Title: Dead end
Notes: Just a semi-short one about…yes you guessed it, J/D!! I'm sorry I'm obsessed, can I help it? Sometimes the world only seems to be beginning just as it stops.
Disclaimer: Not mine though if they were…oh the fun that would be had!
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The car was going fast, maybe a little too fast, but there was no traffic so what the hell she'd had a great day and she felt above speed restrictions. Donna yelled along to the song on the radio, it sounded like the one Tom Cruise sang in Jerry Maguire only a little different, she couldn't remember the name. It didn't matter though; her face was stuck in a permanent grin. She couldn't have been happier and it was all because of three little words.
I-love-you.
Plus it made her even happier to think about who had said them. The happy song ended and the commercials started. This wasn't good, you have to have a good theme tune to your happiness. She bent down slightly to change the channels. She flicked from one to the other finally finding the right song, she raised her head again just as the trucks horn started blaring at her. She screamed but there was nothing to do. It was too late. They say your life flashes before your eyes, it didn't. For Donna it had only just started, now it was gone.
****
The weather was very fitting I thought. It had rained for four days straight, ever since Donna had…had her accident. Today it seemed to be raining even harder than the other days, and as I got out of the car and looked up at the chapel it seemed that the rain became even harder, pounding against my head and shoulders, almost pressing me against the ground making the steps into that dismal place even harder than they already were. I stood for a minute gazing up at the spire when I felt someone put his or her hand on my arm. For a split second I thought it was Donna, I turned my head…. But it was only CJ, she was saying about how we should get out of the rain. I nodded and followed her blindly. The church was full, only a few seats remained near the front where we were to sit. I couldn't help but smile when I saw all those people. So many people had been touched by her and had had a chance to see her brilliance, her beauty, her Donnaness. I sat in the pew behind her family. They turned to see who it was and tried to smile when they saw us. I tried too but I think it came out more like a grimace. The church was quiet, and no one spoke, not even the customary cough that always rang out at funerals. Everyone was just waiting for the coffin to come through the doors. I had offered to be a bearer but in the end Sam took my place, the idea that my beautiful Donna was lying in that terrible wooden box was more than my heart could deal with. Finally the sound of a car drawing up could be heard outside and someone must have started a CD because suddenly the trembling voice of the lead singer of Counting Crows flooded this awful place. They were her favourite band…. Had been her favourite band.
The funeral came and went, to be honest I don't remember much though I think I've said that it was a beautiful service more times than I can remember. We all sit there in Donnas parents house, this little group who have nothing to do with Donnas other world. Her relatives and friends from here regard us suspiciously, like we're here to try and get a few more votes in the bag. Donnas parents though have been wonderful, I think they knew that there had always been more to our relationship than just boss/assistant. We were all sat in the living room when suddenly Toby stands up and marches through the many people stood around with plates of nibbles talking in hushed voices about nothing in particular. He walks up to and through the French windows onto the deck outside. CJ gets up to follow him and I watch as they talk outside, Toby seems angry but I guess that's how he deals. Me? Well I'm just sat, miles away from them all. No one knows…no knows what our last words together were, no one knows how our lives had only just begun.
"You ok?" Sam asks quietly, his hand moving over to rest on my shoulder, I turn to look at him, drawn out of my memories.
"No." I am not about to start lying and saying I'm great. I will never be great, I just lost my soul mate, I will never be fine again, maybe I'll just "manage".
Sam sighs and looks out to where Toby and CJ are stood. Leo is talking away with Donnas parents and some of the other staff is here. The President was only just discouraged from attending, it would have turned Donnas funeral into a press circus, the last thing her parents needed, but Charlie and Zoe were there in his place. They sat together, holding each other even more tightly than usual, realising how easily the person you love can slip away.
"You don't have to come back on Monday you know. Take some time off." Sam says to me still staring off at CJ and Toby.
"Maybe. I dunno, I want to get back to work to keep my mind off it all, but wherever I go in that place there's something to remind me…" I trail off into a thousand memories of the two of us charging along the corridors of the White House lost in arguments over the silliest things or her telling me her latest piece of useless information.
"You loved her didn't you." it wasn't really a question, just a statement of what we'd all known but no one had ever said. I stood up with clenched fists. It was all I could do to stop myself from shouting at him, saying that of coarse I had and that it was tearing out my heart and it was all I could think of and that I'd never be the same again. Instead I walked towards the deck where Sam and I joined CJ and Toby.
As I opened the door I felt the cold snap at my face, I had forgotten that it was almost Christmas. I followed Toby and CJ's gaze to a great old oak tree where a group of children were playing, oblivious of everything that was happening around them, they were playing on an old wooden swing that seemed to have been there forever. Donna probably played on there when she was little.
"Hey." muttered Toby
"Hey" Sam mumbled back. Had the world suddenly gone on quiet mode? No one seemed to be able to speak above a murmur, as if to speak loudly might make things worse.
"What am I supposed to do now!?" I suddenly cried, braking the silence and surprising even myself, unsure how I had come to say the words that had been stuck in my head since I had stood in that morgue looking over the face of my only love.
"You just…have to carry on." CJ sighed
"How? I couldn't even tell the time without her there, everything about my life is…was intertwined with her! I can't do this, I don't work without her." CJ turned to look at me and tears were welling up in her eyes.
"We'll be here, we'll help you however we can." she said as she moved over to hug me. "It just takes a little time.." she said but I moved away, and snorted in disgust and bitterness and moved down several steps towards the garden.
"Yeah! Time… well it took me a little time to tell her I loved her, look what happened then. My last words to her and then its over…." was all I could say before I felt the tears well up in my eyes again. I couldn't cry in front of them all again. So I walked away across the garden and out through the side door.
I kept walking, not sure where I was going. I looked around at the neighbourhood where Donna had grown up and I could almost see little parts of her everywhere. That smell, the smell which had always intoxicated me hung in the air and made everything seem beautiful. Children seemed to be everywhere. Shouldn't they be in school? But then I remember it's a Sunday…five days ago. Five days since I proposed and she said yes. Five days since she drove straight into that truck.
I walk along and suddenly I'm walking along next to the cemetery. It seemed like a year ago since we were here burying her in that box. I climb over the fence and start hunting. I hadn't paid any attention as to where we were going before, I just let the others lead me on. Now I walked along every row looking at names; parents, grandparents, husbands, wives, sons, daughters, they were all there in neat little rows. Finally I came to a fresh mound, the ground wasn't flat and they hadn't laid the turf back yet and behind the mound stood the piece of marble her parents had picked out. I couldn't read the message, my vision was all blurred from tears but I knew this was her, the smell of her, her essence was everywhere around me. I stood for hours, it was dark before I finally fell to my knees, pounding, digging at the earth. What if they had buried her alive? She could still be alive, just waiting for me to rescue her! She could still be alive! People did that, they practically died and then they would just come back to life, miraculously, it happened all the time! She could still be alive! I dug and dug but still I was nowhere near the coffin, it felt like they had sent it into the bowels of the earth as far away from me as she could ever be. She was alive and stuck in the bowels of the earth. I screamed out,
"Donna!!!!!" I wondered if she could hear me down there.
"I'm only five paces away Josh, you know. Have you ever heard of calling in a polite calm voice." the voice drifted through my subconscious and slowly I realise where I am.
I sit up, the computer screen in front of me has shut off and the lights are all on, I'm in my office.
"Donna?" I call, unsure of what is real and what isn't.
"You see, now that is a much nicer way of calling me." she says as she walks into the office, not looking at me but staring at a pile of paper she is about to give me. She's alive! Walking into my office!!
"Donna!" I say as I jump up and grab her by the arms, not hard but just so I can touch her and see that she is real.
"Josh? Are you ok?" she asks, she looks worried but all I can do is grin like a mad man.
"I'm fantastic! I'm…I'm really happy." Donna smiles at me, unsure if I really am ok.
"I'm happy for you." I'm looking at her; the person who I had just watch die, I'd just buried her…I thought.
"I had…I had a dream." I mumble half to myself, trying to convince myself that the real world was this one, not the nightmare I had just lived through.
"You see, you should never fall asleep at your desk, you always get really weird dreams." she is chiding me, she has that quirky grin on her face and I suddenly realise what the dream was about.
"Donna?" I'm not gonna wait till it's too late.
"Yes Josh?" she asks warily.
"I love you. I love you more than anything. I could never describe how much I love you. I couldn't work without you, I wouldn't function, I need you to make me complete. I love everything about you and I can't see a time in my life when I would want to be away from you. I would never leave you, I won't even go away for a weekend, for a day. I don't ever want to lose you Donna." She looks at me in, I guess, shock. She stands there for a minute or two.
"Wait. Can I just get this straight….You…you love…me." I laugh
"Yes." I say grinning. She looks down as she tries to compute this.
"Seriously?"
"Yes!" I say almost in hysterics. Then she smiles, then grins, then laughs, then hugs me.
"I love you too Joshua Lyman!" she cries
"Then marry me." I say and again she pulls back and stares at me.
"We haven't even been on a date…"
"We don't need to, what's the point, I don't need to go out for a meal to tell whether I want to spend the rest of my life with you…I already know that." she stares at me now, her left eyebrow raised.
"Josh? I can't tell if you're being tight fisted and unromantic about not wanting to take me out to dinner or you're being the most romantic man in the entire world."
"I'd go for B."
"I think I will." she says laughing and smiling. I move my hands up her back and pull her into kiss her, but stop just before we meet.
"So that's a yes?" I ask
"Yes." she whispers, its all I need to hear. We kiss an its….well…its beyond anything I even imagined. I mean we've kissed each other before, as friends and that was…pretty nice. But to know she's mine, to hold her without having to hold back is like nothing I've ever experienced. I could do this all day. Our mouths become tangled and finally we pull away.
"I should go home, its late, and I'm tired and I need to phone everyone in the entire world that I know." she says smiling. I pull her back to me and give her a final kiss.
"Ok." I whisper, I feel her body shiver against me and we almost lose out to lust right there in the office. But she has more control then me and moves away.
"I'll see you tomorrow." She walks out of the office backwards and I follow her. She picks up her keys.
I flash back to that picture of her screaming towards a huge truck, a blurred gravestone, a lifeless body in the morgue.
"No!" I shout out before I have time to control myself. She turns around as she picks up her bags, she looks concerned.
"No…I'll take you home. I don't want you having any accidents."
"You just want to come back to apartment." she says, but looking in no way against this idea.
"That too." I smile and lead her out to my car.