When the time came that she absolutely had to leave, Donna thought of Will Bailey first. They'd become friends, of a sort, during his short sojourn in the West Wing. She'd felt sorry for the wall of subconscious resentment he'd had to scale, sorry for the hostility that nobody could talk or think about, but that manifested itself in petty vandalism with condiments and an office full of bicycles. She'd gone out of her way to be nice to him, hoping to offset the hazing till it passed, but he still hadn't stayed very long. Toby's wrath at Will's departure had surprised Donna. He'd treated his new deputy as just one more body to yell at or foist assignments onto, but apparently leaving was an immeasurable betrayal. Donna sometimes felt like she and Will had more in common than she'd like to admit.

The problem with Will was that, even in Donna's head, he was just a substitute. That was where all the hostility came from: Will had taken away and replaced the person they'd wanted to have. So when Donna couldn't face staying in the White House for one more month, let alone the rest of the administration, she skipped Will entirely. She went to the original, the only person she knew who really, truly understood what it was like to suffocate inside the White House, to feel trapped and helpless and useless, to work yards away from someone you loved who would never love you back.

She didn't wait till after work to make the call, even with the time difference that would've been rudely late. While Josh was away at a meeting she slipped out to the metro and down a couple of stops, ducking into the coffeeshop at the National Building Museum. It was a good place to take a break, quiet and generally untenanted by Washington insiders, and the coffee wasn't half-bad. Sitting down at one of the rickety little tables, she took a deep breath, put on a smile and her most winning phone personality, and made the call.

"Carrington, Schuster and Hawthone, Sam Seaborn's office," came a pleasant female voice after the second ring.

"Hi Terri, this is Donna Moss," Donna began, and hated the quiver she could hear in the edge of her own voice.

"Oh, hey Donna," Terri replied, her voice warming from professional friendliness. Donna spent more time talking to the assistants of Josh's colleagues than she did most of her own family members, and she suspected she wasn't alone. "Do you have Josh on the line? I can put him through."

"Um, no, actually," Donna admitted, "I was hoping to talk to Sam myself, if he had a free minute." No shake there, and the um was excusable, she decided.

"Sure, no problem." Any surprise in Terri's voice was well-concealed. "Hold on just a minute, he's on the other line but they're wrapping up." Donna breathed a sigh of relief as the tasteful hold music began to play. That was one hurdle down. It wasn't that she'd really expected Terri to keep her from talking to Sam, but it seemed like nothing was ever easy or simple anymore, and hardly anything ever went right. She sipped her coffee and shredded her napkin into minuscule pieces and wondered how crazy she was for simultaneously craving this quiet and missing being yelled at.

When the music clicked off, she was tempted for a second to hang up the phone and run back to the White House the way horses will run back into a burning barn, but then the so-familiar, so-beautiful voice said "Sam Seaborn," and she was back on earth again. "Hi Sam, it's Donna. Donna Moss," she added, then realized how stupid that sounded and clamped her lips shut before she could babble.

"Hi Donna!" Sam responded, and though he didn't hide the surprise, she thought maybe he sounded a little happy too. "It has been way too long since we talked. How are you doing? How's the leg?" One of Sam's most valuable assets, Donna decided, was his ability to make everybody feel important just by focusing his attention on them for a few moments.

"It's much better," she told him, automatically rubbing the scar through her dark-colored hose. "Thank you for the flowers, they were beautiful."

"I wish that I could've come visit, but we were in the middle of a trial and I couldn't get away." His regret seemed honest. "So you're back to the thousand-yard White House relay race with Josh again?" Her loud hesitation gave him pause too. "Or is something going on with Josh?" It obviously occurred to him that one reason Donna might be calling him was to inform him of anything about Josh they didn't want him to see on the news. "Is everything all right?"

"Josh is fine," Donna assured him hastily. "Well, not totally fine, not after what happened to Leo, and with Baker looking like he'll drop out and the China trip going on, but he's, you know. He's Josh. He just puts his head down and ignores everything that isn't work and knocks over anything that gets in his way and he comes out on top eventually!" Her voice is perilously close to breaking by the end of the sentence, and she hoped Sam couldn't hear.

"Is everything all right with you?" Sam was more perceptive than most people gave him credit for. That, and if anyone on earth could understand the pain in Donna's voice, it was him.

"I have to get out of here." Donna took a deep breath, a little amazed she'd managed to say it aloud. With the cork out of the bottle, more words came rushing forth."I... Sam, I want to leave the White House. I want to get out of DC and start something new. I don't want to be an assistant anymore. I can't..." I can't walk two steps after Josh for the rest of my life. I can't be "and Donna" anymore. I can't look at him every day and see him not looking back. The words were conspicuous in their absence, a silence on the phone line.

Sam didn't let her twist in the wind. "Come to California," he told her. "We need researchers like you would not believe. These companies, they try to defeat employee lawsuits by burying us in paper and hiding everything they do behind three or four different shells. Nobody cuts through the BS like you do. You'd be a huge asset."

For the first time all day, maybe in a lot of days, Donna felt something warm and hopeful sparking in her chest. It was still paper-pushing, but it would be useful and important, and she'd be doing it on her own. Maybe without the crazy White House hours, she could finish up her degree and go even further. Maybe... "And what about next year?" she asked. "Are you still thinking-"

"Midterms," he told her, that ebullient Sam-grin in his voice. "Senate seat's opening up. I've been working with the state party, I'm going to do it right this time. I could use some experienced help on that, too."

Donna smiled into the phone. "And I bet I could get a pretty good tan, too. Be a California blonde."

"Come to California, Donna," Sam told her again. "You won't even understand how it feels to be in the White House until you get out of there. It's real life out here, and it's amazing."

Her smile was a little stronger now, and for some reason it seemed easier to breathe. "Thanks, Sam."

"Anytime," he assured her. "We've got to stick together."

By the time she said her goodbyes and hung up the phone, Donna was late getting back to work, but she didn't care nearly so much as she might have once. Josh didn't even notice, careening past her an hour later with an armful of notes for her to type up and a mumbled comment about how Congressman Santos' office would be calling about the Patient's Bill of Rights. She waited for a comment about the lunch he'd canceled with her that day, or two days before that, but he'd already forgotten. Donna penciled herself in for the next day and began to type, already daydreaming about blue ocean.