand-something else Louisa remembered about her from the
first time. She'd been tense and nervous then, too-obviously unhappy
and off her stride-but she hadn't been anywhere near a breakdown.
Louisa had talked to her about trauma and its natural effects, the
importance of early intervention, and the difference between post-
trauma stress and post-traumatic stress disorder, and while Donna had
seemed glad to be assured that she was not yet showing any signs of
having developed a serious psychiatric condition like PTSD, and was
unlikely to, as long as she dealt intelligently with her feelings
about what had happened and looked after herself, Louisa had had the
distinct sense that she was only confirming what Donna had already
known. She was the type who would have researched her symptoms on
the internet, perhaps more extensively at a library, before ever
walking into a therapist's office. And she had come in early, before
things reached a crisis.

"That's right," Louisa said, reassuringly. "You said the gallery
exhibit had gone well."

"It did. It went very well. Much better than I was expecting. I
came through with flying colors; everyone said so. They said I did
great. They all said they were proud of me, even-"

She broke off without saying who in particular had been proud of
her. Louisa raised an eyebrow and settled back in her chair as Donna
continued, rather breathlessly:

"Yes, well, what I mean is, I was proud of myself. You were right; I
was able to do it. I don't know why I was so worried about it; it
wasn't nearly as hard as I'd thought it would be. They're just
pictures, after all. Like you said. Just"-her voice trembled, as
though the word was hard for her to say-"pictures. Of me. There's
blood on my face, but blood has never really bothered me that much.
Not-" Her voice wobbled again, and she paused for a moment. Louisa
could see her struggling for control. Finally, though, she took a
deep breath and went on: "Not my own blood. I've always had a
pretty strong stomach for that. I guess most women do, don't they?
We're used to seeing it. Not like men. Not like-"

And she broke off again.

"You haven't been sleeping well, have you, Donna?" Louisa asked after
a moment or two. Donna shook her head.

"No," she admitted. "No, not very well."

"Are you having trouble getting to sleep? Or waking up in the night
and not being able to go back again?"

"Both, really."

"Bad dreams?"

Donna nodded. Louisa wasn't surprised. It was what she'd been
expecting, from the moment the woman had walked through her door.

"It's the pictures, isn't it?"

Donna looked startled. "How did you-" she began, then faltered,
broke off. Her surprise puzzled Louisa.

"It's not uncommon, you know," she said, gently. "We talked about
this, remember? It was always a possibility, that your mind would
take a while to react to what you saw at that show. It doesn't mean
you shouldn't have gone, or that you didn't do well, or you've failed-
it just means you've got more work to do."

"Oh," Donna said, sounding genuinely surprised. "Oh, no. Oh, no-
that's not it. That's not it at all."

Louisa blinked.

"What is it, then?" she asked.

She did a pretty good job, she thought, at keeping her skepticism out
of her voice. It was important not to let the patient think you were
two steps ahead of her, even when you were.

Donna didn't answer. She was staring down at her hands-which, Louisa
could see, were shaking a little. She squeezed them tightly together
in her lap, and the trembling seemed to stop.

"What is it, then?" Louisa repeated. And then, when Donna still
didn't answer, she spoke more sharply, "Donna?"

"I'm sorry?" Donna said, looking up at last.

Her face was paler than ever-as white as a sheet, Louisa thought.
Louisa wasn't much given to examining her thoughts for cliches; if
she'd ever thought about it, she would probably have said that
phrases only became cliches because they were the most efficient way
of expressing a common idea, rather the way labels like "acute stress
disorder" or "PTSD" were the most efficient way of talking about a
variety of symptoms and causes that might otherwise take far too long
to describe.

"I asked what you were saying, Donna," Louisa said, frowning a
little.

"What *I* was saying?" Donna sounded startled, as if she hadn't
realized that she hadn't finished her thought. "I'm sorry." She was
obviously embarrassed. "I guess I'm a little-abstracted today."

Louisa raised an eyebrow at the unusual choice of word.

"'Abstracted,'" Donna went on, loosening her hands a little and
starting to twist something-a kleenex-that she was holding in
them. "That's a strange word, isn't it? I looked it up once; it
means `lost in thought.' But it also means that something's been
reduced, doesn't it? Condensed, boiled down, like an abstract of a
book or an article. I used to do a lot of that at work: Jo-" She
broke off, paused a split second, and then started again, still with
a touch of hesitation. "My-boss-back then-was always wanting me to
make up abstracts of documents for him, articles on this or that, you
wouldn't believe the subjects, everything under the sun."

She smiled, a little tremulously. There was a touch of wistfulness
in her voice. Louisa knitted her brows together: that boss again.
He had been a problem before-at least as much of a problem as the
explosion that had killed three men and injured Donna at Gaza. She
wondered why he would be surfacing in her client's thought again now;
surely everything the woman had achieved since leaving that pointless
job in the dust should have immunized her against thoughts of her
old, toxic boss.

"That was tedious for you," she said, helpfully, remembering Donna's
concerns about her job then. But Donna didn't respond the way she
expected.

"Oh no," Donna said, seriously. Her hands stopped fiddling with the
tissue. She clasped them together earnestly, almost
pleadingly. "Oh, no. It was very interesting, really; I learned so
much that way. It was really quite an education."

She paused, and looked down at her hands for a minute. Louisa
waited, curiously. This was very different from the way Donna had
spoken about her old job before. It had been a while, of course-
almost a year and a half since Donna had left it and joined the
Russell campaign. She'd gone from there to the Santos campaign, and
then to the White House as Mrs. Santos' Chief of Staff. Louisa
didn't follow Washington politics much-she was Army, through and
through-but she'd been pleased by everything Donna had told her about
her successes. She'd had to deal with the old boss during the
campaign, too, Louisa remembered. He'd been a prick, of course, but
somebody else-a woman, naturally-had recognized Donna's abilities and
given her the job she'd deserved, and he'd simply had to put up with
it. Or that was what Louisa remembered. They hadn't talked about
him at all the last time Donna had been here. Clearly something had
changed.

"Of course," Donna said, rather vaguely, "'abstracted' has other
meanings, too. I looked it up once, just so I could argue about it
with-with my boss-and it can mean that something's been removed or
separated from something else. . . ."

And her voice drifted away again.

"Donna," Louisa said, patiently. "You were saying?"

Donna looked up, blinking.

"I'm sorry," she said again. "What did you say?"

"Can you finish what you were saying, Donna? Come to your point?"

"Come to the point?" Donna asked, absently. "I think I was. I
think that was the point."

Louisa suppressed a slight sigh. There were days when she felt
better equipped for this sort of thing than others, and this wasn't
one of them. But she had the time-her only other appointment that
afternoon had cancelled-and Donna was, after all, paying her for it.
That was one of the advantages of private practice; you didn't have
to worry about keeping to a schedule determined by the Army or the
VA. She made a note or two on the pad of paper on her desk and
said, "Why don't you tell me some more about it, Donna? Take your
time. Tell it however you need to."

The woman in front of her nodded and settled back in her chair. Her
voice wavered a little, and she started to twist the kleenex again,
picking at it as she talked, until the legs of her dark pants were
covered in fine white dust.

"I guess-I never told you-about what happened last year, at the end
of the campaign. About-about me and-" She hesitated again, her lips
trembling. There was a long pause.

"And what, Donna?" Louisa asked, evenly.

The pause continued for some time. When Donna finally answered, her
voice was almost inaudible. "And-Josh."

Louisa's eyes widened with surprise. She didn't follow the gossip
columns in the press or read "People," or she might have picked up on
the stories that had started to circulate after the President's
inauguration. They had all been short pieces accompanied by small
photos-just footnotes, really, to the much larger spreads about the
First Family that had appeared at the time.

"No," her therapist said carefully, after a few moments. "No, you
didn't."

Donna's pale face had turned a delicate shade of pink.

"Well," Louisa said, after another short pause. "Why don't you tell
me now?"

The rain slashed against the windows with a hard, rattling sound as
Donna started to speak, and a rumble in the distance announced the
arrival of the afternoon thunderstorm. They'd been having them all
week. Everyone kept hoping they'd clear the air, but they didn't; by
evening the sun would be baking down and the sticky heat would
return, unabated. It seemed too early for this sort of weather-it
was more like July or August than May-but this, the newscasters kept
telling people, was something they could expect to see more often now
that all that carbon build-up in the atmosphere was disrupting the
weather patterns. Dump enough toxic waste into any system and you
changed it, and then you had to live with the consequences. If you
could.

A lot of people were clamoring for the government to legislate
serious environmental regulation in an effort to reverse the changes,
but Louisa herself was of the "learn to live with it" school on
global warming. She had a very comfortable income, didn't own any
waterfront property, and couldn't imagine turning up the thermostat
on her air-conditioning or taking the Metro in to work instead of her
Mazda SUV. She could learn to live with warmer weather and stronger
storms. She thought of that as adaptation.

* * *

Donna had been given Louisa D'Amato's name by Kate Harper after the
explosion in Gaza two years before. She'd spoken briefly with a
psychologist in the hospital in Germany, and a couple of times with
another at National Rehab in Washington when she came home. But
those had been pro forma visits: brief, perfunctory, and not
particularly useful, except that she'd been given a list of symptoms
to watch out for, and the reminder that she should seek more
extensive professional help if they surfaced.

When they did, it was Kate she turned to first, because Kate was the
one who noticed how she was looking and offered her a chance to talk
about it. It had eaten her up that it was Kate who saw what she
needed, not Josh. "Invisible," she'd thought to herself. "That's
what you are to him-invisible. That's what you've always been." She
knew that wasn't really true, and yet it felt true. For every time
he'd flirted with her, every time he'd done something unexpected that
suggested he felt something for her-every Inaugural Ball, every day
in the hospital in Germany-there were twenty other times he'd made it
clear that, whatever interest in her he occasionally showed, it was
superficial and passing, and nothing he was ever going to act on.
And then there was the question of her career. . . .

Kate had provided a surprisingly sympathetic ear. Between her own
experiences and her friends', she knew quite a lot about trauma-and
quite a lot about men, too. Donna didn't want to talk about Josh to
Kate, but Kate asked a few oblique questions and seemed to get a
pretty clear sense of how frustrated Donna was in her job, and how
annoyed with her boss. Like Donna's mother, she seemed to think at
first that Josh's trip to Germany indicated something profound about
the nature of his feelings for his assistant. It was easier to
disabuse Kate of that idea than her mother. Donna couldn't bring
herself to repeat everything C.J. had said before she left for Gaza,
but the humiliating words were so burned into her mind that she
couldn't help echoing some of the more innocuous comments-the ones
about her career-and Kate, who'd had to fight her way tooth and nail
over seemingly unscaleable walls thrown up by men's egos and
indifference and outright sexism to get where she had, had
sympathized more fulsomely than Donna had ever expected when she
first let the bitter words out of her mouth. If Kate guessed that
Donna was feeling more in that department than just career
frustration, she had the tact not to pursue it. Her advice was to
get a good therapist and a new job. She'd heard that Will was
hiring. And she had the names of two or three professionals with
plenty of experience working with trauma victims, and with women who
were having trouble dealing with the men who were holding them back
in their careers, too.

The professionals were all women, and had all helped women Kate knew-
in the Army or the Navy, the NSA or the CIA. And they all charged
considerably less than the only other trauma specialist Donna had had
any experience with, which was a good thing. She'd seen one of
Stanley Keyworth's bills once, when she was straightening up Josh's
desk, and had been shocked at what he'd had to pay. His insurance
had covered part of it, of course, but what they hadn't would still
have made a sizeable dent in Donna's bank account. And Josh had been
diagnosed with something that showed up on an HMO-approved list of
conditions requiring psychiatric treatment, whereas she was pretty
sure she wasn't suffering from anything nearly so severe.

Josh, of course, had been going to the guys at the very top of their
profession. He'd said once that the trouble with therapy was finding
someone who was smarter than you were, and Donna had snorted and
rolled her eyes; only Josh would think it was hard to find a
psychiatrist who was smart enough to work with. Donna had no trouble
accepting someone lower down on the payscale. Louisa D'Amato had
recently retired from the military and gone into private practice.
She was fifty-ish, divorced, with a son in high school and two
younger daughters, and something about her reminded Donna of a
college professor she had particularly admired. She seemed like the
sort of woman who didn't put up with any nonsense from anyone, and
yet she projected an air of approval that was very reassuring. Donna
always came away from their sessions feeling that really, anything
was possible, if she would just take control of her life and move
forward, the way Louisa was encouraging her to do.

They talked at length about Gaza-about the stress Donna had been
feeling since the explosion there, the fear and guilt and grief-but
Donna found herself opening up about other problems, too. If she
occasionally felt a pang of guilt about some of what she said-or what
she didn't say-about Josh, she told herself it served him right and
she didn't care. It was her therapy, after all; she was the one he
had brushed aside and refused to give serious work to and then sent
off to be blown up, and if she wanted to let off steam about that,
she had every right to. She was speaking in confidence; nothing she
said would ever go outside Louisa's office, Louisa had assured her of
that; she could say whatever she wanted to and not have to worry
about the consequences, because there couldn't be any. And she was
enjoying it. It surprised her, how much she enjoyed letting out some
of her frustrations with Josh, and finding a sympathetic woman
listening and nodding and telling her that she was perfectly entitled
to those feelings.

Not that they got into all Donna's feelings about Josh. Louisa
probably suspected that a man who occupied so much of a woman's
thoughts wasn't there in a purely professional capacity, but Donna
rather hurried over the question of what else besides career
advancement she might want from Josh, preferring to dwell on his
failure to recognize her real abilities at work and his willingness
to use her as a dry-cleaning and food-delivery service instead of
promoting her into the kind of responsibilities she knew she could
handle. His trip to see her in the hospital in Germany somehow never
got mentioned at all. It wasn't something Donna really wanted to
talk about; it made her head ache even to think about it. Her mother
still talked about it all the time, and Donna was sick to death of
trying to explain that it hadn't meant what her mother thought it had
at all.

If it had meant *that*, Josh would have *done* something by now, and
he hadn't. Since the day he'd wheeled her back into the White House,
he hadn't given much indication that he was really aware of her at
all. He'd given her a pen. But he hadn't noticed that she was
coming into the office snappish and cross, with bags under her eyes
because she was having trouble sleeping; he hadn't considered that
she might still be needing help. He couldn't even remember that she
liked white wine, not red. And he couldn't let her make her own
decision about whether or not to give a press interview; he snatched
the phone from her hand and yelled at the man on the other end and
hung up, as if she had nothing to do with it at all. Rude, Louisa
had agreed-more than rude: controlling, domineering, completely
lacking in even the most basic respect for her. No, Louisa had told
her, it was not at all likely that a man like that could be expected
to change. There was nothing to be gained from staying in a job with
a boss like that; questions of loyalty to the administration were
irrelevant; she was being crushed, and she had to look out for
herself, to put herself first. The best thing to do was simply to
get another job.

Talking to Louisa was a refreshing change from talking to her
mother. Louisa didn't insist on anything except Donna's need to put
herself first and make decisions that would move her life forward.
She was entirely in Donna's camp, which Donna often felt these days
her mother wasn't. Of course, she wasn't paying her mother to be her
sounding-board, and her mother knew a good deal more about both her
daughter and Josh than Louisa did. But just because her mother knew
things didn't mean she understood them, and Donna was fed up with
hearing her talk about how wonderful Josh had been after Gaza, and
how he had arranged her mother's trip there and how good he'd been
about sorting out the insurance details afterwards, and what it meant
that he'd come to Germany himself and what her mother was sure he was
feeling for her, when he obviously wasn't feeling those things at all
and never would be, no matter how much she'd always wanted it. But
C.J. had pointed out how hopeless that wish was, and she'd been
right. Josh must have come to Germany just because Leo had wanted
him to, because she worked for them and someone had to be there to
talk to the doctors, and her father couldn't travel anymore, and Leo
had probably realized that her mother would be too upset to deal with
all that on her own; there might have been liability issues involved-
or just Leo's fatherly kindness. Every time her mother mentioned
Josh in Germany, Donna wanted to cry. It was really easier not to
talk to Louisa about any of that at all.

Easier not to talk about it, easier not to have to think about it.
Easier just to stick with the obvious-that Josh was her boss, that
he'd ignored her and dismissed her whenever she'd tried to take steps
to increase her responsibilities and advance her career, that he'd
sent her to Gaza on a meaningless make-work assignment, and because
he'd sent her there, she'd been blown up. She should never have been
there; she should have been doing something more significant back in
the White House, or somewhere else in D.C. C.J. Cregg had said so,
after all, and she was a very accomplished woman with a very
important job; she should know. Kate Harper-whose job was, if
anything, more responsible than C.J.'s-had clearly agreed. And
Louisa did, too. Three intelligent, successful women had all said
the same thing: "Think of yourself, Donna. You've got to look after
yourself. Nobody else is going to do it for you-he's not, is he?
Put yourself first, for a change. Put yourself first. Put yourself
first. . . ."

They all made it clear they thought Donna should be taking steps to
move her career forward, not letting the pathetic crush she suspected
they all realized she'd been harboring all these years for her boss
keep her from breaking free and doing something more challenging and
worthwhile with her life. She only had one life to live, after all,
and she'd come close enough to losing it to realize that she couldn't
afford to waste any of it. Better to give up her hopes of ever being
loved by Josh and create a satisfying career for herself, than waste
whatever was left of her life being frustrated in both love and work;
and there was, after all, always the possibility that she would
eventually find someone else to love her, if she wasn't so busy
thinking about Josh that no one else would ever really do. It was
true that Kate had seemed at first to think that Josh might actually
care for her in the same way she cared for him, but C.J. knew him far
better than Kate did, and she obviously hadn't thought anything of
the kind. And neither did Donna now. She wondered sometimes how her
mother could be so naive. She supposed that was why she had been so
naive herself; she'd been brought up to it, and even her time with
Alan "Freeride" Robertson hadn't opened her eyes. It upset her to
hear her own absurd romanticism echoed in her mother's voice. She
found herself snapping crossly over the phone whenever her mother
asked anything at all about her work or Josh, just to get her to
stop. Her mother seemed hurt at first, and then annoyed, and Donna
didn't know how to deal with that, because she loved her mother a lot
and usually got along with her just fine, but now she couldn't seem
to stop being angry with her, because she wouldn't stop talking about
Josh. It was another reason why she had to get away from him; if she
had another job, her mother wouldn't have as much excuse to keep
bringing him up all the time. On every count, leaving was obviously
the best thing to do. If she'd had any question left about it, the
cancelled lunches would have been her answer. But really, she'd made
up her mind before she'd ever penciled the first one in.

So Donna left and went to work for Will. She called Louisa with
tears of joy in her voice just two weeks later, after she'd moved
into her first real office of her own, and they rejoiced together in
the progress she'd made. A few months later she called the therapist
again, this time very close to real tears, after that terrible
interview with Josh after the convention, when she'd asked him for a
job with the Santos campaign and he'd refused-and again a month or so
later, with no trace of tears at all, to report triumphantly that the
campaign's communications director had hired her over Josh's
objections to join the Santos media team.

And she'd talked to Louisa after Colin Ayres called one day-just
after the convention, while she was still working for the Vice-
President-and told her that he was planning to mount an exhibition of
photographs from Gaza as part of the U.N.'s peacekeeping
celebrations, and wanted her to write some short pieces about her
experiences there to accompany them; and then later-months later-
when, just before the opening of the show, he'd called again to tell
Donna more about the pictures he'd selected to exhibit there. She
and the therapist had spent a lot of time discussing Donna's feelings
about going to the opening after that. Donna had been upset at
first, and reluctant, but in the end, with Louisa's encouragement,
she'd decided to go ahead. She'd attended the show's opening in New
York in early April, and had called Louisa afterwards to tell her how
well it had gone and to thank her for all her help and support. But
somehow Donna had never gotten around to admitting that the boyfriend
who had, even if with little enthusiasm, accompanied her to the
opening was, in fact, the same rude, controlling, impossible boss
that Louisa had encouraged her to walk away from a year and a half
before. It was all just too complicated to explain, and since Louisa
didn't seem to have seen any of the rumors about Josh and Donna that
had made their way into the back pages of the gossip magazines, there
wasn't really any necessity to explain anything at all.

But now, four and a half weeks later, sitting in Louisa's office
shredding kleenex into her lap, her heart pounding in her chest and
her mind so overwhelmed she could barely make out what the woman
across from her was saying, Donna knew she had to try. Her voice
faltered at times, and her face flushed as she told her therapist
about that early morning late in the campaign when the polls had
suddenly turned their way and, in a moment of exhilaration, Josh had
grabbed her and kissed her and she'd found herself kissing back. She
tried to explain what she was sure Louisa had realized long ago:
that, for all his faults, Josh was an attractive man and she'd always
been attracted to him, even when she'd been angry with him. She told
Louisa how carefully she'd thought about the implications before
deciding to let him know that, if he was interested in taking things
farther than that kiss and going to bed with her, she wouldn't
object. She explained how she'd made up her mind to take charge of
the relationship-Louisa was clearly pleased about that-and how she'd
told Josh a few days after they'd started sleeping together that he
had four weeks to make some decisions about what they were doing and
what he wanted, and how he'd ended up asking her to go away with him
for a week to lie in the sun in the Caribbean and unwind after the
campaign, to have a chance to spend some real time together and
talk. And she tried to describe, as best she could, what had
happened after that.

But she didn't tell Louisa everything. How could she? There was too
much to tell, too many details, all of them tiny and confusing and
painful and precious, like shards of some treasured object she had
dropped and broken, and was down on her knees now desperately hoping
to pick up and somehow piece back together.

* * *

To be continued. . . .



Life after Paradise
by Chai

Rating: Mature

Category: Post-ep for "Transition" and beyond. If I add "drama"
and "romance" to the categories, will people be less worried about
where this is going?

Spoilers: Through S7

Disclaimers: Guess I forgot these in the first post. All the usual.

Feedback: Yes, please. I'll do almost anything to get it:
chai4anne@yahoo.com

Notes: See Part 1.

Life after Paradise

From Chapter 1:

But she didn't tell Louisa everything. How could she? There was too
much to tell, too many details, all of them tiny and confusing and
painful and precious, like shards of some treasured object she had
dropped and broken, and was down on her knees now desperately hoping
to pick up and somehow piece back together.

* * *

Chapter 2-

Donna couldn't, for instance, tell Louisa everything about that first
kiss. She couldn't tell her about the way Josh had looked, rumpled
and only half-dressed and utterly desirable, or about the way she'd
wanted to push him back onto the bed and have him even before
anything had happened. She couldn't tell her about the way he'd
pulled back and looked at her searchingly for a moment, as if wanting
an assent, as his hands reached up gently to cup her face and he'd
kissed her. She couldn't tell her about the way he'd tasted, of
sleep and stale coffee, but under that, something both familiar and
new that she'd realized with a strange, heart-aching pang was the
taste of him: after all these years, she was tasting Josh. She
couldn't tell Louisa what that had meant to her. And she couldn't
tell her about the way his hands had moved down her body, or the way
her body had flamed into life at his touch; about the way he'd pulled
her to him, or the way she'd forgotten everything else in the
desperate need of him. Those were the things she couldn't tell but
that mattered more than any of the things she did say. They were
burned into her body and soul; she couldn't remember anymore what any
other kiss had felt like from any other man, even the first one-only
that kiss, and the ones that had come after it. Only Josh.

But those weren't the sorts of things you told somebody else, even
your therapist, so Donna just said that she'd taken the polls to
Josh's room one morning and he'd kissed her, but Matt Santos had come
in and they'd jumped away from each other, and that had been it for a
while. She didn't tell Louisa how she'd burned for him for hours
after, or how, when they'd finally had a few minutes alone with each
other later, Josh hadn't come back for more the way she'd been
hoping, but apologized instead: it was "inappropriate," he didn't
know what had come over him, he was sorry, it wouldn't happen again.
His reaction made her feel ridiculous and humiliated, and although
she thought Louisa might approve of her reply-"It was bound to happen
eventually," she'd said, trying desperately to look as if she was
keeping her cool-she didn't want to have to tell her what she'd
really been feeling, how she'd wanted to laugh and cry at the same
time, but really she'd just wanted to go back to that kiss and where
it had been taking them, just wanted him to want her so much he
simply couldn't stop himself, because that was the way she wanted
him. But he hadn't, not then, and not for quite a bit after-which
was the last thing she wanted to admit to anyone else, even Louisa.

She certainly didn't want to tell Louisa that whole absurd business
about the key. She still didn't know if Josh hadn't picked it up
because he'd been surprised, or because-for whatever strange reasons
his mind might come up with-he really hadn't wanted to. She would
have gone with surprise if he'd come to her room later, or even if
he'd called, but he hadn't, and she still wondered why. That was the
trouble with Josh: she knew him inside and out and backwards most of
the time, but she still sometimes felt as if she didn't know him at
all. Any normal man would have come to her room after that if he'd
wanted her at all, but Josh of course wasn't any normal man. Maybe
he hadn't come because he'd just been too busy or too tired. Or
maybe he was still worrying about appropriateness. Or maybe she'd
put on the wrong outfit that morning, or had food between her teeth
or something, and he really hadn't felt all that attracted in that
moment, even though he obviously had been when they'd kissed.

Or, of course, maybe he just hadn't wanted to deal with all the stuff
that would inevitably come up between them if they slept together.
There was a lot of history there, and Josh had enough history of his
own that he might very well shy away from any kind of sex that would
be too emotionally entangling. She'd had a theory once that he was
scared to get too close to anyone, because it hurt too much when the
people he loved left him or died. She'd always wondered about the
kind of women he seemed to choose when he did get into a
relationship: Mandy and Amy had seemed to her to care more about
politics than people, which didn't make them very good choices for
any long-term kind of thing. But perhaps that was exactly why he'd
chosen them, because he knew in advance that they really weren't
going to expect very much from him in the way of emotional
involvement, and he didn't really want very much from them that way,
either. And perhaps that was why he hadn't gone for her years ago,
in spite the times when she'd thought maybe something really was
going to happen between them, because she hadn't known how to keep
her emotions off her face then, and seeing how much she'd cared had
scared him off. Of course they were involved now, but she'd been
working very hard not to let him know just how much he still mattered
to her, so she wouldn't put him off, and so she wouldn't die of shame
when-if-he started to push her away.

Eventually, of course, they *had* made it to bed, but the way they'd
done it hadn't given Donna any clues about what Josh was really
feeling or what, besides sex, he might really want. He'd asked her
if she'd ever "come on board" during a campaign before, a question
that raised a whole string of other questions in her mind: Was he
trying to warn her that campaign sex was all he was offering? Or was
it just a clumsy attempt at a pick-up line? She wouldn't have
expected Josh to be very adept at that sort of thing, but surely he
could have managed something a little smoother than that if he'd
wanted to. So maybe it was a warning: this is going to be casual,
don't expect anything else. On the other hand, maybe he'd asked
because he really wanted to know. But why would he have to ask? He
must have known the answer; she'd been glued to his side all through
both Bartlet for America campaigns; she'd hardly had time to be
coming on board with anybody except him. Had he just not noticed?
She'd always wondered how much he really took in of what she was
doing, whether it was the local gomers themselves who irritated him,
or just her constant chattering about them; whether he really cared
what she did on her dates, or not. There'd been so many times when
she'd thought he wanted her and was jealous of the men she went out
with, but so many other times when she hadn't been able to tell what
he was thinking at all.

Especially in recent years, after Gaza, when he hadn't done anything
to try to make things happen between them, or after she'd resigned.
She'd wondered very briefly then if maybe, when she wasn't working
for him anymore, he'd come after her, but he hadn't, of course: he'd
gone after Matt Santos instead. So she'd worked for Russell, and
he'd worked for Santos, and when she'd tried to come back, after the
convention, he hadn't wanted anything to do with her at all. And
yet, even while he was telling her to go, he'd told her that he
missed her every day. That was so maddeningly typical of Josh: to do
and say things that made her want to tear him out of her heart and
stomp him to pieces, and then come back with something like that that
made it impossible to forget about him and get on with her life. It
wasn't like she hadn't had other opportunities: there'd been plenty
of chances, on the Russell campaign, and all the ones before that.
But she'd never taken any of them up on more than the offer of a
drink after work, or dinner. And maybe that was why he'd asked if
she'd ever come on board. Maybe he'd been wondering what she'd been
doing all those months when she'd been away from him. Maybe he
wondered because he'd missed her, because he really cared. But then
again, maybe he was just wondering if he should be worried about who
she'd been with and how safe the sex had been. Or maybe it was just
Josh's idea of a smooth pick-up line. Or maybe it was his way of
telling her that campaign sex was all he wanted and all she was going
to get. . . .

And she'd been willing to settle for that right then, because she'd
been wanting him so much, ever since that kiss. So she'd said no-no,
she'd never come on board during a campaign. He'd asked her if she
wanted another drink, and she'd said no again. She'd said no to
everything he said, and he'd finally heard the yes she was willing
into her words and her legs and followed her upstairs. On the
outside she knew she'd stayed calm, but inside she'd never felt more
nervous in her life: her heart was fluttering, her stomach felt like
it was tied in knots, and she wondered if she was going to
distinguish herself by actually being sick. At the break in the
corridor he'd stopped, and looked at her uncertainly. Her room was
down the hall to the left; his was straight ahead. "So, um," he'd
said, brilliantly. She looked at him as coolly as she knew how,
flicked her hair back, and kept walking. When they got to his door
she put her hand out; he put his keycard into it and let her walk in
first. The door had shut slowly behind him. He stood with his back
to it, looking at her, and she'd turned around and looked at him, and
they stood like that for almost a whole minute, just looking at each
other: his eyes full of doubt and desire, and she doing everything
she could not to let hers show how badly she was shaking inside. And
then he reached out and took her face in his hands again, and started
to kiss her, hard, and it wasn't long before they were ripping each
other's clothes off and gasping together on the bed, and not really
much longer before she was crying out half in agony and half in
bliss, and he was too. It was good sex, the intensity of it more
than making for the relative briefness. And yet when it was all over
she'd wanted to curl up in a little ball and cry, because everything
had changed and nothing had, and she had no idea where this was
going, or what, besides predictable male desire, he really felt for
her at all.

But she didn't let herself cry. Instead she rolled over and acted as
if she was trying to sleep, and after a while she slipped out of bed
and took the computer into the bathroom so she could check the latest
news reports while getting dressed. He came in after her, looking
tousle-haired and bewildered and utterly desirable, but she just
said, "I really want to win this thing"-as if he didn't, and as if
there was something she could actually do about it now. It wasn't a
lie, but it wasn't the point, either: the point was just to put some
distance between them, and remind him that she was a pro now and the
fact that they'd just had sex together wasn't really anything like as
important as the win. She didn't want him to forget that. And she
didn't want to forget it herself. She was afraid that, if she really
let herself think about what had just happened-about the fact that
she'd just slept with the man she'd worked for and loved and longed
for for almost nine years, she'd go to pieces and forget about
everything else, and everything she'd achieved this past year would
slip away from her. She was almost certain that he was going to slip
away from her: she'd actually been surprised that she'd made it out
of bed and into her clothes before he had. This was campaign sex,
after all. Whether Josh wanted it to be anything more than that she
had no idea, but she certainly wasn't going to find out today. Or
tonight: there'd be victory sex when it was all over if they won,
probably comfort sex if (oh God, don't think it) they didn't, and
maybe a little stress-relief sex between now and then if he wanted it
and she did too, but other than that, she knew neither one of them
would have a thought to spare for anything except the election
today. Any talk they were going to have would have to wait until
tomorrow. And that was a good thing, because she was a pro now and
she really couldn't afford to get all emotional and fall apart on
Election Day.

But of course they didn't talk that day or the next one, either, or
the one after that-or not about what they'd just done. Leo died, and
neither one of them was able to think or talk about anything else but
that. When they'd finally made it to Josh's room that night, Josh
had said, "I'm sorry, I don't think I can-" and she'd said, "It's all
right. I couldn't either," and he'd wrapped his arms around her and
held her very tight, and said, "I just can't believe he's gone," and
she'd said, "I know. I can't either."

"If I just hadn't asked him-" Josh's voice had been thick and low.

"It's not your fault, Josh," she tried to soothe him. "It's not your
fault."

"What was I thinking of, Donna? He'd had a heart attack last fall; I
should never have put him through that-"

"He loved every minute of it, Josh, you know he did."

"He never even got to see it; he worked so hard for this, and he
didn't get to see any of it. He didn't even get to know."

"He knew, Josh. I'm sure he knew we were going to win."

Josh shook his head then.

"It's not the same," he said, bitterly. "It's not the same."

And Donna hadn't known what to say to that at all. He was right:
whatever Leo had or hadn't known in his heart, it could never be the
same as having been there to taste the win himself. And the win
wasn't the same anymore: it hardly felt like a victory; more like a
defeat. Josh buried his head in her neck, and she could feel his
shoulders heaving and the warm wetness on his face pressed against
her. And she grieved, not just for Leo, but for the man crying in
her arms, who had worked so hard this past year, and surely had
deserved something better than to have all the joy of his
accomplishment taken from him along with the man he'd loved almost
like a second father-and she remembered that other time, when his
real father had died on the night they won the Illinois primary, and
she cried for that all over again, too.

But along with her grief she was aware of other feelings that made
her almost ashamed, because it seemed wrong that any corner of her
mind should be given over to anything except mourning Leo and
comforting Josh. But she couldn't help it; from time to time, other
thoughts pushed their way in: amazement that they had won, and she
had played a real part in it; another kind of amazement that Josh was
in her arms after all these years, holding her and confiding in her
and finding some sort of comfort simply in being close to her; and,
on the heels of that, the unsettling awareness that, whatever she
might be to him tonight, there were no guarantees that he would feel
the same way or want the same things tomorrow.

She wasn't really surprised to find that he was already up and gone
when she woke in the morning. He'd left a note: "Got to see Matt.
Sorry about last night. Talk to you later." Which was more than
she'd expected, but still told her nothing, and left her wondering
with a sinking heart what it was he was sorry about. Not having had
sex with her? Having opened himself up by breaking down in front of
her? What was he going to do about it now? She sighed, put the note
in her pocket, and went out to start taking care of the hundreds of
things that were waiting to be done that day.

When she finally saw him, he was talking to five people at once, and
didn't have time to do more than give her a small half-smile. He was
insanely busy all day, obviously still stunned by both victory and
grief. He left for D.C. later that day, taking Leo's body home to
his daughter and her mother and the President who had been his best
friend. Donna had to stay behind with the rest of the campaign
staff, while the Santoses took a few days at home in Houston to
recover and regroup.

It was three days before she saw Josh again, at Leo's funeral. She
was nearly knocked off her feet when he asked her if she still had a
key to his apartment and offered to let her stay there since her
place was still sublet. That was-sweet. There was no denying that
was very sweet. But it was frightening, too: they still hadn't
talked about anything, so she really had no idea what he had in mind;
it would be too easy to assume that a gesture like that meant more
than it did. She wondered if, really, he didn't have anything in
mind except getting more sex and getting it more easily-and if that
was all this was about, she couldn't go on with it, much though she
was enjoying the sex herself. She couldn't afford to slip into
living with him, even temporarily, without having talked about
anything: it would be too easy just to go on that way without ever
talking, and then she'd find out too late that he didn't really feel
the things she needed him to feel, and wasn't willing to do the
things she needed him to do for her. That was how things had
happened with Alan. She didn't want to do that again, and she didn't
want Josh to think she was too eager to do it with him, anyway,
because too much eagerness always put a man off-she'd certainly
learned that one over the years. So she told him she couldn't, and
was glad she wasn't even lying: she'd already made arrangements to
stay with C.J.

His attempt to talk her out of it surprised her even more than his
initial offer had: surely he must see the implications of what he was
suggesting, now that she'd pointed them out to him? It couldn't
possibly just be her who was finding all this awkward and hard to
navigate, could it? She said as much to him, and of course he said
no, she was right, it wasn't just her, which was almost a relief to
hear. She hadn't known what was happening there for a minute; she'd
been so sure he wouldn't really want her staying over regularly yet,
wouldn't really be comfortable with her more or less moving in. And
of course he hadn't been. He just hadn't considered the implications
of what he was suggesting, or else he was trying to act nonchalantly
to hide the fact that, really, he was just as confused and scared by
what they were doing as she was.

Confused and scared, she thought, was okay. At least it was better
than being certain, if certainty meant knowing that all he wanted
from her was just campaign sex, or knowing that he didn't want to be
as close to her emotionally as Leo's death had almost forced him to
be. They needed to talk-they both knew that-but of course they
didn't do it; he was always too busy, or too tired, or both of them
were just too interested in doing something else.

But they couldn't go on like that, so she'd changed it. She lay in
bed one morning rehearsing what she was going to say, and was quite
pleased with the little speech she was able to work out. She told
him she didn't know what this thing they were doing was all about,
and she knew he didn't know, either. And she'd laid down the rules:
four weeks, or else. They had four weeks to figure out what they
wanted from this, or it was over. He'd tried to wiggle out of it, of
course, told her the next day that things were too crazy at work and
he couldn't give the time or thought to work things out with her
right now-but she didn't let him off the hook. And when he finally
offered her a job with the administration-Assistant Press Secretary-
she said she couldn't work with him and sleep with him, and couldn't
work with him if they stopped sleeping together, either- which was
probably more than she should have admitted right then, but
fortunately he didn't seem to notice. She stuck to her guns on both
the job and the deadline. She was proud of herself for that: it was
just what Louisa would have told her to do.

* * *

Donna did tell Louisa that part, and was rewarded with a smile of
approval.

"That was good," Louisa said. "You took charge of the relationship.
You decided what you needed, and told him. That was very good."

Donna would have smiled back once. But on that rainy morning in
early May, she couldn't manage it. She just squeezed her hands
together tightly in her lap, and tried to explain, in a faltering
voice, how things had gone from there.

* * *

Taking charge had actually worked more spectacularly well than Donna
had ever expected. Just a few hours after she'd renewed the
deadline, Josh grabbed her at her desk and said,

"Go pack a bag. We're out of here."

"What?" she said, more than a little stunned.

"I said, go pack," he said, with his best grin, the one that showed
all his dimples in full force. "We're taking a vacation. Now.
Tonight. A week. Together. So go on-go pack."

"We are?" she asked, unable to stop the smile that was starting to
stretch her face from ear to ear.

"We're leaving from Dulles at 6:30," he said. "Sam's filling in for
me. The President-elect is cool with it; said he'd drive me to the
airport himself if it wouldn't mean a motorcade. Sam will deal with
Lou for you, and I don't think Mrs. Santos will mind, either-you
weren't planning to start tomorrow, were you?"

She shook her head, still beaming.

"So, tell her if you want to, but then go pack!"

And he pulled her to him and gave her a kiss, right there where
anybody walking by could see, and then stepped away, whistling and
practically bouncing on the balls of his feet.

"Um, Josh?" she said, smiling at him indulgently. Really, he was
irresistible when he was like this, though she didn't want him to
find out she thought so.

"Yeah?" He was still grinning.

"What am I packing for? What do I need to bring?"

"A swimsuit," he said. "Preferably a bikini. And some very short
skirts or shorts. And some of those tops that wrap around your neck
and leave your shoulders and tummy all bare"-and he actually reached
out and put a hand on hers. It was just as well that nobody was
passing by. She laughed; she couldn't help it.

"Anything else?"

"Some sunscreen, I guess. We can rub it on each other. Oh, and your
passport-don't forget that."

"My passport?" she said, startled.

"Barbados," Josh said, smiling. "Sam knew a place that sounded
pretty nice."

"Great," she said, beaming at him again. "Yours is in your-" and
then she stopped, because that was the kind of thing she'd promised
herself she wouldn't do anymore. She could not afford to start
acting like his assistant again. But old habits were hard to break.

She felt her smile slipping as she thought about it. Josh's had
slipped, too. He looked at her oddly for a moment.

"In my desk at home," he said quietly, finishing her sentence for
her. "Yeah, I know."

"Right," she said, awkwardly. "Well, that's lovely; I'd better go
get ready."

"Yeah," he said, smiling again, though not quite so broadly as
before. "See you at the airport. Dulles, remember. Boarding at six-
thirty."

"I'll see you there."

"Don't be late."

"Like I would." She'd always been the one who had to say that to him.

But she almost was late. She had to finish what she was doing and
dash home and pack a bag and change, because she couldn't possibly
fly to the Caribbean wearing pantyhose and a business suit. And
since it was winter she had to dig through everything in her closet
to find her bikini and some summer skirts and blouses, and since it
was Josh she was going with she had to put on six different outfits
before finding one she thought looked right: slim white cotton pants
(their length a concession to the reality that it was mid-November
and no longer warm out in Washington) and a soft, flowery blouse that
looked pretty and flirty and, she hoped, enticing, without making it
seem as if she was trying too hard, as if it mattered too much to her
how she was dressed when she got on a plane to fly off to Barbados
for a week of sun and sex with him. No trip with a man had ever
mattered to her more, which made it essential that it not show that
it mattered too much.

They'd already boarded the plane when she arrived. Typically, he
hadn't waited for her; he was already in his seat. But she was too
happy to let that bother her, especially when she saw the way he
smiled when he saw her.

"Hey," he said, softly, and his voice made her heart beat just a
little faster.

"May I just say," she'd said, using her best sultry tones as she
slipped into her seat, "this was a truly excellent notion."

"Sam's," he answered, which made her laugh. Of course; it would be.

"The vacation," he'd clarified then. "The going with you part was
all me." Which was so sweet it earned him a kiss.

Two years ago she would have melted at the look on his face,
dissolved in a little puddle at his feet at the way he kissed her
back. But that was two years ago. She wasn't going to let herself
lose her cool about him now; not yet, not until she really knew where
he was coming from on this and what it all meant to him. And so,
when she pulled back from the kiss, she said,

"All you? I think some part of it was me."

Sam might have insisted Josh take a vacation, but she had a strong
feeling that, if she hadn't given him that ultimatum, he wouldn't
have thought of going any farther from the office than his apartment,
where he'd have holed up with a stack of files and his cell phone,
his only concession to the idea of "vacation" being to work from home
in his boxers and undershirt.

"Nope," he answered, with a grin that was all Josh, half cocky, half
sweet: "Bringing you along was all my idea. But I'm hoping you're
planning to make all of you available all of the time to all of me."

That was insufferable.

"What do you mean, *'bringing'* me along, Josh? I'm not your
BlackBerry, or your umbrella, or something," she said, a little more
sharply than she really intended to.

He blinked for a moment and the cocky smile slipped and he looked
startled, which wasn't like him-he used to be better at getting a
snappy reply back to her when she said things like that-and said, "I
didn't bring either of those."

And she said, "You didn't bring me, either; I'm paying for my ticket,
you know."

And he said, "But I booked the tickets. And the hotel. You're
planning to stay with me there, aren't you?"

His face was so comically worried that she relented then and gave him
a smile to let him know she was joking when she said, "That
depends."

"On what?"

"On how nicely you behave between now and then. And how much I like
the hotel."

And he'd reached over and put a hand on her leg, high up, and
said, "What do you mean by nice?" while stroking his thumb
suggestively along the inside of her thigh. She could feel his
fingers through the thin fabric of her pants; his touch made her
shiver. But she'd put a hand over his and wrapped her fingers around
his fingers and moved his hand down six inches, and said,

"Nice means lots of things, and one of them is not doing anything to
embarrass me in front of all these other passengers."

And they'd gone on like that for a while, until finally he quieted
down, and after a bit she looked over and realized he was asleep.

He slept for about half an hour, then suddenly startled awake. She
put down her book to look over at him, and saw his eyes wide and
blinking and disoriented, so she put a hand on his knee and
said, "Josh," very gently, and he'd sat up a little then and put his
hand over hers and smiled at her sleepily and said, "I'm not dreaming
this, am I? We're really on a plane flying to Barbados?"

"For a whole week, Josh."

"Wow. I really must be dreaming. But why am I dreaming I'm on a
plane, instead of there and in bed already with you?"

She reached over and gave his arm a pinch, just for fun.

"Ouch!" he said, rubbing his arm and pretending to look hurt. "What
was that for?"

"To prove you're not dreaming," she said, smiling sweetly. She
wanted to kiss the place she'd pinched, but didn't; she really needed
to keep her cool.

They chatted for a while about Barbados, Josh tossing off comic
innuendos with every second word before he surprised her by asking,
his voice suddenly serious,

"Are you looking forward to it?"

"Mmmm," she said. "Of course I am. All that sunshine and blue
water. Nothing to do."

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, it should be great," but his voice didn't
sound like he was really sure.

"You don't sound convinced," she commented.

"Of course I'm convinced," he said, forcing more enthusiasm into his
voice. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"All that sunshine and blue water. Nothing to do," Donna pointed
out. "You have no idea how you're going to manage a whole week with
nothing to do."

He laughed, a little ruefully, and said, "Yeah, it feels kind of
strange, you know?"

She nodded. "I know."

"But there'll be *something* to do," he said, slipping his hand up
her thigh again. "Something I want to do very much."

"We can't do that all the time," she pointed out.

"I can," he said, with an exaggerated wiggle of his eyebrows. "You
still have no idea how long I can-" She laughed, cutting him off.

"Well, not with me," she said firmly, and he gave her a funny look
and said,

"You want me to do it with somebody else?"

So she slapped his hand lightly and said, "Not if you want to do it
with me," and he said, "All I want is to do it with you," in that
tone of voice that made her heart do treacherous things again, but
also made her want to pull on the reins, because she just couldn't
tell how important any of this was to him at all. He tried slipping
his hand around her thigh another time, very high up, which would
have been lovely except that the steward and stewardess were just
coming up the aisle with the drinks cart, and could see. So she
pushed it back the way she had before, and he tried again, making a
funny face at her while he did it, so she laughed when she pushed his
hand back again, and then he slipped his arm across her shoulders and
pulled her towards him and kissed her very sweetly on her cheek, and
then he tipped his head back against his seat and closed his eyes,
and a few minutes later she heard his breathing slowing down, and
knew he had fallen asleep again.

She turned her face sideways and looked at him. Somehow, when he was
sleeping, it was easier to see just how tired he really was. There
were lines and splotches and shadows all over his face that didn't
show as much when he was awake and talking, his hands moving
everywhere, teasing and pleasing and amusing and annoying her all at
the same time. She wondered why he felt he had to act like that with
her when he was so tired: there was something about his
flirtatiousness just now that had seemed more like a performance than
actual, immediate desire. He was too obviously exhausted to really
want to do any of that right now, and yet he seemed to feel he had to
act as if he did. She wondered, not for the first time, how much of
all that manic Josh-stuff was just what he did to keep himself from
slowing down-to keep anyone, including himself, from noticing that he
needed to slow down and making him do it, although Sam and the
President-elect had already noticed, and slowing down was what this
week away was supposed to be for. It was as if he was afraid of what
would happen, if he ever stopped driving himself forward and let up
on himself-really let up on himself-the way he almost never did, the
way he was supposed to be doing on this trip now. Afraid the world
would fall apart, probably, without him there to hold it together.
And afraid, perhaps, that he'd fall apart, too: afraid of what he'd
find in himself, if he ever stopped joking around and let himself
think about things-personal things-seriously for more than half a
minute at a time. Or no, that was wrong-she was pretty sure Josh
knew exactly what he'd find. She'd seen him in his bad moments often
enough, seen that dark look in his eyes often enough, to be
reasonably certain that Josh knew himself far better than he liked
other people to think he did. And far better than he was comfortable
with other people knowing him.

What she wasn't sure of was why he was still keeping that bantering,
smirking shield up around her. "We have to talk," he'd said, more
than once, always when he was on the phone and real talk was a
conveniently long time and distance away, but when they were actually
together, serious talk about anything except work was the last thing
he wanted to do. Which in a way had been suiting her just fine: she
had no idea how to have the conversation she knew they had to have if
anything lasting was going to come of this, and she was horribly
afraid that, when they did try to have it, everything was going to
come unraveled and fall apart, and they were going to lose even the
superficial level of closeness to each other they'd managed to
achieve in the little while they'd been together. She knew better
than to fool herself into thinking that his wanting to go on a
tropical vacation with her had to mean much; he'd planned a trip to
Tahiti with Amy Gardner once, after all. And Donna had had too much
experience of sex to have any illusion that, by itself, it could be
counted on to bring the two of them together in any meaningful way.
It could only do that if the relationship was already meaningful, and
if it meant pretty much the same thing to both partners at the same
time. But she had no idea what this relationship meant to Josh, or
what he was willing to do to sustain it in the future. And that was
what he was going to have to get serious and tell her, sometime
during this week together, or she was going to have to make herself
walk away.

She shivered a little, because the thought of doing that was almost
more than she could bear. Almost, but not quite: it was just a shade
less unbearable than the alternative: the possibility of staying with
Josh, loving him in the way she knew she wouldn't be able to stop
herself from loving him if they went on like this, and never being
sure she was loved in the same way too. Or being pretty sure she
wasn't, that she was a familiar comfort to him, an enjoyable outlet
for his sexual energies, but that his heart really just didn't have
room in it for the kind of love she wanted-a love that would be
capable of putting another real person first, not just the abstract
ideals and impersonal voting numbers and laws and bills that always
seemed to command ninety percent of Josh's attention and demand
ninety percent or more of his commitment and enthusiasm and time.
And not just any other person, of course, but her. And not
just "her" as a tall, slim woman with a strikingly elegant figure and
pale skin and long blonde hair and a smile even she knew was dazzling-
a prize plenty of men in Washington would have been glad to enjoy on
their arms at parties, and in bed later on-and not just "her" as his
familiar assistant who knew that he liked his burgers burnt like
hockey pucks and what to buy his mother for her birthday and which
shirt he should wear to look his best on t.v.-and not just "her" as a
tennis partner in the game of talk they'd always played so easily,
batting the conversational ball back and forth with little jabs of
sarcasm and wit in that way that always left her, at least, with the
intellectual equivalent of a runner's high-not just those Donnas, but
the rest of her, too. The Donna who wanted to prove herself in the
world he'd been a star in for years. The Donna who wanted her ideas
to be taken seriously, not condescended to or brushed aside. Her
ideas, her hopes, her dreams, her fears. . . . She wanted the kind of
love that could embrace all of that, and a lover who would care
enough about it-about her-to put her first. Not all the time-that
would be unreasonable-and, with his job, impossible. But not just
when it was convenient for him, either.

She didn't really know how that worked. She'd never been in a
relationship where that kind of balance was even a possibility, had
no idea how people worked that sort of thing out. Her parents'
marriage was pleasant enough, but she didn't really think her mother
had had many hopes and dreams or doubts and fears that hadn't been
easily met by her husband's faithful departure to an uninteresting
but steady job-while she went off to her own uninteresting but steady
job-every day, or by his equally faithful return home to his family
at night. It would be a tricky thing with the most willing and able
partner, to strike that balance between someone's doing what he
reasonably needed to do for himself and his job, and still being
willing some of the time to show that she mattered more. Whether it
was even possible with a man like Josh, who had a job like the one he
was going into, she had no idea. But she knew she wanted it. Needed
it. She'd put herself last for far too long-in her work, in her
relationships with other men, with Josh. Most of all, with Josh.

She had to stop doing that; she had to learn to put herself first.
C.J. had said so. Kate had said so. Louisa had said so, many
times. But looking at the man stretched out in the seat next to her,
sleeping the sleep of exhaustion while his hand still rested on her
knee, she had no idea how she was going to be able to keep from
giving herself up to him completely all over again.

* * *

To be continued. . . .



Life after Paradise
by Chai

Rating: Mature

Category: Post-ep for "Transition" and beyond

Spoilers: Through S7

Disclaimers: All the usual

Feedback: Yes, please. I'll do almost anything to get it:
chai4anne@yahoo.com

Notes: Feed me, please. . . .

* * *

It was late when they got to Barbados. They took a taxi from the
airport to their hotel. Donna hadn't had anything to do with making
the arrangements, and had been wondering what sort of place Sam would
have recommended that would have appealed to Josh: one of the big
resorts that offer easy-to-book vacation packages, she'd imagined,
resigning herself to the thought of busy lobbies and miles of
corridors and the sort of sterile elegance (if she was lucky; sterile
inelegance if she wasn't) that places like that inevitably provide.
But the taxi took them past one big hotel after another until they
seemed to have gotten right past the touristy town. They drove down
quiet roads lined with high green hedges, and then slowed and turned
through a pair of tall wrought-iron gates, their wheels crunching on
the gravel driveway that stretched in front of them, white and
gleaming in the moonlight. At the end of it, nestled among carefully
manicured lawns and shrubbery, was what looked like a large old
plantation house with stuccoed walls and a tiled roof, its wide front
porch beautifully draped with flowering vines. Beyond the house she
could see more lawns and gardens sweeping down to a wide curve of
sand and a wider expanse of shimmering moonlight and sparkling
darkness that could only be the sea.

"Oh, my goodness!" Donna said, as she stepped out of the car. The
driver was getting their bags out of the trunk and taking them up the
steps and inside. Josh looked at her and smiled.

"Is this okay, then?" he asked.

"Okay?" Donna laughed. "Yes, this is okay, Josh." She took a deep
breath. The air was warm but not heavy, fresh with the breeze from
the water, and thick with sweet scents she didn't recognize but knew
must be coming from the flowers all around them. "Do you smell
that? What do you think it is? Bougainvillea? Frangipani?" She
turned the words over on her tongue. She had no idea what either
bougainvillea or frangipani looked or smelled like, but she'd always
loved their names.

"I haven't got a clue," Josh said, slipping his arm around her back
and burying his face in her hair. "But it doesn't smell anything
like as nice as you do."

The driver came back down the steps and beamed at them, saying
something to Josh about a nice stay and mentioning, in a lilting
accent and almost deferential tones, the price of the trip. Josh
straightened up, dug out his wallet, and paid him-adding, Donna
noticed, a generous tip-then wrapped his arm around Donna's waist
again and led her up the steps, through the tall doors, and inside.
She looked around her at the high ceilings and cool tile floors, the
gleaming brass fixtures and mahogany furniture, the calla lilies and
potted palms swaying gently in the breeze stirred by the wide-armed
ceiling fans circling gently overhead. Josh was talking quietly to
the liveried man behind the desk, and another man, also in uniform,
was gathering up their bags. A minute later they were being led up a
great, curving staircase and along a wide, high-ceilinged hall.
Their guide stopped at a room at the end. Donna felt her stomach
tighten with nervous anticipation as the receptionist put the old-
fashioned key in the lock and opened the door. This was ridiculous,
she thought: she'd slept with Josh plenty of times by now, there
wasn't any reason to be shaking inside as if this was the first. But
she was.

The man set their bags inside the room, hoped they would find
everything satisfactory, urged Josh to call the desk if there was
anything at all that they desired, and left, closing the door quietly
behind him. Beyond a fleeting impression of space and elegance,
Donna had no idea what the room looked like: all she was aware of was
Josh, his eyes warm and bright as they caught hers, his smile almost
shy in the moment when he just stood, looking at her, before he
wrapped his arms around her and pulled her tight against him. His
mouth soft and gentle at first as it met hers, then hard and
demanding as the rest of him as he walked her backwards across the
room and, to her astonishment, bent slightly and slipped an arm under
her knees to scoop her up, literally sweeping her off her feet and
onto the beautifully be-linened bed. And then his hands and mouth
moving over every inch of her, until her consciousness was so filled
with delicious sensation that she could think of nothing else except
what he was making her body feel and do.

* * *

Donna woke to a soft breeze on her skin and a room full of dappled,
dancing light. It was a big room. When she propped herself up on
her elbow, she was startled to see how big it was, and how beautiful,
in that colonial, tropical style that she'd seen in magazines and
travel brochures. Some of the furniture looked like quite good
antiques, and the bed-linens were very soft and fine. Josh muttered
something and turned over restlessly beside her; she smiled
indulgently and slipped out of bed as quietly as possible, leaving
him to sleep as long as he could. He needed it. He'd slept during
much of the trip here, but never very deeply or for very long at a
time, and last night had been more of the same: she'd woken several
times to feel him tossing beside her, and once she'd opened her eyes
to see him standing by the long windows, looking out. She'd called
him back to bed, and he'd come, and made love to her again with an
urgency and need that had surprised her, considering what they'd
managed to accomplish earlier. His sleep had seemed deeper after
that. She herself felt quite rested now, in spite of the disturbed
night, but it didn't really surprise her that Josh needed more, or
that he wasn't finding it easy to get it even when he had the
chance. He'd been working on far too little for far too long; it was
going to take his body a while to get used to being able to have what
it needed.

She started to pad across the room to the bathroom, but stopped when
she saw the view. Gauzy curtains billowed into the room beside long
French windows that opened onto a balcony with a carved balustrade
and wooden deck furniture that was probably teak, but Donna hardly
noticed any of that; she was entirely transfixed by the view beyond
the deck: the broad crescent of gleaming white sand, the lush greens
of the hilly islands in the harbor, and that incredible expanse of
turquoise water and sky. She took a deep breath of the sweetly-
scented floral air and felt a little giddy after it. Somewhere a
bird was singing, an intricate, bright song she didn't think she'd
ever heard before.

She had no idea how long she stood there, naked in front of the
windows, caressed by the warm breeze and getting drunk on all that
blue water and flowery, perfumed air. It didn't matter: the
brilliant light outside and the comparative dimness of the room
around her would shield her from any prying eyes; she could do what
she liked. She felt her body and soul growing lighter with every
dizzying breath. Washington was a million miles away. This really
*was* paradise, she thought, and she was here with Josh, and
everything that had ever gone wrong in her whole life was over and
done with, and from now on everything was going to be different: good
and beautiful and sparkling and new. She laughed at herself even as
she thought it, but the conviction stayed with her in a lightness of
heart that she had no desire to weigh down with sober, rational
thought. When she finally tore herself away from the view and made
her way to the enormous and extremely well-appointed bathroom, she
felt as if she were walking on air. She sang in the shower, and if
she forgot about not waking Josh up, he didn't seem to mind at all.

Afterwards, lying lazily in one of the deck chairs on the balcony,
her hair spread out to dry in the sun and a tray of fruit and rolls
between them, Donna stretched out a foot and plucked the newspaper
out of Josh's hand with her toes. He gaped at her, blinking.

"I can't believe you did that."

"I have very talented toes."

"I was enjoying that paper."

"Now you can enjoy my toes."

He grinned, and brought her foot up to his mouth.

"Eeks! That tickles! Stop it, Josh! Cut it out!"

"Why? I thought you wanted me to enjoy your toes?"

"Agh, stop it, you beast! Oh. Oh. Oh, don't stop that. . . ."

It was almost noon before they got out of their room. They walked
down to the beach and strolled on the sand, feeling the water lapping
warmly about their ankles. Josh didn't seem inclined to go in, so
Donna let him retreat to the shade of palm tree while she swam. When
she came out, he was asleep again. She stretched herself out on a
towel beside him and watched him indulgently. She pulled out the
novel she had bought at the airport, but the sun and the swim and
Josh's restless night and the crazy pace of the last few weeks
finally caught up with her, and before she had finished the first
chapter she had fallen asleep herself.

* * *

Those first few days really were like paradise. The hotel was
perfect, their room was perfect, the setting was perfect, the weather
was perfect. And Josh, amazingly, seemed to be pretty close to
perfect, too. He was willing to do anything Donna wanted to do, any
time she wanted to do it. Sex, of course, obviously-that was no
surprise-but other things, too. After that first sleepy afternoon,
he swam when she wanted to swim, played tennis when she felt like
playing tennis, went scuba-diving when she wanted to go scuba-diving,
walked on the beach and put shells in his pockets when she wanted to
collect shells. He booked a guide to take them out in a glass-
bottomed boat to admire the fish on the coral reef, and another to
sail them around the islands in the bay that she'd been wondering
about. When she confessed, after too much wine at dinner one night,
that the only golfing she'd ever done had been on a putt-putt course,
he took her out on the links and tried to show her how to swing a
real club, without laughing at the results or making a single crack
about caddying for him instead. He was even willing to go shopping
with her, and managed to make himself look, if not exactly wildly
excited, at least patient and uncomplaining while she oooed and
ahhhed over all the enticing little boutiques in town. He teased her
a little about buying so many things she could have found just as
easily in similar boutiques at home, but that was only to be
expected, and he more than made up for it by pulling his wallet out
and buying the necklace and earrings she'd mooned over late in the
day, when she'd already spent far too much money and had realized,
rather sadly, that her budget couldn't handle any more and she really
was going to have to slow down. Slowing down her shopping impulses
was a lot easier to do than slowing down her heart when Josh smiled
and handed the little package to her as they left the shop.

"You shouldn't have," she said, hoping he wouldn't notice the
unsteadiness in her voice.

"Why not?" he said, grinning down at her.

"They were expensive."

"Not that bad. You can make it up to me later on."

Which she did, of course, though, for everything she did for him that
way, he seemed determined to do three times as much for her. She'd
thought he was a good lover when they'd started this, but she hadn't
had any idea of just how good he could be when he wasn't tired and
stressed to the nth degree. He was an overachiever in bed, just the
way he was in everything else, it seemed, which really shouldn't have
been surprising; she suspected his ego required it.

Of course, nothing could be completely perfect. Sometimes she found
herself thinking about the job that was lying ahead of her, worrying
that she wasn't ready for it and wouldn't be able to do it properly.
Sometimes she couldn't help thinking about Leo and feeling sad. But
she tried to edit those thoughts out as much as possible. This
wasn't the time to grieve; she'd already done that, and she'd have
plenty of chances to do it again. It wasn't the right time to worry
about her job, either. This was a time just to enjoy herself, and
Josh, and see how good life could be for them when they just slowed
down and savored it a little, together.

She wasn't the only one who had reasons to worry or grieve, of
course. Sometimes, when Josh was quiet, she could see a shadow cross
his face and knew he was either thinking about his job, or about Leo,
or both. It was hardly surprising: Leo's death had been far harder
on Josh than on her, and the job he was going to was far more
challenging and difficult than hers would ever be, and there wasn't
really much she could do about either one, except touch his arm or
squeeze his hand a little, to let him know she saw and understood and
was there if he wanted to talk. He didn't, though: whenever she did
that, he'd blink a little, or shake his head as if to clear it, and
put a smile on his face and start talking about what she wanted to do
next. It was obvious that he wasn't feeling inclined to open up any
more than he already had about how he felt about Leo's death, and if
there was anything in particular that was worrying him about the job-
anything beyond the sheer size and weight of it, which no amount of
talking was ever going to reduce-he didn't want to discuss it.

Part of her was a little sad that he wasn't willing to be more open
with her, but she wasn't really surprised: Josh had never been
inclined to talk much about his feelings, and she had always known
what he was thinking most of the time anyway, just as she did now.
Another part of her was relieved. She felt a little guilty about
that, but she couldn't help it: she just wanted to enjoy this time
together, and not have to give any of it up to anything else,
especially not to the work that she knew would dominate his thoughts
and absorb most or all of his time again when they went back to D.C.

There were days when she found herself wishing they never had to go
back to D.C. But then she'd catch herself and remember that she
didn't want to become that woman again. She had a challenging,
important, and well-paid job waiting for her there; she wasn't going
to let herself slip back into being the kind of woman who could be
made happy just by spending time with a man, even if that time was
being spent in a particularly lovely place, and even if the man was
being astonishingly obliging in almost every way. There was
something about that obligingness that she found a little unsettling,
actually. It didn't seem entirely natural, especially from Josh.
She'd never known him to be like that; she couldn't help feeling
sometimes, the way she had on the plane, as if she were on the
receiving end of a performance: every time she saw that shadow cross
his face, and then saw him force a smile when she noticed, the
feeling deepened. It was sweet of him, of course, but she couldn't
quite shake away the thought that he wasn't just covering up his hurt
about Leo or his fears about his job, but was acting the whole thing-
the whole perfect vacation, perfect lover thing-because it was easier
than letting her know what he was really feeling about everything,
especially her. He wanted the sex, of course-she knew that. But she
still didn't know whether he wanted anything else from her, anything
deeper or more meaningful, anything long-term. He probably didn't
know, either, and didn't really want to have to think or talk about
it; keeping her happy in every other way was letting him avoid the
discussion and, in typical Josh-fashion, letting him feel less
guilty*for* avoiding it. Unless, of course, it was his way of making
himself feel less guilty about what he *did* know he was going to say
when the moment finally came: "Thanks, Donna, it's been great, but,
y'know, the next few years are going to be really busy and this just
isn't the right time for me to make a commitment. . . ."

Still, if she sometimes came out of the bathroom in the morning to
find Josh on the balcony looking at the newspapers, his brow creased
and his mouth set in worried lines, all she had to do was to touch
him lightly and bend down to kiss him, and he'd set the papers aside
and give himself over to her in whatever way she wanted. And if he
sometimes tossed restlessly beside her at night, all she had to do
was to reach for him, and he'd wake and make love to her again and
then fall asleep more deeply. In the morning they would make love
again, and then have coffee together in the sun, and go for another
walk, or a swim, or a boat ride, or they'd play tennis, or try to
play golf, or go and explore the town and shop, or go dancing, or eat
at one of the many restaurants he'd found out about somehow-simple or
elegant but always delicious-and paradise would resume.

It all worked very well for the first few days. But as the week
began to draw to an end, Donna began to find it harder to be
satisfied by all the fun things they were doing, harder and harder to
put her doubts and fears aside. She wanted to know where this was
all going. She *needed* to know. She'd given Josh too much time,
she thought; she couldn't wait another three weeks to find out what
he was really thinking. But it was so hard to bring the subject up;
if it didn't go well, the trip would be ruined, and they'd have to
sweat out the end of it in the most awkward discomfort with each
other. The thought of that was even more miserable than the
doubting, fearful thoughts that were pressing in on her more and more
insistently, so she kept putting the conversation off. "The last
night," she thought. "If he hasn't said anything by the last night,
I'll bring it up."

That was reasonable, she thought. She'd given him four weeks, but
that was when she'd thought they'd be on his Washington schedule; one
week of being together twenty-four hours a day should have given Josh
all the time he needed to come to some kind of decision, shouldn't
it? She wasn't expecting the moon, after all. Not a proposal, or a
fancy ring, or anything like that. Just some sort of discussion
about where they'd been and where he saw this going. Just something
to tell her that this was a relationship he was willing to invest
something in, that it *might* be the one he would want to commit to
someday.

* * *

On their second-to-last night, Donna woke to find the bed beside her
empty. It wasn't the first time that had happened, but this time,
when she called his name softly, he didn't come back. She called
again, but there was still no answer. She lay there for a while,
wondering where he was and what he was doing, before she finally woke
up enough to make herself get out of bed and look. He wasn't on the
balcony, as she'd half expected. Then she noticed that the bathroom
door was closed, and a faint line of light was showing underneath
it. She tapped on it gently.

There was a pause. Then, after a moment, Josh's voice,
saying, "Sorry. I'll be out in a minute."

"Are you all right, Josh?" she asked, opening the door a crack to
check up on him. She was surprised to find him dressed in his boxers
and sitting on the floor. He had a newspaper beside him, and a pad
of paper, but he wasn't looking at either one of them; his eyes were
shut, and his head tipped back against the wall. In spite of his tan
he looked pale, but that might have been just the bright light in the
bathroom, and all that white marble tile.

"Josh!" she exclaimed. "What on earth are you doing? Are you all
right?"

"I'm sorry," he said, opening his eyes. He looked startled. "I was-
working. I-just wanted to get some stuff I'd been thinking about
down on paper, so I wouldn't forget it." He gestured to the pad of
paper-which seemed to have only a word or two written on it.

"You don't seem to have had much to write down," she pointed
out. "And there's a desk in the room, Josh-a very handsome one. I
think it's an antique."

He flushed a bit.

"I just couldn't sleep," he said. "And I didn't want to disturb you;
I thought I wouldn't wake you if I worked for a while in here."

That was sweet, and made her smile.

"Come on," she said, "You need your sleep. This is supposed to be a
vacation."

He smiled back.

"Sorry," he said again, and stood up. He was moving stiffly, she
noticed, and winced a bit when he bent over to gather up the
newspaper and his notepad.

"Are you all right?" she asked again anxiously, seeing the expression
that flitted across his face when he had to move. "You shouldn't
have been sitting on the floor like that, Josh."

"I'm fine," he said, following her back to bed, and dropping the
papers on the floor beside it. She started to rub his back.

"Where does it hurt?"

"It's fine. Don't worry about it. Here, I need to be doing that to
you, too."

They rubbed each other's backs for a little while. Side-by-side
wasn't the best position for giving a massage, but Donna was too
tired and his hands on her back felt too nice for her to really want
to sit up and do it properly. It was all she could do to keep her
hands moving at all. After a while, though, she thought of something
she should have said right away.

"You don't have to do that, you know," she said sleepily, stifling a
yawn.

"Do what? Rub your back? Of course I do; I want to." His voice was
as sleepy as hers.

"Work in the bathroom, at night. If you need to get something done,
you can do it. At the desk. During the day."

"But there's other stuff I have to do during the day," he mumbled.
He sounded as if he was already halfway asleep, but he pressed his
mouth to her shoulder and kissed it.

"You don't *have* to," she said, just a little sharply.

"Want to," he corrected, sleepily. He kissed her shoulder again,
then moved his lips down and kissed a little lower, and then a third
time, a little lower still. But before he actually reached her
breast, he had fallen asleep.

Donna lay very still, feeling his heart beating against hers, and
wondering what it all meant: what the difference between "have to"
and "want to" was, and whether Josh really had any idea why he was
doing all this or what he wanted from her at all.

* * *

The next morning she slept in much later than usual. She woke to
find Josh leaning on his elbow, looking down at her.

"So," he said, when he saw her eyes flutter open. He started to
trace slow, lazy circles on her stomach with a finger. Over his
shoulder light and shadows were dancing on the ceiling and the big
fan was turning and stirring up a gentle breeze, just as slowly and
lazily.

"So," she said back. His eyes looked dark and serious, but his
finger was teasing, almost tickling her. She closed her eyes again
so she concentrate on the sensation, and not on the look in his eyes.

"So," he said again. "So, so, so. . . ."

"So what, Josh?" she murmured. "Ooo, that feels so good. . . ."

"So," he said, bending over so she could feel his breath warm on her
face. He opened his hand and began to stroke her gently with the
whole of it, working slowly downwards.

"Articulate, aren't we, this morning?"

"Always," he said, and she could hear a little laugh in his voice
now, and opened her eyes to see them smiling down at her warmly.

"Your staff might not agree with you."

"Do you really want them to?" He brought his mouth down to join his
hand, which was creeping down into places that made it hard for her
to go on speaking.

"No. Oh, no. Oh-"

"It can be our little secret, then."

"So-it can. So-oh-oh-"

Josh lifted his head for a moment.

"Articulate this morning, aren't we?" he murmured, the laugh in his
voice unmistakable now.

Donna didn't bother answering him. She didn't want him wasting any
more time talking-at least, not right then.

It was another beautiful morning, another perfect day.

* * *

"So," Josh said, about twelve hours later, when they had almost
finished a last dinner in the restaurant she'd chosen, her favorite
of the many places they'd tried that week. He pushed his plate back,
and was fiddling with his wine glass and looking out the window when
he said it. The sun was setting, a huge round red ball going down
into a mirror-like sea. The day, like the meal and the vacation, was
almost over.

"So," Donna said, picking up her glass and taking another sip. The
bottle sat between them, nearly empty.

"We go back tomorrow."

"Yes, we do."

"It's been nice."

She smiled, carefully avoiding letting any of the emotion she was
feeling show on her face.

"Yes, it has."

They sat quietly for a couple of minutes, sipping the last of the
wine. The busboy came and cleared away the plates, and the waiter
brought their coffees.

"Donna," Josh said, when they were alone again, "when we go back-"
He stopped, and looked down at his coffee-cup. His voice sounded
strained. Donna felt her throat tighten. She looked studiously at
her cup, too.

"Yes?" she asked, hearing a chill creep into her voice, but unable to
keep it out. So, she thought, this was it. This was when he was
going to give her the speech she'd been dreading. "It's been nice.
You've been great. But when we go back, I'm going to be too
busy. . . ."

Josh cleared his throat.

"When we go back-have you thought- Do you know-What-" He broke off
again. She looked up to see him frowning at the table, the coffee
pushed aside.

"What *what,* Josh?" she asked sternly. The suspense was killing
her.

"What-you want-to do?"

She shrugged.

"Go to work for the First Lady, of course."

"You're sure? You don't want Assistant Press Secretary? It's a good
offer, you know-you'd be in the thick of things, you'd be helping to
shape our message, and you'd get to take some of the briefings for
Lou, which would give you experience and exposure. And then, if she
leaves, you'd be all set to move up. . . ."

She raised her eyebrows at that, surprised the possibility had
occurred to him, but shook her head.

"No, Josh, I told you. I can't sleep with you and work for you,
too. And I don't think it would be so good to be working for you if
we're not together, either. So, either way, I don't think I should
take that job."

He nodded.

"I know," he said, quietly. "I just wanted to make sure you knew you
had a choice."

"Thank you." She meant it. "This will be a better job for me, I
think, though. It will be nice to be in charge of something, for
once."

A shadow crossed his face, and he shut his eyes.

"Yeah," he said, after a moment. "I know."

They sat quietly again for another minute or two. Then Josh said,
suddenly,

"That wasn't what I meant, though."

"What?"

"That wasn't what I meant, when I asked if you knew what you wanted
to do when we get back. I wasn't asking about the job."

"Oh," Donna said, surprised. "What-did you mean?"

"I meant, had you thought any more about what you wanted to do about-
this?" And he waved his hand across the table, indicating the two of
them.

Donna looked back at him steadily. She was surprised he'd brought it
up, but she wasn't about to let him make her go first on this one.

"What do *you* want to do, Josh?" she asked.

He took a deep breath, and looked down at his glass again.

"This has been a great week," he said. "It's been-well, great. I
haven't done anything like this in years. Or ever, really-not like
this, not for a whole week, and not-not with someone-well, you
know. . . ." His voice trailed away self-consciously. Donna raised
an eyebrow, doing her best to look cool and collected, but wondering
where, exactly, he was taking this. He cleared his throat and tried
again.

"Everyone's been telling me I don't have a life," he said, "and it's
true, I don't. I mean, I didn't. It's been amazing, just having a
week like this to do whatever we want, whenever we want to do it.
But now we've got to go back. And you know what it's going to be
like, Donna: it's going to be crazy. It's going to be the hardest
job I've ever had, and I'm going to have to work harder than I've
ever had to in my life before, because this job matters more than any
other job I've ever had. I have no idea how I'm going to do it. I'd
thought Leo would be there to help me, but. . . ."

His voice choked a little and he blinked, hard, and, upset as she was
at what she thought he was about to say, Donna couldn't help reaching
across the table and touching his hand. He turned it over and
wrapped his fingers around hers and squeezed them, hard.

"So," he said, when he'd got control of his voice again, "so, I don't
know what kind of life I'm going to be able to have, you know? It's
not going to be like this, that's for sure." He glanced towards the
beach, where the surf was rolling in lazily, and then looked back at
her. His eyes were as dark and serious as they had been that morning
when she woke up, and she wondered whether this inevitable
conversation was what he'd been thinking about then. She was
suddenly, fiercely glad that he'd made love to her one more time
instead.

"And maybe I should just quit, but. . . ."

Donna squeezed her eyes shut, but nodded. Josh could never do that,
she knew. Politics was his life. She couldn't imagine him stepping
down to do something less difficult; couldn't imagine him backing
away from the challenge and the thrill of being at the heart of
things, giving them his all. She'd always known that about him, and
had always known, really, that he couldn't possibly find time to fit
anything else into that life, even her. . . .

"No," she said, softly. "No, you can't do that. Of course you can't
do that."

He squeezed her hand more tightly.

"You understand?" he said. "You do understand?"

She nodded, unable to look up at him but holding onto his hand for
dear life. She'd tried so hard to keep herself from showing what she
felt for him so this moment, if it came, wouldn't be so painful, but
now that it was here she couldn't stop herself from clinging to him
as if that would somehow keep him from leaving her.

"Thank you," he whispered. A long minute passed. Donna stared down
at the table, willing herself not to cry. And then, to her
astonishment, he said,

"But I want to try to make this work, Donna. I do want to make it
work. I just don't know how to do it, you know?"

She lifted her eyes, stunned.

"You-want this to work?"

He nodded, looking miserable.

"I don't know if I can. I'm no good at this sort of thing, Donna,
you know that. But I want to try. I mean, if-if you do. . . ."

She felt the heat flush over her face, and a smile that was far
broader and brighter than she really wanted him to see.

"Trying sounds good," she said, struggling to keep some composure in
her voice, at least.

"It does?" He sounded so surprised, she laughed.

"Yes, Josh, trying sounds like a pretty good idea to me."

"But how?" he said, anxiously. "How do we make it work?"

She sat back then, disentangled her fingers from his, picked up her
coffee cup, and took a steadying sip. Her mind was whirling with
relief and happiness and the realization that here, at last, was her
opportunity to say all the things she'd been thinking all this time,
all the things Louisa had helped her see would be essential in any
relationship she might eventually want to have.

"Well," she said, taking another sip and smiling a little over the
cup at him, "for starters, it might be a good idea if we saw each
other every now and again."

That made him smile, too.

"That sounds like a very good idea."

"But you're going to be very busy, as you've said. So, how are we
going to do that?" She was dodging, wanting it to come from him, and
yet she was surprised when it actually did.

"I was thinking," Josh started, hesitantly.

"Yes?"

"I was thinking, maybe, since we're not going to be seeing each other
much during the day anymore. . . ."

"Yes, Josh?"

"I was thinking, maybe . . . we should try . . ."

"Yes, Josh?"

"You know, actually-sleeping together?"

Donna laughed a little at that.

"That would be a necessary part of making things work, yes."

"I mean, not just for sex, but, you know-all the time."

"Every night?"

"Every night."

"We could do that, I suppose."

"We could?"

"I don't see why not."

Josh sat back, looking relieved. He reached out across the table and
put his hand over hers. She turned hers up, and he twisted his
fingers through hers. She shivered a little at his touch; it felt so
good, so right, so. . . .

"It might be easier if we made some adjustments to other areas of our
lives," he said.

Donna laughed again.

"Such as?"

"Such as, if we were actually, you know, sharing a place."

"You mean, living together?"

He bit his lip and nodded, his eyes searching hers questioningly.

She smiled, and looked down at their hands, clasped together. He was
squeezing tightly again; it almost hurt, with his fingers twisted
through hers like that.

"That might make things easier," she agreed. He sighed, and relaxed
his grip just a little.

"It's a good idea?"

"It sounds like a good idea."

He beamed at her then, showing all his dimples. She beamed back,
feeling as if a huge load had just been lifted off her chest, and she
could breathe freely again. He looked as if he felt the same way.

"At my place?" he asked.

"Why not mine?" She was just teasing; she didn't want to live in her
apartment, if Josh's was a possibility.

"Because mine is in a better neighborhood, and nicer, and you've
always liked it better."

Donna tipped her head to the side, pretending to consider that.

"All right," she said at last, laughing. "But you'll have to make
room for some of my stuff."

"Just some?" he asked, grinning.

"Just some," she said. "I don't want to give up my apartment just
yet."

His face fell a little, the dimples vanishing. He looked at her
cautiously.

"Why-?" he began, and then broke off.

"I'll sublet it for six months, Josh. If things aren't working out
by then, I'll move back again."

That was important. Moving in together was a step forward-a big step-
but it wasn't a full commitment. And she still didn't know yet
whether he'd be able to give her everything else she needed.

He looked out the window. It was a minute before he looked back and
answered.

"Okay," he said, quietly. She couldn't tell from his voice what he
was thinking.

"Okay?" she echoed, questioningly.

He looked back at her.

"Okay," he said again, and smiled a little then. She smiled back.
They sat for a minute, saying nothing, just holding hands across the
table and smiling and thinking about the fact that they were going to
be living together. But after a minute Donna looked down at their
joined hands, and when she looked up, she wasn't smiling anymore.

"But Josh-"

"Yes, Donna?"

"Just sharing an apartment isn't all it's going to take to make
things work, you know."

His smile faded too.

"Yeah," he said, "I know."

"I know you're going to be very busy."

"Yeah," he said again. "I really am."

"And I understand that, Josh. It's okay; I can deal with that."

"Jenny couldn't," he said, a touch of bitterness in his voice.

"I'm not Jenny, Josh. Jenny never told Leo what she wanted; she just
let it all build up until she couldn't take it anymore, and it broke
them. I'm not going to be like that."

He nodded, looking at her questioningly.

"That's good," he said. "But-what do you want? Can you tell me? Do
you know?"

She did know. She'd given it a lot of thought over the past year,
talked about it a lot with her therapist, and with herself. Once the
answer would just have been, "You," even if she'd never have said it
out loud, but it wasn't the answer anymore. She looked down at the
tablecloth, frowning a little, looking for the words she needed.

"I need," she began, and paused. This was so important; she had to
get it right.

"I need to have some sort of life together," she started, taking an
indirect route to the main point. "I need you to come home at night
whenever you can, as early as you can. I'll understand when you
can't, but as much as you can, I need you to keep hours that will let
us spend a little time together. I know how important this job is,
Josh, but I'm going to need to know that being with me is important
to you, too, that you'll put that first-put me first-when you
honestly can."

He squeezed her hand again.

"It is," he whispered. "It will be. I want that, too."

"If you can't make it back, I need you to let me know. Call me. Or
have Margaret call me. But don't just leave me hanging, please."

She would understand if he slipped up sometimes; she expected it.
But she wanted the principle established that he'd try not to do that.

"I will," he said. "Really, Donna. I promise."

She looked up at him for a moment, and saw him watching her intently,
his eyes very bright. She dropped her eyes again, took her hand out
of his, and took a deep breath.

"But-I'm going to need more than that, Josh," she started,
hesitantly. She could hear the tension in her voice; her hands were
pressed together in her lap. She took another deep breath and
stretched them out on her legs, willing herself to relax. Josh was
looking at her searchingly, a worried expression on his face.

"What, Donna?" he asked, quietly, when she didn't go on right away.
She bit her lip. Why was this so hard to say?

"I need-I'm going to need-to know-" She stopped, and cleared her
throat. In spite of herself, her hands were twisting together again
in her lap. She kept her eyes fixed on them, and hated herself for
not being able to look up.

"To know what, Donna?" Josh's voice was gentle and steady; it
steadied her. She took another deep breath, and looked up to see his
eyes watching her, warm and tender and concerned.

"That you-that you respect me." He blinked, looking startled. She
pressed on. "That you take me seriously, Josh."

"Of course I take you seriously, Donna!" He sounded almost
indignant. "How could you possibly think-"

"You know how I could think it, Josh. And I need to know it won't be
like that anymore. That-that I won't be just your assistant to you
anymore."

There, she had said it. She was shaking inside, but she had said it,
and her voice had stayed surprisingly steady while she did. Louisa
would be proud of her, she thought, fleetingly, and perhaps C.J.
would, too, and Kate Harper. She looked up and saw that his eyes had
gone very wide.

"You're not," he stammered, "I do-" He looked completely
flummoxed. "I-you-
Donna, you never were *just* my assistant to me."

She flushed, and looked back at him squarely.

"But Josh," she said, determined to have this out once and for
all, "I don't want to be your assistant anymore *at all.*"

He blinked, and swallowed, and this time he was the one to drop his
eyes and start fiddling with his napkin. After a minute he said,
huskily, "Was it really that bad?"

"It got to be."

He bit his lip, hard. There was a long pause. Then he said,
quietly, "I'm sorry. I didn't know. I-I'm sorry, Donna. I meant to
be-I didn't mean-I'm sorry I was such a lousy boss."

This wasn't the time, she thought, to go into the list of grievances
she'd built up before she left what had once been her dream job.
That was history now; she could let it go. So she just said,

"I know. And you weren't, not at first, and not always. But-if I'm
going to live with you, Josh, I need to be your partner, not your
assistant. And I need you to be *my* partner, not my boss."

His face twisted.

"I'm sorry," he said, again. "I didn't think I'd been-I didn't know
you thought I still-"

"I don't, Josh. You haven't been. I just don't want that to
change. I don't want us to slip back into the way we used to be."

He nodded. She reached across the table and put her hand over his
again. He turned his over and squeezed hers until it hurt.

"It won't," he said. "We won't. I promise."

"I just want to know that you take me seriously, Josh."

"I do," he said, earnestly. "I do. And I will."

She smiled then, and the waiter came with the bill, and afterwards
they skipped the taxi and walked back to their hotel along the beach,
hand in hand, a huge, romantic moon hanging before them in the
velvety darkness of the sky, the water splashing seductively around
their ankles and the sand warm and yielding under their feet. There
was no question about what they would do when they got back to their
room. Josh was quiet, but Donna didn't mind; she was happy just to
walk along holding his hand, and didn't need any more words now.
They had had their talk, and she had said all the things she'd needed
to say, and Josh had been all right with it. He hadn't wanted to
break up with her after all. They were going to live together, and
she had set out the terms, and he had agreed to all of them. The
next six months wouldn't be paradise, of course-she wasn't expecting
that-but for the first time since this whole thing had begun she felt
a real sense of conviction that it was all going to work out. How
right Louisa had been. She hadn't known anything about Donna
becoming involved with Josh, of course, but she had helped Donna
learn to let her needs be known and to be prepared to walk away if
they weren't met, and that had made all the difference. If only,
Donna thought for a fleeting moment, she had learned years ago how to
get what she wanted. She had been so foolish then, so naive and
trusting. C.J. had opened her eyes to that. . . . But there was no
point in going there. She had learned her lesson, and everything was
so much better because of it. She had stood up for herself and what
she wanted, and now she was going to have it, and that was all that
mattered.

* * *

To be continued. Please feed me with feedback! chai4anne@yahoo.com



Life after Paradise 4/10?
by Chai

Rating: Mature

Category: Post-ep for "Transition" and beyond

Spoilers: Through S7

Disclaimers: All the usual

Feedback: Yes, please. I'll do almost anything to get it:
chai4anne@yahoo.com

Notes: The timing in this section might get a little confusing in
places. Just be aware that some of the scenes are in the present and
some take place the summer before. It should be clear enough as long
as you don't walk away in the middle and then come back to it later
and lose track, but I thought a warning about it might help.

And I'd like to acknowledge again my indebtedness to Shelley, Jen
Wilson, and Sally Reeve for some of the events in this section. My
excuse is that they all did such a good job writing about them that I
started to think of them as almost canon--fanon, anyway. I hope by
the end of the story you'll think I've done something a bit different
with them, but right now, I know, these things sound pretty
unoriginal.

* * *

Life after Paradise

Part 4-

* * *

"So," Louisa said, "you moved in with him?"

"Yes," Donna said. "When we got back. I sublet my apartment for six
more months."

"Did you let the apartment with your things in it, or move them over?"

"I'd left my furniture in it when I let it during the campaign. I
just extended the lease, and brought what I wanted of the smaller
stuff out of storage. Josh's place isn't all that big."

"That's not quite the same thing as moving in with all your things,
is it?"

"No, it isn't."

"You didn't make any of those big decisions-who throws out what to
fit it all in?"

"No, I guess not. He cleared out the bathroom cabinet for me,
though, and a lot of the closet space, and half the drawers. And I
brought my bedding and towels and my teapot and favorite mugs, my
grandmother's afghan, some books and CDs, things like that."

Louisa nodded. Moving in was a big step; Donna had been wise, she
thought, not to commit herself too far. She might have postponed
some important arguments about taste and space and rights to
possessions, but she'd left herself free to go if things weren't
working out-when things didn't work out. Louisa was a great believer
in back-up plans and escape routes for women, and-after discovering
that, for thirteen of their fifteen years of marriage, her Army-
doctor husband had been carrying on with one of his pretty nurses
after another-no longer much of a believer in any kind of commitment
between the sexes. Men were just too selfish and undependable; women
had to expect that, and learn to look out for themselves.

But you could never convince a woman of that, until she had found it
out for herself. All you could do was insist on the safety-net: the
well-paid job, the separate bank account, the ability to jump free
when the time came and survive it. Condoms were important, too; you
never knew what the man might be doing on the side. She'd been lucky-
Rick, after all, had been a doctor-but plenty of women weren't. The
need to protect yourself physically during sex even in marriage made
the whole question of children difficult-but then, children were
difficult, any way you looked at it. Very sweet at times, when they
were younger, but that wore off so quickly, and then you had to live
with them for ten or twelve more years. . . . Louisa often envied her
friends who had remained unmarried and childless. But that, too, was
something she'd found it was impossible to convince a woman of until
she'd learned it for herself.

Louisa did know families who seemed happy. But they were just
disasters waiting to happen, like hers. . . .

"Had he lived with anyone before?" she asked, since she knew better
than to share what she was thinking with the woman in front of her.
All she could do was keep her talking, until she was ready to tell
Louisa what had happened. That something had happened was obvious
enough: the man had let her down somehow already. It had been
inevitable, but that didn't make it any less painful, Louisa knew.
Fortunately Donna had been sensible and had kept her options open.
She would be able to move back to her own apartment and carry on with
her work in the high-profile job this man had done his best to keep
her out of. They always liked it better when you were dependent; it
meant they could have their cake and eat it, too.

"No. No, I was the first, actually. I mean, he's had girlfriends
who left stuff there before, of course, and I'm sure he's left his
stuff at their places, but not this level of stuff. He's always had
his own place, and they've had theirs."

Of course, some men preferred to avoid commitment altogether. It was
selfish of them, but it made things easier, really, as long as the
woman understood what was happening and could deal with it. The
trouble always came about when she couldn't, when she gave her heart
away and thought he had, too. . . .

"How did he feel about having your things there? It's a big change
for a man who's used to living alone."

Probably that was where the trouble had come from; he hadn't really
wanted Donna in his space-the space he'd been used to having to
himself all those years-at all. He might have accepted it as what he
had to do to get her to go on having sex with him, but when push came
to shove. . . .

"He was pretty good about it. I was surprised; I'd thought it would
bother him, even though he wanted me there, but he had the bathroom
all ready for me when I brought my stuff over, and the bedroom closet
and drawers, like I said. He joked about not being able to find his
razor in the morning, with all my makeup and conditioners and things
in the bathroom cabinet, but it was just joking-he really didn't seem
to mind at all."

"So you thought it was going well?"

"It was. It was going really well. At first. . . ."

Didn't it always, Louisa thought to herself. At first. . . .

* * *

It did go well at first. From the moment Donna drove up to Josh's
doorstep, her car overflowing with sheets and blankets and afghans
and teapots and the contents of her considerable wardrobe, the big
box of bath essentials she had so missed during the campaign, and all
the other odds and ends she considered necessary to a comfortable
home, it went surprisingly well. Josh met her on the doorstep,
grinning and bouncing on the balls of his feet, and helped her carry
it all inside.

"Is this all?" he asked her, when the car was finally empty.

"Sarcasm will get you nowhere."

"That wasn't sarcasm. I'm amazed-I'd expected a lot more than this."

"I told you I was leaving the furniture, Josh."

"But you have a lot more stuff than this. All your books and plants
and china thingies, and that old, battered chest you're so proud of,
and-"

"That's an antique, Josh. It's a hundred years old. It has a right
to be battered!"

"I know." He actually smiled at her; he'd always given her a hard
time about that old trunk, which was, admittedly, not the finest
antique in the world. "But you like it. Where is it? Do you need
me to go back and lift it into the car for you?"

"It's okay. I decided it could stay in storage a while longer.
We're going to be crowded in here as it is. It's a pretty small
apartment, you know."

"I know." He shot her a worried look. "You'd like something bigger,
wouldn't you?"

"Well, yes, eventually. But this is fine for now, Josh."

"It is? Really?"

"Of course it is."

"That's good," he said, with obvious relief. "Look, I cleared out
part of the closet for you, and half the drawers."

"Wherever did you put it all, Josh?"

He shrugged.

"I gave most of it to Goodwill. I didn't need half that stuff
anyway; I just hadn't gotten around to cleaning it out."

She laughed.

"I've been telling you to do that for years," she pointed out.

He grinned, and slipped his arm around her waist.

"You never gave me a good enough reason to do it before," he said.
His arms tightened around her as his mouth met hers. They never
made it to the bed. Donna didn't even notice, much less protest,
when her dress bags and dry-cleaning slipped off the back of the sofa
and spilled all over the floor.

* * *

Eventually, of course, she'd unpacked it all and put it away. He
really had created a lot of space for her things in the bedroom, and
he'd cleaned out the cabinet over the sink in the bathroom for her,
too. "I don't need much room," he'd said, shrugging, when she
commented on it. "I knew you'd have about a million pots and
potions, so I figured you'd want the space." He kept a corner for a
comb and his shaving things and left the rest of the space for her.
Which was just as well; she didn't have any trouble filling it.
She'd really missed all her "pots and potions," as Josh called them,
on the campaign.

She put her toothbrush next to his in the cup beside the sink, and
loved the way they looked, nestled together. She loved the way her
sheets looked on his bed. She loved the way he looked between her
sheets, late at night, or first thing in the morning, if she woke up
in time to see him before he slipped out. She loved watching him sip
coffee from one of her favorite cups in his kitchen. She loved
watching him close his eyes and tip his head back against her
grandmother's afghan that she'd draped over the back of his couch in
the living room when he was taking a break from the interminable
stacks of briefing memos he brought home to work on every night. One
night when she was tired-she was having her period-he made her lie
down on the couch and tucked the afghan round her, then went and made
her some tea and brought it out to her. He sat down beside her and
put her feet in his lap and rubbed them while she sipped it, and they
both watched the news and talked about what had happened at work that
day. She loved that. She loved living with Josh. And he didn't
seem to mind living with her too much, either.

She wasn't so sure about her new job at first. Her first priority
was obviously to help the First Lady and her children get settled
into their new life, but the Party had a budget, and a committeeful
of experienced Washington wives who had done this before with the
Bartlets and other Democratic presidents, and Donna found that what
Helen really needed was someone to help her advocate for her tastes,
which were a lot simpler and more child-oriented than most of the
Washington wives were expecting. Since the most expensive pieces of
furniture Donna had ever owned were her bed and the couch she'd
bought at Ikea for $800 eight years before, she felt horribly out of
her depth at first, but one of the wives proved to be sympathetic,
and Donna quickly realized that she didn't have to become an
overnight expert in interior decoration, she just had to find the
right person who was. It turned out to be quite a lot of fun in the
end, looking over portfolios of decorators' work with Helen, laughing
at all the pompous excess, and finally choosing one who seemed able
to strike a balance between dignity and comfort. She took the same
approach with Helen's wardrobe, putting together a list of design
consultants and then hiring one who would do the leg-work for her.
By Christmas, Donna was beginning to feel as if she might actually be
able to cope. By the time the Inauguration arrived, she was really
enjoying herself.

Josh was too busy to go home with her at Christmas. Donna hadn't
expected him to, and was secretly relieved that she didn't have to
deal with that yet. It was hard enough answering all her family's
questions without having to worry about how he was reacting to them
and how her family was reacting to his reactions. Not that they
weren't happy that he and Donna were together; it was their over-
abundance of happiness that Donna would have worried about,
especially her mother's. She thought Josh would find it
embarrassing; it might even put him off. And she was afraid her
mother might start talking about how he'd felt after Gaza again,
which would be excruciating. In fact, her mother did try to bring it
up once, while they were in the kitchen together and the others had
gone out of the room for a minute, but at least he wasn't there to
have to hear it, and Donna was able to change the subject quickly.

Later that night, she lay in bed looking at the familiar shadows on
the ceiling and wondering why that subject bothered her so much.
She'd just finished talking to him-the second time that day. "I miss
you," he'd said softly, after she'd told him all about the tree and
the presents she'd got and how the big dinner with all her aunts and
uncles and cousins had gone. "I miss you, too," she'd whispered
back. And she did. Her heart ached with missing him so much, and
she'd only been away for two days, and was flying back tomorrow.

After she said good-bye, she held the phone against her chest, and
watched the shadows dancing on the ceiling, and for just a moment her
mother's voice flitted into her mind again. "He really loves you,
dear. I knew it, when he came all that way to be with you when you
were hurt. And afterwards. . . ." "We're just trying it out, Mom,"
Donna had said, a little sharply, because she hated it when her
mother talked like that. He couldn't have loved her then; he
couldn't. Because if he had, and she'd-but she couldn't go there.
She couldn't let herself go there. She'd done the right thing; she
had to have done the right thing. Look at where it had got her: she
was working for the First Lady now; she was the First Lady's Chief of
Staff. And they were together; she and Josh were together. She'd be
with him tomorrow night. She had to think about that, and not the
other. . . .

* * *

There were high points, of course, and low points. Coming home to
Josh after Christmas was one of the high points-he met her at the
airport and took her out to dinner that night at a cozy little hole-
in-the-wall Vietnamese place in Georgetown she loved. The
Inauguration was another high, but a more stressful one: they were
both tense, strained to the limit, until the actual moment was over
and Matthew Santos had taken his Oath of Office and become the new
President of the United States. The balls passed in a whirl of
relief, confusion, delight, and sore feet. She didn't get to dance
much with Josh, but she didn't really mind: they both had a lot of
other things to think about, with each of them responsible for one of
the principal stars putting on a top performance.

The next night she put on one of her favorite CD's and pushed the
furniture back, and they danced in the living room of his apartment,
a lot more intimately than they'd been able to in public the night
before. So intimately that Donna said afterwards she wasn't really
sure it counted as dancing. Josh just raised an eyebrow and asked
who was counting.

"You were," she pointed out.

"I had to keep track," he protested. "For your sake, to make sure
you got enough-"

"For your ego's sake, more like," Donna said, swatting him
lightly. "Honestly, you turn everything into a competition, even
when there's nobody to compete against."

"Not nobody," Josh said, growling a little. "There's a whole world
of men out there who-"

"Are you suggesting," Donna said, sternly, putting a hand over his
mouth to cut him off, "that I've slept with a whole world of men?"

Josh flushed then.

"No, of course not," he said, pulling her hand away and squeezing it
in his own. "But-"

"Be careful, Josh," Donna said, still in a warning tone of voice,
though her eyes were dancing. "Be very careful."

"I was going to say," he went on, firmly, "that there's a whole world
of men out there you could have slept with any time you wanted to,
and still could, so naturally I have to make sure that you don't want
to."

Donna felt the heat steal into her own face, too.

"You're doing a pretty good job," she said, softly. "I couldn't ask
for anything better."

He brought her hand up to his mouth, then, and kissed her fingers
gently. "I couldn't, either," he murmured, and they went on to add
another number or two to the count.

So everything was going very well, in spite of the long hours Josh
had to put in, and the stresses of his new job. He *was* stressed-
she could tell that-but he seemed to have everything well under
control; he'd relax once he got more comfortable in the job. At
least he was keeping something like regular hours: he'd kept his
word, and tried to leave work in time to have dinner with her most
nights. It was a fairly late dinner, but Donna didn't mind that.
She'd make herself some tea and work in her office until he called to
say he was ready to leave. Her job was a lot less demanding than
his, but there was still plenty for her to do if she wanted to, and
she was nervous enough about getting things right that she did want
to. Besides, she liked going home with him. They'd talk about their
day in the car, and while they were cooking dinner. She had a
filebox full of recipes that didn't take very long to make, and he
actually seemed to enjoy making them with her. If he'd had a very
long day or had a lot of work to get through still, they'd sometimes
stop and pick up take-out, instead. Donna was relieved that they
seemed to have negotiated the dinner pitfall without ever having
really talked about it: she had half-thought that Josh would expect
her to do all the cooking on her own, something she was determined
not to do. She knew too many women who came home from their jobs and
had to cook dinner every night, while the men got another hour's work
in-or worse, watched t.v. But Josh had come into the kitchen with
her that first night and started cutting things up for a stir-fry as
if it was the most natural thing in the world, and they'd never had
to argue about it at all. It wasn't what she'd been expecting, but
she certainly wasn't going to complain. Perhaps he really had
understood what she was saying, that last night in Barbados, when
she'd told him she didn't want to have to act like his assistant
anymore. Or perhaps he just liked having something to think about
besides work, and it helped him unwind.

Of course, nothing could be perfect. Sometimes-not often, but
sometimes-he had to call and say he couldn't make it back for
dinner. And he always brought a stack of files and briefing memos
home with him, and holed up with them for a couple of hours after
they ate. He was usually up before she was, too, even though she
liked to think of herself as an early riser. Donna would have loved
more languid mornings, lying in bed together talking and making love,
but you couldn't have everything, especially when the man you were
with was the President's Chief of Staff. They tried to get at least
one morning like that on the weekend, usually Sunday. It helped that
the President was a family man and a church-goer, who had roped off
Sunday mornings as sacrosanct unless there was an absolute national
or international emergency. The President tried to keep Sunday
afternoons for his wife and children, too, which meant that some of
the time, at least, Josh was able to spend with Donna. They'd cook
brunch together, or walk around Georgetown and get something to eat
at one of the many little upscale cafes, before he had to head back
in to the office, or hole up at home with his files and his cell
phone. Donna loved that time together-even the presence of the
Secret Service agents who accompanied Josh and, to her surprise,
Donna herself everywhere ("They say they can't protect me if they
can't protect you, Donna") couldn't spoil her delight in it, and she
was looking forward to getting more of it when Josh felt more in
control of the job and more comfortable delegating some of the
responsibilities to Sam and the rest of the senior staff.

So, while it wasn't paradise, life in those first few months together
was closer to it than Donna would ever have imagined possible just a
short while before. And then the invitation came.

* * *

"What invitation was that?"

"To the show. The gallery show."

"The one we talked about?"

"That's right."

"Your boyfriend wasn't happy about it. I remember. . . ."

* * *

It was a very handsome invitation, printed on heavy rag stock, with
the United Nations and the State Department seals on the outside, and
a black and white photograph of two children kicking a soccer ball on
a dusty-looking field inside. It was addressed to Ms. Donna Moss and
Guest, inviting them to attend the gala opening of an exhibition of
photographs at the U.N. on the first Friday in April. Donna stared
at it for a long time. When she put it down, her hand was shaking a
little. She wondered why. It wasn't as if this should have come as
a surprise. She'd known all about it; she should have been expecting
it. But a few months can change everything, and they had, and she
wasn't.

The photographer whose work was being shown was Colin Ayres. The
exhibit had been organized by the State Department in conjunction
with the U.N., as part of the U.N.'s year-long celebration of fifty
years of peacekeeping. State had decided to use the occasion to
showcase the U.S.'s involvement with peacekeeping in Gaza. The
photographs were a before-and-after study of the disputed territory:
before and after the peace accord President Bartlet had brokered at
Camp David. Before and after the explosion that had killed two
United States Congressmen and one U.S. Navy Admiral, and had changed
forever the life of one White House assistant, Donna Moss.

Colin had called her the previous summer, not long after the
convention, when she was still working for the Vice President and
didn't really have very much to do anymore, since his campaign was
over. Colin had explained that he was putting together an exhibit
for the U.N. and State, and he wanted to include a section on the
conditions in Gaza before the peace accord that President Bartlet had
negotiated and the U.N. had undertaken to enforce. He had plenty of
pictures, of course, but some of the ones he thought would be most
effective had Donna in them, and he wondered if she'd mind. There
were three or four that he'd taken the day he'd shown her "the real
Gaza"; her face was visible, but she was really just a figure off to
the side; he couldn't imagine that she'd find anything to object to.
But he wanted to make sure. And there was something else. . .

"You wrote a lot, while you were there. On your computer. Using my
internet hook-up."

"I remember," Donna said, her voice a little shaky.

"Dispatches, you said. To your boss, back in Washington."

"Yes," she said, and this time her voice wasn't as shaky. It was the
anger she suddenly felt that steadied it. Josh, who hadn't wanted to
hire her for his campaign. . . .

"I wondered if you still had those emails? Or, if you didn't, if
you'd be willing to try to recreate some of what you were thinking
then?"

"What-I was thinking?"

"That day I showed you around the place. You seemed very struck by
it. We need some text to go with the pictures. I could write it
myself, of course, but I was thinking it might be more effective if I
could get it from someone else, someone without any preconceptions,
who was seeing it for the first time. A fresh perspective. An
innocent--"
He broke off, and coughed a little, as if aware that Donna might not
be flattered at being called innocent. But she recognized the phrase.

"An innocent eye?" she said.

"Something like that."

"I'll-think about it," she said again. "I'll have to think about it."

"Right, sweetheart. Hear from you soon."

And he'd hung up. Donna had thought about it. She'd even talked
about it with Louisa. But it hadn't really taken her very long to
decide: it gave her a peculiar little jolt of satisfaction to think
that her time on that trip might not have been a complete waste, and
that those accounts of it that she'd poured so much into might
actually do some good in the world after all. Josh certainly hadn't
cared about them-she doubted he'd ever read them; he'd never answered
any of them, anyway. And Josh didn't want her to join the Santos
campaign. Her job for the Vice President was winding down, but here,
at least, was something interesting she could do. So she'd gone back
over those old emails, and edited them a little, and zipped them up
into one big attachment and sent them off to Colin, and he'd written
back to thank her, and said he'd be sure to send her an invitation to
the opening of the show.

And here it was, a heavy piece of parchment in Donna's hands. But
she wasn't so sure, now, how she felt about it-or, more to the point,
how she felt about telling Josh about it. There had been just enough
vindictiveness in her thinking when she had shared those emails with
Colin to make her uncomfortable now. Josh was almost bound to be
jealous. And if he recognized what she'd written, how would he feel
about her having shared it with her former lover-with the man who'd
been her lover at the very same time she'd been writing to Josh?
They were her emails, she thought defensively, not his, even though
they'd been addressed to him. She'd written them, after all-and
she'd written them when Josh was her boss, not her lover, and he'd
never answered them or given any indication of having ever read them,
and the fact that he hadn't answered had pretty much proven what C.J.
had tried to say that night of the shutdown, and had been part of the
reason Donna had known she had to leave her job with him, and the
fact that she was now the First Lady's Chief of Staff was proof
enough that leaving had been the right thing to do, so Josh couldn't
possibly have anything to complain about-but still, there was
something about the whole thing that didn't feel quite right now that
she and Josh were together. She thought about how she'd feel if Josh
made old letters or emails he'd written to her, however
unromantically, public-if he'd given them, say, to Amy Gardner to use
in some campaign of hers-and she bit the side of her thumb, and
pushed the invitation into her briefcase to think about later.

But before she could do much more thinking about it, something else
happened that put the problem of having given Colin emails she'd
written to Josh entirely out of her mind. About two days after the
invitation came, Colin called again. He wanted to know if she'd
gotten it. He wanted to urge her to come. But he wanted to talk to
her about something first. He was in Washington, talking to his
contact at State and making some final decisions about the pictures
he'd be hanging in New York. He knew she must be busy these days,
but was there any chance she could join him for a drink that night?
Or tomorrow sometime? As soon as possible, if she didn't mind.
Thursday lunch? At the Hawk and Dove? Yes, he knew where that was;
he'd been to D.C. a few times before. Thanks, love. He'd see her
then. And yes, he'd expected a lovely woman like her would be seeing
someone; that wasn't what this was about at all; his intentions were
pure, perfectly pure. . . .

His voice was as breezy and light as ever, but under the surface,
Donna thought she could detect something else-something that, if it
hadn't seemed so improbable, she would almost have called anxiety.
But Colin Ayres was just about the least nervous man she'd ever met,
and how could the prospect of a talk with Donna possibly be enough to
make him that way?

* * *

"Josh?"

"Yeah?"

"Colin called me today."

"Colin?" His voice was abstracted, his mind still deep in the
briefing papers spread out in front of him.

"Colin Ayres."

"Colin Ayres?" Josh's voice sharpened suddenly. "That Irish wanker
you were with in-in-"

"In Gaza. Yes, Josh-that Colin Ayres."

"What the hell did he want?"

"To see me."

"I'll bet he did."

"Is that so surprising?"

Josh glowered at her.

"No, it's not surprising at all. Of course he wants to see you.
You're not going to oblige, are you?"

"I'd like to see him."

"You want to go on a date with your ex-boyfriend?"

"Just for a drink, Josh, not a *date.* And he was never my
boyfriend. He was a guy I met on a trip and slept with a couple of
times. It didn't mean anything. You don't have to worry."

"I'm not worried."

"Then why are you being such a grouch about him calling me up and
wanting to see me?"

"I'm not. I just-" Josh stopped, pushed a hand through his hair,
and sighed. "Okay, maybe I am. I don't like him very much, that's
all."

"You don't know him."

"I know him well enough. He's a pain in the ass, and he's anti-
Israel and probably anti-Semitic, too. And he was your boyfriend,
Donna! You can't expect me to be thrilled about one of your old
boyfriends calling you up for a date. That's unreasonable."

"Honestly, Josh, you're being ridiculous. I told you-he wasn't my
boyfriend, and it's not a *date.* He just wants to see me about
something."

"What?"

Donna bit her lip to stop herself from snapping that it was none of
his business. She could hardly blame him for wanting to know. She
knew she'd feel the same if one of his old girlfriends had called him
up and wanted to go out to lunch, though Colin hardly qualified as a
boyfriend-more like a one-night stand. But still. . . .

"I don't know. He didn't say. Just that he wanted to see me, and
there was something he wanted to talk to me about. Nothing
romantic. I told him I was seeing someone, and he made it very clear
that that wasn't what he was after at all."

"Well, what do you think he *is* after?"

"I don't know." She still hadn't told him about the gallery show;
this didn't seem like the best moment to introduce it. And she
didn't know whether what Colin wanted to talk about had anything to
do with the show or not.

"Is he trying to get to the First Lady?"

"I don't think so. I don't know what it is, but I promise you, Josh,
he didn't sound amorous at all."

"Better not."

"I'm not interested in Colin that way, Josh. But I'd like to see him
again, and I'd like to hear what he's got to say."

Josh sighed.

"Okay."

"Okay?"

"Okay."

"Really?"

"Of course, Donna. You're a grown-up; you can do what you want. You
don't have to ask my permission."

"I wasn't planning to. I just wanted to tell you what I was doing,
so you wouldn't go all funny about it and think I was sneaking off to
see an old boyfriend behind your back."

"So you admit he was a boyfriend?"

"*Josh*!"

"Sorry."

"You don't really think I'm going to get something on with Colin, do
you, Josh? While I'm living with you? That's-fairly insulting to
me, you know; you must think I'm some kind of slut."

Josh looked taken aback.

"God, Donna-I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that all. I'd never-
I'm sorry. Really. Go ahead, see him if you want to. Of course I
don't think about you like that. I never would. I'm sorry."

"Really?"

"Really."

"You really don't mind my going?"

"I'll live with it. But if he brings you flowers. . . ."

"He's not going to bring me flowers, Josh."

"How do you know?"

"It wasn't like that then, and it's certainly not like that now."

"He brought you flowers in the hospital." Josh's voice was suddenly
a low growl.

"He did?"

"You don't remember?"

"I was pretty drugged up, Josh. I don't remember all that much."

Josh looked at her strangely.

"You don't remember that? " he said. "You seemed pretty happy about
it at the time. I thought. . . ."

"He brought me flowers?"

"Yeah, and he kissed you when he gave them to you, a great, big,
smoochy kiss. So it *was* like that."

"How charming."

"You seemed to think so."

"Well, you've got to admit, Josh, that *was* charming-coming all that
way and bringing me flowers, when we hardly knew each other."

"Oh, great," Josh muttered. "And I had to remind you."

"It doesn't matter now, Josh. I'm not interested in Colin, I told
you. I promise. You don't have anything to worry about."

Josh scuffed at the carpet with his foot.

"I brought you flowers, too," he said, his voice low and husky.

"You did?"

"Yeah, well-you never got them."

"I didn't? Why not?"

Josh shrugged. He was looking at his foot, which was still pushing
back and forth on the carpet, as if he wanted to rub a hole in it.

"I-um, I dropped them."

"You *dropped* them? Oh, Josh." Donna couldn't help laughing. "You
really *are* a klutz sometimes! How did you ever do that? Why didn't
you buy me some more?"

Josh was biting his lip.

"I don't know."

"You don't know?"

"I don't know. Everything was so crazy, there wasn't time. And then
everyone was sending you flowers, and you couldn't have them in the
ICU, and your mother was taking them away in armfuls, and then I had
to go back. . . ." His voice trailed away.

"You could have sent some when I came home," she said, in a teasing
voice.

She'd always wondered why he hadn't. He'd come to see her, of
course, in Germany-which really had been good of him, even if Leo had
sent him and even if her mother *had* gone and blown it all out of
proportion afterwards-and at the rehab hospital in D.C., where he'd
driven her crazy by his incessant nagging about when she was going to
be ready to come back to work for him. He'd got her rooms bumped up
to private ones, and dealt with the insurance about it for her-
somehow he must have persuaded them to pay, because she'd never seen
a bill for any of it, thank God; at least that had been one nightmare
she hadn't had to cope with. And he'd helped her with the wheelchair
when she did come back to work, but that had been self-interest: it
had got her back there a whole lot earlier than if he'd had to wait
until she didn't need one. He'd given her a pen-one of the pens the
peace accord had been signed with, which she hadn't appreciated very
much, because it had seemed like the kind of thing any boss might do
and she was sick to death of Josh acting like her boss and nothing
else. But he'd never sent her flowers. She didn't know why that had
bothered her so much-they wouldn't have been any more personal than
the pen, and in some ways less-but it had. He used to send her
flowers for their non-anniversary, just to drive her crazy, but he'd
been the only person she knew who hadn't sent some to her when she
was in the hospital, and it had hurt her that he hadn't bothered. It
had seemed like a deliberate avoidance of anything that might suggest
romantic interest, as if he had suddenly realized that by coming to
Germany he might have made their friends, or maybe even Donna
herself, think she meant more to him than she did, and then he felt
he had to backpedal frantically to correct the mis-impression. She
wondered now what kind of flowers he *had* got her, and how he could
have dropped them, and why he'd never got her any again. Then she
thought how ridiculous it was to be worrying about all that now, when
they were living together, and whatever he'd felt or hadn't felt then
was in the past and could hardly matter any more now at all.

"You had so many," Josh said again, still talking about the
flowers. "Your room at the rehab place was full of them. And I
thought. . . ."

"You thought what, Josh?"

He shrugged again.

"It doesn't matter. When are you going to get together with Ayres,
anyway?"

"On Thursday. I said I'd meet him for lunch at the Hawk and Dove."

"He'll look like a real idiot if he brings flowers to the Hawk and
Dove."

"I told you, he won't *be* bringing flowers, Josh. And if he does,
I'll tell him to give them to the waitress, or something. Look,
Josh, do you want to come, too?"

Josh looked startled.

"What?"

"Do you want to come? When I meet with Colin? So there won't be any
question about how things stand?"

"You can't want me to," he said, flatly.

"Of course I do, if it would be more comfortable for you. I know you
said you didn't like him, but I think you'd really find him quite
interesting if you gave him a chance. And I'm sure he'd like you."

Josh flushed, and smiled a little.

"That's sweet of you, Donna, but you don't have to do that. I trust
you, really I do-I never meant to suggest I didn't. I couldn't come,
anyway; my schedule's jammed all week, I'm afraid. But thanks for
asking. Go and have fun and eat one of the H & D's hamburgers for
me."

"Burned to a crisp like yours?"

"Any way you want it, but with fries. Your own fries. No nibbling
his fries, Donna-you have to have your own."

She smiled.

"No nibbling his fries?"

"You only get to eat my fries."

"Josh, there's nothing meaningful about eating someone's fries."

"Yes, there is."

"No, there isn't. I used to eat your fries all the time."

"I know. And you still do. But you should only do it with me."

"I've eaten other men's fries, Josh, and it didn't mean anything."

"You shouldn't have. I don't want to know about that."

Donna eyed him strangely. Really, he could be very odd sometimes.

"I'll be getting soup, Josh, or a salad."

"Order fries with it-you know you always want them. And if he brings
flowers, shove them down his throat."

She shook her head, and smiled.

It was the last time she was able to talk about Colin Ayres to Josh
and smile for a very long time.

* * *

"How'd your lunch with Ayres go?"

"Oh-fine."

"Really? You didn't have to shove his flowers down his throat, or
get the waiter to pull him off you and throw him out the door?"

"No."

"Are you okay, Donna?"

"Yes."

"You don't seem okay. Was it something Ayres said? Or something I
did?"

"I'm fine."

"You're not."

"I am, really, Josh. I've just got a bit of a headache. I think
I'll go out when we get back and take a walk."

"Do you want company?"

"Not right now, thanks."

"Okay."

"Okay. Here we are. I'll go now."

"Donna?"

"Yes?"

"That bastard said something to upset you, didn't he?"

"I'll tell you about it later, Josh."

"I'll kill him."

"He was fine, Josh. I'll tell you about it later."

"Okay. Please do. You'll take one of the agents, won't you?"

"Like they'd give me a choice."

* * *

"Thank God."

"Why on earth?"

"You're home safe."

"I wasn't gone that long, Josh. And Greg was with me."

"I was worried about you. You seemed upset when you left."

"I guess I was a bit."

"Can you-tell me about it now?"

"I need you not to get uptight about this, Josh."

"I'm already uptight about it. I just need to know what it is I'm
uptight about."

"Don't freak out on me."

"I'll try not to. What the frigging hell did that bastard do, Donna?"

"He's not a bastard, Josh. And he didn't *do* anything."

"Well, what did he say, then? He said something that upset you,
didn't he?"

"A little. At first. I'm not upset about it now, not really. In
fact, I think I'm-interested. Maybe. I'll have to think about it
some more."

"You're-*interested*?"

"*Not* in Colin, Josh, for God's sake! In what he said."

"Which was?"

"Josh, I've been meaning to tell you. There's going to be an
exhibition next month. Of Colin's photographs. It's at the U.N.,
but it's in conjunction with the State Department; it's to
commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of their involvement in
peacekeeping."

"The anniversary's not till November."

"They're doing things about it all year. State got involved because
they want something to showcase the success of the mission in . . ."
Donna swallowed.

"In Gaza," Josh finished for her, slowly.

"That's right."

"So, why does Ayres want to involve you? You don't-oh my God, he
didn't-he didn't-" Josh choked, and couldn't go on.

"Yes, he took pictures of me. Before the explosion, when we were
going around together."

Josh nodded, painfully.

"He talked to me about those last summer, actually. He wanted my
permission to use them in the show. I gave it to him; I didn't have
a problem with that at all. He also asked me to write something
about my experiences there, when he was taking me around, showing me
the place, and-and I did."

Josh looked down at the floor.

"It was after the convention, I didn't have much to do at work, and
it didn't take long-I had some notes to work from, those emails I
sent you from there. It wasn't a big deal."

"He couldn't write the text himself?" Josh's voice was rough. He
didn't look up.

"Yes, of course he could, but he said he'd remembered how interested
I'd been, and how shocked by some of it, and he thought it would be
more powerful if it came from me. From what he called `an innocent
eye.'"

"That's Ruskin," Josh growled. "Not Ayres."

"I know that, Josh. I imagine Colin does, too."

"So he's a plagiarist who can't even write his own text, and he hit
you up for it because he knew you'd do a better job than he could-but
what was he talking to you about today? Why were you upset? Has he
messed around with what you wrote? Cut it till you can't recognize
it anymore? Or said something you didn't like about it? What did
the asshole say that upset you?"

Donna shook her head. She couldn't be bothered arguing with him
about Colin not being a plagiarist or an asshole; she was still
shaking inside. Her voice shook a little, too, when she answered.

"He-had some more pictures. For the show. Ones I-hadn't seen-that
he hadn't shown me-before."

Josh's head shot up.

"More pictures? Of you?"

Donna nodded, painfully. He stared at her, comprehending and
appalled.

"From-when-"

"When I was in the car. Yes."

"The god-damned, fucking, fucked-up-"

He broke off, choking. He obviously couldn't find a word foul enough
for what he wanted to say.

"He's a photographer, Josh," Donna said, choking a little, too, as
she tried to protest. "That's what he does. He said the Israeli
police wouldn't let him near to help. He said he was almost crying
when he was taking the pictures, but there wasn't anything else he
could do."

"*Almost* crying?" Josh's voice was unrecognizable. "The god-damned
fucking bastard. He-didn't-show them to you, did he?" He was
clenching his hands on the edge of the sofa where they were sitting;
his knuckles were white.

"No. He offered to. I said I wasn't ready to see them yet. He
seemed to understand."

"*Yet!?!* Donna you can't-"

"Yes, I can."

"You *can't!*"

"Why not?"

"You just can't."

"*Why* can't I?" Donna, who had been sitting very still with her
hands clasped together in her lap, suddenly stood up. Her eyes were
flashing. "You think they'd upset me too much, if I saw them? You
think I'm too weak for that? I think I might want to see them,
Josh. I think I might want to go to this show. He asked me to do
that-to give him permission to use them, and to come to the opening
of the show. And I might want to."

"I-I-" Josh sounded almost short of breath. "You just can't. You
can't do that. I-" But he couldn't finish. Donna fixed him with an
icy look, suddenly furious. She'd been upset about this all
afternoon; she'd finally got herself calmed down about it, and now he
had to act like this about it?

"How *dare* you, Josh? You can't tell me what I can and can't do.
You're not my boss anymore! This isn't about you; it's not your
decision to make. It's mine. I haven't made it yet, but I'm going
to think about it, and I'm telling you I might-I just might-decide I
want to do it. And I don't want you to try to stop me, just because
you can't stand Colin Ayres."

"I-" Josh said again, looking at her helplessly.

"It's for the U.N., Josh. It's about peacekeeping, about President
Bartlet's accord, about the work we're still doing there. State's
behind it, Colin said; Secretary Vinick's all in favor; there won't
be any problem about my being the First Lady's C.o.S. and
participating if I want to. I would think you'd want to support
that. I would think you'd want to support *me,* if I decide to do
this. You said you would. You said you'd take me seriously, support
me in doing what I need to do, and now look at you-you just want to
say no, no, you can't do that, and order me around, as if it was your
decision, as if all that mattered was your petty, ridiculous
insecurities and jealousies, because you don't like the man who's
asked me to do this, because I slept with him once!"

Josh stared at her, his face white and his mouth set with what looked
like anger. Then, abruptly, he turned around and walked very fast
towards the bathroom, shutting the door behind him hard. Donna felt
her legs give underneath her and sat down suddenly on the couch
again. She was trembling all over. She'd thought the walk she'd
taken had calmed her nerves, but clearly it hadn't been enough. She
waited for Josh to come out of the bathroom, but he didn't: to her
disbelief, she heard water start pouring in the bathtub, and then the
gush of it as the shower was turned on full. He'd decided to take a
shower? Now? *Passive-aggressive idiot,* she thought; how dare he
just walk away like that in the middle of an argument? She should
have guessed he wouldn't be able to take an emotional scene-he could
argue all day with Congressmen and Senators, but when things got
personal, he'd shut down, she should have expected that. But how
could he expect *her* not to be emotional, after what had happened?
Didn't she have a right to be? It had upset her, Colin telling her
about taking her picture after the explosion, thinking about it all
again, and realizing that she was going to have to make herself look
at his pictures if she wasn't going to be a total wimp and let
everyone involved with this project down. She was going to have to
let other people look at his pictures, pictures of her at the worst
moment of her life, damaged, helpless, bleeding. . . . Oh, she didn't
*have* to, but she didn't want to have to say no, either. No wonder
she was upset. And instead of calming her down and helping her think
it through, Josh had just tried to tell her what to do, as if he was
her boss again, as if what she wanted and needed didn't matter at
all. It was so like him. She was furious. If he came out now, she
didn't think she *could* talk to him, but he wasn't coming out. He
was taking the longest shower she'd ever known anyone to take. He
was trying to avoid her, that was obvious; he was acting like a
teenage girl-like Donna herself, when she'd been fifteen and angry
with her parents, and the bathroom had been the only place to
hide. . . . All right, then, he *could* avoid her. She'd avoid him,
too. She stood up, shakily, and made her way to the bedroom, closing
the door with a decided bang behind her.

There was a tiny two-piece off the bedroom, where they kept
toothbrushes and some of her sanitary supplies and not much else.
She used it now, brushing her teeth carefully, paying attention to
each one. Then she splashed cold water on her face-her cleansers
were all in the other room, and Josh seemed to have used up all the
hot water already-and patted herself dry on the hand-towel. She
undressed, put on her oldest, ugliest flannel pajamas, and curled
herself up on the extreme edge of their bed.

She needn't have bothered with the "don't touch me" routine. Josh
never came to bed that night. When she woke up the next morning,
he'd left for work already. There was a bunch of flowers from the
corner store on the kitchen counter, with a note: "I'm sorry. Do
what you want about it-it's up to you. I didn't mean to try to tell
you what to do."

When she got to the office, the first thing she did was call Louisa.
She went to see her a few days later, the earliest appointment they
could both fit in.

* * *

To be continued. . .

I need the feedback, guys. chai4anne@yahoo.com



Life after Paradise 5/10
by Chai

Rating: Mature

Category: Post-ep for "Transition" and beyond; angsty drama; romance

Spoilers: Through S7

Disclaimers: All the usual

Feedback: Yes, please. I'll do almost anything to get it:
chai4anne@yahoo.com

Note: I meant to put this note with the last section, pointing out
that I've taken the story a bit off-canon in giving Donna more time
in hospital--both in Germany and D.C.--than the show allowed her. It
just seemed too improbable their way. . . . Otherwise, I've tried to
fit this story pretty closely to what we see on the show, where
there's something to fit it to.

This is a very short bit, but it seemed to want to stand as a chapter
on its own. You'll remember that the last chapter ended with Donna
calling her therapist after arguing with Josh about Colin's show, and
scheduling an appointment for a few days later.

Part 5:

"You said your boyfriend isn't happy about the show?"

"No."

"Why do you think that is?"

"He doesn't like the man I'm working with, the photographer who asked
me to do this."

"Why is that?"

"I slept with him-with Colin, the photographer-a couple of times,
when I first met him. It wasn't a serious thing, just a fling, but I
think that bothers him."

"He's jealous?"

"Probably. I've told him there's nothing to worry about, but he's
just not happy about it."

"He doesn't trust you, then?"

"He says he does."

"But you don't believe him?"

Donna sighed.

"It's not just about Colin. I-I don't think he trusts me to be able
to do this. I think he thinks I'm going to break down at the
opening, make a fool of myself somehow."

"Did he say that?"

"Not exactly. He just kept saying, `You can't,' when I was telling
him about it. I told him he couldn't tell me what I can or can't do."

"That's good."

"He apologized afterwards, but . . . I can tell he doesn't like my
going to this. He closes up whenever I mention it, changes the
subject, shuts me out."

"And how does that make you feel?"

"Not good at all. . . ."

* * *

"The exhibition," Donna said to Josh over breakfast one Saturday
morning two weeks later, "is opening next week."

His face went very still.

"Yeah?" he said, putting his coffee cup down. Some of the steaming
liquid sloshed over the edge onto his hand. He winced, and wiped at
it without taking his eyes off her face.

"On April 2. That's a Friday night."

"Okay," Josh said cautiously.

"The First Lady would like to go, but she can't-Peter has a school
concert that night."

"That's too bad. It would have been a good event for her to go to.
I'd thought you'd have put it on her schedule for sure."

"Yes, I'd hoped she could make it, but she says she can't. She was
very sorry about it, but of course the children come first."

"Of course."

"She's giving me time off to go up for it, though."

"Okay."

Donna took a deep breath.

"I thought I'd fly up that afternoon, and come back Saturday or
Sunday."

Josh blinked, and looked down at his coffee.

"Okay," he said again. He picked it up to take another drink.

"I was hoping," Donna said, trying to make her voice sound bright and
cheery, as if she wasn't afraid of how he was going to react to what
she wanted to say, "that you'd come with me."

Josh looked up, his eyes wide. The coffee spilled again, steaming
hot liquid pouring over his hand and onto his legs. He didn't seem
to notice.

"Come-with you?" he asked. He sounded as if the air had been knocked
out of him.

"Yes, Josh-come with me. We could make a weekend of it, maybe go to
a show or something on Saturday evening-or Saturday afternoon, if you
don't want to be away too long." She sipped her coffee carefully,
trying to look cool and collected, as if this didn't matter much to
her, but it did. She didn't want to have to go to the opening by
herself, and she wanted Josh to see the work she'd done. She wanted
him to tell her she'd done well. That didn't seem unreasonable; it
was one of the things partners were supposed to do for each other,
surely.

"I, um . . . I . . ." he swallowed, and looked down. "I-hadn't
thought-I hadn't expected-I don't know if-"

"If what, Josh?" Donna said, hearing the chill in her voice and not
caring. Surely he wasn't going to let her down on this? Surely?

"If I can go," he said, quietly. He was staring down at his hands.
There was a red mark on one of them where the coffee had spilled on
him. He picked up a napkin and started to blot the coffee up, as if
he had only just noticed it.

"I've asked Margaret what your schedule looks like that weekend,
Josh, and there's nothing major on then at all. Sam can manage on
his own for a day, surely."

"I-" He swallowed again, put the napkin down, and looked up at her,
something like desperation in his eyes.

"*Josh!* What's the matter with you? I'm not asking for the moon
here; I'm just asking you to take a few hours off to go with me to
New York. We don't have to do a show if you don't want to take the
time, but the opening-I can't believe you wouldn't have been planning
to go! You know how important this is to me. I know you don't like
it-I know you don't like Colin and you don't like that it's him I
worked with on this, and I know you probably think I can't do this
and I'm going to make a fool of myself somehow, but-"

"Donna!" Josh sounded horrified. "I don't think that. I've never
thought that. Why would you ever think I would think you were going
to make a fool of yourself?"

"You said I couldn't do it."

"*When?*?"

"That night, when I first told you about it. You kept saying, `You
can't do that. You can't do that.'"

Josh stared at her, appalled.

"I didn't mean that, Donna. I didn't mean it that way at all. I-I-
" he floundered, trying to find the words to explain, but she went
on,

"This is so important to me, Josh. I want to do it-I *need* to do
it. It doesn't have anything to do with Colin; I've told you over
and over that I'm not interested in him that way, and he's not
interested in me; you have nothing to worry about from him. And I
know it's going to be hard, to walk in there and see those pictures
blown up to twice life size and *not* make a fool of myself by
breaking down. I've seen the prints now-" Josh sucked in his breath,
a strange, small gasping noise-"but those were so much smaller, and
nobody was watching me; it didn't matter how I reacted, and I know
this will be different. That's why I need you there; I-I don't
actually know if I can do it by myself. I-I hope I could, but-I
don't want to, I-I want you there, with me, and-and I want you to see
what I wrote, about the people I met in Gaza, and the peacekeepers,
and-I just want you to be there, that's all."

Donna could feel the tears starting behind her eyes, and closed them
so she couldn't see the pity or the rejection in his face. She felt
exposed, pathetic, vulnerable. This was the closest she'd ever come
to telling him how much his opinion mattered to her.

She heard his chair scrape back, and thought perhaps he was going to
leave the room. But he knelt down beside her chair, and put his arms
around her.

"Donna." His voice was very soft. "I had no idea you felt like
that. Of course I want to see what you've done. And I'm sure you
won't break down, but if you do, you won't have made a fool of
yourself-you couldn't ever do that. Everyone would understand. But
you won't-you'll be fine. You'd be fine by yourself-more than fine,
you'd be wonderful. But if you want me to be there with you, then
I'll be there. No matter what."

Donna face was wet by the time he'd finished, but she didn't care
now. She thought she had never felt so much love for Josh as she
felt right then.

"Thank you," she gulped. He squeezed her tightly and she relaxed
into his arms, loving the warmth and strength of them. She hadn't
realized how tense she'd been about this until now.

"No matter what," he said again, so softly that it was almost as if
he was talking to himself, not to her. "No matter what."

"I-I'll understand if something comes up, Josh. If the President
needs you, if you really can't-"

"It won't," he said, very seriously. "Nothing will come up. I won't
let it."

She had to smile then, because nobody but Josh could say something as
ridiculous as that and sound as though he actually thought he could
make it happen.

* * *

To be continued. . . .

Please--talk to me. chai4anne@yahoo.com



Life after Paradise 6/10
by Chai

Rating: Mature

Category: Post-ep for "Transition" and beyond; angsty drama; romance

Spoilers: Through S7

Disclaimers: All the usual

Feedback: Yes, please. I'll do almost anything to get it:
chai4anne@yahoo.com

* * *

Part 6--

"So, he went in the end? After you told him what you wanted?"

"Yes, he did."

"And how was it?"

"The opening was . . . very nice. Lovely, really. Everything was
very nice. Just about everyone said nice things. . . ."

But her voice was flat and expressionless, Louisa noted-at odds with
her words. Donna had sounded much more enthusiastic than that when
she'd called Louisa after the show. The therapist wondered what had
happened to change that now.

* * *

It *had* been lovely, for the most part. She bought a new dress for
the occasion, long and silvery-blue and, she thought, quite
sophisticated-looking-and new shoes and a new handbag to match. Josh
wore his tuxedo. They flew up on Friday afternoon and checked into
their hotel and changed, and he took her out to a quiet little
restaurant before the opening. She was too nervous to eat much, but
managed a bowl of soup, and some bread, and told him it was
delicious, which it was. He didn't eat much, either. He looked as
pale and tense as she felt, but because she was so happy that he'd
agreed to come she couldn't feel angry with him for being nervous on
her account, and decided it was rather sweet of him, instead. They
took a taxi to the U.N. Donna held her breath when she walked into
the gallery, but Colin was there to greet them, and he swept her off
to be introduced to the various dignitaries who were gracing the
opening with their presence, and she found that she was able to keep
her eyes on the faces of the people who were talking to her and
didn't really have to look at the pictures directly at all. Everyone
said sympathetic things about the bombing and her injuries, and
complimented her on what she had written about her experiences in
Gaza, and several society women told her gushingly that they'd been
moved to tears by her words. Waiters moved around, offering
champagne and delectable-looking hors d'oeuvres from silver trays,
and while it wasn't the most glamorous affair Donna had ever been to-
it didn't compare to a State Dinner at the White House, or an
Inaugural Ball-it was still the most glamorous one she had ever been
that close to being the center of attention at, and she found it a
heady experience. After a while she stole a look out of the corner
of her eye at one of the pictures of herself, and was surprised and
pleased to find that it didn't unnerve her the way she'd expected it
to. After that she let herself look about freely, and was able to
tell Colin quite sincerely that she thought the photos were well-
chosen and effectively hung, and that the show was dramatic and
powerful and showed something important about Gaza and the effects of
the peacekeepers there. Josh grunted some sort of assent from beside
her. He was clearly no more enamored of Colin Ayres than he had been
before, but Donna was far too happy and excited to get distressed
about that.

The only thing that disturbed her enjoyment at all was a little
flutter of conversation she overheard about midway through the
evening. A woman came up and touched Josh on the elbow. "Josh,
*dear,*" she said, gushingly, just as Colin was introducing Donna to
yet another socialite. Josh turned away towards the other woman, and
Donna was forced to turn towards the socialite and act as though she
were listening to what the woman had to say, but her attention was
all on the conversation behind her.

"Dear Josh," the woman at Josh's elbow purred again, "it's been
*such* a long time. How *are* you? How have you been?"

"Fine, Lizzie," Josh said, with, Donna was relieved to notice, no
particular enthusiasm. "What about you?"

"Oh, I'm doing *wonderfully,* just *wonderfully,* darling. I'm
writing for the "Times," now, you know. Helping review art shows and
things-I'm reviewing this one, of course. And I'm married! Can you
believe it? Three years ago. Joe Reisman, darling, he's an
investment banker, we're doing very well. We have a little girl now,
Maggie, *such* a darling baby, so sweet. But what about you, Josh?
Not married yet? I don't see a ring. Josh, darling, you really
*must* find a nice Jewish girl and settle down soon. Yes, I know I
sound like our mothers, but you know, they're weren't as crazy as we
used to think. It really does make *such* a difference, having that
in common. Joe and I-well, I knew right away, really, when I met
him, that it was going to work, and that was part of the reason why.
We've started going to temple, too. I know, I know. It's because of
Maggie, I suppose. You'll see-you'll want to, too, when you have
children. You'll want them to know who they are. What? You're
here with someone? Oh, I didn't realize!"-Lizzie giggled-"How
tactless of me! But you know what I'm like. I don't think she heard
me, do you? She's the woman in the pictures, isn't she? And she
wrote some of the text they've put up there. Rather naive, don't you
think? Oh dear, there I go again! Oh, look-there's Robbie Fraser,
from the MOMA, you know, over there-I *must* catch him! Bye for now,
Josh darling! I'll try to catch you later; of course I'd love to
meet your date. But don't forget what I said. Our mothers really
weren't as crazy as we used to think."

And then she apparently dropped Josh's arm and darted across the room
after Robbie Fraser from the MOMA, because the chatter stopped. But
when the socialite said goodbye and Donna turned around, Josh was
gone, too. She searched the room for him. The woman he'd been
talking to-a tall redhead-was some distance away, in animated
conversation with an elegantly-dressed older man with thinning hair
and a silvered beard. She couldn't see Josh at all.

He reappeared after a while, though, carrying drinks for both of
them, and rejoined her as a present, if rather silent, companion.
She decided not to mention what she'd heard. In fact, she tried to
put it out of her mind. Josh obviously hadn't been interested in the
woman, whatever their former relationship had or hadn't been-Donna
hadn't really been able to tell whether she was an old girlfriend or
not. And just because she thought Josh should marry a nice Jewish
girl didn't mean he thought so. Did it? And so she thought Donna's
texts were naive. Well, she probably thought any kind of settlement
with the Palestinians was unacceptable. Donna had just described the
situation in Gaza as she'd seen it. And everyone else tonight had
told her she'd done a wonderful job, and what she'd written had been
very effective and moving. . . .

Donna did her best to put that little exchange out of her mind, and
for a while she almost succeeded. The champagne probably helped, but
it was a conscious decision, really, as conscious as the one she'd
taken in coming here at all. She was proud of herself, and had a
right to be; she'd written those texts hanging on the wall, and she'd
made herself come and look at those pictures of herself, and she
hadn't broken down. This was *her* evening, and she wasn't going to
let anything spoil it for her, not even a negative comment from an
art critic at the "New York Times," who just happened to be an old
friend of Josh's, and who thought a Jewish man could only be really
happy if the woman he married was Jewish, too. It helped that Josh
hovered at her elbow for the rest of the evening, and brought her
drinks, and didn't act as if he was regretting anything, even though
he didn't have much to say, either. But when the evening was finally
over and they were waiting for their taxi back to their hotel, he
slipped an arm around her and squeezed tightly, and told her in a
husky voice that she'd done a great job and he was proud of her.
That was the shining cap on the night, as far as Donna was concerned;
nothing could put a dent in that. When they went to bed, he kissed
his way down her body and did everything she could have asked for
with his mouth. And then he rubbed her back, and when Donna asked,
rather sleepily, if he didn't need something too, he said that was
all right, they were both tired, and it could wait till the morning.
She was tired enough to be grateful.

But in the morning Josh was up before she was, showered and dressed
and busy with his BlackBerry. He looked pale and preoccupied, and
didn't seem inclined to go back to bed with her again. Donna drank
some coffee and read the papers while he worked. Of course the first
thing she looked for was the reviews of the show. She got a bit of a
shock when she saw them. Everyone had liked Colin's pictures, and
some of the critics praised the texts Donna had written and her
courage in taking a stance for greater understanding and peaceful
coexistence, when she could so easily have wanted vengeance against
the terrorists who had injured her and killed her companions. But it
was hard to remember what the good reviews had said after reading the
one in the Times. Josh's friend seemed to have nothing good to say
about it; "naive" was one of the kindest words she used. Donna felt
as if she'd been kicked in the gut after reading it; she hadn't
realized how much she had invested in the show until then.

She wondered whether Josh had read the reviews or not. He'd
obviously been at the papers before she got up, but they weren't open
to the arts pages, and she couldn't tell how far he'd read before
getting called away by work. She wanted him to say something
comforting, but he never mentioned the show at all, and she couldn't
bring herself to be the one to bring it up. What if he *had* read
them, and thought Lizzie was right? What if he thought Lizzie was
right about other things, as well?

They ate lunch out and went to the matinee of the show Donna had
chosen that afternoon, but she didn't enjoy it much, and didn't think
he did, either. He seemed tired and distracted through most of it,
fiddling with his BlackBerry, and disappeared for most of the last
half, she supposed to deal with something that had come up at work.
They flew back that evening. When they got home, he said he was
terribly sorry but he had a lot to catch up on; if she didn't mind,
he'd work on it for a while and come to bed later. Donna
understood. What she didn't understand was why he never did come to
bed, even though she heard him taking a shower for what seemed like
hours in the middle of the night.

* * *

"But?" Louisa prompted.

"What?" Donna asked. She'd been lost in her own thoughts for a
minute or two. Louisa was trying to wait patiently; she wanted Donna
to tell the story her own way.

"You said the opening night of the exhibit was lovely."

"Oh yes, it was."

Donna's voice was still flat, but Louisa decided to let it go for now.

"So, what happened after that?"

Donna bit her lip, and looked down at the floor.

"I don't know," she whispered.

"Something changed?"

Donna nodded, painfully.

"With Josh?"

She nodded again.

"Can you tell me about it?"

Donna took a deep breath.

"I-he-he started to be very busy after that. I wasn't surprised at
first; he's got a terrible job, and taking the time to go away with
me like that, I knew he'd have to put in extra time to catch up.
But. . . ."

"But?"

"It-never stopped. After that weekend, he just seemed to be busy all
the time. He's always busy, of course, but even busier than that.
And whenever we were together, things were-different. I don't know
how to describe it. Just-different."

"Not different in a good way, I take it?"

"No. It was like-like he wasn't really quite there. When we were
talking-it was as if he didn't really want to be. Even when-" She
blushed, and broke off.

"When you were in bed?"

Donna nodded, her eyes cast down. Sex wasn't something she'd talked
to her therapist about before. There hadn't been any reason to: she
hadn't been seeing anyone when she first started talking to Louisa,
and there hadn't been any need to since she started sleeping with
Josh. Until now.

"How was it different?"

Donna fiddled with another kleenex in her lap.

"Just-different," she said again. "I don't really know how to
describe it. He seemed less-passionate, I guess. As if-he didn't
really want to, almost, or as if-I don't know. There was something
wrong, I could tell."

"Did you talk to him about it?"

Donna bit her lip.

"I tried to," she whispered.

"What did he say?"

"He was upset. He said he was sorry, he was tired, he'd been feeling
a little off-color. . ."

Louisa tipped her head sideways, and considered this.

"You didn't believe him?"

"Yes. Yes, of course I believed him-I could see that something was
the matter. I just didn't think . . . ." Her voice trailed off
again.

"That that was the whole story?"

Donna nodded again, swallowing hard.

"What do you think he wasn't telling you?"

"I don't know."

"You've got some idea, surely?"

Donna bit her lip, and looked out the window.

"I thought-I wondered-if-maybe-" She stopped, and swallowed. It was
a minute before she began again. "There was this woman at the Gaza
show, an old friend of Josh's, maybe an old girlfriend, I couldn't
tell. I overheard them talking. They were right behind me. She
kept saying that Josh should find a nice Jewish girl to marry. She'd
gotten married herself since he'd seen her last, and she said it made
all the difference, having that in common. She talked about going to
temple, and how important it was, when you had children, to be able
to share that, so they know who they are."

"So you think maybe he was thinking about that?"

Donna nodded again, mutely. The lump in her throat wouldn't let any
words out.

"Did you ask him?"

She shook her head.

"Why not?"

"I-" She choked a little, and squeezed her hands together more
tightly.

"You were afraid of hearing the answer?"

She nodded again, and looked away. A few moments passed. Then she
said, softly,

"That wasn't all. She-that woman-was an art critic for the "New York
Times." She laughed at what I'd written-you know, about Gaza and the
Palestinians and Israel. She said it was naive. I-Josh didn't say
anything, and he told me afterwards I'd done well and he was proud of
me. But-I can't help wondering-if, really. . . ."

"He agreed with her?"

Donna nodded again, not meeting Louisa's eyes.

"He-was never really very keen on the peace plan," she
explained. "He's softened a bit on it, since it's been working, but
at first . . . I don't think he thought it was going to work. He was
so angry with the Palestinians for supporting terrorists. And, well,
he's Jewish."

"So you thought he thought you were naive to support it?"

"Not so much to support it, but-some of the things I said-about
people just having to get to know each other-I suppose. . . . That
was what that woman talked about, anyway, in her review the next
day. She really tore my part of the show apart."

"And you think that made him look at you differently?"

Donna nodded again, the lump back in her throat and her eyes hot and
burning.

"It might have. I-I guess I've always thought-he might think-I
wasn't-I'm not-"

"Not what, Donna?"

"I don't have a college degree, you know," Donna burst out. "I never
finished it. I was his assistant for eight years-his secretary,
really. He's twelve years older than me. He's got degrees from
Harvard and Yale; he was a Fulbright Scholar; everyone says he's one
of the most brilliant political minds of his generation. I'm smart,
and I have a good job now, but I'm not in his league, I know that.
And . . . And . . ."

"You think you aren't smart enough for him?"

Donna bit her lip but nodded briefly, and looked out the window
again. There were bright red spots on her cheeks, but the rest of
her face was deathly white.

"Has he said that?"

"No," she whispered. "No. But . . . ."

"You think he's started to think it?"

She was still looking out the window, twisting her hands in her lap.

"Maybe," she said quietly. "I don't know."

"Perhaps you should ask him."

She went paler than ever, and the red spots on her cheeks burned more
brightly.

"I can't."

"Why not?"

"I-it would be too humiliating. And anyway, he isn't there to ask."

Ah, thought Louisa. Now we're getting to the heart of this.

"He's not there?"

"No. Something's come up at work, and he hasn't been home in days.
Four-almost five days. Since last Friday."

"That's a long time."

"It can happen. I-there really is something, this time. Everyone
there got called in and is working round the clock. Not like-"

"Not like what, Donna?"

She hesitated.

"Go on, Donna," Louisa urged.

"Not like before," Donna said, finally. "After the Gaza show, when
he started to seem so busy all the time. I thought at first it was
just work, but it went on and on for weeks. And then I ran into Sam."

"Sam?"

"Sam Seaborn, Josh's Deputy. And he was talking about his fiancee,
and what fun they were having going out for drives together on the
weekends, exploring the area. They'd been to the mountains, and
Baltimore, and the Eastern Shore. I asked how they could find the
time, and he said they couldn't always, of course, but the last few
weeks had been so much calmer at work that he'd been able to get away
from the office on weekends, and they'd really been enjoying it. He
said I should be sure to make Josh get away for a bit, while we had
the chance."

"Would Sam's schedule be the same as Josh's?"

"Not exactly, of course, but if Josh was really busy, Sam would be,
too. There's no reason Josh should be going crazy by himself, not at
this point. Before we took office, when he was trying to study up on
everything-I could have seen it then. But he's done all that now,
and he's been learning how to delegate more, finding his stride."

"Could it be something that he can't involve Sam in?"

Donna bit her lip. She thought about the MS crisis, and how long
Josh had waited to tell her. But. . . .

"I thought about that," she said. "Things like that do come up in a
job like his, of course. But I don't think it could be. The
President and Mrs. Santos went to Camp David last Thursday, just
before this big thing started. They've come back now, of course, but
then-on Thursday-the President came in while I was helping Mrs.
Santos get ready; he was laughing, and she was laughing, and they
both seemed really relaxed and happy. He said something like Sam
said, about taking Josh and going away for a nice weekend together."

"Did you tell Josh that?"

"Yes. He said he was sorry, but he just couldn't go away again right
now. I asked him to explain, and he said he couldn't. He got
upset. Quite upset. . . ."

* * *

"Donna, I can't! I just can't! Look, I'm sorry-I went to New York,
didn't I? I went to New York. I thought that would make you happy."

"I'm just asking *why,* Josh? Why are you so busy? Why don't I ever
see you anymore?"

"You see me. We see each other. I come home, like I promised I
would. I come home."

"You come home and you bury yourself in your work. We haven't talked
in weeks."

"We talk! I talk to you! Of course I do!"

"Not for more than a minute or two at a time, Josh. And I'm just
asking *why?*"

"It's a crazy job, Donna. I thought you knew that. I thought you
knew it was going to be like this sometimes."

"But everyone else seems to be taking time off right now. The
President is off at Camp David with his wife and kids; he looked
pretty relaxed this afternoon. He said I should get you to go away
for a weekend. Sam was telling me about all the places he and
Lorraine have been going."

"We went to New York."

"And stayed less than twenty-four hours. You didn't even see half
the show."

"Is that what you're mad about?"

"I'm not *mad,* Josh. I just don't understand."

"I-I've really got a lot on my plate right now, Donna. I'm sorry. I-
I'll try to explain when things have calmed down a bit, when I've got
things under control."

"But Sam said things *were* under control. And the President. . . ."

"That's Sam, Donna. And the President. They're not me, and I'm not
them, and we have different jobs, and if things are going to stay
under control for them, I've got to be able to deal with mine."

"You can't tell me about it?"

Josh had run his fingers through his hair and glanced at her for a
moment with something like desperation in his eyes, then looked
away. It struck her that he hadn't really looked at her the whole
time they'd been talking, and that she couldn't remember when the
last time he'd really looked at her had been.

"I'm sorry, Donna. I can't. I just can't."

And she'd felt her heart rip just a little, because she was quite
sure that, whatever was keeping him from talking to her, it wasn't
the Classified Information Act or national security. With the
President and Sam both so relaxed, it had to be something else,
something that-whatever Josh might be saying-didn't have to do with
work at all. And she remembered Lizzie from the "New York Times"
again, and wondered whether Josh, too, had thought she had been
terribly naive in her statements about Palestinians and Israelis, or
whether he had, for the first time in his life, begun to realize
that, if he ever did get married and have children, he wanted to do
it with a nice Jewish girl.

* * *

Her attempt to talk to Josh on Thursday did have some effect: he left
his papers earlier than usual that night, and came to bed with her.
He kissed her and stroked her and brought her to climax, and then he
kissed her and stroked her and did it all over again. But he didn't
come himself. He didn't even try to. When she reached for him, she
realized that he wasn't even hard.

"Josh?" she said, bewildered. He groaned.

"I'm sorry," he whispered into her neck. "It isn't you; it's me.
I'm just too tired."

She tried to stroke him into arousal, but nothing happened. She
didn't want to make a thing about it, didn't want to embarrass him:
it was obvious that he was embarrassed enough already. She rubbed
his back for a while, until they both drifted off to sleep.

She woke in the night to find the bed empty. She could hear the
shower running in the bathroom across the hall. It was still running
when she drifted uneasily back to sleep again. She really didn't
want to try to ask Josh again what was going on.

At four o'clock that morning Josh's pager and cellphone went off at
the same time. He came into the bedroom to grab his clothes, and
told her he had to go in. Something had happened in Kazakhstan. The
President was flying back from Camp David. He didn't know when he'd
be able to get home.

* * *

"Sexual dysfunction can have a number of causes, you know. Stress
is one. It can also be a sign of certain medical problems."

Donna looked alarmed.

"I hadn't thought of that," she said.

"Or it can be brought about by a change in medication."

"He's not taking any medication," she said, doubtfully. "He used to,
of course, after he was shot, but he hasn't needed anything for
several years now."

"My point is that there could be any number of reasons why he had
that reaction that night. It doesn't have to be due to decreased
interest in you."

Donna flushed and looked down at her hands.

"On the other hand," Louisa continued, her voice very gentle. "since
you have reason to believe he hasn't been honest with you about
needing to work so continually, we might have to consider the
possibility that his feelings have, in some way, changed. It's not
uncommon for men to use work as an excuse, when they don't want to
have difficult conversations with their wives or girlfriends. You
say he does come home in the evenings?"

"Yes," Donna said, her voice trembling now. "Yes, until last weekend
he came home every evening."

"Tell me about last weekend, then."

"But I've told you-that really is because of work," Donna said,
quickly. "I'm sure of that. Something's happening-I don't know
what, exactly, and I couldn't tell you if I did. I probably
shouldn't even tell you that much. You won't-say anything to anyone,
will you?"

"Of course not. Everything we discuss is confidential."

"Thank you. I'm sorry. It's just-working there, things get
complicated sometimes."

Louisa thought for a minute. Then she looked at Donna shrewdly and
said,

"So, if Josh has been away from home for five days but you're not
worried about his reasons for staying away, why did you call me
today? Something must have happened--you seemed very upset when you
phoned. And when you arrived."

Donna twisted her hands together in her lap so hard Louisa thought
she might actually break her fingers. A minute passed, and then
another.

"Donna?" Louisa prompted her again. "What happened that upset you
today?"

Donna shook her head a little.

"Not today," she whispered, at last. "Two-no, three days ago."

"Saturday?"

"Yes." Her voice was barely audible.

"What happened on Saturday, then?"

Donna stopped twisting her hands, and clasped them together to still
them.

"I saw-" she breathed. "I saw-"

She swallowed, and couldn't go on.

"What did you see, Donna?" Louisa asked, patiently.

"I-there was-"

She swallowed, and stopped again.

"There was what, Donna?"

Donna still couldn't answer.

"What did you see, Donna?"

Another pause, then,

"He-a-photographer-"

Her voice was so quiet that Louisa had to lean forward to hear her
properly.

"A photographer?"

Donna nodded, but her eyes never left her clasped hands, which she
was pressing down so hard against her knees that Louisa thought she
must be hurting herself.

"There-there were-pictures-"

She couldn't seem to finish.

"From Gaza?" Louisa asked, though it was hardly a question in her
mind. She had thought all along that Donna's distress must have
something to do with her having attended that exhibition and seen
those pictures. It had been a good thing to do, she was sure of it,
but even good things had less-good consequences sometimes that had to
be dealt with.

But Donna was shaking her head, almost violently.

"No," she cried out, her voice suddenly not a whisper but a
wail. "No. Not those. Oh, why did I ever care about those?"

Louisa picked up a pen and made a note of that.

"What pictures, then?" she asked, in an encouraging tone.

"Pictures-pictures of-oh God," Donna choked. "I can't stop seeing
them. I can't. I can't. I can't."

"Pictures of what, Donna?" Louisa asked, evenly.

"Of-" Donna started, but her throat closed up and she couldn't
finish. And then she started to cry.

* * *

To be continued. . . .

Please talk to me: chai4anne@yahoo.com



Life after Paradise 7a/10
by Chai

Rating: Mature

Category: Post-ep for "Transition" and beyond; angsty drama; romance

Spoilers: Through S7

Disclaimers: All the usual

Feedback: Yes, please. I'll do almost anything to get it:
chai4anne@yahoo.com

Note: Since I've committed myself to ten chapters now, I'm breaking
number 7 up into two parts, a and b-I think they'll be more effective
that way. I'll get part b up as soon as I can. Feedback really does
help speed things along, though. . . .

My apologies to everyone who's told me they haven't cared for the
characters so far. I did try to warn you. But perhaps you'll start
to feel differently about Donna, at least, after this-I hope so.

* * *

Part 7a

The photographer was young. That was the first thing she thought
when she saw him sitting in the little coffee shop just around the
corner from the White House where she'd said she could meet him on
Saturday afternoon. Her agent was with her, but got a coffee and sat
discreetly at the next table; the Chief of Staff's live-in girlfriend
didn't get the full clear-out-the-room treatment that the President
did, a fact that Donna was perpetually grateful for. She didn't
think the young man even registered that she had someone with her.
He was probably in his mid-twenties, she realized later, but he
looked younger: a thin, weedy guy with wispy blond hair and a scrappy
little attempt at a beard. The black-rimmed glasses were another
attempt to seem cool, but only made him look more feckless. She
wondered how on earth he'd managed to get Colin's attention, let
alone his interest in helping the boy get his pictures published, or
put in a show, or whatever it was he wanted to do with them. He
might be a very good photographer, of course, but he hardly seemed
old enough to have had time to have gone anywhere or seen anything
very interesting. But appearances were obviously deceiving, because
Colin had, in fact, sent this unimpressive young man to Donna and
told him to show his pictures to her and get her permission to use
them, or that was the impression Donna had gotten from the young
man's rather garbled introduction on the phone on Friday, when he'd
called to ask to meet her. He must have been at Gaza, too, and got
some shots of her, and thought he could do something with them. She
wondered how he had managed to get anything different enough that
there would be any point in showing it after Colin's had made such a
splash. She hoped Colin wouldn't be willing to waste her time just
to get some kid off his back.

"Thor?" she asked, holding out her hand and trying not to laugh at
the improbable name he'd given her over the phone. He was wearing it
on a sticker on his shirt, as he'd promised. "Thor Andersen?"
Really, it was ridiculous. If Colin hadn't sent him to her. . . .
But he had, and she hadn't had anything better to do, with Helen
Santos still at Camp David, and with Josh holed up in the Sit. Room
with the President, so here she was. . . .

The young man looked up eagerly.

"Donna? Ms. Moss?" he said, half-rising and shaking her
hand. "Thank you for coming. Can I get you-" He looked flustered
when he realized that Donna was already holding coffee. "I'm sorry;
I meant to buy that for you," he said, smiling ingenuously. Donna
found herself smiling back.

"That's all right," she said. "Don't worry about it."

"It's terribly nice of you to take the time. I know you must be very
busy. But Colin Ayres said you were very interested in his project-I
told you, I met him in New York, after seeing the show there-oh, and
you wrote wonderfully for it, you really did-"

That was balm to Donna's soul. She felt herself relaxing, and smiled
at the young man more brightly.

"And he said you were the one to talk to about using these. He
seemed to think you could help me get permission to use them. . . ."

His voice trailed off a little, uncertainly. Donna thought that was
an odd way of putting it-not "give me permission," but "help me
*get*" it. Whatever had he taken shots of, that he thought she could
help him get permission to use?

He was opening a thick envelope. Out of the corner of her eye Donna
could see her agent watching closely, his hand hovering near his
hidden weapon. She smiled indulgently, and leaned in closer.
Nothing could be less threatening than this harmless, feckless young
man.

Thor put a picture on the table in front of her. The print was large-
eight by ten-and in color. It was a night scene, outdoors-there was
a paved sidewalk, and lamp posts, and bushes in the background.
There seemed to be a lot of people in the shot, students by the look
of them-she could see backpacks and books poking out of shoulder
bags. There was a sense of confusion in the picture-everyone seemed
to be hurrying; some of them looked upset. Some of the faces were
blurred, others in focus in the harsh glare of overhead lighting and
the camera's flash, but there was nobody in the picture that Donna
recognized.

"I'm sorry," she said, bemusedly. "I don't-"

"These just set the scene," Thor said, putting down another. She
studied it politely. It was very similar to the first. There was
nothing particularly remarkable about the photos-she could see no
reason why this young man would want to show them to anyone, or why
Colin would have recommended that she see them-and yet something
about them was nudging at her consciousness uneasily, telling her she
ought to recognize where they had been taken. The scene didn't
really look familiar, though; she couldn't place it . . . .

"I was a freshman," Thor explained. "Photo-journalism major; I knew
what I wanted to do, even then. I took my camera everywhere, hoping
to get a good shot. Of course I had it with me that night, at the
talk. They searched my bag going in, but they let me keep it-I
worked for the student paper, I had a badge. I got a few good shots
inside-I was up at the front. I was hoping to get him again when he
came out, but they made us all wait while they took him out first, of
course. When I got out everyone was screaming and running, and I
didn't have any idea what had happened, what was going on, but I
pulled out my camera again and just started shooting." He blinked,
nervously. "Pictures, I mean, of course."

Donna had no idea what he was talking about.

"Who were you photographing inside?" she asked, wondering why on
earth this should be any concern of hers.

"The President, of course," Thor said, putting another picture
down. "President Bartlet. He'd been giving a talk-I thought you'd
remember-"

Donna's heart stopped. She was quite sure, afterwards, that it
literally stopped. She certainly stopped breathing. She couldn't
speak. She couldn't hear. She couldn't think. All she could do was
stare at the picture Thor had just set down on the table in front of
her. She didn't want to see it, but she couldn't look away. She
wished her eyes would stop working, the way everything else had, but
they didn't. They would soon, though, she thought, vaguely. Her
heart had stopped, she couldn't breathe anymore, she was going to die
and this was the last thing she was going to see.

But her body wasn't that merciful. Somehow her heart did beat again,
and somehow she must have taken another breath, even though she had
no conscious awareness of doing it. Thor put another picture down
beside the first, and then another. He was talking all the while;
she could hear him now, his voice somehow just audible over the
pounding of the blood in her ears. She couldn't shut his voice out,
any more than she could shut her eyes or look away.

"I had a good telephoto-my parents gave it to me for my birthday that
summer; I couldn't have got these without it. I saw him sitting
there, and started to shoot. I was quite a ways back, but with that
lens I was able to get a pretty good shot, wasn't I? And this one-I
got in even closer. You can see his face pretty well there, can't
you? And this one's really good, don't you think, with the blood all
over his hands like that, and that expression in his eyes? Like he
thought he was dying, by himself like that, alone. And this one-he's
fainting, I guess, and that other man-it's Toby Ziegler, isn't it?-
who's just come up is catching him; that's quite a shot, I think-like
a pieta, almost, only two men, of course, not a man and a
woman. . . . There's another like that here, with C.J. Cregg kneeling
down beside him, and that's Sam Seaborn. And then the medics coming,
and you can't see him anymore, just a bit in this one-Cregg's holding
his hand, that must be his blood all over her because she wasn't
hurt, was she?

I tried to publish these in the student paper-I was really excited
about them-but the prof who was the advisor wouldn't let me-he said
it would be bad taste, that I didn't want to get a reputation as an
ambulance-chaser, or something like that. I shouldn't have listened
to him, I realize that now, but I was wet behind the ears then, and
he was a senior professor, so I thought he knew everything and I
should do what he said. So I put the pictures away and didn't do
anything with them-I just sent the ones of Bartlet's talk in, and
some of those first ones you saw, the students running after they'd
heard the shots, but I kept these back. Pretty dumb, really-I should
have realized Havergill was an old-fashioned old fart even then, but
it was years before I got that, and then I figured these were out of
date and nobody would be interested. I did try, once-I wrote to the
White House about it-but I just got a form letter back saying they
wouldn't give permission.

But after I saw Ayres' show in New York, and you there, and *him,* I
couldn't help thinking-well, this sort of thing is never really out
of date, is it? There are a lot of hot issues here-guns, hate
crimes, campus shootings-it's a kind of terrorism too, isn't it? So
I got up my nerve to go to Ayres and tell him what I had, and ask him
if he didn't think there might be something I could do with these
still. And he said I should get the permission of the people in the
pictures. I told him how I'd tried, and he seemed to think I'd have
an easier time if I started with you. You're not in these, of
course, but I gathered . . . I mean, I've read . . . that you and
Lyman . . . I mean, you know him, don't you? And he was there with
you, wasn't he, at Ayres' show, in New York, at the U.N.? I saw you
both there; the father of a friend of mine had tickets for the
opening and couldn't use them, so he gave them to my friend, and she
asked me, because she knew it was the sort of thing I'm into. You
were so great, Ms. Moss-he looked pretty bothered, but you were so
cool, so totally together, even though all those pictures were of
you. . . . And what you said, what you wrote-I thought that was
great, about having to be willing to put your own feelings aside to
let other people see what had happened, so they could
understand. . . . Ayres said you'd been really good about it, that
you weren't one of those people who asks how we can just stand there
and take pictures and not try to help; you understand what
photojournalism's all about, that we're there to record the news, not
to get involved in it. So he thought I should show these to you and
get you to talk to Lyman for me, ask him if he'd agree . . . I mean,
you understand, don't you? You see how important these are, why they
should be shown? The world should see what it looks like, what it
feels like, to be shot at like that. And these pictures do that-you
can really see what it felt like, can't you? It's all over his face,
isn't it? And Ziegler's, and Seaborn's, and Cregg's. You'll talk to
him, and to them, and make it all right for me to show these shots?
I don't *have* to have permission, I know that, but it would be
better if I did; he's a pretty important man; I wouldn't want to piss
him off. And you were so cool about those other pictures, the ones
of you, at Gaza-and they were *you.* You are okay with it, aren't
you, Donna? I mean, Ms. Moss. You're-okay? You look kind of pale.
Geez, I hope I haven't upset you with these. I never thought . . . I
never thought . . . Ms. Moss? Are you feeling okay? You're okay
about all this, aren't you, Ms. Moss? Ms. Moss? Are you okay?"

Donna finally made her mouth move. She didn't recognize the voice
that came out.

"No," she whispered hoarsely. "No. No. No."

Her throat filled with hot bile and her eyes began to swim. Somehow
her hand moved automatically to pick up her purse from the floor as
she pushed her chair back and stood up. Her agent stood up, too,
and took her arm as she stumbled blindly through the crowds of people
lining up at the bar for their coffees, and out the door.

* * *

Greg drove her home through the afternoon thunderstorm, which was
just beginning to break as they left the coffeeshop. Donna flinched
at every flash of lightening and gunshot of thunder. When they got
back to the house in Georgetown she ran inside, slamming the door in
the agent's face. She made it to the bathroom just in time.

Afterwards, still shaky and sick, she sat on the couch, pulled her
knees up to her face, and tried to breathe. She had no idea how long
she sat there like that-minutes, hours, days?-but eventually she
uncurled herself and got up. There was something she'd forgotten,
something important that she'd done and had to undo. Greg had gone
off-shift, but another agent, David, followed her to her car and
offered to drive. She was grateful for that; she didn't know if she
could have driven. She sat in the back seat and stared blindly out
the window. It was raining; the streets were slick and black and
reflecting a tangle of lights from the cars, puddles of red, streams
of it, everywhere-deep red, bright red, pools of brilliant red
pulsing out of the cars and onto the pavement like blood streaming
and pooling and staining everything, everywhere. . . .

She wanted to scream, but she knew if she started to, the agent would
stop the car and then they wouldn't get there and she wouldn't be
able to undo what she'd done.

Back at the coffee shop, the photographer was long gone. She got
down on her hands and knees, looking under the bench, the tables, the
chairs, while her confused but ever-cooperative agent stood guard.
She swept the floor desperately with her hands, as if somehow that
might turn up what she was looking for, but it was gone. He was
gone.

"Are you all right?" a barista asked her. "Did you lose
something?"

"An earring? A contact?" A white-haired woman at one of the tables
asked, leaning down herself to see if she could help.

Donna stood up slowly, shaking her head, blinking back tears.

"What's the matter, dear?" the woman asked, kindly. "You look
upset." Something inside Donna seemed to break at the motherly tones.

"I left him," she answered wildly, choking back a sob. "I left him.
I left him."

"What's `them,' dear? What have you lost?" the woman said, adjusting
her hearing aid.

Donna just stared at her helplessly. Then she turned and made her
way out of the restaurant again, David following protectively in her
wake. Tears were starting to run down her face, and people were
staring, but she didn't notice, didn't care. She'd left him. She'd
left him lying there bleeding on the table. She'd left him, she'd
left him, she'd left him. . . .

* * *

Tbc. . . .

Please feed back: chai4anne@yahoo.com



Life after Paradise 7b/10
by Chai

Rating: Mature

Category: Post-ep for "Transition" and beyond; angsty drama; romance

Spoilers: Through S7

Disclaimers: All the usual

Feedback: Yes, please. I'll do almost anything to get it:
chai4anne@yahoo.com

Thanks to everyone who's fed back so far. Please don't stop. . . .

* * *

Part 7b-

"I left him. . . I left him. . . I left him. . . ."

The tears kept coming as Donna somehow managed to choke the story out
to Louisa.

"You left some pictures, Donna. On a table in a restaurant. You
couldn't have taken them with you-they weren't yours. There's
nothing else you could have done."

Donna shook her head. Her hands were pressed together again, white-
knuckled and trembling, and her tear-streaked face was miserable.

"I left *him.*"

"You've had a bad shock," Louisa said, patiently. "You weren't
expecting to see those images just then. If you'd had more
preparation, you would have been all right. You did so well at the
Gaza exhibit because you prepared for it; you'll be just fine about
this, when you've had time to calm down and think about it
rationally."

Donna shook her head.

"I shouldn't have left him," she said, miserably. "I shouldn't have
left him. What was I thinking of, leaving him like that?"

"He's all right, you know," Louisa went on, reassuringly. "It was
years ago."

"Two years," Donna whispered. "Just two years ago."

"It was more than that, Donna. You're not thinking clearly. The
shooting at Rosslyn happened, what? Six, seven years ago."

Donna stared at her for a second, then shook her head a little, as if
to clear it.

"Seven years," she agreed. "Rosslyn was seven years ago. I left him
that night, too. I shouldn't have left him alone that night. And
then. . . ." Her voice trailed away.

Louisa leaned forward a little.

"He wasn't alone, Donna. He was with the President and a lot of
other people, wasn't he?"

Donna didn't say anything to that. Louisa pressed on:

"Seven years is a long time, Donna. He's still alive. They got him
to the hospital in time, and he survived it. He's fine now."

Donna looked down at the kleenex she had shredded all over her lap.

"He's not fine," she said, in a colorless voice. "He's not fine."

"What do you mean?"

"I told you. He's been acting differently. Stressed. Really
stressed. Not like himself at all-"

"He has a stressful job, Donna. But so do you."

Donna stared at her, bewildered. And then her cell phone rang.

She groped in her purse.

"Leave it, Donna."

Donna blinked at the woman sitting behind the desk.

"I can't. It might be him. I-"

"It can wait, Donna."

"It's Margaret," Donna said, looking at the display. "His
assistant. I'm sorry, I have to take this call-"

"Not now, Donna. Whatever it is, it will keep; let it wait till
we're finished. This is more important. This is critical, Donna:
you haven't been thinking clearly, you know that. Your sense of
time is distorted: you went back for those pictures, hours after you
should have known the photographer would have left; you said just now
that the Rosslyn shooting happened two years ago. You're not acting
rationally." Louisa had had no idea, when Donna had come in, how
close to a crisis the woman actually was. "Josh's assistant can
wait. You need to stay with me until you get this sorted out."

Donna looked at the phone, then up at her therapist. The phone
stopped ringing.

"That's right," Louisa said, relaxing a little in her chair. "Why
don't you turn that off, and then you can focus on what matters right
now. It's *you* we have to be concerned about right now."

"Me?" Donna said, a tremble in her voice.

"That's right, Donna: you. Your issues, your needs are what matter
right now. Everything else can wait."

Donna stared at her. A full minute passed, while Louisa held her
eyes, more or less willing her patient to turn off her cell phone and
put it back in her purse.

"That's what you've been saying all along, isn't it?" Donna said at
last. "*My* issues, *my* needs." Her voice was wondering.

"Of course. You're my patient. You came to me for help. That's
what this is all about: taking care of your needs." There was just a
hint of impatience in Louisa's voice now.

"Just mine."

"We can't do anyone else's here, Donna."

"Just mine," Donna said again, still in that wondering tone. "Just
me. That's all I've been thinking about, isn't it? All this time,
ever since Gaza-just me."

"It's important to be able to think about yourself, Donna."

"Yes," Donna said. "Yes, of course it is. But-when does it start
being about him, too?"

"About who?"

"Josh," Donna said. "When does it start being about Josh, too?"

"I don't do couples therapy, Donna. If you want that, I can give you
some names-"

"Thank you," Donna said, slowly. "Thank you, but I-don't think that
will be necessary. At least, not until I've taken care of some
things myself, first."

And she stood up, and started to walk very quickly towards the door.

"Donna!" Louisa called out, sharply. "Donna, don't leave yet.
You're not ready to go. You're at a crisis point; we've got to get
this sorted out before you leave. There's a lot more we need to be
working on here today. For you. "

Donna pulled herself up very straight, and stood in the doorway,
looking at the therapist as if she were seeing her for the first time.

"No," she said, quite firmly, although her hands were still shaking a
little. "No, thank you, Louisa. What I need to do right now is call
Josh."

Then she turned and walked out the door, closing it firmly behind her.

* * *

Louisa stared after Donna, shaking her head. They had a lot more
work to do there than she'd thought at first. Donna would be back,
of course-and not just for the coat and umbrella she'd left on
Louisa's stand. She'd never be happy until she'd learned to look
after herself.

Her own phone rang. Louisa answered it, her voice a little sharper
than usual-she was still irked by her patient's sudden departure.
She didn't soften her tone when she heard her daughter's voice on the
other end of the line.

"Megan? You know you shouldn't call me when I'm at the office. You
missed the bus? Well, you're going to have to get home on your own.
No, I can't come and get you, you know that. No, I'm not with a
client right now, but I might have been-she only just left-and I have
other things I need to take care of here before I come home. You're
a big girl now; you can get home on your own. Yes, I know it's
raining. . . ."

When she put the phone down, Louisa stared out of the window for a
minute at the rain. She might as well leave now, she figured; she
didn't have another appointment that day. She'd done the right thing
in putting Megan off, though; the child was so clingy-she had to
learn to look after herself. And Louisa liked to take a little time
every day to unwind downtown before she had to drive home to Bethesda
and make dinner and deal with the endless squabbles over homework
and t.v. She needed that time. She would go and get a coffee and
shop a little; she wanted a new lipstick, and perhaps some new
shoes. Between her patients and her children, it was hard to find
time to look after herself, but she had learned to make a point of
doing it. You had to look after yourself, no matter what. Nobody
else was going to do it for you.

* * *

To be continued. . . .

Please feed back! chai4anne@yahoo.com



Life after Paradise 8/10
by Chai

Rating: Mature

Category: Post-ep for "Transition" and beyond; angsty drama; romance

Spoilers: Through S7

Disclaimers: All the usual

Feedback: Yes, please. I'll do almost anything to get it:
chai4anne@yahoo.com

Sorry about the long delay there earlier, guys-I sent 7b in twice
Monday afternoon, but Yahell must have been doing its thing and
munched it or something. I hope this one goes up faster! Thanks to
everyone who's fed back so far. Please don't stop. . . .

* * *

Part 8-

"I think you left your coat, Ms. Moss." That was Greg, one of her
agents. They were in the elevator outside Louisa's office, about to
go down to the lobby. "And your umbrella. Do you want to go back
for them? It's pretty wet out there."

Donna waved him impatiently aside. She already had her cell phone
pressed to her ear.

"Margaret?" she asked urgently, when the line was picked up. "It's
Donna. Did you just call?"

"Donna."

Margaret's dire tone set Donna's heart pounding.

"What is it, Margaret?" she asked, shakily.

"Donna, I'm so sorry."

For the second time in two days, Donna's heart froze and she stopped
breathing.

"You know I wouldn't bother you like this if it wasn't important."

Margaret sounded flustered, but was obviously not about to say what
Donna had thought for a moment she was going to. Her heart started
to beat again. She took a long, deep breath to steady herself.

"What is it, Margaret? What's wrong?"

"Josh would kill me if he knew I was calling you like this, and
normally I wouldn't, of course, I'd go and get them myself. I have
his keys, you know. But I just can't today, Donna, it's crazy here,
you have no idea. They're in the Sit Room; I can't leave, not even
for five minutes."

"What's going on, Margaret?" Donna asked, as patiently as possible.
Margaret knew her job inside out and backwards, and Josh and Donna
had both been deeply grateful that she'd decided to stay on and work
for him as she had for C.J. and Leo, but there was no denying that
she was a little odd-she always had been. Donna was used to it, but
sometimes, when you wanted information urgently, it could be a little
hard to take.

"Teddy's been sick, you know-he had a fever of 101 the first night,
and then he just went crazy with itching, and his daycare couldn't
take him until five days after the spots came out."

"Spots? What's the matter?"

"Oh, nothing serious-just chicken-pox, the poor darling-but they
wouldn't take him at the daycare, and my sister was out of town, so I
had to stay home with him, and Darlene's been taking my place. I
just got back today."

"Oh. I didn't realize. Josh didn't say anything." There were two
assistants in the pool who'd been trained to act as back-ups for
Margaret, but she'd never needed to call one in before.

"No, of course, he wouldn't; he's been working round the clock on
this,"-her tones grew hushed-"this *thing*; he hasn't had a minute to
think of anything else. But Darlene didn't *tell* me he needed
anything, and I didn't think to check this morning-there was just so
much else to do. And of course he hasn't been home in days. And now
he tells me they upped the dosage again over a month ago, and he's
been taking it from the supply here during the day for weeks, and of
course we've run out. Ran out days ago, but he didn't tell Darlene.
Of course. I suppose he didn't want to mention it; you know how he
is. So he's just been doing without, and now his head's killing him,
and the chest pains, and-"

"*Chest pains???*" Donna all but shrieked into the phone. "CHEST
PAINS??? Have you called the doctor? Does he need an ambulance? Is
he-???"

"Oh, don't worry," Margaret said, reassuringly. "He'll be all
right. It's just the usual, he says. But it's gotten worse, of
course, since he hasn't been taking his meds, and-"

"How do you know he's all right?" Donna interrupted her. "Has the
doctor seen him?" There was a doctor on duty at the White House
twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, just in case the
President needed one. He wasn't supposed to be called on for other
people's problems except in an emergency, but this had to count as an
emergency.

"I told you," Margaret said, as patiently as Donna a minute or two
before. "It's just the usual."

"The usual?" Donna said, blankly. She had no idea what Margaret was
talking about. Chest pains were definitely not her idea of what was
usual for Josh; he'd never had them before that she knew of, except
when he was recovering from his surgery, and that had all healed up
long ago.

"You know," Margaret said, lowering her voice. "The usual. Because
of-his thing."

"His thing," Donna repeated, stupidly. Her mind didn't seem to be
working properly; she couldn't piece this together at all. All she
could think of was that Josh was having chest pains. But he was all
right. Because this was usual; Josh having chest pains was usual.
She wanted to scream at someone until she understood, but there
wasn't any point in screaming at Margaret; she knew her too well to
think she'd find out anything any faster that way.

"What happened to him." Margaret said. "After-he was shot." Her
voice sounded hushed when she said it, almost reverential. In some
corner of her mind, Donna realized that Margaret had come to feel the
same kind of devotion to Josh as she had to Leo, and would probably
lay down her life for him if anyone ever asked her to. Donna
understood that. She had felt the same way about him once herself,
until she'd become so angry with him two years ago.

"I knew he'd had problems, of course," Margaret went on. "-Leo had
me make the arrangements for that man from ATVA-but I hadn't realized
stress was still something he had to worry about, or that it did this
kind of thing to him, until he told me."

Donna felt stunned. She hadn't realized, either. She'd known his
PTSD wasn't considered entirely curable, of course-she'd researched
it thoroughly at the time-but he'd improved very quickly after he'd
started therapy for it, and had gotten so much beetter that she never
thought about it anymore. He'd been on medication for a while, but
he hadn't liked it and had been able to phase it out gradually; the
last couple of years she'd been working for him, he hadn't been on
anything at all. Even when he'd been at his lowest, after Carrick's
resignation, when Leo had been so angry with him and had dealt with
him so unfairly, he hadn't had any recurrence of the symptoms that
she'd known of. That she'd known of. "You've got health and
strength," she remembered saying to him once, years ago. She
wondered now if he'd been keeping something from her then-or when he
had started to. His job as Chief of Staff was highly stressful, of
course, but she hadn't thought he was having any real problems
because of it except the broken sleep, which was nothing unusual for
him. And yet Margaret spoke as if he'd been dealing with difficult
symptoms for some time. "The usual." How could this be usual, and
she not know about it?

"He's having-a flashback?" she asked, worriedly. "To-the shooting?"

"No, no," Margaret said. "Not that. It isn't the bullet wound
that's hurting him now; it's that pain right across his chest, that
keeps him from breathing properly; he was doubled over in that little
room off the Sit Room when he paged me, but of course he'd told me
this could happen sometimes, and it's just a reaction to stress."

Her tone was reassuring, but Donna couldn't find anything comforting
in her words. *Chest pains.* Donna's own chest tightened at the
thought, her heart pounding painfully against her ribs and the blood
thudding in her ears.

"You're sure he's all right?" she asked again, anxiously. "How do
you know it isn't serious? That he isn't-" She couldn't say it. She
thought of Leo, and spots started to dance before her eyes.

"We have a signal," Margaret said solemnly.

"*What?*" The spots danced a little harder, and her ears rang. She
couldn't have heard that right.

"A signal," Margaret said again, very seriously. "A hand-signal. If
he needs a doctor, he uses the hand-signal. It was my idea, the
first day, when he told me. That way I know when it's serious and
when it's not."

Donna shook her head to clear it. "But-" she started, and then
stopped, because whatever crazy scheme Margaret might have dreamed
up, she didn't actually want to hear about it now. She wanted to get
what Josh needed as fast as she could. Then, if the meds didn't
help, she'd call a doctor herself.

"You said he keeps his medications in the office, but he's run out?"
she asked, as briskly as possible, trying to keep the faintness she
was feeling out of her voice. "What does he need right now?"

"All of them," Margaret answered, discomfortingly.

"He has them at home?" Donna didn't like to admit that she didn't
know, but she wasn't taking any chances. "Or does he need the
prescriptions filled?"

"He says he has enough at home. But if you could find me the
prescriptions, too, I could get them filled. I should keep them
here, really. I've been asking him to bring them in, but he never
remembers, and I didn't want to go through his desk at home when it's
yours, too. . . ."

"Yes," Donna said, cutting her off. "Right. His meds, and his
prescriptions."

"Just the meds now; I'll get the prescriptions from you later. He
really needs to take something soon."

And we've been wasting all this time talking, Donna thought fiercely,
slamming her phone shut and shoving it into her purse as she ran out
of the building into the rain. Greg followed her at a trot.

"I'll drive," she said, sliding into the driver's seat and starting
the car. She had the car moving before Greg had had time to do up
his seat belt beside her. She sped through every light on
Pennsylvania Avenue, going through at least two of them after the
yellow changed to red, and zipped around Washington Circle at a rate
that had taxi-drivers honking at her as she cut them off while
changing lanes. She made it home five minutes sooner than she'd ever
managed before, slipped into the parking-place in front that was
marked "Permit Holder Only"-the permit was held by the Secret
Service, which had infuriated all Josh's neighbors by taking over
several parking places on his side of the street-and dashed up the
stairs, ignoring Greg and forgetting to nod at the agent who was
sitting in the car behind hers, watching the house in what was
supposed to be an unobtrusive manner. Her hand was trembling so much
she could barely get the key in the lock.

Inside, she headed for the bathroom and rifled through the medicine
cabinet, but, as she'd thought, there was nothing there-Josh had
cleared it out for her when she'd moved in, and all he kept there now
was his razor, deodorant, and a comb. She looked under the sink, but
it was empty except her supply of pads and tampons, and the usual
cluster of scrubbing brushes and cleansers. There was nothing in the
two-piece off their bedroom, either. The desk in the living room
yielded nothing; neither did his drawers in the bureau or the
nightstand in the bedroom. The kitchen cabinets were equally
unhelpful, and she knew there was nothing lurking in the fridge. She
had to take two or three deep breaths to steady herself and force
down her rising sense of panic; it reminded her what stress could
feel like even when a person didn't have a stress disorder. After a
minute's thought she went back to the bathroom and opened the
cupboard where the towels were kept, pulling them out and looking
between them. On the bottom, in the narrow space under the very
lowest shelf, she found the black, zipped toiletries bag Josh used
when he was traveling. Inside it was a bottle of Tylenol Extra-
Strength and several vials of prescription medications, all of them
nearly empty. She bit her lip when she saw the labels on the
prescriptions: one was a bottle of sleeping pills; one was for high
blood pressure; another, an anti-depressant.

She felt bewildered: why had Josh needed to go back on this regimen
again? When had it started? And why hadn't he told her? She hadn't
known he was taking anything, although she'd been living with him all
this time. If Margaret hadn't called her, there was no reason she
ever would have known: of all the places in the apartment where he
could have kept his supplies, he'd chosen one of the most
inconspicuous spots, where she'd be least likely to come across
them. It flickered across her mind that that wouldn't always have
been true: two years ago, it had been her regular business to dig
out his travel bags and check to see that they had everything in them
he might need. But that was Margaret's business now. The thought
that it was Margaret's business, not hers, and that Margaret had
known what Josh needed when she hadn't gave her a strange pang, but
she didn't have time to think about any of that now. She zipped the
bottles back into their discreet case and headed for her car,
slamming the door behind her. Greg followed, asking no questions, as
usual.

Margaret got to her feet when she came into the office. "Oh, thank
goodness," she said, with a sigh of relief, almost grabbing the bag
from Donna's hand; she shook the bottles out of it and left with them
before Donna could say anything at all. Donna waited, wondering and
worrying. She couldn't follow; the Sit Room and its environs were
off-limits to all but a few of the West Wing staff.

"Is he all right?" she asked anxiously, when Margaret finally
reappeared.

"He will be now," Margaret said, beaming. "Thanks for getting them
for me." She opened a drawer and transferred a couple of tablets
from each bottle into the containers she had there, then put the
original bottles back in their bag and handed it to Donna. "That
should be enough for the next day or two, but if you could find those
prescriptions for me, I'll get them filled. He should have a supply
here and at home. He doesn't seem to want to carry them in his
backpack, for some reason."

"I'll find them tonight."

"Thanks so much, Donna. I really appreciate it."

Donna nodded, relieved, but still worried. She waited for a minute,
hoping Margaret would say something more, but Josh's assistant was
already shuffling through the papers on her desk, and seemed to be
giving all her attention to that.

"I'd better get back," Donna said at last, starting for the door.

"Donna," Margaret said then, in a strained sort of voice. Donna
turned back, and raised her eyebrows questioningly. "Donna, please-
"

"What, Margaret?" Donna asked, curiously. Margaret was still
fussing with the papers; she seemed positively nervous, Donna
realized.

"You-won't tell Josh I called you, will you? Please. He'd have an
absolute fit if he found out. I was just so busy-I couldn't get away-
and I didn't think you'd want him to have to wait any longer, when it
was as bad as that. You-you didn't mind, did you?"

Donna stared at her. She and Margaret had always gotten along so
well.

"Of course I didn't mind, Margaret. How could I? What are you
talking about?"

Margaret looked relieved.

"That's good," she said. "I didn't really think you would, but Josh
has made such a thing about it. He read me the riot act our very
first day in office: you weren't his assistant anymore; I mustn't ask
you to do things you used to do for him if I got busy, or bother you
with anything for him. He was *fierce* about it. I don't know why-I
know how important your job for the First Lady is; I wouldn't think
of disturbing you ordinarily. I just thought, this one time-the
whole staff is going crazy with this thing in Kazakhstan; he's been
sleeping on a cot down there, just a couple of hours a night; the
Joint Chiefs have been doing the same. He hasn't let this kind of
thing stop him the other times, but it was starting to show-he had to
leave the Sit Room while one bout passed; the President noticed, and
asked if he was all right. I found him in that little side room down
there, just doubled over and waiting it out. That's when he asked me
to go back to the apartment and get what he needed, but the phone's
been ringing off the hook, and this place has been like Grand Central
Station-he's been so busy down there, he has no idea-and I just
thought, this one time. . . ."

Donna felt her mouth tremble, and a hot, burning sensation well up at
the back of her eyes.

"It's all right, Margaret," she said, her voice shaking a little. "I
won't tell him you asked me."

Margaret smiled then, happy with relief. "Thank you," she said. "I
knew you'd understand, Donna. It would just drive him wild. And
more stress really isn't what he needs right now, is it?"

"No," Donna agreed. "It certainly isn't." And she hurried out of
the office as quickly as she could.

* * *

Tbc. . . .

Please keep feeding back! chai4anne@yahoo.com



Life after Paradise 8b/10
by Chai

Rating: Mature

Category: Post-ep for "Transition" and beyond; angsty drama; romance

Spoilers: Through S7

Disclaimers: All the usual

Feedback: Yes, please. I'll do almost anything to get it:
chai4anne@yahoo.com

I guess the last part really should have been labelled 8a. I didn't
think of that last night-sorry. . . .

Part 8b-

There was no point in going back to her office. She'd taken the
afternoon off to see Louisa; it was dinnertime now, and everyone else
in the East Wing would have left. Donna went back to her car and let
Greg drive her home. The storm had ended, but the heat and humidity
were as bad as ever. Her head was pounding. She went back to the
bathroom and took some Tylenol from her own supply. If only, she
thought as she washed them down, they could fix the things that
really hurt. But life wasn't that easy; all the pills in the world
couldn't make some of the things that really mattered right. All
they did was let you put the hard stuff on hold for a little while.
But when the drug wore off, it was all still there.

She looked around the bathroom, remembering the times Josh had
retreated to it when they'd been arguing or something had gone
wrong. She wondered if the long showers had helped him relax while
he was waiting for an attack to pass, or if they'd just been an
excuse, a cover for the time he was taking-or for any sound he might
make. Presumably he took the anti-depressants every day and it was
only the last few days he'd missed, because he'd been called into the
office just when his supply had run down and Margaret had been gone
and wasn't able to fill it. But Margaret had mentioned other
occasions when he'd had trouble. Had he somehow run out of the
medications then, too? Or had there been times when the stress he'd
been under had just been more than the medication would handle? Had
he told his doctor about them? Margaret had said something about his
dosage getting increased, so presumably he had. But what had brought
the attacks on in the first place? And was he doing everything he
ought to to manage the stress? He was eating regularly, sleeping
well enough most of the time-though it looked as though he'd been
taking medication to achieve that, too. He worked out every morning,
but maybe he needed to spend more time at it, or to try to get some
exercise outdoors-that was supposed to be more calming, wasn't it?
And then there was therapy-was he going to that? It had helped him
before, she remembered, and he'd been more willing to talk to Stanley
Keyworth or one of the therapists Stanley had recommended than he had
been to continue the medications: they'd had side-effects he didn't
like, and he'd always said he hated them. But was he doing it now?
It was hard to imagine when he was fitting it in, if he was. And how
long had all this been going on? And-the most miserable question of
all-why had he never told her? He had told Margaret, but he hadn't
told her. . . .

Her head still aching. Feeling more than a little sick, she sat down
at the desk she and Josh shared and started looking through it for
his prescriptions so she could get them filled. She wasn't going to
leave that to Margaret; she'd drop them off at the pharmacy herself
in the morning. She finally found them, stuffed in a drawer. She
sat for a long time, staring at them: one set had been written in
late November, and the other, as Margaret had said, just over a month
ago. Just after their beautiful trip to Barbados, and just after the
trip to New York.

She put her head in her hands, trying to make it stop hurting so
much; the Tylenol didn't seem to be doing any good. She needed to be
able to think clearly, but she'd never felt so confused. She felt as
if someone had dumped five or six jigsaw puzzles together, emptied
the pieces in front of her, and told her to put them together into
one big picture: they simply wouldn't fit. Nothing wanted to fit
together. Nothing at all.

Everything had seemed so wonderful until a few weeks ago. She'd had
everything she wanted: a high-profile job, plenty of responsibility,
reasonable work hours, an apartment in Georgetown, Josh. Especially
Josh. And then it had all changed in a minute, and Josh had started
to slip away from her, and she hadn't been able to get him to tell
her what was happening, and she hadn't been sure why. She still
wasn't sure. She thought she could see parts of the picture, but
then she would try to fit the other parts in and the first ones would
slip and slide away, like bits of colored glass in a kaleidoscope
that cover each other up and then uncover and recover themselves in
different ways, but never let you see all of them together in a
completely finished pattern, a solid whole.

She closed her eyes, and the pictures of Josh at Rosslyn danced
before them again. The blood-so much blood; his shirt covered with
it; his hands covered with it too, pressed against his chest, as if
he was trying to hold the blood or the pain in. For all the times
she'd thought about what had happened to him there, that was a detail
she'd never pictured: she'd never realized he'd been conscious when
Toby found him, never imagined him aware of what was happening to him
and trying to stop it, not for so long. Remembering the look on his
face-agonized, desperate, alone-she wanted to be sick. The thought
of that gangling, feckless boy taking that picture made her feel
sicker still; it wasn't the sort of moment that ought to be recorded
for people to look at and talk about. And how could anyone see
someone else struggling like that and just stand still and take
pictures without trying to help? And then Josh's eyes closing-Thor's
intrusive telephoto had actually caught them half-shut-and Toby
catching him and lowering him to the ground and holding him there.
She wondered if he'd let himself go then because Toby was there and
he wasn't alone anymore. She wondered if he'd thought, as he let go,
that that was the last thing he was going to see. She thought
probably he had. Toby and C.J. and Sam had thought so, she was sure:
she could see it on their stricken faces, as Thor had said. Toby and
C.J. and Sam, kneeling beside him, holding him, trying to comfort him
as he was bleeding, they would have thought dying, in their arms.
Toby and C.J. and Sam, not her. It should have been her. It should
have been her. She should have been there, she thought desperately;
she should never have left him and gone home that night. It should
have been her with him, not them. She shouldn't have left him. She
shouldn't have left him. She shouldn't have left him. . . . Not
then. . . . Not ever. . . .

She had to stop thinking like this, or she'd go crazy, and no amount
of talk to Louisa would be able to help her. Not that she had much
faith left in Louisa's brand of therapy, anyway. Perhaps Josh was
right, and you had to be willing to pay for the right person.
Someone smarter than you were, he'd said once, and she'd laughed at
him for thinking like that, but now she wondered if she should have
paid more attention to how her therapist thought about things before
she'd been willing to hand her life over to her to be dissected and
analyzed and changed. Though it wasn't exactly IQ that she'd finally
realized was missing in Louisa; it was something else, something
warmer and more emotional. EQ, maybe. Once Donna had thought that
her own real strengths lay, not so much in her talent for
organization or her excellent memory, as in her sensitivity and
compassion, her emotional awareness. Her heart. But somewhere along
the line she'd stopped letting herself feel as much. She'd stopped
quite deliberately after Gaza, really, because feeling that way was
what had tied her to Josh, whose needs she had once been almost
painfully aware of, and to cut herself free from him, she'd had to
cut herself off from feeling those things, or from feeling them so
acutely. But something about the last few days had woken her up to
the importance of letting herself feel that way again. How Louisa
could have expected her to sit there and talk about *herself* when
Josh might need her-when, it had turned out, he *did* need her, badly-
she couldn't imagine. She knew she was being a little unfair to the
therapist, who-as she had pointed out-could only deal with the issues
of the patient in front of her. But why couldn't Louisa understand
that Josh's well-being was as important to Donna as her own? There
had been a coldness in the therapist's manner when Margaret had first
called, a flash of impatience in her eyes when Donna had wanted to
answer, that Donna still found chilling to remember. No, she didn't
think she wanted to go back to see Louisa D'Amato again, no matter
how confused or upset she might feel.

And she felt very confused and upset right now. She had to do
*something,* had to try to get some answers to the questions that
seemed to be pounding away inside her skull as if they were trying to
break it open. She couldn't wait for Josh to come home and talk to
her; he might be stuck in the Sit Room for days, and she'd be useless
to Mrs. Santos while she was feeling like this. She had to do
something, she had to. And she had to do it now.

Josh had always been fairly well-organized about his finances. He
had his check registers and his Visa statements and the receipts he
needed for his taxes all gathered together in bundles in one drawer,
and his most important papers, including his back tax returns, stored
in file folders in another. Donna had never had anything to do with
that part of his life, and she knew she was probably crossing a line
somewhere by looking through his records for anything except the
prescriptions Margaret had asked her for, but she was too distressed
really to care. It was her desk too, she told herself; she was
living with him now; she had some sort of right to look through it,
didn't she? But the reality was that she didn't really care whether
she had a right to or not. He was her boyfriend, her lover, her
partner, the man she was sharing her life with, the man she loved-had
always loved, ever since she'd met him-and he was hurting and sick,
and she had to find out why, and what he was doing about it besides
taking pills, and how long he'd been going on like this, and why he
hadn't told her. She simply had to.

An hour later, though, she was feeling more confused and distressed
than ever. She sat staring at the papers spread out before her,
trying to put together the pieces of what she'd found, and what she
hadn't. What she hadn't found was what she'd really been hoping for-
something, anything, to contradict the damning testimony of those
prescriptions and their dates. What she had found was, in some ways,
more than she could have hoped for-but it brought tears to her eyes
and made her heart ache. On top of everything else that had happened
over the past few days, it was more than she could bear. She put her
head down on the desk top and the papers-the bills and Visa
statements and cancelled checks; the neat little stack of
correspondence with the insurance company that she and Josh, like
every other White House employee, had always shared; the gift
certificate for three days and three nights at the most luxurious spa
resort on the Eastern Shore, purchased early in December two years
before and made out in her name, with a little note written across it
in Josh's hand, telling her it had been a rough year but he hoped
she'd take a long weekend in the new one and go and relax and enjoy
herself, because she'd earned it and deserved it-and cried.

* * *

Tbc. . .

Please keep feeding back! chai4anne@yahoo.com



Life after Paradise 9a/10
by Chai

Rating: Mature

Category: Post-ep for "Transition" and beyond; angsty drama; romance

Spoilers: Through S7

Disclaimers: All the usual

Feedback: Yes, please. I'll do almost anything to get it:
chai4anne@yahoo.com

My apologies for the typos in the last couple of posts. Obviously,
that should have been "Her head was still aching," not "Her head
still aching" in 8b-I really haven't forgotten what a sentence should
look like-and I'm pretty sure I meant that Josh "had gotten so much
better," not "beetter" in 8a. Gah. I really shouldn't try to make
changes late at night. Let's hope I've managed to get this one into
better shape.

* * *

Part 9a-

It was after one in the morning when Josh finally dragged himself up
the steps to the apartment and let himself in. He was surprised to
find a light on, and Donna curled up on the couch, the coffee-table
in front of her covered with papers. She opened her eyes when he
came in, and he saw that they were red and swollen, and her face
splotchy, as if she had been crying. He felt his chest constrict, as
if someone had suddenly started to tighten an iron band around it so
he couldn't breathe properly.

"Donna?" he said, dropping his backpack onto the floor. "Why are you
still up? What's the matter?"

"Oh, Josh," she said plaintively, sitting up. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, of course I am," he said, bemusedly. "Pretty tired, but it's
all over now, and the world hasn't come to an end and probably won't
for a while yet-"

"Why didn't you tell me?" she burst out. "Oh Josh, why didn't you
*tell* me?"

The iron band tightened a little more.

"I'm sorry I couldn't call, Donna!" He was still standing in the
door, watching her with something like desperation in his
eyes. "It's been just crazy. But Margaret should have-"

"Not *that,*" she said, waving a hand in the air as if to brush aside
Kazakhstan and the Sit Room and Josh's four nights and five days away
from home as insignificant trivialities. "Not *that.*"

"Then-what?"

Her lower lip trembled.

"That you-that you-oh, *Josh*!!!"

She got up suddenly and ran towards him, throwing her arms around him
and burying her face in his neck. He closed his arms around her
automatically and held her to him tightly, swaying a little with
exhaustion as he did.

"Shhh," he said, softly. "Shhh, Donna, shhhh."

"Oh, Josh," she said again, into his neck. "Oh, Josh."

"What's the matter, Donna? What's wrong?"

"You . . . you . . ." She couldn't get the words out. He pushed her
gently towards the sofa and sank into it beside her, rubbing a hand
over his face to try to wipe the tiredness away.

"I'm sorry I haven't been home, Donna! I hated being away from you
for so long, but we knew this would happen sometimes. And I'm sorry
I haven't been able to call. I wanted to, but there just hasn't been
a minute; every time I took my cell phone out, someone would grab me
for something. But I told Margaret to keep you posted-she did,
didn't she?"

"Not at first," Donna said.

"You're kidding!"

"It's all right. Teddy was sick, and her sister was away until
today; she had to go on leave, and Darlene forgot, I guess, or didn't
understand. But it's okay. I knew something big was happening-the
whole building knew that-and that was why I hadn't heard from you."

"Damn it, I've told Margaret *always* to let you know, if I can't get
away. The others are supposed to know that, too. I'm sorry, Donna-"

"It's all right, Josh. Don't be angry with her, please. It wasn't
her fault."

"But what's wrong, then? You seemed upset about something just now."

"I was," she said. "I am."

Josh took a deep breath, and dropped his eyes dropped to the floor.

"What did I do?" he asked, roughly. "I mean, what *else* did I do,
besides that?"

"You didn't *do* anything," Donna said. "But-oh, Josh! You haven't
been well. And you never told me. I didn't realize, I didn't know,
so I haven't been helping, I haven't been doing anything-oh Josh, why
didn't you *tell* me you haven't been feeling well?"

He glanced up at her for a moment, and then away.

"I haven't been sick, Donna," he said, rubbing a hand over his face
again. "I'm fine. Pretty tired, after the last few days, but
otherwise I'm fine."

"You're not. You know you're not. You've been having headaches, bad
ones. And chest pains-*chest pains,* Josh! Margaret said-"

"*Margaret* said?" Josh ground out. "She's not supposed to-"

He stood up abruptly and walked across the room to the window, the
need to move suddenly much greater than the exhaustion he'd been
feeling just moments ago.

"*Damn it*!" he said, slapping his hand against the window-
frame, "Can't anyone in that place do *anything* I ask them to?"

Donna winced. She hadn't meant to break Margaret's confidence. But
it was too late to go back now.

"Please don't be angry, Josh. She didn't have any choice-you'd run
out of your medications there, and she couldn't leave the office to
get them, things were so busy, so she called me-"

"She's *not supposed* to call you!"

"I thought you said she was supposed to call me any time you couldn't
make it home?"

"For *that*!" Josh said, turning around and gripping the window-
frame, as if for support. "For *that*! To let you know when I can't
be home for dinner, so you won't have to wait for me! Not for other
things. It's *her* job to take care of all that stuff; she's not
supposed to bother you with it, she knows that!!"

"Josh-"

"I'm sorry, Donna! I'm sorry! She shouldn't have done that. I've
told her not to do that; I'll talk to her tomorrow and make sure it
doesn't happen again."

"Josh, what are you talking about? Of course she should have called
me. Why ever not?"

"You know why not, Donna. You're busy. You have more important
things to worry about; I promised you I wouldn't bother you with
things like that anymore-"

"You were *sick*, Josh! You think I don't want to know about *that*?"

"I wasn't sick, Donna! It was nothing, it's not important-"

"It wasn't nothing! Margaret said you had to leave the Sit Room.
She said you were doubled over; you couldn't breathe. . . ."

"I could breathe. I just had to take a few minutes-"

"You needed your medication."

"It helps, but I don't *need* it. I don't even *want* it. I hate
the damn stuff, I just-"

"I know you do. I know you hate it. I thought you'd gone off it
years ago, Josh-why did you have to start up again? And why didn't
you tell me?"

He leaned against the window-frame. His face was pale, and he was
breathing hard.

"Donna, don't make a thing out of this. I'm not *sick*. It's not
that big a deal; it's not going to kill me; it's just-just-you know
what it is."

"The PTSD?"

He hesitated, nodded briefly, and looked away.

"A flashback?"

He bit his lip, and hesitated again before answering.

"No. Not-like what you're thinking, Donna; not like before. I know
where I am; I've got it under control. I'm not going to freak out
and do anything I shouldn't. There's nothing to worry about; it's no
big deal."

"Margaret said you'd had attacks like this before. Since she's been
working for you."

"It's not a big deal."

"She said you warned her about it, on her first day. So you'd done
this before that. Recently enough that you thought you might do it
again, not just years ago."

He shrugged.

"A couple of times. It's nothing."

"Did you see a doctor, Josh? Are you sure you're not-not-" She
couldn't finish.

"Going to have a heart attack? I'm fine, Donna, I told you. Yes,
I've seen a doctor about it. It's just a reaction to stress. It's
nothing to worry about."

"But that kind of reaction to stress has to be bad for you! And
you're in pain. When it happens, you're in pain."

Donna's voice was distressed. She couldn't bear the idea of Josh
being in pain. It had been so terrible to watch, after Rosslyn. . . .

"It doesn't matter." He was pacing across the room now. "It's not
*real*. And the medication helps."

"When you have it. You'd run out."

"I'm sorry! You shouldn't have had to go for it. I'll make sure you
don't ever have to again!"

"That's okay, Josh; I didn't mind that! Of course I didn't mind it.
Why would you ever think I would mind?"

Josh ran his hand through his hair, and dropped onto the couch again,
shaking his head and looking completely bemused.

"*Why,* Josh? *Tell me*-why?"

"You said-" he started, huskily. "I thought-you didn't want to
bother with things like that anymore."

Donna stared at him, wide-eyed with disbelief.

"*Why*, Josh? I said something? What did I say? When?"

"That last night in Barbados. You know. You said you didn't want me
to treat you like my assistant anymore."

Donna swallowed, hard.

"You thought I meant-about things like this?"

"I thought you meant about everything. You said so. You said you'd
gotten sick of having to look after me; you didn't want to be my
assistant any more at all. I promised I wouldn't do that to you any
more. And I've tried to keep that promise, Donna, I really have. I
told Margaret not to bother you with anything for me. That's her
job; you have a more important job now-"

"Oh, Josh," Donna said, swallowing another lump and trying to keep
from crying. "I didn't mean-I never thought-and anyway, Margaret
doesn't do it right. She let your prescriptions run down, Josh; she
should be keeping track, making sure you've always got enough on hand-
"

A hint of a smile crossed Josh's face then.

"Of course she's not as good at it as you were, Donna," he said,
softly. "Nobody could be as good at looking after me as you were.
But she's not that bad, you know; today was my fault, really. She's
been asking me for months to bring in my prescriptions, and I keep
forgetting. And then I ran out."

Donna sniffed.

"Of course you forgot," she said. "You've got too many other things
to worry about every day, and you never do take the time to think
about yourself. That's why you need someone to-oh, Josh, I'm sorry!
I'm sorry I made you think I didn't want to do anything to help you.
I never meant that. I meant-I don't know what I meant, really, what
I was afraid of. Just-that you wouldn't take me seriously, I guess.
I was afraid of that."

"Of course I take you seriously, Donna!" Josh said, startled. He
wasn't smiling anymore. "Why would you doubt that?"

"I was your *secretary*, Josh!"

"My *secretary*? Donna, you were never my secretary; you were always
my assistant, always, right from the start."

"It's a pretty title for the same thing, Josh."

"Donna, how can you say that?"

"I answered your telephones, Josh. I did your filing, kept your
schedule-that's what a secretary does."

"You did those things because that's part of what a White House
assistant, does, Donna, but you did so much more than that. You
researched issues for me all the time. You-I can't believe you don't
know how much more you were to me than just a secretary. You were
like my *partner,* damn it! My junior partner, maybe, but not just
my secretary; never just that. We worked *together.* I always
thought we were working together. For Leo. For the administration.
For the President."

Donna thought she was going to cry again.

"Oh, Josh," she said. "How can you say that? I know you let me do
some research for you, and I'm grateful for that, I learned a lot
from it, I really did. But I had to work *so hard* to prove myself
to you. You couldn't believe Will had given me a real job; you
thought he was just using me to get at you. *Make-work*, you said-
you thought he'd given me *make-work.* You didn't want to hire me
when I came to you for a job after the convention. You were furious
when Lou did."

"Oh, God, Donna," Josh cried, his voice agonized. "I'm sorry I said
those things; I'm sorry. I was angry that you'd left like that. I
was-it bothered me, a lot. And-I couldn't deal with having you come
back like that, and having to be with you all the time, and wondering
why you'd done it and when you were going to leave again. I-"

"I left so I could get a better job, Josh!" Donna said, not entirely
truthfully.

"But-like that? You didn't tell me. You didn't give notice, or
*anything.* You just-left. After all those years, you just left.
You didn't let me do anything, to try to stop you or to help you or-
or anything."

The iron band around his chest seemed to have pulled tighter; he was
almost panting with the effort to breathe. Donna didn't notice; the
anger that had been simmering deep down in her all this time suddenly
bubbled to the surface, flooding every other thought away in the heat
of the moment.

"I tried to! I asked you to have lunch with me *seven times,* Josh!
You kept canceling. You couldn't have found a clearer way to
say, `You don't matter, Donna,' if you'd thought about it for months
beforehand!"

"I'm sorry, Donna!" he said wildly. "I'm sorry! I screwed up. I
know I screwed that up; I screwed everything up. But it wasn't
because you didn't matter, Donna! Of course you mattered! You-you-"

And then the pain came. It knocked what breath was left out of him;
he put a hand to his chest involuntarily, and bent over, gasping.
Donna's eyes flew wide.

"Josh! Josh-what's wrong? What-?" Then she realized. She started
to run towards the bathroom for what was left of his medications, but
stopped, realizing he must have already had all he could of them that
day.

"Can you take anything?" she asked, hoping she was wrong.

Josh shook his head, still unable to speak. His face grimaced in
pain. He was still holding his chest-not low and on the side, where
the bullet had hit him, but higher up. Where his heart was, Donna
thought, panicking.

"I'll call 911," she said, desperately, but he shook his head so
violently that she thought he was going to make himself pass out.

"'S'all right," he gasped. "I'll be-all right-in a minute."

Not knowing what else to do, she sat down again beside him and rubbed
his back.

"Sorry," he said, still breathlessly.

"It's all right, Josh. It's all right. I'm so sorry; I didn't mean
to make you upset. All that stuff doesn't matter any more, Josh; it
really doesn't matter any more at all."

After a few minutes his breathing grew quieter. He leaned back
against the sofa cushions, his face white and beaded with sweat, and
closed his eyes. Donna couldn't rub his back any more, so she took
his hand in hers and squeezed it. He turned his over so he could
squeeze back. His grip felt fainter than usual. She felt another
spurt of fear.

"Josh," she said, hesitantly, after a minute. "You've got to see
someone about this. This isn't all right."

"I have," he said, without opening his eyes. "I told you-I have."

"What did they say?"

"That I have a stress disorder."

"That's all?"

"More or less."

"You can't keep going in this job if stress makes you do this, Josh.
You've got to find a better way to handle it, or you're going to have
to quit."

"I can handle the job, Donna. The job doesn't-it's not the problem,
I-I don't do this that often. And not on the job; it's never been
like this on the job before today. I'm just tired. It's been a hell
of a few days."

Donna thought for a minute. Then she said, quietly,

"Josh, you haven't been going to therapy for this, have you?"

"Donna-"

"You haven't, have you?"

"No," he said, sounding very tired. "No, I haven't."

"Why not, Josh? It could help, couldn't it? The attacks might not
be so bad if you were doing it. You had good people to go to; it
helped you before."

"I haven't had time."

"You need to *make* the time, Josh!"

"Right," he said, wearily. "How, Donna? Out of what? This job
takes every waking minute I have, when I'm not with you, you know
that. And we need time together. When I don't absolutely have to
be somewhere else, I need to be here with you. That's what you said
you wanted, and it's what I want, too."

"I didn't mean every second, Josh! Of course, if you need time to go
to therapy-"

"I don't *need* it, Donna! I told you, I'm fine, I've got this under
control. I know what they'll tell me, anyway; I know what I'm
supposed to be doing to deal with this. I've done it before."

"I thought it had stopped."

"It did, for a while. Then it started up again. But it's different
this time; I don't lose track of where I am or what's going on; I
don't lose control and do things I shouldn't. I don't need to go
back to Keyworth's guys and get them to tell me all the same stuff
all over again."

"They might-" Her voice faltered. "Wouldn't you be able-to talk-
about what's-really causing this? What the real problem is?"

"The real problem? Donna, I have PTSD; I process stress differently
than other people do; that's the real problem. I've seen therapists
about it; they've told me how to deal with it; I'm doing those
things, as well as I possibly can. There's nothing more they can
tell me. It's not worth going back to be told the same things all
over again, even if I had time-"

"But you're having these attacks!"

"I have a stressful job, Donna. I have a stressful life. There's
nothing I can do about that except deal with it, which is what I've
been doing. It's fine-"

"But-" Donna wrinkled her forehead. There had to be some way to
make things better; Josh couldn't just go on like this. The
medications alone obviously weren't enough.

"Donna, trust me, it would just be a waste of time. And money. Do
you have any idea how much Keyworth and his pals cost? My insurance
doesn't even begin to cover it."

"That doesn't matter. Not if it would help."

"Of *course* it matters! I-"

And he stopped, and swallowed.

"Why, Josh? Why does it matter?" Donna asked, surprised. Josh had
never worried much about money, as far as she knew. His government
salary had never been particularly large, but he wasn't a big
spender, and his father had left him something, she knew, though she
had no idea how much. She'd only looked at his check registers and
credit card statements that evening when she'd been trying to find
out whether he'd been going to therapy or not; she hadn't touched his
tax records, or the ones from his savings accounts or investments.

He sat up a little, and started fidgeting with the binding around the
edge of a sofa cushion.

"I-" he started again, and swallowed.

"Why, Josh?"

"I-"

"Josh! What's the matter?"

He ran his hands through his hair, and bent over again, not looking
at her.

"I'm sorry, Donna. I guess I should have told you this before, but-"

"But *what,* Josh?"

He swallowed again.

"I-you know Matt didn't have much money for the campaign at first. I
took a pretty big salary cut to work on it. But I still had this
place to keep up, and expenses-the travel was pretty steep for a
while there, until we got the nomination. After that I took
expenses, but . . . well . . ."

"You didn't increase your *salary*?" Donna was stunned.

He looked embarrassed.

"I couldn't, Donna. We needed every penny for the campaign. I was
having to make the most ridiculous calls on ad buys; we almost lost
Illinois because there wasn't enough to do everything we needed. I-"

"Josh," Donna said, almost sternly. "What were you getting?"

He scuffed at the carpet with his shoe.

"I, um . . ."

"Josh!"

"I-nothing, basically."

"*Nothing!!!*"

"You can't contribute more than a thousand in cash to a campaign, but
you can donate your time."

"So you donated yours?"

"I wanted us to win, Donna. I really, really wanted us to win."

Donna stared at him for a moment, stunned.

"How much-did it cost you?"

"A couple of hundred."

"Thousand?"

"Yeah. The travel, the hotels. . . ."

"Josh!"

"I know," he sighed. "But I didn't know what else to do. We needed
every dollar we could get. I figured I'd make it up later. It
didn't clean me out-I've still got some investments, and the
apartment, of course. And my salary, though that's not much more
than I was making before. We'll be all right in the long run; I'll
have plenty of opportunities after we leave the White House; I should
be able to make some real money then. And we're all right now. But
we're not going to go on being all right unless I can save some
money. You're not going to want to stay in this apartment; it's too
small, I know that; you're going to want a house. You should have a
house. I'd like to get us a nice one, but you know what that means:
we'll get a good price for the condo, but it won't even begin to
cover the cost of a house in a decent neighborhood-"

"Josh!" Donna said again, sounding as stunned as she felt.

He didn't seem to notice, but just kept talking as if she hadn't said
anything.

"And it's got to *be* a decent neighborhood, Donna! Even if we could
afford a place around here, this isn't really where we'll want to
be. You know what the District schools are like, even here; we'd
have to go private, and that's another twenty or thirty thousand a
year, at least. And there aren't any parks or places to play
outside, or that many kids to play with. We should probably look at
Bethesda or Chevy Chase, where we can still get downtown fairly
easily but there's some green stuff around the houses and the schools
are pretty good. Though even then, I'm not sure they'll be good
enough-"

Donna's mouth was hanging open now.

"But Bethesda's through the roof now, you know that, and Chevy Chase
is worse. And before that-there's the ring, I want to be able to get
you a really nice one. And the wedding-your parents shouldn't have
to pay for that. And the honeymoon. That trip at Christmas cost
plenty, and a honeymoon should be nicer than that. I want it to be
the best-"

"Josh?" It came out as a strangled squeak. "A wedding? A
honeymoon? Schools?"

He stared at her, startled, as if he hadn't really realized that he'd
been talking out loud.

"I-" he said again, and flushed to the roots of his hair. "I mean-if-
you-decide-you want. . . ." His voice trailed away.

Donna's face was as scarlet as his.

"We haven't-you haven't ever-I didn't know-you wanted-"

He bit his lip, which was trembling, but met her eyes steadily.

"Of course I want," he said, huskily. "Of course I want to marry
you. I know you wanted time to decide how things were going, and I
wasn't assuming anything, just trying to make sure we'd have what
we'd need, if things work out and you say yes-"

She never knew later whether she leaned towards him first, or he
leaned towards her, but somehow their lips met, and after that
neither of them could say anything else for a very long time.

"Does that mean yes?" he asked, a little shakily, when they both came
up for air.

"Of course it does," she answered, her voice shaking too.

He pulled her to him and kissed her again. And again. And again.
And again. . . .

* * *

To be continued . . .

Please feed me: chai4anne@yahoo.com



Life after Paradise 9b/10
by Chai

Rating: Mature

Category: Post-ep for "Transition" and beyond; angsty drama; romance

Spoilers: Through S7

Disclaimers: All the usual

Feedback: Yes, please. I'll do almost anything to get it:
chai4anne@yahoo.com

* * *

Part 9b-

"Josh?" Donna said, a while later.

They were still sitting on the couch, wrapped in each other's arms.
Donna couldn't remember kissing anyone for as long as that since she
was a teenager. Josh hadn't even tried to take it any farther; she
suspected he was simply too tired to manage it, though he wasn't
showing any signs of falling asleep yet. She herself had passed the
point of exhaustion and moved into some sort of zone where sleep no
longer seemed to matter, she was so exhilarated by what had just
happened and what they were going to do. But she was beginning to
come down from her high a little. She couldn't forget what had
happened just before Josh had told her he wanted to marry her, or
what Margaret had told her had happened that afternoon, or all the
things she'd been wondering about that evening while she waited for
him to come home.

"Yes, dear?" he replied, endearingly.

"Josh-I need to ask you something."

"Ask away."

Donna took a deep breath.

"When I took your medications in to Margaret this afternoon, she
asked me to look for your prescriptions, too."

"I'm sorry," he said, automatically. "Really, I-"

"I don't mind, Josh; I told you."

This apologetic Josh was so different from the one she used to know,
she thought; she would never have expected him to act like this.
What on earth had happened to change him so?

"Thank you," he whispered, giving her waist a squeeze.

"I looked for them when I came home. I looked through your side of
the desk. I hope you don't mind."

"Mind?" he said, sounding startled. "No, of course I don't mind.
Why would I mind?"

"I found the prescriptions," Donna went on, without answering
this. "I found some other things, too. But I didn't find what I was
looking for."

"What else did you find? And what were you looking for?" Josh asked,
sounding more puzzled than before.

"I found some of your cancelled checks and old Visa bills. I was
looking for something to tell me that you'd been going to therapy, or
doing something to deal with this-with these attacks-before the dates
on the prescriptions."

Josh looked bewildered.

"My-checks? My Visa bills?" he asked.

Donna nodded.

"From two years ago," she said. "After Gaza."

His face flushed, and he dropped his eyes-understanding, embarrassed.

"Josh," she said, taking his arm and holding it tightly. "You paid
for my mother's flight to Germany. You paid a fortune to fly her
there and to fly there yourself. And then you paid all those bills
for me that my insurance didn't want to cover-my private rooms, some
of my therapy, even. I knew you'd dealt with them for me, but I
thought you'd just handled the paperwork; I had no idea-I didn't know-
"

"It's okay," he said, a little roughly. "Don't worry about it at
all."

"Oh, Josh," she said, despairingly, "why did you do that? You were
looking after me and my family and I didn't even know. Why didn't
you tell me? Why didn't my mother tell me? She kept saying how
wonderful you were,"-Josh blushed more deeply than before-"but she
never told me what you'd done. Did you ask her not to?"

Josh's face looked like it was going to burn off.

"Maybe," he muttered. "Yeah. Something like that."

"*Why,* Josh? And-why did you fly all that way to see me like that,
at all? It cost you a fortune. I've never even thought about it
before; I thought Leo sent you, the government paid. . . ."

He smiled a little through his embarrassment.

"Leo told me I could go," he said. "He said if I needed to be with
you, everyone would understand. And I took off like a bat out of
hell. I was being spectacularly useless, anyway, just freaking out
and yelling at everyone about killing everyone who'd done that to
you, everyone who'd had anything to do with it-or anyone else I could
make pay for it somehow. The money was the last thing I was thinking
about, and I don't want you to think about it, either. I'd have paid
ten times that if paying it would have got me to you any faster, or
would have made you all right when I got there. I'd have paid a
hundred times for that. A thousand. Anything. . . ."

Donna buried her face in his chest, and he wrapped his arms around
her and dropped his face into her hair. She could feel his heart
beating against her, faster than usual, and his breath still coming a
little too quickly.

"I didn't know you felt like that then," she whispered. "I didn't
know at all."

"Of course I felt like that," he answered, huskily. "I've always
felt like that. You didn't, so I tried not to think about it. I
even tried to convince myself I really didn't feel it, and sometimes
I almost succeeded, but when you were hurt I couldn't lie to myself
any more. I just had to get to you, no matter what you or anyone
else thought. But I'd have given anything I had to be able to turn
the clock back and make that not happen to you, Donna. I would. I
really would."

Donna started to cry again, very softly.

"I did feel that way, Josh. I did. I always did. I even told you
once. That night, in your office-do you remember? You'd sent me
flowers for what you kept insisting was our anniversary, and I was
angry with you for making fun of me for having gone back to Alan, and
I told you about how I hurt my ankle and he didn't come to get me
from the hospital for hours. And you said-"

"I remember," Josh said. "I said, if you were hurt, I wouldn't stop
for a beer like he did."

"And I said, if you were hurt, I wouldn't stop for red lights."

"I know. I couldn't believe you'd said that. But I didn't think you
meant it the way it sounded. I wondered, for a while, but I didn't
want to assume-I couldn't really believe you'd mean that. And then
we found out about the President's MS, and all hell broke loose, and
then-you never said anything like that again, so I figured you hadn't
meant anything by it, just that we were, you know, good friends."

"I did mean something by it, Josh."

"I'm sorry, Donna. I guess I screwed that up. I've screwed a lot of
things up for us. I just-I had to be your boss, you know? And that
made it hard to know what to do."

"I didn't know," she said through her tears. "I just didn't know you
felt that way, too. I didn't know at all. And I didn't know you
wanted *this*. What you said, just now. When did you decide, Josh?
That you wanted to-marry me?" She hesitated, then said, more
softly, "That you wanted us to have *children???*"

Josh scrubbed a hand over his face.

"I-I don't know, Donna. There've been lots of times when I've
thought about it. I haven't always been sure I could deal with it.
But then I got you, and I just knew I didn't want you to leave again,
ever. I wanted you to feel the same. I-I didn't think you did."

"Oh, Josh, of course I did!"

"You *said,* Donna! You said you didn't know what this was all
about, what you wanted from it! That threw me; I didn't know what
was going on with you, what you wanted, and-I wondered for a while if
I was right to be thinking about those things, about being together,
making something of this. . . . Before we went away I told the
President-Elect I didn't have a life, and I didn't know if that was
because I wanted it that way or not, or if it was just some sort of
pathetic avoidance thing, but really, I knew what I *wanted* then, I
just didn't know if I could ever figure out how to make it happen,
you know? Because I know I'm no good at talking about these things,
and I always seem to make a mess of it with you somehow-"

"Oh Josh," Donna said, burying her face in his shoulder. "You
haven't made a mess of it. Or not any more than I have. I didn't
have any idea you were even close to thinking that way. I just
assumed you weren't. But I guess that made it a lot harder for you,
didn't it? My assuming. . . ."

"I guess I made it hard for you, too, Donna. You probably wanted a
guy who'd have just sailed in there and asked you years ago, and
taken a chance on your saying no. I wish I could be that guy. I
just-"

"You just were that guy, Josh."

"It took me long enough. And I didn't do it very well, did I? I
should have-"

"You did it beautifully. And I didn't make it easy for you, Josh."

"I-I was just afraid of screwing up what we did have, you know,
Donna? By saying the wrong thing, or saying it in the wrong way or
at the wrong time. I kept thinking maybe it was better just to keep
going the way I was, because at least I knew how to do that and it
worked, sort of. That's what I meant, when I said I didn't know if I
wanted a life. But I did know. I just-I didn't know how to do it,
you know? I didn't want one if you didn't want it with me, and I
didn't know how to get you to want that."

"Oh, Josh. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry! I didn't know you felt that
way. Even after you came to Germany, I thought it was just because
Leo thought someone should. And I was so hateful to you that fall,
before I left. . . ."

He squeezed a little tighter.

"You weren't hateful, Donna," he said. "You couldn't be hateful. I
knew I must have done something to make you angry with me. I just
didn't know what, or how to fix it, so I just tried to keep going and
hoped it would fix itself."

"You didn't do anything. It was me, Josh-just me. I was frustrated
and angry and hurting all over, and I just wanted things to be
different. In my job. With you. Especially with you. But after I
came back to work, you were acting as if everything was the same and
would never change, and I got angry with you about that, which wasn't
fair. There wasn't any way you could have known what I wanted. It
wasn't your fault."

"That week before you left, when you wanted me to take you out to
lunch, I-I was scared, Donna. I knew you were angry and I didn't
know what I'd done, and I didn't really want to find out, because I
didn't think I'd be able to make it all right any more. And I didn't
want to take you out to *lunch,*" he added, bitterly.

Donna gulped a little.

"You-didn't?" she said, confused. "Why-?"

He'd paid for her hospital rooms and half her therapy and some very
expensive last-minute plane tickets; why wouldn't he have wanted to
take her out to lunch?

"I wanted to take you out to dinner, Donna. I wanted to book a table
in the best restaurant in town, and take you out to dinner, and tell
you how much you meant to me and how I couldn't bear to lose you-what
it did to me when you got hurt and I thought I might lose you-and-and-
how I felt about you. But you seemed so angry with me-you'd been so
angry, ever since you came back from Germany-and you'd been seeing
that Irish guy, that-" he choked a little-"that photographer guy,
Ayres-and I thought I was the last man in the world you'd want to
hear that from. I thought you'd probably slap me in the face or
something, for daring to think of it. And then you'd quit, just so
you didn't have to see me and think about me thinking about you like
that. You'd leave. I kept telling myself, if I just kept pretending
everything was okay, you'd stop being angry with me sometime, and
then at least I wouldn't have driven you away and I'd still get to
see you every day. I just didn't know what I was going to do if you
left, Donna. I didn't think I could deal with that."

"I'm sorry, Josh!" Donna cried out, desperately. "I'm so sorry. I
didn't mean to hurt you like that. I'm so, so sorry!"

"It's okay," he said, roughly, holding her as tightly as he possibly
could without hurting her. "Just-don't go again, okay? Please, just
don't go again."

"I won't, Josh. I promise. I won't. But, Josh-" grasping at the
one thing in all that that she could do still do something about-
"what do you mean, I'd been seeing Colin? I wasn't seeing Colin;
I've told you that. I never went out with him. He was just a-a
fling, a couple of nights in the hotel in Gaza. I never saw him
after I left Germany, not until last summer, and that was just about
the show."

Josh shook his head.

"You did tell me that a while ago," he admitted. "But I didn't know
it *then.* I really thought you were with him, doing something long-
distance, something like that. There were phone calls-and flowers-"

Donna remembered Josh pulling the phone out of her hand to shout at
the man on the other end, and looking at the cards on her flowers.
She'd thought he was just being rude and controlling. It had never
crossed her mind that he'd been jealous.

"I hated that he gave you flowers and I couldn't. But I was your
boss-what would people have said if I'd started giving you flowers,
after all that? What would you have said? I could make a joke of it
once, but after running out of the office in the middle of a crisis
like that so I could be with you . . ."

Donna bit her lip. She'd thought he was deliberately avoiding
sending romantic signals when he hadn't sent her flowers in the
hospital. She'd never thought that he might be pulling back because
he thought he'd already made his feelings obvious and she'd rejected
them. She wondered how he could have believed that she'd ever prefer
Colin Ayres to him. But the confidence-even over-confidence, at
times-that he brought so naturally to his job had really never come
into play around women, except as fairly transparent bravado. He'd
always been positively awkward at first with the ones he liked. . . .

"I thought you said you did bring me some flowers? In the hospital,
in Germany? You told me a while ago you brought me flowers, but
something happened to them."

Josh blushed again.

"They were roses," he said, huskily. "I got you some roses. Red
ones. They weren't that great-just hospital flowers-but they were
all I could get, on the way back from that damn lunch Leo made me go
to. I was kicking myself for not having thought of it before, until
that Ayres guy came in with his great big stinking bouquet and kissed
you and you thought he was so charming. I've never been any good
with stuff like that; I just hadn't thought of it before. All I was
thinking about was you, and wanting to see you wake up and talk to
me."

"I'd rather have that than flowers, Josh."

"You should be able to have that *and* flowers. He hadn't got you
roses; I thought maybe you'd like some, and maybe I could
still . . . . But I got to your room and you weren't there. There
was blood on the floor, and your IV, and I-I panicked. I went
running down the hall, trying to find out where you were and what was
happening. I don't know what happened to the flowers; I must have
dropped them somewhere. And then you were in surgery again, and-and
they said it had gone wrong, Donna, and you might have brain damage,
and-and then your mother came and I had to tell her, and-that guy
Ayres was still there, going on about Israel and telling me I'd left
it too late with you and didn't have a chance any more, and-"

"I seem to remember asking for *you* before I went under," Donna
interrupted, gently. There were a lot of things she didn't remember,
but she remembered that. She'd been embarrassed about seeming so
needy, and had tried to turn it into a joke at first, but then. . .

"Yeah, you did. I was-surprised. But I figured you just wanted a
familiar face, someone you knew better than Ayres right then, to
reassure you."

"I wanted *you*, Josh."

"I didn't know; I couldn't tell! You kept saying how charming he
was, and treating me like-like your brother, or something-and I knew
I was lucky if you still cared that much about me, after what I'd
done to you, sending you there, to that place, to get hurt. I
thought Ayres was right, it was too late for me; I'd never really
thought you'd want me, anyway-you were always with someone else,
always talking about someone else or asking me to get you a date with
someone else-and I knew I didn't-I didn't-have any right to hope for
anything, after what I'd done. So I just, you know, tried to be what
I thought you wanted me to be. Just me. Just *Josh*-" and Donna
recognized the exasperated way she'd so often said his name-"your
pain-in-the-ass boss who almost got you killed, sending you to that
God-awful place to get blown up."

And even though she'd told him she'd marry him just a few minutes
before, Donna could hear the leaden weight in his voice as he
remembered, and realized for the first time just how much what had
happened at Gaza had added to the burden of guilt he already carried
every day.

"I'm sorry!" she cried again, pulling herself even closer to
him. "I'm so sorry, Josh! It wasn't your fault I got hurt; I never
thought it was your fault."

"It was my fault you were there."

"You didn't know."

"It doesn't matter. I should have known."

"Oh, Josh. And I was upset with you because I thought you didn't
care about me."

"Didn't *care*?" he said, his voice cracking. "You thought I didn't
*care*? How could you think that, Donna? How could you possibly
think that? I might have been a god-damned, fucked-up careless fool
who sent you off to that hell on earth without ever thinking what
could happen to you there, but surely you didn't think I didn't
*care*?"

"That way," she amended, quickly. "I thought you didn't care that
way. I thought you never would. That's why I left, Josh; I couldn't
bear it. I wanted you to care that way so much. I'd always wanted
that."

"Oh, Donna," he said, kissing her hair. "How could I possibly not
want you that way? I've always wanted you that way. Any man in his
right mind would want you that way. You have to know that. . . ."

She leaned back into him and lifted her face to his. He kissed his
way down her cheek to her mouth, and they held the kiss for a very
long time, neither one of them wanting to let it go. After a minute
Josh brought a hand up to her breast and started to stroke it, very
gently. She closed her eyes, relishing the way it felt. Then,
suddenly, she remembered what it was she had meant to ask him when
she'd first started this conversation.

"Josh," she said, sitting up and putting a hand on his to stop its
distracting movement. "Josh, there's still something I need to ask
you."

He sighed, and settled for pressing his hand to her breast instead of
stroking it.

"Okay," he said, "but make it quick, Donna. The night's half gone,
and there are some very important things I still need to do with my
fiancee."

Donna beamed at the word, but didn't let him distract her.

"Josh," she said again, "your prescriptions-they were issued in
December, last year. I looked and looked, but I couldn't find
anything earlier than that, even though you still have the old ones
in there-from after-" she choked a little-"after-Rosslyn. And-that
Christmas. . . ."

"There weren't any to find, Donna. I didn't need them for quite a
while."

"Then-why did you start to need them now? In November, I mean?

Josh dropped his hand and shifted a little on the couch,
uncomfortably.

"I-it was a hard time, Donna. The campaign and the election, and Leo
dying, and then the transition-you know what a state I was in for a
while there. I wasn't sleeping well. I was starting to yell at
people."

"That was earlier, Josh. And then you got a break from it all; we
went on vacation. I thought that had helped. You seemed so much
more relaxed while we were on vacation." Her vacation in paradise,
Donna thought. She wondered now how much it had seemed like paradise
to Josh.

"I *was* more relaxed, Donna. It was wonderful, being there, with
you, like that. Better than anything I could have imagined. But
then we had to go back, and there was the job still, and everything
to worry about, and I thought I'd better get some help so I didn't
melt down again. I went to a doctor and he gave me the prescriptions
and that was that."

It made sense. It made perfect sense, really. So why did Donna feel
so sure that that wasn't the whole story?

"Josh, were you having the attacks then? The chest pains? Or-" she
hesitated, but she hadn't been convinced by what he'd said earlier
about them, "the flashbacks?"

He scuffed at the floor with his foot.

"They're not really flashbacks, Donna-I know where I am. Just-
memories, really. Images. Vivid images. At night, mostly; they
haven't been a problem at work, not even today."

So she'd been right: there *was* more than just the chest pains.
*Just* the chest pains, indeed, she thought; *just* chest pains. . . .

"I hate that you're having them at all, whatever they're like and
whenever they happen. And you didn't answer my question, Josh."

"Which-was?" he asked, still scuffing with his foot on the carpet.

"Which was, when did you start having the chest pains and the-
memories-
again?"

He took a deep breath, and let it out very slowly.

"Before we went away," he said, quietly.

"How long before?"

"Um-the night before."

"Did you have them on the trip? In Barbados?"

He glanced up at her quickly, and then looked away.

"Yes," he said, very softly.

Donna flinched. Their perfect trip, their vacation in paradise.

"When?" she asked.

"I-a couple of times."

"I didn't know."

"I didn't want you to. It happened at night; I got up and went to
the bathroom, or out on the balcony, and dealt with it there."

"Why was it happening?"

"I was worried about things, I guess. I have a stress disorder,
Donna; I don't process stress the way normal people do. And I was
pretty stressed before we went away."

"About the job?"

"Of course about the job."

"Was that all?"

Josh dropped his head, and ran his hands over his face and through
his hair.

"Donna-"

"I need to know, Josh. Was that all?"

He gave a very deep sigh.

"No," he said at last. "That wasn't all."

"Was it about me?"

Josh didn't answer.

"It was, wasn't it, Josh? It was something about me."

She was sure of it; had been sure of it ever since she'd seen the
dates on the prescriptions, even though her mind wouldn't seem to let
her work out why.

"Something I did, before we went away. What did I do? Just tell me,
*what did I do?!?*"

He looked up then. His face looked haggard.

"I'm sorry, Donna!" he said. "I couldn't help it. I just-you said
four weeks. Four weeks to get it right, or you'd go. You'd *go!!!*
And it was crazy at work, I didn't have a deputy, we didn't have a
Vice-President, C.J. was freaking out on me, Goodwin was breathing
down my neck, the President-Elect was listening to him more than he
was to me, I couldn't get two hours together to sleep, let alone time
to talk to you and find out what you were thinking! And then you
said you didn't know what you wanted from this, but I had four weeks
to do the right things and convince you to stay. Four weeks to
figure out what you wanted and do it, so you wouldn't go. It just-it
got to me, that's all. Thank God Sam forced me to take a break, and
thank God you came with me, or I don't know what I'd have done. I
thought my head was going to explode. I thought *I* was going to
explode, and if I had, they'd still be sweeping up little bits and
pieces of me from every corner of the O.E.O.B., and think how ugly
that would be."

Donna didn't smile at that, though he obviously wanted her to. Her
mouth had fallen open.

"You-you thought you had to *do* something? To keep me with you?"

He stared at her incredulously, the effort at humor gone.

"You *said,* Donna! Four weeks. And then it was three weeks, six
days-"

Donna stared back.

"I didn't mean-" she stammered. "I didn't mean-I just wanted you to
decide what it meant to you. What we were doing. Whether it was
just sex, or whether it meant more than that. Whether you wanted to
do *this,*"-and she waved a hand around the apartment. "To really be
together. That's all."

"Of course I wanted this, Donna! I asked you to stay here! You
didn't want to; you said you felt awkward about it; you wanted to
stay with C.J. instead. And then you said you didn't know what you
wanted from this! I didn't know what I had to do to convince you to
want to stay with me, and I couldn't see how I was going to be able
to figure it out in just four weeks, with everything else that was
going on."

Donna's head was spinning.

"I-I thought-you didn't know-what you wanted. I had no idea-"

"Of course I knew what I wanted! Why would I have asked you to live
with me if I didn't?"

"I-I didn't think-you meant-to live with you-"

"What else would I have meant, Donna? Your apartment was still
sublet. I asked if you wanted to use your key and stay with me
here. I didn't offer to move out. That sounds like living together
to me."

"Just for a few days!"

"Jesus, Donna. I had to start somewhere, didn't I? I thought you'd
stay with me and then we'd finally get a chance to talk and maybe
you'd want to go on staying with me, even when that chick from
Treasury did get her ass out of your place. It was the best idea I
could come up with, with everything that was going on. What did you
*think* I meant?"

"I-" She stopped.

What had she thought? She blushed when she remembered: that if she
moved in with Josh for even a few days without a serious discussion,
without a chance to lay down some rules and get his agreement to
them, she'd be in trouble. That he wouldn't respect her, wouldn't
take her seriously; that he'd expect her to act like his assistant
again, and she'd slide into doing it because she wouldn't be able to
say no to him if she let herself get in that deep. She'd been afraid
he'd take advantage of her, and she'd let him. She'd been afraid
they'd just go on and on like that, the way she had with Alan. . . .

"I don't know," she whispered. "I don't know what I thought you
meant. I wanted us to talk, that's all-I didn't want to move in with
you without talking it over first, without knowing I meant more to
you than just-just-"

She stopped, and looked away.

"Than just *what,* Donna?"

"Just *campaign sex,*" Donna answered him, desperately. "I thought
we started this as just campaign sex, Josh! I needed to know it was
more than that to you, that's all!"

Josh's face went very still.

"It may have been that to you," he said, quietly. "But it wasn't to
me."

"It wasn't to me, either," she said, almost sobbing. "Of course it
wasn't just that to me! But I didn't know it wasn't to you. How was
I supposed to know that?"

Josh stared at her for a long moment.

"I thought you knew me better than that, Donna," he said
softly. "I'd have thought you'd have known I wouldn't do that with
you. It's been years since I've done that with anybody; when I sleep
with someone, it means something to me. But you're the only woman
I've ever waited eight years to do it with, and the only one I've
ever asked to live with me while we were doing it."

Donna sobbed. He pulled her to him again immediately.

"Shhh," he said. "It doesn't matter now, Donna. We've figured it
out; we're going to get married. Nothing else matters."

"It does," she said, through her sobs. "It does! I could *see* how
stressed you were, and I didn't even think about it; all I thought
about was me and getting what I wanted from you, when I wanted it. I
made you sick! You had to go back on those medications, and you hate
them-"

"You didn't make me sick, Donna. I was already pretty stressed-out.
It was just-"

"One thing too many. The last straw."

Josh bit his lip, and she knew she was right.

"And then," she pressed on, wanting to know the worst. "Then I moved
in with you. And then-oh, God, I've just realized! I gave you
another deadline, didn't I? I told you I was keeping my apartment
and I'd move out in six months if things weren't working out. You
probably felt pressured about that, too, didn't you? And that was
almost six months ago. I haven't even been thinking about it, but
I'll bet you've been worrying about *that*, too, haven't you? About
whether I was really going to stay or not, and what you had to do to
make me want to?"

Josh looked at the floor.

"A bit," he said, uncomfortably. "Yeah. Sure. I wanted to do
everything right. I just wanted you to be happy, Donna; I just
really didn't want you to leave."

"So you came home every night, whether you were busy or not."

"I wanted to do that, Donna."

"You cooked dinner with me, so I wouldn't have to do it myself,
whether it was late or not."

"I wanted to do that too, Donna."

"You made love to me every night, whether you were tired or not."

"I *really* wanted to do that, Donna! More than anything. I could
never be too tired to want to do that."

"You went to Colin's show with me, because I said I wanted you to-
whether you wanted to or not."

Josh tightened his arm around her waist.

"I was proud to do that, Donna," he said, quietly. "I was proud to
be there with you."

"*No matter what,*" she said. "You said you'd go *no matter what.*
And you knew, didn't you? You knew what would happen. But I didn't
know; I didn't even think. I just got angry with you about it,
because you seemed different afterwards. You were so busy all of a
sudden. You started to stay late at work. When we were making love,
you seemed different-as if your heart wasn't really in it, as if you
didn't really want me anymore-"

"Not *want* you!" Josh groaned. "Of course I wanted you; I always
want you. I didn't know you thought that, Donna! I felt awful about
those nights I couldn't; I-"

But Donna wasn't going to let him apologize for that.

"I heard you talking to your friend Lizzie there," she ploughed on,
cutting him off. "I heard her say the texts I'd written were naive.
She seemed to assume you'd think so, too. She panned the show in her
review the next day. I thought you probably agreed with her."

"With Lizzie? No, Donna! I was furious with her for saying that. I
couldn't get away from her fast enough-"

"And she talked about how wonderful it was to be married to someone
Jewish. I thought maybe you'd begun to realize what you'd be missing
if you stayed with me."

"Never, Donna, never! I'd be missing so much more if I wasn't with
you. I don't want a nice Jewish girl, thank you; I just want you.
And for your information, my mother gave that one up years ago. She
just wants me to be happy. She'll be thrilled if you'll marry me."

Donna felt a flutter of joy at that, but she couldn't let herself off
the hook so easily.

"I'm just telling you what I thought, Josh. You've got to know how
self-centered I've been. I've been awful. Maybe you won't want to
marry me when you know; I don't deserve it." Josh was making
protesting noises, but she put her hand over his mouth to stop him
and kept on. "The *President* asked me about you-the President-
Elect, I mean; he said he was worried about you, you seemed so
stressed-out, before we went away. And I just made a joke of it! A
stupid joke. I couldn't tell him you needed a break; I couldn't tell
him I was worried, too, because I wasn't. All I was thinking about
was covering up what we were doing, so I wouldn't feel like a fool if
it went wrong, and getting you to decide what you wanted from this on
my timetable, whether that was good for you or not. All this time,
ever since Gaza, everything I've been thinking has been about me. My
doubts, my fears, my insecurities-"

"Donna," Josh said, taking her hand. "You shouldn't have any. You
don't need to have any. But it's not self-centered if you do. You
haven't been awful; you could never be awful. I should have realized
you might have overheard what Lizzie was saying; I should have
reassured you-"

"You were in no state to have to worry about that at all, Josh,"
Donna went on, grimly. "Your doctor had to increase your dosage four
weeks ago. After the show."

"Things at work-" Josh started, but his voice faltered, and he didn't
go on.

"You weren't worried about work then, Josh! I know. I asked. I
asked Margaret, and I asked Sam, and I talked to Lou and Annabeth one
day in the Mess, and everyone said things were going really well
then. You know they were; that was why I got angry with you Thursday
night, before you got called in."

Josh hung his head.

"I'm sorry," he said. There was a long pause. Donna watched him,
shaking her head.

"You don't have anything to be sorry about," she said. "You were
sick. You were sick after that show. That night, weren't you? That
was one of the times you couldn't-you didn't-you made love to me, but
you didn't even try to get anything for yourself, and I didn't see
why. And the next day, when you kept leaving the theatre-you were
sick then too, weren't you? I didn't understand; I can't believe I
didn't understand. All I could think about was what your friend
said, and all the things I wanted you to say to me about the show,
and how you weren't saying them, and I couldn't see past myself to
what was happening with you. It was because of the pictures, wasn't
it? The ones of me, at Gaza, that I made you go and see?"

He nodded, looking ashamed.

"I'm sorry," he said again. "I'm sorry, Donna. They just got to
me. They just-they really got to me."

"I know," she said, her voice almost a sob. "I know."

"It was-I couldn't take it, Donna. What you'd written, up on the
wall-it brought it all back, sitting on that plane, reading those
emails you'd written me over and over, wondering if you were still
going to be alive when I got there; thinking about what those
bastards had done to you, and what I'd done, sending you there;
wondering if I was ever going to see you again, and what shape you
were going to be in if I did. But the pictures were worse. I-I
wanted to be there for you, but I just couldn't stand it; I had to
leave the room a couple of times; I-I just couldn't. . . . And that
night, and the next day-it was all I could think about, all I could
see. And after that, I just-it just-they really got to me, Donna,
they really did. I'm sorry."

She turned and put her arms around him, so she could hold him the way
he was holding her, and clung to him desperately.

"I know," she said again, on a sob. "I know, Josh. I felt the same
way when-when-"

She choked for a moment, then went on.

"The other day-someone-showed me-pictures-of you-at-when-you were-"
She couldn't finish.

Josh stared at her, confused. Then, suddenly, he seemed to
understand.

"At Rosslyn?" His eyes widened. "I didn't know there were any.
I've never seen anything. There weren't any in the papers after, not
with me in them, were there?"

Donna shook her head.

"Nothing," she said. "It was such a shock. I went home and was sick
afterwards. And that was how I finally realized what had happened to
you, after that gallery show. Though even then it took me an awfully
long time to figure it out."

Josh tightened his arms around her convulsively.

"Where did you see them?" he asked, his voice rough with
emotion. "Who showed them to you? They shouldn't have done that;
they shouldn't have upset you like that."

"A photojournalism student was taking pictures at President Bartlet's
speech. He never did anything with them-one of his profs said not
to, and when he approached the White House he was told they wouldn't
give permission-"

"That must have been C.J.," Josh said. "Or Toby. They never
mentioned anything to me about it."

"I guess they wouldn't. Anyway, this boy went to the exhibit in New
York-to Colin's show-and that made him think maybe he could do
something with them. He talked to Colin about it, and Colin told him
to come to me-I guess he thought I'd persuade you to go along with
it. Colin told me there was a guy who had some pictures he wanted to
talk to me about, but he never said what they were. I thought they
were more of me, from Gaza-"

She felt Josh shudder.

"The bastard," he said. "The absolute bastard."

"I don't think he realized how I'd feel, Josh. He deals with that
kind of thing all the time, and I don't think he realized how much it
would upset me, to see you like that. He thought, since I'd been
okay about the ones of me, at Gaza-"

"He should never have made you look at those," Josh said,
viciously. "You might have gotten over the worst of it by the time
we got to that show, but I know they upset you; you were worried
about how you were going to react in public-"

"It was okay, Josh," she said, softly. "The Congressmen, and Admiral
Fitzwallace-knowing they were there, in the background-that got to
me, but I didn't mind seeing myself that much, I really didn't. I
didn't think about it being different for you."

"Of course it was different for me," Josh said, his face pressed into
her hair. "It was *you.* If they'd been pictures of me, at Rosslyn,
I'd have been fine. I don't mean I'd like it, but-"

"They were awful, Josh. Horrible. You shouldn't see them, you
shouldn't ever see them; they're different than the ones of me-"

"Of course they're different. They're just me."

"Oh, Josh! I was unconscious; I don't remember it. You-your eyes
were open. You-you-"

"It's okay," he said, squeezing her more tightly still. "It's okay,
Donna."

"It's not okay, Josh; it's not okay! It was awful, looking at you
like that, bleeding-there was so much blood-and-and conscious.
Feeling it. Knowing what was happening. No wonder you had trouble,
later. That's-that's what you go through, isn't it? Every time you
have a flashback. Or whatever you want to call it, when you have
these attacks at night now with the memories, the vivid memories-
that's what you live through again, isn't it? Even now, after all
these years-"

"No," he said, so softly against her hair that she almost missed it.

"No?"

"No."

She looked up at him, confused. He swallowed, and pulled back a bit
so she could see his face. It was wrenched with exhaustion and
emotion, but there was a tenderness in his eyes unlike anything she'd
ever seen before.

"Not anymore," he said, softly. "That's not where I am anymore, when
it happens. That's not what I see."

He ran a finger down one of her cheeks, where the blood had run in
Colin's pictures, and then put his hand flat against her chest, where
her scars from the surgery lay.

"Oh, Josh."

"That was worse, Donna. So much worse."

"No, Josh. Rosslyn was *much worse* than that. I-"

"Not for me, Donna. Not for me."

* * *

To be continued . . .

Please feed me: chai4anne@yahoo.com



Life after Paradise 10/10
by Chai

Rating: Mature

Category: Post-ep for "Transition" and beyond; angsty drama; romance

Spoilers: Through S7

Disclaimers: All the usual

Feedback: Yes, please. I'll do almost anything to get it:
chai4anne@yahoo.com

The last chapter, for what it's worth-which, I'm rather gathering
from the lack of response to yesterday's posts, isn't very much.

* * *

When they finally got to bed that night, Donna wouldn't let Josh try
to make love to her.

"Stop that," she said, pushing him gently back against the
pillows. "You've been away from home for five days, getting two
hours' sleep a night on a cot in the White House basement, and we've
been up half the night now talking. You're exhausted. Let me rub
your back, and get some sleep."

"We just got engaged, Donna. We need to celebrate. There are things
I have to do with my fiancee that I've never done before," he added,
incoherently.

"There's something we haven't done before?"

"There are things I haven't done with my fiancee before," he
clarified. "Lots of things."

"Josh, you're so tired you can't even talk straight. I'll still be
your fiancee in the morning, I promise. Get some sleep now. We're
both tired. Get some sleep."

"I'm not too tired."

"You're exhausted."

"You're too tired, too?"

Donna smiled at him tenderly.

"Wiped," she said. "But in the morning. . . ."

"In the morning," Josh promised, his voice already groggy. "In th'
mornin'. . . ."

Donna rubbed his back gently until he fell asleep. Then she got up
and went into the living room to send a message to Helen Santos,
saying she thought she'd better take another day off. The First Lady
wouldn't mind, she knew. She was the most undemanding of employers,
and she'd been genuinely worried about Donna before she left to see
Louisa this-no, yesterday-afternoon. Besides, there was nothing so
pressing on the agenda that it couldn't wait for another day: one of
the advantages of working in the East Wing instead of the West. But
even Josh ought to be able to take a day off now, after the marathon
of the last week. He'd mumbled as much to her as he was dropping off
to sleep. Just to make sure, though, she sent an email to Margaret
and another to Sam, and then turned his BlackBerry off. There was
still his pager, if the President absolutely had to reach him, but
she thought that was unlikely-Helen Santos had undoubtedly given
orders that nothing short of a nuclear attack should be allowed to
interrupt her husband's long-delayed chance to get a good night's
sleep.

She was tired, but not as ready to sleep as she'd let Josh think: a
kind of restlessness seemed to have taken her over, driven no doubt
by all the intense and conflicting emotions she'd experienced over
the last forty-eight hours, from horror and self-recrimination to
giddying joy and delight. She went into the kitchen to warm up some
milk and brought it back to bed with her, curling up beside Josh and
sipping it slowly while she watched him sleep. It was so good to see
him sleep like that. It was what he needed more than anything else,
she thought: deep, natural, uninterrupted sleep. She hoped he'd be
able to get it more often now that one source of stress, at least,
was gone, and he didn't have to worry about her deadlines anymore, or
how to make her want to stay. Perhaps that would take enough
pressure off him that these attacks would stop now. He'd always been
able to manage the stress of his jobs; it was the other, more
personal kinds of pressure that he found so hard to deal with. . . .

At least she'd be in a better position to look out for him now. It
appalled her, to think how little she'd been doing for him all these
months that they'd been living together. She'd done her share of the
grocery-shopping and the cooking and the laundry, of course, and had
given him the best sex she knew how to give almost every night, but
she'd assumed that was all she had to do. She'd told him, before
they went away together, that they had to figure out what they wanted
from each other-but she realized now that she'd never really asked
him what he wanted or needed, not even when they'd had their big talk
in Barbados. She'd just assumed that sex and good conversation and
tolerance for his impossible work schedule were pretty much all he'd
be looking for, and the idea of commitment-a deeper commitment than
simply living together-was something he'd have to arrive at slowly,
with considerable guidance and pressure from her before he got
there. It had never occurred to her that he might have already made
up his mind about that on his own, or that she might have been making
him unhappy and on edge by her apparent unsureness about her feelings
for him.

He hadn't told her, of course. There was so much, it turned out,
that could have happened differently if only he'd told her what he
was thinking-all along, from the beginning, almost. But how could
she complain about that? She knew how hard emotional things were for
him to talk about-harder than for most men, with his family history-
and she'd never been exactly direct with him, either. She'd tried
just once, but she could see now why he might not have understood her
then, or why he might have been too uncertain of her meaning to do
anything openly to find out. They'd been in an impossible situation,
really, working together like that-and not in an ordinary office,
either, where they could have bent the rules a little to explore
their personal feelings, but in the White House, where the work
always had to take precedence over everything else, every minute of
the day. Josh was an idealist, after all-he'd gone to work there to
serve the President, and he would never have allowed himself to do
anything that might interfere with that. And she'd been just as
idealistic in her own way, once. It was that last year when
everything had changed, when she'd gotten a taste of what it was like
to have more responsibility and had started to crave it-and when
she'd finally had enough of loving a man she thought was never going
to love her back.

Looking at him sleeping beside her now, she wondered why she hadn't
understood what he'd obviously thought she would understand when he
flew all that way to be with her in the hospital in Germany. Perhaps
it was just because of the pain and the drugs-there were whole parts
of the experience she didn't remember clearly, and things she still
wasn't sure had actually happened or not. And yet she'd known he was
there, and had realized that he'd left the White House at a critical
time to be with her. She'd told herself it must be because Leo had
thought someone should be there and had sent him. Her mother had
shaken her head in despair and told her over and over again that Leo
McGarry would hardly have sent his right-hand man to her at a time
like that if the right-hand man hadn't wanted very badly to come, and
that a man didn't do that sort of thing unless he really loved
someone, but she hadn't wanted to listen to her mother. Instead
she'd listened to C.J., an unmarried woman in her forties who had
been quite bitter at the time about the state of her own
relationships with men; and Kate Harper, three times divorced; and
Louisa D'Amato.

Most of all to Louisa. If only she hadn't. . . . And yet she
couldn't altogether blame Louisa, who had only been doing her job as
she saw it, and had only had the information Donna gave her to work
with all along. Donna wondered if there were other kinds of
therapists who might be more perceptive about what their clients
weren't telling them, or who took a broader view and might try to
remind their clients sometimes that their own needs weren't the only
ones they ought to be considering. There must be, she supposed-there
were people who specialized in couples therapy and family therapy,
which could hardly be practiced by emphasizing one person's needs at
the expense of another's. Perhaps that was the kind of therapist she
should have sought out, someone who might have been able to remind
her that Josh was not just a difficult boss but a human being with
reasons for acting the way he did, and issues and needs of his own.
But she hadn't wanted to be reminded of that; she'd wanted someone to
talk to about the traumatic experience she'd been through, and after
that she'd wanted a sympathetic ear to complain to about how badly
Josh was treating her and how frustrated she was in her job.

Or perhaps she should simply have listened to her mother, who had had
no patience with that kind of talk, and had been relentless in trying
to get Donna to look at Josh in a more sympathetic light. But that
had been at least half the reason why Donna had refused to. Thinking
about it now, she felt ashamed of herself. Did other women in their
mid-thirties still have issues with their mothers? When their
mothers were as good and kind and loving as Donna, when she wasn't in
a bad mood, had always admitted hers to be? She loved her mother
hugely, and knew without a shadow of a doubt that her mother loved
her. So why was it so hard, sometimes, to talk to her? And why,
when her mother wanted to give her advice, was it an almost-automatic
response to do the opposite of whatever she was urging? Goodness,
Donna thought, I'm like a teenager still, rebelling and trying to
prove that I can do things on my own. It was a depressing
realization; she wanted to be able to think of herself as more mature
than that. And of course, most of the time she *was* more mature
than that. It was just when her mother tried to direct the really
important decisions of her life that Donna found herself digging her
heels in and wanting to prove her wrong. But her mother hadn't been
wrong this time; she'd been absolutely right. And Donna could only
rejoice that she had been, because after all, Josh had been in love
with her all this time-ever since Gaza, and long before that-and
nothing could make Donna happier than knowing that. She'd call her
mother tomorrow and tell her, and her mother would laugh and cry and
say, `I told you so,' and Donna knew that she'd laugh and cry too,
and say, "Yes, Mom, you really did. I should have listened to you,"
and her mother would say, "Yes, darling, you should always listen to
your mother, but at least you finally did this time." And Donna
would have to bite her tongue to stop herself just in time from
saying that it was Josh she'd finally listened to, not her mother at
all. . . .

It had taken her a long time, but she'd finally listened-to what he
wasn't saying, what he needed to say. It was all she'd needed to
hear. He loved her, and wanted her to be happy with him; he didn't
want her ever to leave. She wondered why it had taken her so long to
hear that, when he'd been saying it in every way he could except with
words, and when she'd always known that words were something Josh
didn't find it easy to come up with when his deepest, most personal
feelings were involved. But she'd been listening to herself-her
wants, her needs, her insecurities and fears-more than she had to
him. Still, she'd finally heard what he'd been trying to tell her
all this time, and she'd told him what he'd so badly needed to hear,
and now there really was a chance that they could be happy together,
as long as they kept talking, and kept listening to each other more
than to themselves. Not that she was going to accuse Josh of doing
that. He'd been listening to her, all right; he could hardly be
blamed for not realizing that she hadn't been saying what she really
meant. But she'd said it now, and she'd make sure she said it again
and again, often: she loved him, and his happiness mattered more to
her than anything else in the world.

She looked down at him, and felt a rush of such tenderness that it
almost overwhelmed her. He was so far from perfect, this man, and
yet she loved him with everything in her, and she knew, when she
really thought about it as she was now, that she loved him for his
imperfections as much as for any of his obvious strengths. She loved
the strength of his arms and legs, of course, and the beautiful lines
of his body and face, but she loved the receding hairline and the
creases in his forehead, too, the little lines that age was starting
to draw around his mouth, and the flecks of grey that were just
beginning to show in his thick curls. She loved the acuity of his
mind and the strength of his conviction in his own abilities, even
when it drove her to distraction, but just as much she loved the
hesitations and self-doubt that she knew were always there under the
surface, because they were a measure of how much he cared about
everything he was doing, and how much it mattered to him to do it
right. He wasn't really an egotist, she knew, though when she was
irritated with him it was sometimes hard to remember that: he was a
man of passions and convictions who had long ago decided to throw the
whole strength of his being into trying to make the world a better
place and to do it no matter what the cost to himself, and she loved
that about him desperately, even though it worried her desperately
for his sake, too. She loved his humor and his seriousness; his love
of life and his struggles when living it was almost too hard; his
wonderful smile, and the dark look that could shadow his eyes when he
was afraid of failing at one of the impossible demands he had placed
on himself, or when someone else had failed and he didn't know how to
make things right. She loved the qualities in him that completed her
own and made her feel stronger and safer, more intelligent and more
vividly alive, but she also loved his weaknesses and his
vulnerabilities, because they were what made him need her. And she
knew now that he *did* need her, just as much as she needed him.
That was a humbling and almost frightening thing, to think that she
really did have that kind of importance in his life, after all these
years of doubting it-but it gave her a feeling of wonderful warmth
and strength and peacefulness and joy, too. She hoped he could feel
the same way, now that he knew how much she loved and needed him, too.

She looked around the room, and smiled. It was cramped-much more
cramped now than it used to be, with all her things jammed in next to
Josh's-and distressingly untidy; she'd been too miserable for the
past few days to make any effort to pick up after either of them, and
Josh had left in too much of a rush on Friday morning to pick up
after himself. The bedroom door was standing open. She'd left a
lamp on in the living room; by its light she could see Josh's t-shirt
hanging off the exercise bike, his backpack dumped beside the door.
Her shoes were tumbled together by the sofa, and the contents of her
purse spilled over the coffee-table; the table and the desk were both
covered with the papers she'd been looking at, and stacks of files
and other papers were perched with coffee-cups and magazines and bits
and bobs of clothing on the t.v. and bookshelves and every other
dusty surface she could see. The kitchen was just as bad, she knew,
and the bathroom-after her wild search for Josh's medicines earlier-
even worse. The apartment was small and crowded and a mess, but it
looked more beautiful to her right now than the grandest house on
Embassy Row, more beautiful even than that lovely and frighteningly
expensive resort Josh had paid for in Barbados that had seemed like
paradise to her just a few months ago. This wasn't paradise, but it
was better than that: it was real; it was theirs; and it was home.

It was all she wanted. She'd have to be sure to tell him that
tomorrow: that none of those other things he'd been worrying about-
proposals in fancy restaurants, and expensive rings and weddings and
honeymoons and houses-really mattered to her at all, as long as she
had this-Josh, and a place together that they could call home. And
children some day, of course. And yes, children would need a larger
house and good schools to go to, if she and Josh could possibly
manage it. But all of that could wait; for now, this was more than
good enough. It was real. It was theirs. And it was home.

* * *

Daylight was flooding the room when, hours later, she woke to find
him kissing her. His eyes were warm and bright as they watched her;
his usually brilliant smile almost shy.

"Do you still want to marry me?" he asked, wonderingly.

"If you still want to marry me," she answered softly, letting her
mouth melt into his.

They made love for a long time then, and after a while she found
herself losing all consciousness of any difference between her
pleasure and his, or between herself and him at all.

* * *
* * *

The End

If you've enjoyed this at all, please let me know: chai4anne@yahoo.com