Notes: Glitterbug belongs to Steven Page and Stephen Duffy.
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From the ground you are the only
Star that shines tonight
If you go you must know that you�ll shine forever
Come, if you�re mine you will shine eternally�
Through the haze of a thousand wasted days
You must be tired; you�ve burned so bright
So goodnight
Goodnight�
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�Someday, it has to stop hurting, doesn�t it?� She knew there would be no answer, and yet she still asked the question of the darkness.
The soft whistle of the wind in the trees was the only reply, and she smiled ruefully at herself. Tipping her head back, she watched the clouds drift over the stars for a while, and wondered why she had come. She had avoided this place for so long, and tonight when she had suddenly been struck with the impulse to visit, she had not questioned it. She had left a note on the counter, a simple note that she knew he would understand, and she had driven out here in the fading sunlight without a second thought. By the time she arrived, both the sun and her conviction had disappeared, and she found herself with no light to see by and nothing to say.
She knelt in the grass, plucked out a blade, and twisted it through her fingers, trying to gather her thoughts and her emotions. When she finally spoke into the darkness, it was with a voice so raw that she barely even recognized it as her own.
�I hated you for leaving me, you know.� They weren�t the words she had meant to say, but they spilled from her with such honesty that she had no choice but to continue. �I had never hated anyone before, never even really knew what it was to hate someone. But that night, when I heard those words, I hated you so much that it wiped out anything else I had ever felt for you. There was just this rage, and this uncontrollable helplessness, and I hated you.�
She felt the tears start to fall, and because it was dark and she was alone, she decided not to care. Instead, she let them stream down her face and drop onto her lap and the grass beneath her. �You know, at some point, you would think the human body would stop producing tears. You would think that there would be some line, some moment where your tear ducts just go, �enough! I�m not doing this anymore!� But they never do. No matter how hard you cry, how many days, weeks, even months, they just keep coming. At some point you lose track of how long you�ve been crying, how many tissue boxes you�ve gone through, how many people have tried to comfort you. Somewhere along the way, you just look back and realize that there are a thousand days of your life that are nothing but a haze of tears.
�There are the tears that you let yourself cry, when you�re alone at night in your apartment, because you�ve made it through the day. There are the ones that you choke back, when you go by those places that always remind you of him. There are the tears that well up in your eyes that you manage to catch before they fall, and the ones that are soaked up by one of the thousand shoulders you�ve been offered to cry on. At some point, everyone�s shoulders start looking the same.
�I don�t hate you anymore, you know.
�I wonder sometimes, how much you remember about that night. My greatest hope is that it�s all a blur to you, that you never even knew what hit you. I never really was a person who prayed much, you know. I grew up in a church, but somewhere along the way, it all just stopped meaning anything to me. But that night, I sat there and I prayed, first for you to live, and then when we knew that was no longer possible, I prayed that you hadn�t felt any pain.
�You had already had too much pain in your life.
�When things like this happen, people are very fond of telling you that life goes on. And I�ve discovered that the truth is, it does. In halting, painful little steps, somehow you get through each day, and when you�re finally able to collapse into bed each night and realize that you�ve finally made it to another few blissful hours of oblivion, it gives you just a little more hope that someday, maybe, you�ll be ok.
�There are only two things that have gotten me through this time, you know, and that�s why I�m here. The first thing is the memories I have of you. The other thing�is him.�
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There are times when the world truly moves in slow motion.
Donna had always laughed a little when it would happen in the movies, when people would go running through rooms with long, drawn out yells coming from their mouths and painfully slow raindrops battering the windows behind them. But as she stood frozen in front of the tv and the glass slid from her grasp and began its impossibly long descent onto the floor, she discovered that it did in fact happen.
She watched her drink fall from her hand out of the corner of her eye, but she couldn�t seem to bring herself to care, because she was transfixed by the unmistakable sound of her world shattering around her.
It had been an early night for her, and she had come home to her empty apartment and changed immediately into pajamas, ready to curl up on the couch and watch old movies until Casey came home with the promised pint of Ben and Jerry�s. It was going to be Girls Night In, and she had found herself actually looking forward to it. With their mutually hectic schedules, it was hard for them to find time to actually sit down and talk much anymore.
She had flicked on the tv as she made her way to the couch, intending to flip to one of the movie channels and unwind for a while, and instead she felt the glass slide from her fingers, saw it tumble to the carpet in a whirlwind of splintering shards and scattered droplets.
Her body reacted before her mind. The shock hit her even before she could begin to start processing the words, and the glass fell, her knees went out from under her, her hands shot out to catch herself on the coffee table as her stained carpet rushed up to meet her. She knelt there alone on the floor of her apartment and watched the anchor talk for a moment or two, trying desperately to catch her breath. The woman�s face was deceptively calm, and her stillness almost seemed to mock the words coming from her mouth, as if such horrible things could not be true because she was collected, she was composed.
But shots had been fired at the President, and for all anyone knew, their country was coming down around them.
She couldn�t say for sure how she made it to her feet, but she found herself in her bedroom, shedding her ridiculous pajamas and throwing on the nearest clothes she could find as the news report continued in the background. Her mind spun as she tried to remember if there was anything she was supposed to be doing at a time like this. Josh. She had to find Josh. He would know what she was supposed to be doing, he would be able to tell her where she should be. Her place was beside him. If anything happened, she was supposed to find him. The realization calmed her marginally, and she found that she could breathe again, just a little.
She turned on the radio when she got in the car, but turned it down low, so that she could only hear it if she really listened. Instead, she watched the people driving around her, wondered if they had even heard about what happened, wondered if they knew how much their lives were about to change if the President had been shot. She pushed that thought away quickly, and tried to see other images in her mind than the President lying senseless on an operating table, with the country in shambles around him.
Her mind turned to the past two years in the White House, almost feverishly trying to keep itself occupied, running through an endless litany of meetings and conferences, and late nights in the office eating Chinese food by the flickering light of computers. The brief thought that those pleasant memories could all be instantly wiped out tonight flashed across her mind, but she refused to take any notice of it, and stared furiously at the road, willing the numbness to stay with her so that she didn�t start crying. She couldn�t afford to pull over right now.
So instead she remembered the steady noise of the dull rhythmic thumping that would come from Toby�s office late at night, and the sight of Sam, hunched over and yelling at his computer in frustration, and the sound of CJ�s laughter echoing through the halls over the noise of everyday work. She remembered the way her breath caught the first time she stepped into the Oval Office, and the way her heart still pounded a little when she would hear the President give one of his speeches. She remembered walking into campaign headquarters, and she reminded herself that things were going to be ok once she found Josh and figured out what she was supposed to be doing right now.
She smiled a little at the thought of Josh being anything even close to a calming influence in her life. At any other time, the thought would have been so absurd that it would have been laughable, but right now she felt like her world would somehow stop spinning out of control if she could just see him and the others, and figure out what had to be done. It was the inaction of just driving, getting from one place to another with no concept of what was waiting for her when she got there, that was driving her crazy.
And then, all of a sudden, she was there, and she was suddenly afraid, more desperately afraid than she had ever been in her life.
Now nothing stood between her and the reality of the night.
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She knew she was babbling, and she tried to stop, but the words were spilling mindlessly from her mouth with no conscious thought from her at all. She could feel her hands shaking, and whether it was from relief that the President would be alright or from residual nerves, she wasn�t sure and didn�t care.
As she was talking, she briefly wondered in the back of her mind why Sam wouldn�t look at her, wouldn�t even turn around, but it didn�t register, not really, not until Toby broke into her rambling tirade, and then she knew. She knew before he even said another word, and yet when the words did come, they made no sense to her. Even as her stumbling questions fell from her lips, she was wondering why she hadn�t thought of it. Of course he would have called her, if he had been able to. Of course she would have heard from him before now.
Toby was talking to her with a calm that reminded her eerily of the newscaster she had watched at home, and for the briefest second she wanted to cross the room and slap him, shake him until he couldn�t breathe, make him understand that this wasn�t something to be calm about, this wasn�t one of his scripted speeches, this was his friend, his brother, lying in a hospital bed with a bullet in his chest. But she couldn�t move, so instead she stood there and stared back at him numbly, deliberately not meeting CJ�s eyes, not wanting to see the concern there, and the same fear that she knew was in her own.
She could feel the tears start to well up then, and she had to sit because she was sure she would fall if she stayed on her feet another second. She felt a hand on her back, and she didn�t know if it was CJ�s or Sam�s. She didn�t cry, not then, not really. The tears fell silently from her eyes, just a few of them, but there was no gasping for breath, no hitching sobs to betray her to the others. Charlie, sitting next to her, was the only one who saw the tears fall, but he didn�t seem to really notice, so she didn�t mind.
Vaguely, the thought tugged at the corner of her mind that she should be remembering all her moments with him, reliving their lives together, but she discovered that sometimes things don�t always happen the way they�re supposed to. Her mind was occupied with the future, and had no place for the past. She was envisioning long months of recovery, both physical and emotional, scars on him and all of them that would last for years, maybe for a lifetime. She imagined herself, months down the road, holding him together during the work day, and answering the phone at night to console him when he woke up from another crippling nightmare of gunfire.
The thought of her life without him never crossed her mind, because such a thing was unthinkable.
The others left the room, one by one, until she and Sam were the only ones there, sitting back to back on the uncomfortable waiting room couch. He still hadn�t turned to look at her, and she briefly wondered why, but she was too caught up in her thoughts to mind all that much. It wasn�t until she heard his breath hitch that she realized he was crying.
She turned to look at him, but his head was buried in his hands, and she knew that he had just been trying to hold himself together until CJ and Toby left the room. He had always been the young one, the na�ve one, and she knew that to let them see him cry would be an unforgivable weakness in his mind. She wondered if he had forgotten she was there, and she almost didn�t reach out, almost didn�t lay a hand on his shoulder, but in the end she decided that this pain was too much for him to bear alone, and so she let the tears fall from her own eyes, and rested a shaking hand just below his neck, feeling the warmth of his skin through his shirt as his shoulders trembled with sobs.
Neither of them said a word, and he didn�t turn to her, didn�t try to hold onto her at all, but he didn�t pull away either. So she left her hand there, and they cried, and when the tears wouldn�t come anymore they sat in silence and tried to catch their breath. It was Mrs. Landingham entering that drew them apart, and Sam stood to hug her on shaky legs, then excused himself to go back to the office. He didn�t turn to look at Donna once, but she could feel his gaze anyway, those impossibly beautiful blue eyes glazed with the same numb fear that clouded her own.
They sat there together, the two women, and they talked mindlessly about the men they had devoted their lives to. The directionless chatter was so far removed from the broken silence that she had shared with Sam, and yet in a way it couldn�t be more similar. There was an intimacy to shared worry, shared pain, that was unlike any other bond between people, and whether that bond was reached through wordless tears or meaningless voices, it was all the same in the end.
They both looked up when the First Lady entered, and Donna tried to stand, but her legs betrayed her. She was struck by the sudden fragility that had appeared in this indomitable woman, and by the bruised look in her eyes.
Time passed, as they sat there with nothing to do but worry, and to them it was nothing but a measure of heartbeats. For the other two women, it was counting the moments until the man they cared for was returned to them. For Donna, it was an endless agony of seconds stolen away from Josh�s life.
Others came and went as time wore steadily on, and some of them stopped to talk to her, to mouth empty promises and useless assurances. She nodded, and made politely appropriate responses, and wondered vaguely how her brain was somehow managing to simultaneously formulate coherent sentences and keep her from flying into a complete rage of helplessness at her forced inaction. She wondered briefly if anyone had thought to call his mother, and that led to the thought that the country was holding its breath waiting for its President to wake up, and there was probably something that the office of the Deputy Chief of Staff was supposed to be doing. She asked the nearest person, who happened to be the First Lady, and was met with a quick denial that there was anything she was supposed to do. She had to bite her lip to keep from screaming that she couldn�t just sit still anymore.
She got up and paced a little, barely seeing the faces that skimmed by on either side of her, hunched over in uncomfortable chairs holding whispered conversations, or walking in and out of the room with purposes and focuses that she did not share. He was her only purpose now, her only focus.
In a way, it was no different than the last few years of her life. She had dedicated herself to him, in every way possible, and he had accepted it without question, and in turn had become just as dedicated to her in his own backwards and endearing way. She could feel the tears return to sting her eyes again, but decided that crying now, in this room full of busy people, was not something that she wanted to do. So she held in the tears and stared blankly ahead and waited for the next hour of waiting to come.
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She stood in silence and watched, and it was unreal.
The pane of glass that separated them may as well have been a plane of reality. She knew in her mind that it was him lying there, and every so often the surgeons would shift a little and she could see his pale face and disheveled hair shielded by a maze of tubes and monitors. But there was a part of her, most of her, that could not reconcile itself with the thought that this lifeless shell of a man was the same person she had devoted so much of her life to.
Now that she was alone, she finally let the tears fall, and she reached out a finger to lightly brush the glass between them. It was cool to the touch, and she shivered reflexively, pulling back her hand and wrapping her arms around her.
In the beginning of the night there had been too much worry, too much anxiousness taking up her mind, and her memories had not been given the chance to assault her. But now, alone in this tiny observation room, she found herself thinking back over every moment she could remember with him, trying to capture each one and use them to form a barrier between her and the cold truth of his lifeless form on the table before her. Somewhere inside that puzzle of skin and muscle that the surgeons were working on, there was a man who would only eat Chinese food right from the carton, and who needed at least two cups of coffee to be truly functional in the morning, and who once told a senator to take his legislative agenda and shove it up his ass.
She needed that man back.
Hardly a week had gone by since she had joined the campaign that someone hadn�t commented on the fact that Josh would never be able to survive without her. They always laughed about it together, knowing it was true. What people didn�t realize was how much Donna relied on him in return. He needed her for the structure she provided, and for the innate way that she had of reading him, knowing if he needed to be reined in, or if he needed to banter meaninglessly to distract himself from the pressure he was feeling. But she needed him just as much, for the way he made her smile, and the way he took her for granted so easily and yet would defend her to the death if anyone else tried it. He had taken her into his life when she had nowhere else to go, and when she had fled from him and run home only to find the same disappointment she had tried to escape the first time, he had taken her back and given her another chance without a second thought.
When she had left Wisconsin and Alan behind, she had promised herself that she would never again be that girl, the one who attached herself to a man and lived her life for him. Because with Alan, as it had been with all the guys before him, she had become nothing but an appendage, an accessory. She was only necessary as long as she was useful and decorative. When she finally decided that she no longer wanted to be either of those things to him, she packed up and left, swearing that she would never again lose herself to some man.
Then somewhere along the line between New Hampshire and Washington, Josh Lyman had become her life, and she discovered that instead of losing herself in him, she had found who she was truly meant to be.
She reached up idly to tug at the security badge she wore around her neck, and watched the flurry of activity in the operating room. She heard the door behind her open, but didn�t turn. People had been in and out since she had come back here�Dr. Bartlet, Leo, hospital doctors, Zoey once for a few minutes�and she didn�t feel like talking to any of them, didn�t want them to see her bloodshot eyes and swollen cheeks, so she stared blankly ahead and hoped they would leave.
There was silence for a few moments, and she began to think that maybe whoever it was hadn�t come in at all, had just opened the door, seen her in here, and left, but then she heard Sam say her name, and his shattered voice nearly broke her heart. She turned to look at him, but didn�t speak, and even though he looked like a lost little boy who just needed a hug, she didn�t touch him. She didn�t think she could bear to feel the warmth of his skin when all she could feel of Josh was a cold pane of glass.
She could see in his eyes that he had news, but she didn�t ask because she knew it was bad, and he didn�t tell her because he needed to be asked. Instead, he talked, and she listened, and wondered how there could possibly be so many things about Josh that she didn�t know and Sam did. But he told her about them, told her about him as a college boy, and as a young political operative, and as a lawyer. Once or twice, she even felt the beginnings of a smile ghost across her face, and neither of them was crying, so it was an improvement on the last time they had been in a room together.
Eventually she had to ask, and it hurt her to see the curtain that fell across his eyes when she did. He told her that the doctors were saying Josh had lost a lot of blood, and that some of his organs were failing, and that there was very little chance he was going to pull through. The tears came then, to both their eyes, and he reached out to her but she pulled away as if he had raised a hand to her. She pressed her back against the cold unyielding surface of the window, turning away from Josh, away from the reality of that harshly lit operating room. She leaned her head back on the glass and let the tears stream down her face as Sam left the room with a choked and whispered apology.
It wasn�t long after then that the doctor came in, clean and sterile in his unfeeling scrubs, and told her that he was gone. There were no tears then, for they had been spent and lay cooling on the metal windowsill. She reached out a trembling hand to place her palm against the glass, and she felt as cold and lifeless inside as it felt against her skin. She focused her eyes on the glaring lights above the operating table until all she could see was light and shadow and the blurring edges of nothing.
She felt her legs give out, and she discovered that she no longer had the energy to care.
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The candle flickered in an unseen breeze as she wondered what she was doing here.
His mother had asked her to come, and she hadn�t known how to refuse, even if she had wanted to. Ruth was the only family member that Josh had left to sit here in his apartment for him in this week, and Donna didn�t have the heart to make her do it alone.
The others had come, some of them, at times during the week when their hectic schedule of piecing the country back together allowed. Leo had come the first night, and Donna had withdrawn to another room and tried not to listen to the muffled echoes of Ruth�s sobs that carried through the thin walls. Toby had come three times to sit with the women, and the third time he had brought CJ. As they left that night, Donna saw CJ reach for his hand at the door, and she smiled just a tiny bit at the thought that maybe some small happiness had come from all this tragedy.
She tried not to feel guilty that she was able to smile at all.
They talked most of the time, the two women, just to fill the silence, and through each other they rediscovered the man they both had loved. Donna was amazed that the stories never ran out, but it seemed like there was always something to tell, always some moment to relate and relive, from his childhood, or his more recent days in the White House. She hadn�t realized how many memories of him she had accumulated until she started to tell them to Ruth, and discovered that there were too many to count, too many to tell in a day, or a week, or a lifetime.
Tonight, however, they sat in silence and watched the candle flicker on the nearby table, lost in their own thoughts. When Donna�s cell phone rang, startling them both from their reveries, she reached for it instinctively, starting to answer as she had so many countless times over the past few years, but then her voice caught in her throat as she realized that it wasn�t Josh on the other end, and it never would be again. She took a moment to collect herself, willing the tears to stay in her eyes, praying for her voice to be steady as she said a hesitant hello.
She almost didn�t recognize his voice, distorted as it was by static and pain, but something in the way he said her name sparked something in her mind, and she whispered �Sam?� into the phone, knowing already that it was him.
They hadn�t spoken since the hospital, even though they had seen each other. It had been his words, not the doctor�s, that had taken the last of her hope from her. She hadn�t been able to bring herself to forgive him for that just yet, and she was sure that he hadn�t forgiven her for the way she had reacted to him. She had felt his eyes on her at the funeral, but when she had lifted her head to look at him, he had turned away, unwilling to meet her gaze.
But now he was on the phone, asking to see her, and so she asked where he was. There was a long pause, and she began to think that they had been disconnected, but then she heard his voice again, and he was telling her that he was on the stairs outside Josh�s apartment. She stood and went to the window, and she saw him there in the dim light of a streetlamp below her, looking young and fragile, alone in the rain. As she buzzed him upstairs, Ruth retired to the guest room without a word.
She met him at the door with a towel, and wondered how they could have possibly become so awkward with each other. Grief was supposed to pull people together, and yet she had never felt so far away from this man. He didn�t say anything until they were sitting on the couch, him with the towel across his shoulders to catch the water from his dripping hair, and her curled up in a defensive ball on the other end.
�You were in love with him.� It wasn�t a question, and it wasn�t what she had expected to hear. Her head snapped up and she looked at him to see her own pain in his eyes.
�Yes,� she whispered. She didn�t know if he was really looking for an answer, but she couldn�t leave his words hanging there in the candlelit shadows of the room, so she gave the only answer she had. He didn�t say anything, and she felt the need to explain herself, so she continued. �I didn�t mean to fall for him. It was the last thing on my mind, really, when I got to New Hampshire. I left home promising myself that I would never devote myself to another guy the way I had with my last boyfriend, and then I met Josh and all that just went straight out the window. It wasn�t a gratitude thing, you know. It wasn�t just that he took me in when I had nowhere else to go. It was more than that. We just�I don�t know. We fit. Somewhere along the way I woke up one morning and discovered that I couldn�t live my life without him, and more importantly, I didn�t want to.� She tried to keep going, but the words choked her and she couldn�t. She wiped away a few tears and took a few breaths, and when she spoke next it was in a voice barely above a whisper.
�He was the only man I ever really loved.�
Sam nodded, and the compassion and understanding in his face brought new tears to her eyes. �Me too,� he whispered, and it took her a moment to understand what he meant, but when she did, she discovered that she wasn�t surprised. �I mean,� he continued quickly, �I�m not�I�ve never�� he sighed and shook his head in frustration. �I�ve loved women, and I�ve been in love with them, and I have no doubt that someday I�ll fall in love with one again. But then there was Josh, and�I loved him. As much as I ever loved any woman, and maybe more.� He stopped, and the tears that had been welling up in his eyes finally fell. She found that she couldn�t just sit and watch, so she reached out and took his hand. He looked up at her with eyes that reflected his broken heart as he whispered, �He never knew.�
�He did,� she said, and even as the words came from her mouth, she knew that they were true. �Maybe he didn�t know the extent of it, but he knew you loved him, and he loved you back, in his own way. You were his closest friend, Sam, and he was a man who hardly ever let anyone in. I can count on my fingers the people in this world that he trusted, and I know that you were right at the top of that list.�
He took his hand away from hers and let out a bitter little laugh. �And I suppose that�s supposed to make me feel better?�
�I wasn�t saying it to make you feel better,� she said, and a part of her wished she could take back the harshness of her words, but she continued anyhow, feeling an unfamiliar spark of anger at him. �I was saying it because it�s true. And because if there�s anyone in the world who has any idea what you�re feeling right now, it�s me. We both lost someone that we loved, Sam, and if you came over here to go twenty rounds of Who Loves Him More, you can turn around and head back out into the rain, because I�m pretty sure that neither of us needs that after the ten different kinds of hell we�ve been through in the past week!� She was practically yelling by the end of it, and she could feel the helpless tears of fury streaming down her face as she waited for him to turn on her and start yelling back, but he didn�t.
Instead he crumpled against the back of the couch, his face a mask of stunned revelation. He started to cry again, reaching for her, and she held back for a moment before she abandoned herself to the sobs that were building up behind her furious fa�ade and buried her face in his chest. �God, Donna, I�m so sorry,� he whispered into her hair as their tears fell together, and she found that she couldn�t remember why she had been so angry, couldn�t remember if there had even been a reason. Whatever it had been, it didn�t matter, because they had both been destroyed by the loss of the man they had loved, and anything other than that was insignificant.
She didn�t know how much time passed as they cried in each other�s arms, because time had ceased to mean anything to her after those endless hours in the hospital. They stayed like that, afterwards, because neither of them had the energy to move, and because she found that there was something reassuring about listening to a living heart beat against her skin. When she inevitably fell asleep there, with his arms still draped loosely around her, it was the first real sleep she had gotten since the shooting, and she dreamed of Josh.
They woke in the morning to the smell of food and the sound of Ruth moving about in the kitchen. She met Donna with an understanding glance, and served them breakfast in silence. After they ate, Sam came to sit with them in the living room, and the three of them shared more stories of the man they had loved and lost, and Donna wondered briefly if maybe this was what family was supposed to be.
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In the past, the good thing about nightmares had been that when she woke up, she would discover they were not real.
Now she was living the nightmare.
She woke herself with her own screams, and it took a few moments for her to get reoriented. The darkness in her room had become oppressive since the shooting, and Casey had bought her a small blue lava lamp to keep on at night. It had made her smile a little, and Casey had commented that it was good to see that her smile was still in there somewhere. It hadn�t come out much in the past few months, because every time it did, she felt a twinge of guilt.
The small bubbling lamp cast moving shadows around her room, and she clutched at her pillows and tried not to see gunmen in each dark shape. Her breaths were coming in short erratic bursts, and she reached up to run a hand back through her hair and found it slick with sweat. She stood on shaky legs, wrapped herself in a robe, and made her way to the door. She paced the hallway for a few minutes, but started to worry that she might wake Casey, so she went into the living room and perched uneasily on the couch, willing her heart to stop racing.
Her phone was lying on the coffee table, and she picked it up and dialed without thinking. When he answered, his voice was foggy with sleep, and she was overcome by the urge to hang up, feeling like a fool for calling this late, but instead she asked without preamble, �Do you still get nightmares?� and found a small bit of comfort in the fact that she didn�t have to say who it was.
�Every night,� he said drowsily. She could hear him moving around, and imagined him sitting up against his pillows, leaning his head back on the headboard. �Why, did you have one?�
�Yeah,� she admitted, and she knew that she should let him get back to sleep, but a part of her kept talking. �And, you know, I could handle the nightmares on their own, if I knew I was going to wake up and find out that they were all just a bad dream, all just my head messing with me. But every night I dream that he dies, and every morning I wake up to find that it wasn�t just a nightmare. And it�s been months, Sam. Months of waking up shaking and screaming from a dream where Josh is lying dead in my arms, only to find that he is dead, and it wasn�t in my arms, it was on some cold operating table with no one by his side but a bunch of doctors who didn�t even know his name.�
�You were there, Donna,� he said, and he no longer sounded sleepy, just sad. �You were with him, watching over him, in every way you could be.�
�I wasn�t there when it mattered!� she burst out, and they were words she had never meant to say, but they were there now, and there was no going back. �He didn�t know I was there in the operating room, Sam. But he knew, he knew when he was lying there on the sidewalk trying to hold his own blood in�he knew that I wasn�t there with him.� She choked on sudden tears, but forced herself to finish. �He died thinking that I wasn�t there with him, that I didn�t care enough to find him, to help him. He died thinking I had forgotten about him!�
�He didn�t,� Sam said, and his voice cut through her tears. �Because he knew as well as I do how ridiculous that is.� She blinked a little, and opened her mouth to protest, but he continued. �Josh knew you loved him, Donna, and he knew that there wasn�t a thing in the world that you wouldn�t do for him. So to think that he would believe you�d forget about him is completely preposterous. No, you weren�t with him when he was shot. Neither was I. Neither was his mother. Neither was anyone. That doesn�t mean that we didn�t care enough to be there. He was alone in that moment, and I have no doubt that you were the first thing on his mind. Because he loved you, just as much as you loved him, if not more. He would never think that you forgot him, and you were there for him, whether he knew it or not.�
His words sunk in gradually, and even though the guilt was not gone, it had been eased a little. �You really think he loved me?� she asked, and winced at how desperate the question sounded, but Sam didn�t seem to mind.
�He did,� he said simply. It was an echo of the words she had said to him when he asked the same question, and she knew that he knew it.
�Thanks, Sam,� she whispered, and she hoped that he knew she was talking about so much more than just telling her that.
�Anytime. You know that,� he said, and she knew he had understood. �So. You going to let me get back to sleep now? �Cause, you know, I have a very important job to get up for in the morning. It�s known as running the country�maybe you�ve heard of it.�
She felt a smile creep across her face, and for the first time in a long time, it didn�t disappear as soon as she discovered it was there. Instead, she knew that he heard it in her voice as she replied, �Can�t say I have. You�ll have to introduce me to the concept someday. For now, go to bed, or I�m going to have do deal with a very cranky Cathy at lunch tomorrow.�
She could hear him chuckle. �Goodnight, Donna,� he said, and hung up, leaving her alone in her darkened apartment with a distant smile on her face, all thought of tears temporarily forgotten.
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The sun was setting, and even though it was tourist season, the steps were nearly deserted. She watched the fading light play across the still water of the pool, and tried to remember why she had come here. It wasn�t to remember him, not really, because she could do that anywhere. But this had always been where she would come to escape, to think, even in the days when she was working for him.
Since he had died, she had come more often, sometimes to cry away from the prying eyes of the others in the office, and sometimes just to run away from the new existence that she was still adjusting to, even now after all this time.
Toby was a good boss to her, when he wasn�t in one of his moods, and Ginger was happy working for Leo�s new deputy, so the trade had been a good plan for all involved. But there were still days when Donna would pass Josh�s old office and look in, expecting to find his comfortable disarray, and instead see an uncommonly neat desk in the middle of an unfamiliar room. Sometimes she would hear the whispers in the corridor when a new intern would come in, the ones that were about her, and about him. She tried not to let it bother her, not to let it get to her, but of course it did.
She watched as the sky faded from a brilliant pink to the dusky grey of twilight, and she wondered if the pain of his memory would ever leave her. There were nights now when she would not have nightmares, and she was sure that it was progress, but the next night she would wake in cold sweat and realize that it wasn�t getting any better, not really. Sometimes she would make it through a day without crying, but those days were rare, and they usually ended in her waking in the middle of the night weeping hysterically because she was afraid that maybe she didn�t love him as much anymore.
She tried to tell herself that living her life was not a betrayal of him, and that moving on didn�t mean forgetting him, but the words in her head always ended up sounding like the hollow assurances of a cheap self help book.
�So, does it ever get any better?� She glanced up, and marveled a little at the way he always seemed to be able to read her mind.
�You know, I don�t think it ever does, Sam,� she said as he settled down next to her. �But it does get farther away. Maybe that�s all we can hope for. I don�t think time really does heal all wounds�it just helps us forget how painful they once were.�
�We�re all scarred,� he toned dramatically, and she smiled a little, wondering how he could mock her and make her feel better all at the same time.
�What are you doing here?� she asked, and tried not to notice that she wasn�t upset at all that he had interrupted her private thinking time.
�You forgot about dinner, so I bribed Cathy with a muffin to tell me where you�d gone.�
�Give the girl a pastry, and she�s yours for life,� she said, rolling her eyes. Then she paused. �Dinner?�
�That new Mexican place CJ was talking about. You said you wanted to try it, so I said��
�Right,� she broke in, remembering. He peered at her for a second. �You know, if you want to take a rain check, that�s ok with me,� he offered, and waved a hand at the setting sun. �I know it�s�well, May. And if you just wanted to sit here and think or something, I can�� he trailed off.
She didn�t answer him right away. Instead, she watched a little boy play by the reflecting pool with his father for a few minutes. �Do you ever wonder how things would be different if he had lived?� she asked, and she could tell he was a little taken aback by the abrupt change in subject.
�All the time,� he told her after a pause. �Every day, something will remind me of him, and I�ll think, what if he was still here? Would this still be happening? What would he do to fix it? And in the end, I think, there are probably a whole lot of things that would be different. This, for one thing,� he added, waving a hand and seeming to encompass themselves and the monument, and the whole night.
�Yeah,� she mused. �This.� They were quiet for a few moments, and she didn�t intend to keep talking, but when the silence stretched out between them, she felt the need to fill it. �I never thanked you, I don�t think. Not really. I mean, this past year�� she trailed off awkwardly, and started again. �It helped, you know, knowing that there was someone in the world who could say �I know how you feel� and really mean it. All those nights when I would call you, and those days when you would find me crying in the office�you always seemed to know what I needed to hear, what would make me feel better, and I just�� She sighed. �See, this is why you�re the speechwriter and I�m not.�
�No, that was pretty good,� he said, and when she looked in his eyes she knew that it was his way of accepting her thanks. �And I am the speechwriter, but I think ditto pretty much suffices in this situation.�
She smiled a little shakily, and leaned over to lay her head on his shoulder. He wrapped his arms around her and they sat there like that for a while, watching as the stars appeared above them. She finally lifted her head, and when she looked up into his eyes, she saw something there that matched what was in her own.
When their lips met it was soft, and brief, and utterly perfect.
She pulled back then, and smiled at the way the stars reflected in his eyes. One of his hands darted up to push back a lock of her hair, and his face was utterly solemn as he studied her, memorizing her. Then he smiled back, and she felt a sudden weight lift from her chest, a weight that she had never even realized was there.
�So,� she said, breaking their silence. �Dinner.�
�Yes,� he agreed a little breathlessly. �About that.� He watched her as if waiting for a cue, so she pulled away a little and stood, offering him a hand to help him up. They made their way down the stairs to the edge of the pool, and she discovered when they got there that he hadn�t let go of her hand, and she didn�t mind at all.
That night, she would go home and she would cry because a part of her life had suddenly ended. But for that moment, she decided that there was nothing that mattered but herself, and Sam, and the distant memory of a man who had, by their love of him, brought them together.
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Her voice was raw by the time her words were spent, and the breeze chilled her face as it brushed across the trails of forgotten tears that still rolled slowly from her eyes. She reached out a single finger to trace the letters carved into the cool stone before her, and was struck by the similarity to that last moment, when she had reached out to touch the glass between them, once she knew he was gone.
�I�m sorry,� she said, because it hadn�t been said yet, and she felt that it needed to. �I�m sorry I never came before now, but I couldn�t face it, this cold and lifeless piece of rock that is supposed to commemorate the life of such a warm and living person. I don�t know why I came tonight, not really. I suppose I could have just as easily had this conversation with you in my living room, but for some reason I just needed to come.
�I miss you so much, Josh.�
She stopped then, and wept silently for a few minutes, resting her forehead against the smooth stone. When she could catch her breath again, she reached out to place a dry and withered flower atop the grave.
�Do you remember these flowers?� she asked, and smiled a little through her tears. �You got them for me for our first �anniversary� and I got mad because you got them on the wrong day. I kept them, you know, and dried them. They�re on the hall table in my apartment, with the book.� She reached up to wipe the tears from her eyes. �I�m not going to forget you,� she promised, and she didn�t know if she was assuring him or herself.
She rose then, on shaky legs, and stood silently for a few moments, watching the moonlight play across the stone and the flower that trembled in the slight breeze. Finally, she turned to go, and behind her the breeze picked up, lifting the flower and then letting it drift down to the grass just below the headstone. She turned back before she was out of sight and paused to take one last look.
�I�ll never stop loving you,� she whispered, and the wind stole her words as she faded into the gathering mist.