There was always a certain way things had to be in the Paulson family. Girls wore dresses and boys wore blue jeans. In the winter when the snow kept everyone inside and even the students in the city were quiet, huddled around their little radiators, the family would sit around the TV and watch the Christian channels. The four Paulson children would sit quietly on the couch, watching, their dæmons in their laps, and their father in his arm chair, mother either in the kitchen or her own chair on the other side. The Paulson children all had soft dæmons, like their parents. Things that were small and furry with quivering noses and wet eyes. Their parents would smile fondly on their children, winter or summer. Their perfect children in dresses and blue jeans with their safe dæmons and good manners. At least most of the time.

Makuara usually took the shape of a python. Or rats. Or lizards and spiders or scorpions or things that would make Mrs. Paulson scream with fright. Donna would smile behind her hand, secretly pleased, and even more pleased about the shorts and jeans she wore under her dresses and skirts.

Her father never approved. He'd tut at her, scold her for scaring her mother and tell her to make Makuara take a different shape, a more pleasant shape. She'd do so and Makuara would become a rooster and scream his crowing voice so loud it set off car alarms. Then she'd bundle her dæmon up and run out of the house and down the block where she'd shuck off her skirt or dress for the t-shirt and pants she wore underneath. She wasn't something to be kept like her sisters and brother. She was herself and no one would tell her what to be.

Her siblings settled first. Hannah a rabbit. Jessica a finch. Duncan a beagle. Soft. Cute. Donna sniffed at them when she saw them, Makuara clinging to her arm as a lemur or wrapped around her throat as a cobra.

Donna was not soft. She was fierce and fiery as he red hair. The only one who had her mother's red hair, the others all had their father's mop-water blonde hair. Pale and thin and strait as an arrow. Donna's was thick and vibrant orange with tangling curls that always made her cry and scream when her mother tried to brush it for her when she was a child. She learned to braid her hair herself and would throw it into a messy braid as soon as she woke up in the morning. She refused to let her mother touch her hair again.

She'd started playing girls lacrosse, against her parents' wishes, at her high school and once she learned how to play was very good at it. She loved to run and cheer and throw the ball and manipulate her crosse. During games and practice dæmons were allowed onto the field, but forbidden to touch the ball and the field often had dogs and cats or birds or any other animal running around in it. Makuara stayed on Donna until the day he settled. He liked reptile forms, things with unblinking eyes and feral eyes. As he got closer to settling his forms grew larger and more frequent as he tried to find one that fit.

The day her JV team won their tournament Makuara settled, his body liable to rip itself apart with pride as Donna came back to the side lines. She hadn't bothered to look for her parents, they were never there, but Duncan sometimes came. He was the one who supported her, always. He loved her like her parents never did. She jogged back to the side lines, high fiving her teammates and cheering and Makuara slid up next to her.

She'd always been weird. The pretty girl with the fierce reptile for a dæmon. The girl with the dæmon from things that people had nightmares about. Donna thought it was awesome. Duncan drove her home from her game celebration in high spirits, Makuara spread across most of the back seat as some sort of crocodile. She'd beamed at him and Tallin, her brother's beagle, had looked at him and then climbed onto his big back and started to howl. Not a sad howl, a happy howl.

"What's up with Tallin?" Donna had asked as they drove through the streets of Boston.

"You don't know?" Duncan had asked, exasperated and with a roll of his eyes.

"Know what?" she turned back to Makuara. "What's there to know Makky?" she asked him.

"This is us," Makuara had said, opening his mouth a bit in a crocodile smile.

Donna's eyes had widened, then she smiled wickedly, "Excellent," and had laughed. Duncan had sighed, as if to say what was he going to do with his little sister, but hadn't commented after that. Later Donna figured out that Makuara had taken the form of a speckled caiman, and she'd laughed at her parents when they found out this was the form their rebellious daughter's dæmon had taken.

—

In college Donna took drama. It didn't lead anywhere in particular though. She just found that she loved it. She kept up with lacrosse as well, but it wasn't her focus. She wanted to act and be on Broadway or go to Hollywood. Her parents approved of the acting, but not the lacrosse. At least they were happy about something.

Her major changed to nothing after a few years though. She didn't know what she wanted to do with her life. Yes there was acting, but she figured Broadway wasn't her thing, she couldn't sing, and had two left feet. And there was the problem that she was a bit camera shy. She gave up on acting and had to deal with her parents' slight scowls for months before she just decided to move out. She found a job on the other side of the Charles in Jamaica Plain, away from her family, but never too far from them either. She started working at a little restaurant and it was good, though she often forewent food every few weeks to make sure she made rent.

The place she was working at fell through though when it closed, as places in Boston were prone to do and she had to find another job, this one in Cambridge at a pizza place called Ollie's down on Harvard Square.

That was where she met Harvey Specter, and his big lioness dæmon.

He came in every few days, dazed from studying and partying and in need of pizza that wasn't that square pizza place that Donna had never bothered to learn the name of. She was still living in Jamaica Plain and other then the Boston Tea Shop down JFK that made boba tea she didn't know many of the other places to eat in Cambridge.

Harvey was… well Harvey was everything someone could want in a guy really. He was tall, charming, and handsome. She watched him sweep not a few girls right off their feet. His dæmon, Sehkmet, liked her and Makky liked her back. The first time she met Harvey outside of work it was at the park down the street during one of the last warm days of autumn. She and Makky were out, lying in the grass, trying to get the last few bits of sun. She'd opened her eyes to Makky's delighted rumble and had turned to see Sehkmet pressing her head to Makuara's snout happily.

"Harvey!" she'd said sitting up, and he'd sat down next to her laden with a heavy back pack and deep circles under his eyes. He'd been screwing off a bit during the previous years at Harvard Law, but this was his last year, and he had the BAR to pass, he was freaking out. She'd calmed him and offered to help him study. Obviously he'd found that amusing, but she'd pushed the issue. So they went back to Harvey's apartment after getting a pizza from Ollie's and they stayed up late studying.

That had been the start of an amazing friendship.

In the beginning Donna had been thinking with her libido, she admitted it. She would have climbed Harvey like Mount Everest and ridden him like a rodeo cowboy. But there was never any time for that and before she knew it they'd settled into the comfortable cycle of just being friends. She liked that too. That didn't mean, however, that when he wasn't looking she didn't stare at his ass. When Sehkmet caught her doing it she'd just flick her tail in amusement. And Sehkmet always saw, she saw everything, even if Harvey himself didn't. That was probably why Makky and Sehkmet got along so well, they both saw, and were both big and intimidating creatures. What she and Harvey had was good, and she wanted for nothing from him.

When Harvey passed the BAR he said he was going back to New York. He had a job there. Then, like a high school boy asking his crush out on their first date, he'd asked if she wanted to come with him. She'd asked to think about it and had gone back to her five bedroom apartment in Jamaica Plain. She hadn't even needed the end of the night before she was calling Harvey saying yes, she'd go with him, but only if they were roommates.

New York was pretty much everything Boston was not. Boston was an old city. To be fair New York was too, but New York was… well it made even a city girl like Donna feel like a country bumpkin. Everything in New York was so much more then anywhere she'd ever been. She fell in love almost instantly.

What she didn't love was the one bedroom apartment they rented.

Harvey slept on the fold out couch, Donna got the bed. He started working at P&H and for a few months she worked as a waitress. Then Harvey pulled some strings with his boss and got her a job as a low level computer monkey at the firm. Donna did well here. Better then well. She had always been good with electronics, and that was her job. No one gave her any lip either, or try to hit on her, or any other sort of anything she had no interest in, even when she was new, because of Makuara. You wouldn't give the pretty new girl any crap either if their dæmon was a six foot long caiman who lived under her desk and would growl at anyone she didn't like if they came by and she was working.

Like Harvey she gained status quickly. That was how they were alike, they would never settle for second best. They were the best. When Harvey got to be important enough to have his own assistant Donna was right there and together they just continued to rise.

And then Cameron Dennis happened.

Cameron had a little gecko for a dæmon. One of those you saw in the south with a red throat like a sail. He was nice, kind, and took Harvey under his wing like a second father. And then it turned sour. Donna found out first what sort of dirty dealings Cameron was doing and had tried to show Harvey. He'd refused to acknowledge it. He said she was lying. They'd stood in their apartment, yelling at each other from across the room until Harvey had just walked out, slamming the door. It was the first time they'd ever fought. Donna went to bed that night thinking how much easier it would be if they were more then friends and they could just fuck it out.

He'd come back two days later, suit rumpled, with deep circles under his eyes, and maybe a bit puffy-eyed. Donna didn't bring any of it up and just hugged him tightly and they sat and watched Star Trek on their couch and ordered Thai food from the place a few blocks down. Silent Sehkmet curled up like a house cat at Harvey's feet with Makky half curled around her in turn.

They didn't stay with Cameron long after that.