Title: Crying (3?)
Author: Coffeeplease
Rating: R (Character Death, language)
Category: Heavy angst, adult themes, tragedy and melodrama. Not for the kiddies. AU
Spoiler: Everything's game up to "Impact Winter"
Disclaimer: John Wells, Aaron Sorkin, NBC, WB... I have nothing to give you. I gain nothing from this. Please have mercy.
E-mail address: permission: Sure, just tell me before you do.
Notes: C.J.'s take.
"At the time, I thought I was doing what was best for her."
It was a quiet December night. A few snowflakes had begun to fall outside and Josh and C.J. were sitting around his apartment, drinking Tequila and then beer. C.J.'s head was starting to feel a bit heavy and the noise of Josh swallowing his beer got louder and louder. It was time, she thought.
It had been two years.
It had been a year, five months and four days since she had found him at her grave in Wisconsin. He had driven there in one shot, never stopping. Nobody knew where he had gone, but everyone had guessed. Anyway, he didn't work for the White House anymore, so it wasn't as if C.J. had noticed immediately. President Bartlet had told C.J. to go get him. No use asking Toby.
He had been there for three days.
C.J. had never asked him what he planned to do, why he had done it. Just gently leaned down and touched his shoulder. He was spooned next to the dirt, his face marked and red. There were tracks of tears but there was something else, something uglier and deeper that had scarred him. A red line on his lower cheeks.
A line in that damned e-mail: "Some days I just lived to see your dimples and your smile."
There were some who never quite understood. Will, for instance, couldn't believe it when Josh turned in his resignation three weeks after the funeral. Amy kept believing that, like a stomach bug or kidney stone, it would pass. "You have to get Josh," she had told someone at a state function. "Resigning and being depressed... it's just guilt. He'll get over it and be back to browbeating Republicans in no time."
C.J. told Josh and he laughed, very quietly. It wasn't the Josh laugh of old or even a Josh laugh C.J. could recognize. But then again, this Josh no one could recognize. He never shouted. His smile was small and toothless. And the last thing he really wanted to talk about was politics.
For the first year, he hadn't really wanted to talk about her, either, and C.J. did her best to respect those wishes, although she was not entirely successful. C.J. wanted to talk about Donna. C.J. sometimes begged to talk about Donna. She'd talk about her with Toby, with Leo, sometimes even with the President. Sometimes she couldn't stop herself.
Like this night.
"I really... see, Josh... I just wanted her to grow and to be happy. I knew in some ways that what I was saying to her, to have a life without you, that it wouldn't have made either of you very happy. But at the time... at the time, all I could see was a woman in love with what she couldn't have. And no one is very happy like that."
She had, once again, said the wrong thing.
Josh's eyes got very thin and his mouth twisted. He took a very large swig of beer and set the bottle down sharply.
"Josh..."
"It makes perfect sense," his voice was almost unbearable to her. But she had started this conversation. She had to listen to him. "You and Toby and everyone... you all thought... you thought that she was just so madly in love with me and that I was completely indifferent to her."
"Of course not."
"What did you tell her to do...'Anything that doesn't have to do with Josh Lyman.'" Josh leaned back in his chair. The tension radiated from him. "She certainly managed to do that."
C.J. couldn't forget the words of the e-mail, even though she had wanted to, so badly, over the years: "I tried to do something that doesn't have anything to do with you, Josh, but I can't. I can't and I won't but I should and I can't go on like this anymore. So this I am doing by myself. Because its the only thing I can do."
After they were done reading the e-mail, they were both crying.
Two minutes after they finished reading the e-mail, Josh's body began to shake.
Ten minutes after they finished reading the e-mail, Josh began to scream.
C.J. had tried to calm him, but he thrashed around in the bed, a wounded and trapped animal. He ripped at the printout until C.J. had taken it away from him. With wild eyes he had grabbed her and shook her as the secret service agents drew closer to the bed. Dr. Bartlet ran out of the room.
"It's not true!" He had screamed. "It's not true! It's not true!"
He calmed down slightly by the time the doctors gave him another sedative. Huge sobs and muddled words. A few minutes later, he was in a deep sedate sleep. Dr. Bartlet held C.J. while she cried.
"I'm afraid for him, m'am," C.J. whimpered.
"You should be," Dr. Bartlet had replied.
The funeral was on a Wednesday and both Sam and Toby had to hold Josh up. He was drunk. Exceedingly drunk. Leo watched with eyes that were both cutting and sad. Josh wore his sunglasses and slumped over in his seat. The ceremony was about an hour long and the President had given the eulogy.
"I remember young woman who came to a presidential campaign with nothing. I remember a caring, deep soul whose pain was as intense as the love she had for this world. This young woman didn't want to punish those who had hurt her, those who had bombed her and nearly killed her."
Donna's parents looked to Josh as if he held some magic answers. Toby gripped Josh's arm, but wouldn't look at him at all.
And as C.J. and Sam had led him away from the cemetery, he took his sunglasses off and looked back at Jack Reece, Dr. Freeride and Colin Ayers. Men who didn't know each other, sat apart from each other and yet Josh knew each one.
"How come," he sounded remarkably sober. "How come they were allowed to love her? What was wrong with me?"
He turned to C.J. and she was at a loss.
"What was wrong with me, C.J.?"
"You did love her."
Josh sobbed. C.J. and Sam had to grab him tightly as he lost all control and almost fell to the ground. "I never got to show her that. What was wrong with me?"
It had been two years.
"What was wrong with me, C.J.? Why did you tell her to do something, anything as long as it didn't involve me," Josh took a swig of the tequila bottle. "Did you think I wasn't good for her? Did you think I was using her? Did you honestly think in that goddamn little head of yours that I didn't love her back?"
"Josh..."
"Just don't. Just don't. You don't know. I'm sorry you read her e-mail with me and got to see just how right you were." Bitterness and anger overtook him when he was drunk. But it was never long before the tears came. "I'm sure Donna was extremely embarrassed and humiliated and you were such a great friend to make her feel that way. Especially since there was nothing she felt for me that I didn't feel back and even more so... because," his voice choked and tears were now freely running into the scars on his cheek, "... because I loved her so much I could never have left her like this. You made her want to leave me."
His words slapped C.J. and she knew that tonight had ended years of sticky wicket jokes, small pox articles and stolen brownies. She had known, but she had to tell him anyway. It had eaten her alive over the years. She left the apartment. It was a little past midnight.
The e-mail had taken over ten minutes to read entirely. There were many points C.J. had had to look away. She felt intrusive. She felt afraid.
"It's not anyone's fault Joshua," Donna had written. "I love you, more then anything else in this life. But I know you don't feel the same way. I'm positive you don't. And I'm sure that, although this will hurt you, that you will bounce back and marry Amy and mock Republicans."
In the end, neither Donna or Amy had really gotten Josh. C.J. wished she didn't understand so clearly.