Title: Crying (4/4)

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: That's it for the melancholy. Next thing I write's going to have bunnies hopping in a field of gold. Thank you to everyone whose written me and said they enjoyed it. This one may be a little hard to follow at times, but I think you get the gist of it in the end. Josh's life without (or with) Donna.

It would be a lie to say that Josh Lyman never enjoyed life again after Donna Moss died. There were good times, good moments, freeing moments. Watching Charlie grow into a skilled political animal, as good, if not better, than Josh was. Andy sent pictures of the kids, Abbey the grand kids and Josh would file them away meticulously. He had become a neat freak since she had died. He had had more time to concentrate on these things.

Leo, C.J. (after they had reconciled), the Bartlets, everyone would approach him once every few years with a woman they had in mind. A friend of friend, smart, funny beautiful and it would be casual, drinks and dinner, no pressure. He smiled a small smile and looked down at his shoes. They knew it was futile. He would always say no.

He had chosen the life of a monk. He had chosen to remain celibate, for many reasons. Sometimes to prove her last words wrong, that he had loved her, had wanted her. He also supposed it was a way of remaining faithful to something that never was. But he also knew he was desperately afraid to love again. Years passed and he was too old to get back on the horse, anyway. It was the wrong horse.

He drank far too much for anyone's liking, especially Leo's.

But the years had not been cruel, had not been bad in Josh's mind. Only futile. Early on, despair had pushed him to the brink of sanity, perhaps well around the bend. He had held razors in his hand, pills in his backpack and once at her grave had promised he would be with her soon and had cut at himself. But he couldn't follow her like that. She had told him to go on living. And he was never so angry with her that he couldn't honor that request.

He followed her in other ways. He had become neat and celibate. Every year, on both their anniversaries, he went to the Hawk and Dove and wrote a letter to her. Some years, the letter would be twenty pages long and he would have had six beers before getting to the end, where every year he confessed his love for her, begged her to wait for him wherever she was. Later in life, the letters became more morose, as he pictured his own final end. The begging grew more insistent.

She was not with him every moment, but she arrived at some point everyday. The tall blond he saw outside Starbucks. Seeing Wisconsin cheese in the grocery store. Whenever he put a stamp on a letter. Red dresses and birds tapping on windows.

The tactile reminders alone kept her close, but Josh's own daydreams kept her closer. Late nights were spent in his armchair, his eyes partially closed, half-dreaming and half-pretending that it had never actually happened. She hadn't quit, she hadn't died, they had finished out the second term together.

At one of the many good-bye soirees, both large and small, Josh thrust into Donna's hands a letter he had written at the Hawk and Dove some years before, the night she had gone off with Jack Reese to the inn. Donna fingered the paper nervously and asked him if she should read it here or wait until later. Josh had just shrugged his shoulders, somewhat nervously.

The booth commandeered by Toby, C.J., himself and Donna was empty at the moment. C.J. was in the midst of her finest "Jackal" and Toby was blowing smoke rings and pretending to play the bongos. Donna slid into the booth and opened the letter. Nervously, Josh stuffed his hands in his pockets and pretended to watch C.J. He tried to keep from glancing back and failed miserably.

Donna's expression was completely neutral for the longest time. Neutrally breathtaking, Josh thought. After she had gotten to the second page, her lips curled into a smile and Josh finally exhaled. What he had wanted, what she had wanted... it was finally going to come together. He didn't have the courage to speak it yet, but he knew, he had always known.

Neither Josh nor Donna had noticed the club still to silence when their lips finally met that night. But the round of applause and catcalls ten minutes later, when they broke for a breath, was deafening.

"Eight and a half years in the making, baby!" C.J. had shouted as she thrust her grasshopper into the air (and all over herself.)

Leo beamed. "That's probably the best thing to come out of the Bartlet administration."

Toby followed up, cigar firmly in mouth. "Donna, you should have done that years ago. Kept him from talking!"

Donna blushed and both of them were grinning like idiots. Their friends continued to party, to find release and let go of all the stress. Josh and Donna huddled in the booth, speaking softly and kissing, sometimes gently, sometimes passionately. Every thirty minutes or so, Toby would shout out "Get a room", but he never meant it badly. They were drunk and they were giddy.

"I think you should have said screw the administration, screw the rules, this is true love and gotten a room."

He had run into Toby about ten years after her death in a small cafe in New York. Josh was advising an aspiring state Senator on a run for the U.S. senate and was just staying a couple days. Toby and Andy had moved there sometime ago and it had been so awkward and painful just to see Toby's face that Josh almost ran out of the place.

"I think..." Josh looked down at his coffee. "I think I should have done that, too. God, if there's anything I regret most..."

"Of course," Toby folded his hands. "At the time, I would have killed you if you had done anything like that. Anything even remotely like that."

"C.J. would have had my balls in a jar."

"C.J. probably would have had to wait in line," Toby took a swig of his coffee. "It would have gotten to the press, Donna's name would have become a synonym for "slut", you would have broken about eighty-three ethical rules and, you know, it would never have been a fair relationship as long as you were her boss, but at the same time... it probably would have been worth it. Not probably, it definitely would have been worth it."

And it would have been. Josh sank deeper into his armchair, hand curled around a prescription bottle, pretending to remember. He took Donna home from the end of term party. She had been a bit bashful, naked in front of him the first time. He asked if they were going too fast. She had smiled.

"Like C.J. said, eight years in the making, baby."

Making, baby. They had never really determined if it had been that night or another night. Donna claimed it was a Saturday morning, he had brought coffee and the Post to bed. He thought it had to have been the first night and fate was just chastising them for taking so long. At first, neither of them knew what to say or do. It was silence for ten whole minutes staring at a piece of plastic.

"Whatever you choose to do... I mean, I'll support... I mean, it's your choice but I'd be, I'd be very happy to have it, but I don't want to influence you."

Donna cocked her head at him. "I definitely want to take your opinion into account, Josh. Jesus, this affects you just as much as me." She smiled. "Well, for the next nine months, not so much."

"Well, the kid's half mine, so he'll probably overachieve and come out in seven."

Taxing Josh's patience, the kid came out in nine months and a week. In the delivery room, Josh threw up, nearly fainted and promised the kid lifetime Mets tickets if he would stop hurting his mother so. Donna had told him, alarmingly calm, that he was never allowed to touch her again.

Later, with the baby nestled between them, she had assured him she hadn't meant it.

"She never meant what she said, Josh."

Leo was over, looking so old he resembled Yoda. He walked with a cane now and had set it gently on the sofa. Josh swirled the soda water in his cup. He didn't drink around Leo, didn't want the questions.

Leo continued with his thought. "You weren't the reason she killed herself. People... Romeo and Juliet is just a play, people don't kill themselves because they love someone they think doesn't love them back or whatever it was. She was depressed after Germany. She had survivor's guilt. She had PTSD. The only thing that we're all to blame for is not seeing the signs, not paying close enough attention."

"But if anyone should have seen the signs," Josh retorted, "it should have been me. I should have been there for her, more then I was. God, I was so wrapped up in work. I was so wrapped up in myself... I'm still... just wrapped up in myself."

The old man across the room leaned forward. "You're too old to change that now, Josh. The most tragic thing to me about Donna's death is that she would have been able to change that. She would have made you see that there is more to life then politics."

Josh's eyes grew watery. It still was so hard for him. "She did, Leo, God she did. But I'm still... my life beyond politics is her. It still is. I still... feel like I have a life with her."

"You have a memory..."

"No! No, it's not a memory..." Josh didn't want to admit too much. He didn't want to admit that they had three children and she had finished her degree. Didn't want to admit that he knew exactly where the swear jar in the kitchen was, had coached three summers of Little League and had argued with Donna over the cut of their daughter's prom dress.

Leo almost told him not to remember what never was, but they were both too old and tired. To rewind time, Leo thought, but it was a frivolous thought anyway.

He died a year later.

The fantasy had became real one night. Josh came into his bedroom and was shocked to find Donna reading all the Hawk and Dove letters he had written, glancing at all the faces of the children, now grown. The bed was a mess of paper. Her hair was streaked with gray and reading glasses were perched at the end of her nose.

She looked up at him.

"You cut at your cheeks."

Josh found his voice came easy. "You said you loved the dimples. That they helped you get through the day. Since... I didn't want anyone else to see them anymore."

"You changed."

"Couldn't be helped."

Donna put the letter in her hand down. "No, I guess it couldn't. Josh, I didn't think that me ending my life would affect you so much. If I had known then, I would have done things differently."

"As would I."

Donna smiled. Josh feasted like a hungry man. He was well aware that he remained rooted in one place. She crawled across the bed towards him and stood up. "For instance, I would never have let you interrupt "The Jackal" for me to read one of these letters."

"Couldn't be helped."

Tears were streaming down his cheeks.

She touched his cheek with her hand. "Don't cry anymore Josh. You've been crying for thirty years now. Actually, you've been crying most of your life, since Joanie died. And you cried for your father and you cried for me and most of all, you cried for yourself. And I'm sick of the tears and the misery. I'm here now and I'm sorry that I left you."

"It wasn't true," Josh choked out. "It wasn't true, what you wrote."

"I know."

Josh half-laughed, half-sobbed, shaking his head. "I really wish you hadn't left me."

She bit her lip. "Couldn't be helped."

He looked at her, at the laugh lines around her eyes. Still breathtaking. "It really couldn't have been helped? Or was there something I should have said, something I should have done?"

"There probably was," Donna sighed. "But it's over. And it was my choice. A stupid choice, given that you would have coached our son to such Little League glory, but neither you nor I can take it back now."

"I love you," He finally stopped crying.

"I love you, too. And you know what?"

"What?"

She kissed his cheek, right above the scar. "Now we can be together."

The meaning of her words took hold about a minute later. But they were out the door, headed to the Hawk and Dove, long before paramedics even arrived.