Fallout
Disclaimer: I don't own any of Sorkin's characters, so yeah, no suing allowed.
Author's Notes: First off, thanks to my kick arse beta Heather, who without a doubt has gotten me back into gear. The girls are back in town! This is set sometime around Wake Up Call or Freedonia. Feedback is very much requested, it makes my day!
She tells herself that it doesn't matter. She tells herself that it is just a distraction, something that needs to be done to maintain her ever-slipping sanity. After all, doesn't she deserve this? Hasn't she put up with more than any person should and did it with a smile on her face? For years on end she made memories and now she wants to forget them. She wants to forget him yelling at Felicity's cats and DVD players and red dresses and shared beers and the nights she watched him sleep, praying that he would be okay, that he would still be her Josh. He had always been her Josh, no matter what. So why then, does she ask herself, do these thoughts never go away? No matter how hard she tries, they stick with her.
The stream of men has been endless. A new gomer at every campaign stop, an easy bar pick up. Then she remembers not to call them gomers because she is trying to stop thinking about every part of him, so she calls them distractions in the back of her mind. That part is never difficult; after all, she knows that she is the stereotypical leggy blonde. She knows the way to seduce them; she has ever since poor Freddie. She even got a man when they both were in that same damn hall in Iowa, just to prove to herself that she could forget him. It didn't work, all she could think about was how he was right there, trying to sleep but failing miserably at it. That's how well she knows him, she knows how he is going to sleep because of CNN. She knows how he is going to sleep that night because she can feel it deep inside of her. Through all the men though, she can never forget what she wants to forget. She tells them to fuck her brains out, harder and faster, it doesn't matter, just go. Now she prays that while they're fucking her brains out, they also take out the memories. She is tired of living in them, tired of dying in them.
It's been too long since they had happy memories together, way to long. Sometimes when she reaches the brink she remembers something that was so inexpressibly wonderful at the time it made her heart stop. When she read the note inside of the skiing book, when they talked about red lights, when she sat on his lap in the cab to the Inaugural Ball, when he sat with her that night by the fountain, when he gave her that diplomatic passport, when she first woke up and there he was. She hates it when that happens, she tells herself that it all was in the past, like some wonderful dream, but she has to forget it and move on. Morning's harsh light always comes.
Sometimes her distractions mumble endearments in her ear and she wants to block them from registering. Every time they say those things she hears invaluable or amazing or even Harpo for that matter. She hates how her mind does that, she hates how he's buried in the deepest part of her mind. It is as if they have been together for so long that osmosis has taken place and somewhere along the line he has seeped into her. She wants to forget him and get back to her, even if it is only for a few minutes. She knows that this isn't her, that she isn't some tawdry whore, but sometimes she honestly thinks she is beyond caring.
When her distractions are gone, she goes into the shower and makes the water so hot it almost scalds her skin. Then she scrubs their touch off with such vigor that she thinks one of these times she is going to rub her skin right off. While she scrubs, she thinks about where she should have been. She likes to think that she would be working in some library somewhere, pouring over ancient French texts and translating them. She thought that she would have been a doctor's wife and lead a glamorous life. She would have the cute little house in the suburbs with a house full of kids. She always wanted kids. She never thought that she would be a step above a secretary on the run from what she knows to be an elusive truth and she would be calling a White House bullpen a home. She curses the day she impulsively when to Manchester. It was true that was the day her life started, but it was the life that she doesn't know if she wants to live anymore. It has gotten too hard for here these days and she doesn't know why.
When she had one of her really bad days, the kind were she didn't know which way was up and which way was down, the kind where she wondered why she just didn't die in the desert, she made one of her biggest mistakes. She always thought loving the man she could never have was her biggest mistake, but the night with Will was right up there. It was something rooted in a desperate compulsion. She wanted to forget Gaza and Colin and the look on that beautiful face when she finally woke up. She had never taken Will to be the kinky type. Then she supposed that she had never really thought about it before, so it was a moot point. She knew that he knew it was all an act, a selfish act of forgetting something that was unforgettable, but she still gave the command to fuck her brains out and he sure did try. Several times in fact. That next morning she used a whole bottle of her body scrub, trying to wash the night away.
Tonight though, she lies in a little ball on her bed, her robe loosely tied around her. She cries for all that she has lost and all that she has gained and the seeming unbalance of her life. Part of her feels like she is a little girl and the other part of her feels like a very old woman. In her minds eye she can still see herself in CJ's office and she can still hear her words. They hurt like hell at the time, but now, now they are just a dull ache on her bruised soul. It was enviable; she just did not think that the damned Brussels free trade deal would implode her life so spectacularly. That was the best word for it: implosion.
Her self-deprecation is complete. She thinks that she has become addicted to having a different man in every town, that she is dependant on the slight relief it gives her life. Now she understands what Leo went though for all those years, being beholden to something that was so devastating. Hell, even Laurie got paid to do what she was doing out of some sick need to heal herself. On the other hand, she was beholden to Josh for nine long years, and even now in her state of utter disrepair, she still is. She does not even recognize herself anymore. Inside she feels so old and used up, like she has lived million lifetimes over and over again.
There had been good times, there had been wonderful times and she knew that. She just needs to be reminded. She needs to be reminded that there is always hope no matter what. She uncurls herself and slowly gets up. She doesn't care that the front of her robe is falling open and she can see the scar on her chest. It mirrors the one on his chest. Every time she catches a glimpse of it she wants to mock fate. His and hers scars. Somehow though, it works on a sick and twisted level. They have shared nearly every experience together, so why would courting Death be any different?
She picks up her cell phone from the charger and opens it up. She hits number one on the speed dial and waits. One, two, three rings. She knows that he won't fail her, not now, he never has.
"Hey, Sam? It's me, Donna…"