Title: Tabula Rasa

Author: ScullyAsTrinity

Category: Josh/Donna, Angst

Rating: G

Notes: This is for my West Wing girls, and you all know who you are.

Summary: The shortest, most complicated little ficlet I've ever had the pleasure of writing.

Tabula rasa. Clean slate.

Before he had joined the campaign, he was a well oiled machine. Moving flawlessly from task to task. Capitalizing on stress, on pain.

Pre-Inauguration there were system malfunctions. Death, sympathy, rust. There was rust, and the machine refused to work as effortlessly anymore.

Post-Inauguration.

Something had seeped in. Rot. Rotting slowly from the inside out, she watching him spiral and catching him just as the thread broke.

It was wearing thin now. This time another thread, a different color. A different texture.

"This can't happen now." He whispered under his breath.

"What can't happen?" Donna asked, whirling around, catching Josh Lyman off guard.

"Huh?"

"What can't happen now?" She asked again, setting aside the files she was about to organize.

"Uh, just... nothing." Josh said, his eyes faded, distracted, no longer shining. No longer holding light of any kind.

"Josh, are you alright?" She asked him, noticing the pallor of his cheeks. The crumpled tie. The disheveled hair. "You look beat. You shouldn't look beat. You just won. He's in."

"This can't happen right now." He said, brushing off her comment, walking into his office. She followed, leaving the files to balance precariously on the edge of her desk before scattering to the floor.

"What can't?"

"This can't!"

"But Josh, nothing's happening." She said, hands on her hips, hair hanging in her eyes. Her lips were moist, eyes slightly heavy from the night that had just been dealt with. A tired angel, standing before him, deserving of sleep, of rest. Of his bed.

The color returned to his cheeks, the spark to his eyes, the edge to his voice.

"Something's happening. Right here. Right now. And it just can't."