Title: The Rarest Faith IV: The Surest Wisdom
Classification: Post-administration, political, CJ/T, S/OFC, J/...well, you'll
start to get it during this section.
Summary: 2009 "It is courage the world needs, not infallibility...courage is
always the surest wisdom." --Sir Wilfred Grenfell
***
Washington, D.C. February
***
Picking a running mate for Sam was impossible, Donna decided. Too many
variables, too many people to try and please. Too early, even with both the
Republicans and Democrats agreeing that this election needed candidates almost
two years in advance.
Too much of Josh "borrowing" her when she had work of her own to do.
But today Matt had sent her to Josh's office and they were sitting on opposite
sides of his desk, poring over stacks and stacks of files. More paper than she'd
thought was possible to accumulate, and that included the Presidential papers
that had nearly driven her insane during the M.S. scandal.
"He should be doing this himself," Donna declared as she tossed someone's career
into a black box labeled, in her largest Magic Marker, "No Way In Hell."
"Candidates never do this themselves. It's always done by a committee."
"We're the committee?"
"Yeah." Josh leaned back and scrubbed his face with his hands. "Scary, isn't
it?"
Donna knotted her hair into a bun at the back of her head and secured it with a
pencil and a chopstick she was reasonably sure they hadn't used. "About as scary
as you and Toby convincing him to run."
"That wasn't so much convincing him as catching him off guard." Josh smiled,
chuckling softly. "He called back after we called him. Know what his first words
were?" Donna, who had heard the story before, nodded, but Josh seemed to be
ignoring her, lost in the memory. "He said, 'Uh, hi...what was it, exactly, that
I agreed to, just now?'"
"And this is Presidential material?"
Josh blinked at her. "You don't think he is?"
"Yes, I think he is!" And she did, in her heart of hearts. She couldn't imagine
anyone she'd rather have as the leader of the free world. "I'm just saying, he's
still not really focused."
"He's a U.S. Senator with a pretty damn full plate. The election's not until
next year. He'll focus when he needs to." Josh stretched and put a couple of
folders on top of the desk. "This is my short list. What do you have?"
"These." Donna added her folders to Josh's. A pretty tall stack, in spite of
three solid days of culling. "Now, what?"
"I need stats on their voting records - health care initiatives, welfare reform,
civil rights. And if you can get confirmation that they weren't ever on the
'Christian Nation Bill' committee, that'd be good, too."
"Put Billy on that."
"He went back to law school."
"Then have Adele look it up for you."
"She quit," Josh sighed, running his hands through his hair.
"Then I'll have someone from my office deal with it," Donna replied, not looking
up from her notebook. When Josh didn't respond, Donna lifted her head and saw
the bewilderment on his face. "What?"
"I...I don't know. I keep forgetting."
"It's been over two years since I worked for you, Josh," she said, her tone calm
and even. "I'm considered a rising star, or whatever its equivalent might be, in
backstage politics. I don't even type my own memos or do research anymore - Matt
pays people to do these things for me so I can take meetings and organize
staff."
"So you're telling me that you're no longer at my beck and call?" Josh tilted
his head to one side.
"I was never at your beck and call," Donna said firmly, then she sighed. "Well,
maybe a little. But that's over."
"For a number of reasons."
She had to remind herself to breathe slowly. "Yes. A number of reasons."
"Like...Amy?"
Damn him to hell a dozen times over.
"Like I grew up, Josh! Like I'm not the depressed college dropout who drove to
New Hampshire on a whim with fifteen dollars and a pack of Life Savers in her
purse. Like I've survived two Presidential campaigns, the M.S. investigation,
Congressional investigation of my life, and Rosslyn."
"You weren't at Rosslyn."
God almighty, was he still pissed about that? And were those tears she saw just
before he put his face in his hands? She let the words hang in the air while she
considered her response.
"I was there when it mattered." Night after night at Georgetown. Josh's
apartment three or four times a day. Christmas Eve, which she spent in the
Georgetown trauma center. Christmas Day, waking up with a sore back from
sleeping in a chair next to his bed. Christmas night, fending off the angry
phone call from her parents for not showing up.
Josh's eyes were a rich brown. The color of chocolate. So sweet. So bitter.
"Yes, you were," he whispered. "Always there."
"Don't you forget that," she said in a mock-warning tone. Its effect was
lessened by the thickness in her voice.
"I won't." He looked down, then back at her, and the chocolate color of his eyes
had flecks of cognac that nearly took her breath away. "Donna, I--"
"I have to go." She gathered her folders, spilling papers that she didn't bother
to pick up, and held the stack to her chest like a shield.
Against him. Against ever, ever putting herself in a place where he could hurt
her like that again. She slowed her footsteps and forced a smile at Matt as he
passed her. She didn't know whether to wish that Josh had followed her.
He hadn't. The hallway was still and quiet.
Which was more than she could say for her mind.
***
The hallway was still and quiet because Matt had intercepted Josh as he tried to
take off in a dead run. Matt had seen Donna's pained smile, and the panic in
Josh's expression, and he blocked the door, standing with his hands on his hips
and a scowl on his face.
"I know," Matt began, "that this is probably pretty awkward. That you're still
stuck in some time warp where Donna's your assistant, and you have this weird
Perry Mason and Della Street thing going on."
Josh scowled. "That's kinda...weird, Matt. I mean, in the books, you could tell
if they were going to have sex based on whether they ordered onions on their
hamburgers. Donna just made sure mine were thoroughly burned. We never...with
the onions. Where we'd need to worry about them. That's a big difference."
"Whatever." Matt stared Josh down until the defiance was gone from Josh's eyes.
"I've known you a long time, Josh, and I think you're the most skillful
political operative in town. But, as a human being, you've still got a long way
to go, my friend."
"What the hell does that mean?" Josh demanded, his fists balled up on his hips.
"It means that you've already screwed Donna's life up once. I'm not going to
stand idly by while you do it again."
"You're not gonna stand idly by," Josh murmured. "You're gonna watch." He
started to walk back into the conference room, then he shook himself all over
like a dog getting out of a pond. "I mean, I'm not going to screw up, and you're
not going to watch me...not screw up..."
"I know what you mean. And I think you honestly believe it. But I'm just saying
this: hurt her again, and you'll answer to me. And the Bartlets, Sam, Nina, and
C.J. Oh, and Toby."
Josh raised an eyebrow. "Now, you're scaring me."
"Good boy." Matt gave him a shove back into the conference room. "Get back to
work. I'll have some people from the office come in and help you."
"Thanks." Josh sat down again, sniffing to determine if any of Donna's cologne
still hung in the air. It didn't. He rolled his sleeves up and put his elbows on
the table, leaning his forehead on the heels of his hands.
How had he, Joshua Jacob Lyman, graduate of Harvard and Yale, Fulbright scholar,
former Deputy Chief of Staff to President Josiah Bartlet, ended up sitting alone
in a paper-strewn conference room? How, when everybody else's lives were going
places, was his remaining a living hell?
Matt was serving as the Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, an
irony not lost on any of the former Bartlet staffers. Toby's second book had
been a smash, and his work with the President's memoirs was said to be
absolutely stunning. Donna had started an after-school mentoring program for
teenaged girls with an interest in politics, offering them career paths vastly
different from the one she'd taken. C.J. had won so many awards that she was
threatening to get a bigger place so she could store them all. Sam was a husband
and a father, and would - even if it killed Josh - be President someday soon.
Josh took stock of his existence. He lived alone in the apartment he'd shared
with his ex-wife, who had left him for a woman. He'd never bothered to replace
the bed, so he slept on the sofa, fully dressed except for shoes and tie, with
the television on all night. He'd broken most of his coffee cups and didn't
drink anything that hadn't come in a styrofoam cup or a bottle. When he got
sick, he swallowed pills with water he drank from the faucet like a dog. His
hair was coming out in handfuls, and what wasn't coming out was showing signs of
a really unflattering gray, and his weight had dropped so low that Abbey kept
threatening him with intravenous feedings.
He needed glasses. And, by a weird quirk of fate, he was going from 20/20 vision
to bifocals in one fell swoop. He'd always been an overachiever.
"I'm a real prize," he moaned.
Donna, on the other hand - and Josh couldn't believe she had turned 35 - was
widely considered one of the loveliest women in D.C. She was photographed as
often as any Congresswoman, and she was Gary Tennenberg's favorite model at
every charity event he "dressed." There was an elegant, regal quality about
Donna now, although she retained the same sharp wit and lively charm that had
won Josh over in his dingy Manchester "office" eleven years before.
Her love life was a matter of conjecture only, for she appeared at public
functions alone or with friends, and dated very, very privately. She'd been
spending a lot of time with Josh's old friend Mike Casper, now a Deputy
Assistant Director of the FBI, for a while, but that hadn't lasted. Of course,
the relationship wasn't helped by the fact that Josh had tried to get Mike
transferred to Arkadelphia, Arkansas - and that put another wedge between Josh
and Donna that had lasted for months. At least Donna couldn't blame Josh about
Cliff Calley, who had finally given up and married a nice Republican girl.
And why the hell was Josh pondering this, on a day when he had serious,
important work to do?
Because his life sucked. So hard.
He welcomed the news brought by his latest - temporary - assistant, who said
that Nina Seaborn was outside and wanted to see him.
"Great!" Usually, he enjoyed her visits. Her sunny outlook was a welcome change
from the continual Congressional gloom. Today, however, before he could even get
out of his chair, he found himself face-to-face with Nina at her angriest.
"What's the matter?" he asked, genuinely confused by Nina's flashing eyes and
clenched hands.
She pulled the jacket of her suit tighter and stalked over to the table. "Two
guys from the Treasury Department, you said."
It took Josh a moment to understand what she was talking about. "Yes. Even
though it's very early in the process, Sam's entitled to protection. He wouldn't
take it unless we got someone for you. Are you unhappy with the people on your
detail?"
"The Treasury Department? I thought they were here to make sure my viola didn't
get nabbed by an autograph seeker!"
Josh's mind reeled. Was it possible that she...? "Do you mean to tell me," he
began, choking back incredulous laughter, "that you don't know that the Secret
Service is part of the Treasury Department?"
"Well, I do now!" She put her hands on the table, leaning over as if catching
her breath. "Wow. I'm...I'm sorry. I didn't mean to yell. I'm just so
frustrated."
"And you thought you'd take that frustration out on me?" Josh peered at her with
a goofy smile on his face until she smiled back, opening her arms so he could
hug her.
"You're stiff as a board!" Nina exclaimed as she ran her hands over Josh's back.
"Can I take this to mean that I'm not the first person to unload on you today?"
"Noooo, not by a long shot." He ushered her to a chair and pulled up another one
close to her. "But you're the best musician I've seen all day."
She really was. Sam had been in Oregon the night Nina was called on to replace
the viola soloist in Strauss' "Don Quixote," so Josh had gone in his place - and
been blown away by the warmth of Nina's sound, the utter confidence she
displayed as she played a delightfully robust Sancho Panza to the 'cellist's
sorrowful, mad knight. The reviews had been astounding, rating Jacqueline
Fisher-Lennox as a musician to be taken seriously in her own right rather than
the "appendage" known as Nina Seaborn, although a few papers made snide comments
about how politics were creeping into the arts.
Nina rewarded today's compliment with a full-blown smile. "Well, it looks as if
I've wasted a trip down here, and you've wasted ten minutes on me having a nutty
because there are two people with guns following me around all the time."
"I know it's weird, and that there's no way these guys can be completely
unobtrusive. But after a while they kind of fade into the background, and you
won't be so aware of them all the time." Josh looked out the window as he
continued, relishing the warmth of the sun on his face.. "They're there to make
sure that nothing happens to you or Helen. They're there to make sure that Sam
can keep his eye on the ball. He has an important job to do, and the one he's
running for is a thousand times more important. For him to be able to function,
he has to know that the people he loves are safe."
"But I thought that was usually reserved for the President's family - not the
family of someone who wants to be President."
God. He was going to have to tell her.
"Nina. Sit down with me, okay?" He turned his chair so he was sitting
knee-to-knee with her, and he reached over and took her hands. "Sam's an
incredibly popular guy. He's the driving force behind a movement that's bringing
hundreds of thousands of people - disenfranchised people, citizens who had long
since given up on being part of the process - together as a force to bring about
the changes we've needed since...well, forever."
"I'm very proud of him," Nina said softly, glancing at Josh's face. Her eyes
widened. "Someone's threatening him?"
"It's not uncommon," Josh began, but Nina's voice cut him off.
"Someone's threatening him? What the hell, Josh, why am I just hearing about it
now?" She snatched her hands away from his and folded her arms across her chest,
her hands clenching the fabric of her jacket.
"We didn't want to worry you."
"That's crap." She narrowed her eyes, her voice lowering to an almost feral
growl. "Who's behind the threats?"
"The usual charmers - a few people who didn't get it that the C.A.P. was pretty
much toast, the anti-anything-that's-not-from-the-50's club, and various and
sundry other strands cut loose from the lunatic fringe." Josh sighed and
loosened his tie. "But that's not why Sam wanted someone to take care of you."
Silence. Nina's face went white. "Oh."
"Yeah." Josh got out of his chair and paced the room, knocking boxes and
wastebaskets out of his way. "Most people would just think that threatening a
politician's family wasn't anything out of the ordinary. But people who
were...the ones who..."
"Josh..." Nina turned in her chair and held her hand out to him, and he walked
over and took it.
Josh crouched by her chair, holding her hand and looking up at her. "We take
this stuff seriously."
"I know. I'm sorry." She shifted again, letting Josh hold her, unsure of who was
receiving the most comfort. "What about Helen?" she whispered. "Did anyone
threaten her?"
"No." Josh's voice was firm.
"Do you mean it?" Nina asked, lifting an eyebrow, "or is that what you've been
told to tell me?"
"Honest to God," Josh declared, "that's not happening. No one's made a peep
about Helen. It's just you, and it's probably nothing, but we'll all sleep
better if the Secret Service is on the case."
Bartlet had threatened Josh with every dire punishment imaginable unless he
allowed the strings to be pulled. "I will not see someone I love gunned down
again," he had declared, in that fatherly voice Josh missed so, so much. "I will
take care of this on my end, or, so help me God, I will bring her down to live
with me until Sam's inaugurated."
But Nina didn't need to know about that.
Josh stood up and gently brought Nina to her feet. "Am I forgiven?" He made
certain to accompany his question with what he thought of as his most winning
smile.
"Yes, and I owe you one for putting up with me when you're obviously having
quite a lousy day. What can I do to make it up to you?"
Laughing, Josh leaned against the table. "There's nothing in the world that I
need."
Liar.
"Maggie's single, and I know she thinks you're adorable," Nina said, idly
pushing some file folders until they formed a circle. "Or I could ask Donna to
dinner on a night that Sam just happens to bring you home."
"I see Donna just about every day."
"In the office. In weird little rooms with too many take-out cartons and not
enough windows."
"She's just a co-worker," Josh insisted, wincing as he heard his voice climb
half an octave. Maybe Nina wouldn't notice.
"Your voice gets really squeaky when you lie like that."
Dammit.
"She hates me. I got scared of how close we were getting, I got involved with
Amy, I married her, and now Amy's gone and Donna hates me."
"Oh, for the love of God!" Nina cried to the ceiling, her hands spread wide in
supplication. "How can you be the smartest guy I know and such a complete twit
at the same time?"
"It's a life skill," Josh said. "I got a merit badge for it."
Nina laughed, and some of the worry lines on her face disappeared. "You may be a
complete twit, Josh, but you're my complete twit."
"I'll keep that in mind for when you become First Lady."
She blanched again. "Don't say that."
"What - you believe in jinxes, Nina?"
"No! I just...well...it makes me feel a little queasy, that's all. The First
Lady...thing. I mean, my role model is Abbey Bartlet, and how could I ever
measure up to her?"
"How could you not?" Josh pulled his paperwork together and nodded at the door.
"I'll walk you out. Listen, you'd be the perfect First Lady. You'd bring the
arts into the White House - not just as a fan, but as a performer. No one's ever
done that before." Nina had brought music back into his life, something he
didn't think could ever happen to him, and he had all the zeal of the
freshly-converted. "You could spread the word that arts education is a vital
component of every child's learning process, and that it's not a frill to be cut
when times are hard." They got to the lobby, and Josh leaned over to give her a
kiss on the cheek. Nina returned the kiss, then grinned as she wiped lipstick
off Josh's face.
"Thanks for the pep talk, coach."
"Nothing to it. All I have to do is threaten you now and then with some more
viola jokes and you're sweet as pie."
"Stinker," Nina called over her shoulder as she walked out into the crisp
February air, and she even managed a smile at the dark-suited woman who followed
her to her car. Josh watched her jaunty strides until the women turned the
corner, then hunched his shoulders against the cold and went back to the
conference room to take on the remainder of the paperwork.
"Josh."
The disembodied voice startled him, and he paused with his hand over his heart.
"Don't...do that," he whispered, squinting at Donna.
She was standing in front of the window, where the setting sun backlit her and
made her look as if she were glowing around the edges. "I didn't mean to scare
you," she said softly.
Josh found it hard to breathe. "What're you doing here?"
Donna shrugged. She smoothed her hair, licking her lips as she took a breath. "I
ran away, earlier."
"I noticed," Josh said, trying to keep his tone level.
"I'm sorry. It's just that...sometimes...you scare me." She took a couple of
steps forward. "Sometimes you get to be the old Josh, and then suddenly it's
gone, and I never know who I'm really talking to anymore."
Smiling softly, Josh leaned against the wall. The change of angle afforded him a
better view of Donna's eyes, which were soft and a little misty. "I'm a pretty
old Josh. You're almost as old as I was when you started working for me."
"Making cracks about a woman's age won't go far in helping you win her
affection, Joshua."
She hadn't called him that in...forever.
"I just mean," he said, testing each word before letting it leave his lips,
"that you're a wiser woman than before."
"Not all that wise," she whispered, and for a moment Josh was afraid there would
be tears. "I just...I can't go through that, again. I almost lost you at
Rosslyn, then that Christmas, and then I really did lose you to Amy. I can't
afford to let myself get that close to you anymore."
Oh.
"Oh," Josh said. He looked down at his shoes, then across the room, anywhere but
Donna's shimmering eyes. "I'm sorry," he added.
"Me, too. You were my best friend. I missed you."
Oh. Oh.
She crossed the room and took his hands, standing just close enough for him to
get a whiff of cologne. Not the one she'd worn in the White House, but a new
one, a more mature fragrance he'd forever associate with her.
"I missed you, too," he confessed, exhaling the words. They stood like that for
a while, holding hands, not moving, scarcely breathing. Blushing, a little. "So.
What happens now?"
"I go home and work on getting more people behind us for 724 and 618. You go
home and, well, I don't exactly want to know. But we both think for a while, and
we plan something, maybe a lunch, and we plan to take things one day at a time."
Her voice thickened with tears. "It took a long time to get over you, Josh. I
can't just leap back to where we were."
"I know that," Josh murmured, his heart full of joy. He ran one hand up Donna's
arm, then tucked a lock of hair behind her ear.
She smiled at him, a watery, beautiful, brilliant smile, then without another
word she picked up her briefcase and vanished.
It was an offer of friendship. And no one knew better than Josh the value of
having Donnatella Moss as a friend.
Or more.
***
Part two
Classification: Post-administration, political, CJ/T, S/OFC, J/...well, you'll
start to get it during this section.
Summary: 2009 "It is courage the world needs, not infallibility...courage is
always the surest wisdom." --Sir Wilfred Grenfell
***
Washington, D.C. February
***
Picking a running mate for Sam was impossible, Donna decided. Too many
variables, too many people to try and please. Too early, even with both the
Republicans and Democrats agreeing that this election needed candidates almost
two years in advance.
Too much of Josh "borrowing" her when she had work of her own to do.
But today Matt had sent her to Josh's office and they were sitting on opposite
sides of his desk, poring over stacks and stacks of files. More paper than she'd
thought was possible to accumulate, and that included the Presidential papers
that had nearly driven her insane during the M.S. scandal.
"He should be doing this himself," Donna declared as she tossed someone's career
into a black box labeled, in her largest Magic Marker, "No Way In Hell."
"Candidates never do this themselves. It's always done by a committee."
"We're the committee?"
"Yeah." Josh leaned back and scrubbed his face with his hands. "Scary, isn't
it?"
Donna knotted her hair into a bun at the back of her head and secured it with a
pencil and a chopstick she was reasonably sure they hadn't used. "About as scary
as you and Toby convincing him to run."
"That wasn't so much convincing him as catching him off guard." Josh smiled,
chuckling softly. "He called back after we called him. Know what his first words
were?" Donna, who had heard the story before, nodded, but Josh seemed to be
ignoring her, lost in the memory. "He said, 'Uh, hi...what was it, exactly, that
I agreed to, just now?'"
"And this is Presidential material?"
Josh blinked at her. "You don't think he is?"
"Yes, I think he is!" And she did, in her heart of hearts. She couldn't imagine
anyone she'd rather have as the leader of the free world. "I'm just saying, he's
still not really focused."
"He's a U.S. Senator with a pretty damn full plate. The election's not until
next year. He'll focus when he needs to." Josh stretched and put a couple of
folders on top of the desk. "This is my short list. What do you have?"
"These." Donna added her folders to Josh's. A pretty tall stack, in spite of
three solid days of culling. "Now, what?"
"I need stats on their voting records - health care initiatives, welfare reform,
civil rights. And if you can get confirmation that they weren't ever on the
'Christian Nation Bill' committee, that'd be good, too."
"Put Billy on that."
"He went back to law school."
"Then have Adele look it up for you."
"She quit," Josh sighed, running his hands through his hair.
"Then I'll have someone from my office deal with it," Donna replied, not looking
up from her notebook. When Josh didn't respond, Donna lifted her head and saw
the bewilderment on his face. "What?"
"I...I don't know. I keep forgetting."
"It's been over two years since I worked for you, Josh," she said, her tone calm
and even. "I'm considered a rising star, or whatever its equivalent might be, in
backstage politics. I don't even type my own memos or do research anymore - Matt
pays people to do these things for me so I can take meetings and organize
staff."
"So you're telling me that you're no longer at my beck and call?" Josh tilted
his head to one side.
"I was never at your beck and call," Donna said firmly, then she sighed. "Well,
maybe a little. But that's over."
"For a number of reasons."
She had to remind herself to breathe slowly. "Yes. A number of reasons."
"Like...Amy?"
Damn him to hell a dozen times over.
"Like I grew up, Josh! Like I'm not the depressed college dropout who drove to
New Hampshire on a whim with fifteen dollars and a pack of Life Savers in her
purse. Like I've survived two Presidential campaigns, the M.S. investigation,
Congressional investigation of my life, and Rosslyn."
"You weren't at Rosslyn."
God almighty, was he still pissed about that? And were those tears she saw just
before he put his face in his hands? She let the words hang in the air while she
considered her response.
"I was there when it mattered." Night after night at Georgetown. Josh's
apartment three or four times a day. Christmas Eve, which she spent in the
Georgetown trauma center. Christmas Day, waking up with a sore back from
sleeping in a chair next to his bed. Christmas night, fending off the angry
phone call from her parents for not showing up.
Josh's eyes were a rich brown. The color of chocolate. So sweet. So bitter.
"Yes, you were," he whispered. "Always there."
"Don't you forget that," she said in a mock-warning tone. Its effect was
lessened by the thickness in her voice.
"I won't." He looked down, then back at her, and the chocolate color of his eyes
had flecks of cognac that nearly took her breath away. "Donna, I--"
"I have to go." She gathered her folders, spilling papers that she didn't bother
to pick up, and held the stack to her chest like a shield.
Against him. Against ever, ever putting herself in a place where he could hurt
her like that again. She slowed her footsteps and forced a smile at Matt as he
passed her. She didn't know whether to wish that Josh had followed her.
He hadn't. The hallway was still and quiet.
Which was more than she could say for her mind.
***
The hallway was still and quiet because Matt had intercepted Josh as he tried to
take off in a dead run. Matt had seen Donna's pained smile, and the panic in
Josh's expression, and he blocked the door, standing with his hands on his hips
and a scowl on his face.
"I know," Matt began, "that this is probably pretty awkward. That you're still
stuck in some time warp where Donna's your assistant, and you have this weird
Perry Mason and Della Street thing going on."
Josh scowled. "That's kinda...weird, Matt. I mean, in the books, you could tell
if they were going to have sex based on whether they ordered onions on their
hamburgers. Donna just made sure mine were thoroughly burned. We never...with
the onions. Where we'd need to worry about them. That's a big difference."
"Whatever." Matt stared Josh down until the defiance was gone from Josh's eyes.
"I've known you a long time, Josh, and I think you're the most skillful
political operative in town. But, as a human being, you've still got a long way
to go, my friend."
"What the hell does that mean?" Josh demanded, his fists balled up on his hips.
"It means that you've already screwed Donna's life up once. I'm not going to
stand idly by while you do it again."
"You're not gonna stand idly by," Josh murmured. "You're gonna watch." He
started to walk back into the conference room, then he shook himself all over
like a dog getting out of a pond. "I mean, I'm not going to screw up, and you're
not going to watch me...not screw up..."
"I know what you mean. And I think you honestly believe it. But I'm just saying
this: hurt her again, and you'll answer to me. And the Bartlets, Sam, Nina, and
C.J. Oh, and Toby."
Josh raised an eyebrow. "Now, you're scaring me."
"Good boy." Matt gave him a shove back into the conference room. "Get back to
work. I'll have some people from the office come in and help you."
"Thanks." Josh sat down again, sniffing to determine if any of Donna's cologne
still hung in the air. It didn't. He rolled his sleeves up and put his elbows on
the table, leaning his forehead on the heels of his hands.
How had he, Joshua Jacob Lyman, graduate of Harvard and Yale, Fulbright scholar,
former Deputy Chief of Staff to President Josiah Bartlet, ended up sitting alone
in a paper-strewn conference room? How, when everybody else's lives were going
places, was his remaining a living hell?
Matt was serving as the Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, an
irony not lost on any of the former Bartlet staffers. Toby's second book had
been a smash, and his work with the President's memoirs was said to be
absolutely stunning. Donna had started an after-school mentoring program for
teenaged girls with an interest in politics, offering them career paths vastly
different from the one she'd taken. C.J. had won so many awards that she was
threatening to get a bigger place so she could store them all. Sam was a husband
and a father, and would - even if it killed Josh - be President someday soon.
Josh took stock of his existence. He lived alone in the apartment he'd shared
with his ex-wife, who had left him for a woman. He'd never bothered to replace
the bed, so he slept on the sofa, fully dressed except for shoes and tie, with
the television on all night. He'd broken most of his coffee cups and didn't
drink anything that hadn't come in a styrofoam cup or a bottle. When he got
sick, he swallowed pills with water he drank from the faucet like a dog. His
hair was coming out in handfuls, and what wasn't coming out was showing signs of
a really unflattering gray, and his weight had dropped so low that Abbey kept
threatening him with intravenous feedings.
He needed glasses. And, by a weird quirk of fate, he was going from 20/20 vision
to bifocals in one fell swoop. He'd always been an overachiever.
"I'm a real prize," he moaned.
Donna, on the other hand - and Josh couldn't believe she had turned 35 - was
widely considered one of the loveliest women in D.C. She was photographed as
often as any Congresswoman, and she was Gary Tennenberg's favorite model at
every charity event he "dressed." There was an elegant, regal quality about
Donna now, although she retained the same sharp wit and lively charm that had
won Josh over in his dingy Manchester "office" eleven years before.
Her love life was a matter of conjecture only, for she appeared at public
functions alone or with friends, and dated very, very privately. She'd been
spending a lot of time with Josh's old friend Mike Casper, now a Deputy
Assistant Director of the FBI, for a while, but that hadn't lasted. Of course,
the relationship wasn't helped by the fact that Josh had tried to get Mike
transferred to Arkadelphia, Arkansas - and that put another wedge between Josh
and Donna that had lasted for months. At least Donna couldn't blame Josh about
Cliff Calley, who had finally given up and married a nice Republican girl.
And why the hell was Josh pondering this, on a day when he had serious,
important work to do?
Because his life sucked. So hard.
He welcomed the news brought by his latest - temporary - assistant, who said
that Nina Seaborn was outside and wanted to see him.
"Great!" Usually, he enjoyed her visits. Her sunny outlook was a welcome change
from the continual Congressional gloom. Today, however, before he could even get
out of his chair, he found himself face-to-face with Nina at her angriest.
"What's the matter?" he asked, genuinely confused by Nina's flashing eyes and
clenched hands.
She pulled the jacket of her suit tighter and stalked over to the table. "Two
guys from the Treasury Department, you said."
It took Josh a moment to understand what she was talking about. "Yes. Even
though it's very early in the process, Sam's entitled to protection. He wouldn't
take it unless we got someone for you. Are you unhappy with the people on your
detail?"
"The Treasury Department? I thought they were here to make sure my viola didn't
get nabbed by an autograph seeker!"
Josh's mind reeled. Was it possible that she...? "Do you mean to tell me," he
began, choking back incredulous laughter, "that you don't know that the Secret
Service is part of the Treasury Department?"
"Well, I do now!" She put her hands on the table, leaning over as if catching
her breath. "Wow. I'm...I'm sorry. I didn't mean to yell. I'm just so
frustrated."
"And you thought you'd take that frustration out on me?" Josh peered at her with
a goofy smile on his face until she smiled back, opening her arms so he could
hug her.
"You're stiff as a board!" Nina exclaimed as she ran her hands over Josh's back.
"Can I take this to mean that I'm not the first person to unload on you today?"
"Noooo, not by a long shot." He ushered her to a chair and pulled up another one
close to her. "But you're the best musician I've seen all day."
She really was. Sam had been in Oregon the night Nina was called on to replace
the viola soloist in Strauss' "Don Quixote," so Josh had gone in his place - and
been blown away by the warmth of Nina's sound, the utter confidence she
displayed as she played a delightfully robust Sancho Panza to the 'cellist's
sorrowful, mad knight. The reviews had been astounding, rating Jacqueline
Fisher-Lennox as a musician to be taken seriously in her own right rather than
the "appendage" known as Nina Seaborn, although a few papers made snide comments
about how politics were creeping into the arts.
Nina rewarded today's compliment with a full-blown smile. "Well, it looks as if
I've wasted a trip down here, and you've wasted ten minutes on me having a nutty
because there are two people with guns following me around all the time."
"I know it's weird, and that there's no way these guys can be completely
unobtrusive. But after a while they kind of fade into the background, and you
won't be so aware of them all the time." Josh looked out the window as he
continued, relishing the warmth of the sun on his face.. "They're there to make
sure that nothing happens to you or Helen. They're there to make sure that Sam
can keep his eye on the ball. He has an important job to do, and the one he's
running for is a thousand times more important. For him to be able to function,
he has to know that the people he loves are safe."
"But I thought that was usually reserved for the President's family - not the
family of someone who wants to be President."
God. He was going to have to tell her.
"Nina. Sit down with me, okay?" He turned his chair so he was sitting
knee-to-knee with her, and he reached over and took her hands. "Sam's an
incredibly popular guy. He's the driving force behind a movement that's bringing
hundreds of thousands of people - disenfranchised people, citizens who had long
since given up on being part of the process - together as a force to bring about
the changes we've needed since...well, forever."
"I'm very proud of him," Nina said softly, glancing at Josh's face. Her eyes
widened. "Someone's threatening him?"
"It's not uncommon," Josh began, but Nina's voice cut him off.
"Someone's threatening him? What the hell, Josh, why am I just hearing about it
now?" She snatched her hands away from his and folded her arms across her chest,
her hands clenching the fabric of her jacket.
"We didn't want to worry you."
"That's crap." She narrowed her eyes, her voice lowering to an almost feral
growl. "Who's behind the threats?"
"The usual charmers - a few people who didn't get it that the C.A.P. was pretty
much toast, the anti-anything-that's-not-from-the-50's club, and various and
sundry other strands cut loose from the lunatic fringe." Josh sighed and
loosened his tie. "But that's not why Sam wanted someone to take care of you."
Silence. Nina's face went white. "Oh."
"Yeah." Josh got out of his chair and paced the room, knocking boxes and
wastebaskets out of his way. "Most people would just think that threatening a
politician's family wasn't anything out of the ordinary. But people who
were...the ones who..."
"Josh..." Nina turned in her chair and held her hand out to him, and he walked
over and took it.
Josh crouched by her chair, holding her hand and looking up at her. "We take
this stuff seriously."
"I know. I'm sorry." She shifted again, letting Josh hold her, unsure of who was
receiving the most comfort. "What about Helen?" she whispered. "Did anyone
threaten her?"
"No." Josh's voice was firm.
"Do you mean it?" Nina asked, lifting an eyebrow, "or is that what you've been
told to tell me?"
"Honest to God," Josh declared, "that's not happening. No one's made a peep
about Helen. It's just you, and it's probably nothing, but we'll all sleep
better if the Secret Service is on the case."
Bartlet had threatened Josh with every dire punishment imaginable unless he
allowed the strings to be pulled. "I will not see someone I love gunned down
again," he had declared, in that fatherly voice Josh missed so, so much. "I will
take care of this on my end, or, so help me God, I will bring her down to live
with me until Sam's inaugurated."
But Nina didn't need to know about that.
Josh stood up and gently brought Nina to her feet. "Am I forgiven?" He made
certain to accompany his question with what he thought of as his most winning
smile.
"Yes, and I owe you one for putting up with me when you're obviously having
quite a lousy day. What can I do to make it up to you?"
Laughing, Josh leaned against the table. "There's nothing in the world that I
need."
Liar.
"Maggie's single, and I know she thinks you're adorable," Nina said, idly
pushing some file folders until they formed a circle. "Or I could ask Donna to
dinner on a night that Sam just happens to bring you home."
"I see Donna just about every day."
"In the office. In weird little rooms with too many take-out cartons and not
enough windows."
"She's just a co-worker," Josh insisted, wincing as he heard his voice climb
half an octave. Maybe Nina wouldn't notice.
"Your voice gets really squeaky when you lie like that."
Dammit.
"She hates me. I got scared of how close we were getting, I got involved with
Amy, I married her, and now Amy's gone and Donna hates me."
"Oh, for the love of God!" Nina cried to the ceiling, her hands spread wide in
supplication. "How can you be the smartest guy I know and such a complete twit
at the same time?"
"It's a life skill," Josh said. "I got a merit badge for it."
Nina laughed, and some of the worry lines on her face disappeared. "You may be a
complete twit, Josh, but you're my complete twit."
"I'll keep that in mind for when you become First Lady."
She blanched again. "Don't say that."
"What - you believe in jinxes, Nina?"
"No! I just...well...it makes me feel a little queasy, that's all. The First
Lady...thing. I mean, my role model is Abbey Bartlet, and how could I ever
measure up to her?"
"How could you not?" Josh pulled his paperwork together and nodded at the door.
"I'll walk you out. Listen, you'd be the perfect First Lady. You'd bring the
arts into the White House - not just as a fan, but as a performer. No one's ever
done that before." Nina had brought music back into his life, something he
didn't think could ever happen to him, and he had all the zeal of the
freshly-converted. "You could spread the word that arts education is a vital
component of every child's learning process, and that it's not a frill to be cut
when times are hard." They got to the lobby, and Josh leaned over to give her a
kiss on the cheek. Nina returned the kiss, then grinned as she wiped lipstick
off Josh's face.
"Thanks for the pep talk, coach."
"Nothing to it. All I have to do is threaten you now and then with some more
viola jokes and you're sweet as pie."
"Stinker," Nina called over her shoulder as she walked out into the crisp
February air, and she even managed a smile at the dark-suited woman who followed
her to her car. Josh watched her jaunty strides until the women turned the
corner, then hunched his shoulders against the cold and went back to the
conference room to take on the remainder of the paperwork.
"Josh."
The disembodied voice startled him, and he paused with his hand over his heart.
"Don't...do that," he whispered, squinting at Donna.
She was standing in front of the window, where the setting sun backlit her and
made her look as if she were glowing around the edges. "I didn't mean to scare
you," she said softly.
Josh found it hard to breathe. "What're you doing here?"
Donna shrugged. She smoothed her hair, licking her lips as she took a breath. "I
ran away, earlier."
"I noticed," Josh said, trying to keep his tone level.
"I'm sorry. It's just that...sometimes...you scare me." She took a couple of
steps forward. "Sometimes you get to be the old Josh, and then suddenly it's
gone, and I never know who I'm really talking to anymore."
Smiling softly, Josh leaned against the wall. The change of angle afforded him a
better view of Donna's eyes, which were soft and a little misty. "I'm a pretty
old Josh. You're almost as old as I was when you started working for me."
"Making cracks about a woman's age won't go far in helping you win her
affection, Joshua."
She hadn't called him that in...forever.
"I just mean," he said, testing each word before letting it leave his lips,
"that you're a wiser woman than before."
"Not all that wise," she whispered, and for a moment Josh was afraid there would
be tears. "I just...I can't go through that, again. I almost lost you at
Rosslyn, then that Christmas, and then I really did lose you to Amy. I can't
afford to let myself get that close to you anymore."
Oh.
"Oh," Josh said. He looked down at his shoes, then across the room, anywhere but
Donna's shimmering eyes. "I'm sorry," he added.
"Me, too. You were my best friend. I missed you."
Oh. Oh.
She crossed the room and took his hands, standing just close enough for him to
get a whiff of cologne. Not the one she'd worn in the White House, but a new
one, a more mature fragrance he'd forever associate with her.
"I missed you, too," he confessed, exhaling the words. They stood like that for
a while, holding hands, not moving, scarcely breathing. Blushing, a little. "So.
What happens now?"
"I go home and work on getting more people behind us for 724 and 618. You go
home and, well, I don't exactly want to know. But we both think for a while, and
we plan something, maybe a lunch, and we plan to take things one day at a time."
Her voice thickened with tears. "It took a long time to get over you, Josh. I
can't just leap back to where we were."
"I know that," Josh murmured, his heart full of joy. He ran one hand up Donna's
arm, then tucked a lock of hair behind her ear.
She smiled at him, a watery, beautiful, brilliant smile, then without another
word she picked up her briefcase and vanished.
It was an offer of friendship. And no one knew better than Josh the value of
having Donnatella Moss as a friend.
Or more.
***
Part two