XI

"Okay, again I must ask - who are you?"

"Donna." Josh rolled his eyes.

Donna watched her boss's face, illuminated by the streetlights as they drove toward the airport. "Josh. You're being calm, you're being restrained around Republicans, you're being... nice." She wasn't sure how much more of this weirdness she could take.

He gave her a quick sideways glance. "I'm not nice?" he demanded, amused.

"Not usually!"

"I think I'm wounded."

"I think you're possessed!"

"Donna..." Josh sighed, and was silent for a moment. As they came to a stop at a junction, he half-turned to look at her. "I just, I feel like... It's all spinning away from me, Donna. What happened last week, I realised... I don't have anything. All I am is what I do. I'm just a politician."

"Josh-" she began, but he talked over her as they pulled out into the traffic.

"I'm just a politician, Donna, and I don't like it. I don't want to be that guy. I need to be better than that. I need..." He shrugged, as if angry at his own inability to articulate it. "I need to be a good guy."

Donna snorted. "Josh," she laughed affectionately. "Newsflash - you are a good guy! You just need to, you know, learn to act like it a bit more often."

"I'm changing, Donna," he insisted earnestly. "I'm gonna learn to be better. I'm gonna be nicer."

"Well, not that I don't applaud you, but it's not gonna last very long," she informed him. Josh shot her a look, and even in the dimness she could see genuine injury in his eyes.

"You think it's something inherent in me?" he asked quietly. "You think I'm never gonna be able to change like that?"

Donna gave him a wry smile. "Mostly? I think it's something inherent in the fact that you're about to meet my mother."

The Moss family deputation were not hard to miss. Both Donna's mother and her sister - Joletta, the middle sister, Donna had explained - had the same shockingly white-blonde hair. Both of them wore it as long as Donna did, although Mrs. Moss had hers up in a neatly practical bun.

There, any resemblance between his assistant and her family came to an end.

Joletta was certainly, at least superficially, a very pretty woman, if perhaps not quite as stunning as her younger sister. However, there was something missing; no spark to her, none of the bright perkiness that he immediately associated with Donnatella Moss. She dressed like a much older woman, and appeared to be happier studying the floor than looking anyone in the eye. She trailed behind her mother and her husband.

The husband was not hard to identify as the Republican Wisconsin gomer Donna had pegged him as. He wore a cheap suit and an obnoxious expression, and he strutted.

Josh Lyman had, at times in his life - and usually by his assistant - been accused of walking with a swagger. However, he was damn sure he'd never strutted like this guy. Josh decided he had to be some kind of minor official - a bank manager or the boss of an insurance company or something equally banal. He walked as if he was used to expecting the littler people to scurry about and do his bidding.

Josh couldn't help feeling extremely smug about his own, infinitely higher position of authority. There weren't many steps beyond Deputy Chief of Staff you could go.

His first gut reaction to the sight of Mrs. Moss striding towards him, however, was extreme nervousness. She had a light of stubborn determination in her eye that he would forever associate with Donnatella Moss, laying down the Rules when he was recovering from the shooting.

And this was the woman with whom she could not argue.

Help.

The Moss matriarch bore down on the pair of them like some kind of battlecruiser coming in to dock. "Donnatella," she barked imperiously. Josh felt an embarrassing urge to straighten up and tuck his shirt in.

"Hi, mom. Hi, Joletta." The tight smile she'd pasted into place wavered a little. "Mike."

Donna's mother sniffed loudly. "Really, Donnatella, did you iron those clothes this morning? Look at the state of you."

Donna automatically started to smooth out her blouse. "I came right from work, mom," she excused herself, while Josh wondered if there truly were people in the world who ironed clothes in the morning before they put them on. But then, he'd never quite seen the point of this desire to press out wrinkles which were only going to reappear as soon as you put the clothes on.

"Still working at this hour?" Mrs. Moss tutted disapprovingly.

"We were at the Capitol Beat studio for the live broadcast," Donna explained. "Josh drove me over."

That sounded like his cue to be his usual charming self. He smiled politely as Donna made the introductions. "Josh, this is my mother, my sister Joletta, and her husband Mike Vincent. Mom, Jo, Mike, this is Joshua Lyman."

Mrs. Moss inclined her head slightly and shook hands as if she'd like to wash her hand afterwards. Gomer brother-in-law had the kind of limp handshake he despised, and Donna's sister hung back as if it would never occur to her that she was important enough to be officially greeted. He gave her a flash of his best grin - the one which showed off those mythical 'dimples' both Donna and his mother seemed to be convinced he possessed - and was rewarded with a shy smile in return. In that, at least, he could see something of Donna.

Mike scowled at him, apparently objecting to the idea of his wife being smiled at. "Ah, yes, you're the Deputy Chief of Staff," he said, heavily accenting the 'deputy' part as if Josh should somehow be ashamed of being only second-in-command. Considering that he knew that the next step up was Leo McGarry, it was pretty hard to feel bad about himself. Mike gave him a self-satisfied smirk. "I see you've been in the news."

"Yes, that tends to happen when you work in the White House," Josh agreed pleasantly. "The smallest little thing gets blown all out of proportion."

Mrs. Moss fixed him with a laserbeam glare. "I'd hardly call anything 'small' when you work in such close proximity to our country's seat of government."

Apparently light-hearted easy charm was not winning the crowd over. He let the smile fade, and said earnestly "Well, Mrs. Moss, I do agree that in my position I'm entrusted with a lot of responsibility. But I do the job to the best of my ability, and I know I couldn't do that without your daughter there to help me."

He was rewarded with a grateful smile from Donna for that, but Mrs. Moss looked unimpressed, and Mike gave a 'yeah, right' eye-roll that made Josh want to punch him. He'd played some tough crowds - many of them over the past couple of days - but this one was going to be murder. He found he wasn't even so bothered by the jabs at his position as by the way they seemed determined to be unimpressed with Donna. He wondered how she'd ever escaped becoming a black-hole of self-esteem like her middle sister.

But still, these were Donna's family, Republicans or not, and this was the new unflappable nice-guy him. He smiled again. "My car's just outside, I'll drive you to your hotel. Would you like me to help you with your baggage?"

From the brusque way Mrs. Moss handed it over to him, he was left with the impression that he was supposed to have made this generous offer much earlier.

As they walked towards his car, Donna made an overly cheerful attempt to start a conversation in the frigid atmosphere. "So, Joletta, how are the kids?"

"Oh, they're-"

"They're doing very well at school," Mike immediately overrode her. "Thomas came top in the class in maths last term, and Susie's learning to play the piano. Her teacher thinks she may be a child prodigy."

"I used to play the flute," Donna offered.

"Ah, but you didn't stick at it, did you?" said her mother darkly. "You never stick at anything."

"I stuck at politics," Donna pointed out.

"Dreadful occupation." Josh decided to tactfully pretend not to hear that part. "And besides, Donnatella, you're a secretary. There's no reason why you couldn't find secretarial work at home if you really must persist in such a common line of work."

Okay, he definitely heard that part.

"Mrs. Moss, Donna does a great deal more than 'secretarial work'," he told her, struggling to remain civil as he lifted suitcases into the trunk of the car. Heavy suitcases. Ow. "She's my senior assistant, and she's an integral part of all my work. She goes above and beyond the call of duty to keep my office functioning."

Reflected in the car window, he caught the gomer brother-in-law's smirk which clearly spelt out his opinion of what that 'going above and beyond' must entail. Josh took a certain amount of pleasure in very deliberately stepping back on his foot.

"Oh, sorry, Mike - guess I didn't see you there."

The drive to the hotel was even more hellish. Beside him in the passenger seat, Donna kept shooting him apologetic glances at each of her mother's imperious remarks or Mike's snide comments. He learned on the way to the hotel that Mrs. Moss disapproved of: politics, politicians, Democrats in particular, him as both an employer and a person, Donna's choice of job, Donna's choice of living area, Donna's choice of lifestyle, Donna's lack of a husband, and Donna's lack of children.

On the short list of things she approved appeared to be her two other daughters, and the fact that they'd done their very best to squeeze themselves into the mould of 'perfect wife and mother' their husbands had desired for them.

On the drive home, when his car was finally, blessedly, free of all but the regular helping of Moss presence, he turned to look at her.

"So... you take after your dad?"

Donna started to giggled uncontrollably, and then leaned her head against his shoulder as they drove. And suddenly it didn't seem like such a hellish evening after all.