W.W. –Tuesday afternoon.

"And your call button is here if you need anything."

"Thank you, William." Donna tipped the porter, or conductor, or whatever you call the nice guy who carries your laptop and shows you how the bed folds down. She made a mental note to expense that tip later.

"You get settled in and have a lovely trip, Missus Lyman." He headed back down the corridor.

"It's Moss. Actually. William." She grimaced, and turned to where Josh was sitting, legs stretched across the aisle in the small compartment and feet up on her seat, looking idly out the window. He had the same sour look he'd had for the last hour and half as they'd driven to the station and had the car loaded on the Autotrain.

"Oh for god's sake, Josh. Lighten up." She shoved his feet off the seat, perhaps a little more abruptly than she'd actually intended. "We have all night in this compartment, please be the slightest bit decent."

He watched her sit with a huff and start digging through her satchel for papers and notes.

"What are you working on, anyway?" he asked her as she unpacked her laptop and plugged it in to an outlet next to her seat. "You have half the office in those two bags."

"I told you. I'm writing a position paper on the role of Non-Governmental Agencies in implementing foreign aid programs. Toby asked me to do it."

"We have papers like that. We have a lot of papers like that. Maybe he's mad at you, because, you know, of the thing." He gestured vaguely.

She shot him a grumpy look. "Ok, not even I, with all my years of deciphering Josh-speak, know exactly which thing you mean. The TV-movie press issue thing? Or maybe the asking for a raise thing. I'm sure you didn't mean the 'make even Donna's first trip to Disney World a miserable exercise in mindless research without any point or merit' thing? And no, he's not mad. He said the President wanted us to come up with a fresh view starting from a clean page, and Toby volunteered me to do it."

"I don't see the problem, Donna. I tease you about your grasp of trivia and pointless minutiae, I think with some justification, but you do stuff like this all the time. You rock on pointless trivia. Just bang that bad boy out."

She considered this as the train whistle sounded and the locomotives started idling louder somewhere up ahead of them.

"This is different. This is the first thing I've ever written, even on the campaign, which is specifically for the President. I know things I've written have wound up in front of him, things I've helped on, but Josh, this is Donna Moss writing something to be put in front of the President of the United States."

He grinned and nodded. "Yeah, and how cool is that?" He winked and she blushed. He remembered the first time he'd had that feeling.

The train shuddered and heaved and rumbled for a moment, and soon it started pulling smoothly out of the station. They had about three hours till they were going to the dining car for dinner. Donna lowered her head into a briefing book, and started typing on her laptop.

"Hey, before you get lost in there, are we going to, you know?" He tried to sound casual.

"Are we going to what?" she asked, eyes wide and cheeks blushing crimson. She had already been a million miles away when he snapped her back with his question.

"Sorry, I just meant, you know, in C.J.'s office. We said some things, I did mostly, that, never mind."

"Oh. You mean talk. Josh, we can't do this." She sounded sad but resigned.

"Well, if that's how you feel, I mean, it wasn't anything, and I didn't even mean whatever you thought I meant." He looked out the window, embarrassed, and thought about going to get a drink, maybe hiding in the bar car for a while.

"No, Josh." He turned back to her and she was smiling, and blushing so much it tinged the roots of her hair pink on her scalp. "C.J.'s right- you are stupid. I mean, we can't talk right now, till I do this thing for the President. Of course we're going to talk, but I want us both to be able to really pay attention for a change. It's a long trip, maybe that's on purpose so we can talk. Depends on if C.J. was in on it. She's been waiting for us to talk for about five years I think."

"And we don't do that, do we? Talk?" He got up. "I'm going to get something to drink, and let you work for a while. Let me know if you need anything."

"Thanks honey, that's sweet," she said without looking up, typing full speed while chewing on a pencil stub.

He looked at her hard, but decided she wasn't teasing, she had just stopped paying attention. She might not have even realized she'd called him anything other than "Josh." Remembering something she had said earlier, he made a note to check into a few things before they got to Florida.

As he left the compartment into the narrow hallway, the train passed over a bridge, and the sun shown through the window. It caught her hair and spun it into gold. He squinted at her, and closed the door with a smile. First ever trip to Disney World, she'd said. That encouraged some definite plans to start forming in his wily brain. Smirking like a coyote, he stalked down the corridor to the bar.

W.W.

"Hello, mom? Yeah, hi. You'll never guess where I am." Josh looked around at the other passengers enjoying the cocktail lounge in the bar car. "Would you believe I'm on a train heading to Florida?"

Her laughter was audible to the man across the aisle from Josh.

"No really, I have this thing in Orlando, they're sending me down for a few days. No, that's okay Mom. They have a place for me to stay. No, I know. Yeah. Mom… Mom? Trust me, they're going to put us up in a nice place."

Oops. Now he'd done it. He winced and closed his eyes.

"It's me and an aide. Yes. No, just us, but we're meeting with Tom Lieber and… Yes, Donna. Of course she is. No, you really don't have to…" He stopped trying to cut her off, and let her talk.

"I'll let you know the numbers when I get back to the compartment. Donna has all the travel documents. Actually Mom I really could find my own head without her help. No, I don't know 'Shuffle Off to Buffalo.' You don't have… okay…" She sang to him, and he sipped a vodka and coke and hung his head.

When she reached the line about the stork paying a visit, he finally cut her off. "Mom- Mom! I have to go, we're coming to a tunnel." He shook off the dirty look from the older man across the aisle, shrugging his shoulders and hurrying on. "I'll call you in the morning. No, no. Okay, love you too. Bye mom!"

"A tunnel?" the man said to him, shaking his head.

"Well, it could happen." Josh said weakly. He was interrupted by a moment of darkness, cut by the running lights and a few overhead dome lights coming on. There was a sudden shift in the sound of the train on the tracks as they flitted through a tunnel and then a shock of sunlight as they just as quickly emerged.

Josh and the stranger across the way shared a look, then began to smile. Josh started laughing, and the other man soon followed despite himself.

"Okay, son. Next one's on me," said the man, gesturing towards the bar.

W.W. –Tuesday evening.

Donna took a moment to review what she had written. She normally processed information very quickly, with the ability to absorb data and compose a response at the same time. It had saved her on more than one assignment since moving to the West Wing, but it seemed to be failing her tonight.

"One overlooked consequence of relying upon NGOs to implement foreign aid programs is the increased exposure of the administration and its agencies to pressure from elements in friendly governments outside the mainstream of those governments' political constituency. For example, last year… no, in 2003… the Green Party of Germany was able to effectively lobby the EU to restrict the Red Cross from distributing food aid that might contain genetically modified grains. This had a chilling effect on the US government's ability to provide agricultural incentives in future foreign aid legislation."

It wasn't too obscure, and the logic was clear. Donna hung her head. She could not for the life of her remember where she had heard about the Green Party action, so she could not cite it in her brief. She resolved to delete the section unless she could place a source in the next five minutes.

"Donna!" Josh's call rang down the corridor. She hoped no one had sleeping children in these compartments. She ignored him and stared at her paragraph again, trying to will the information from her memory.

The door open and Josh peered in. He looked insufferably tousled and relaxed. She had circles forming under her eyes and had broken a nail changing batteries on her laptop when the power outlet went flaky on her some time earlier.

"What do you want?" she snapped at him, a little more sharply than she had meant to do.

"I was just going to say, you know, dinner. Aren't you coming?" He was a little concerned at how tired she looked.

"I told you I'd go at 7:00, okay?" She looked back at her offending paragraph.

Josh sat down across from her. He lowered his voice a notch and said, trying not to sound too snarky, "Um, Donna…"

She did not look up and made a vague gesture with one hand. He saw she'd broken a nail off even shorter than she usually kept them.

"Donna?"

She looked up.

"Josh, what?"

"It's 8:15."

"Huh. So, are you going to believe your worthless watch or me, the person who always gets you where you need to be on time? It just so happens that it's…" She looked down at her computer. "It's almost 8:25."

"Yeah." He reached over and shut her laptop.

"Make sure that thing is sleeping." She rubbed her eyes with the back of one hand. "That outlet is flaky and I don't want to run out of battery again."

"Come on, I'll take you to dinner." Making sure it went to sleep, he lifted the laptop and slid in into the seat opposite her.

She closed her eyes and leaned her head back. "I'm sorry I was testy, Josh. It's really hard to concentrate on this stuff. I think they've got the wrong girl."

"Hey, none of that." He took her hands and helped her to her feet. He found that he was standing very close to her in the small compartment, but he didn't pull back as he usually did. "I've never had any doubts that you were the right girl."

There was a pause.

"I just said that out loud, didn't I?" His eyebrows rose in surprise.

"Yeah, but I won't tell anyone."

There was another pause, and she almost smiled. Then the moment passed, and they went off in search of dinner without speaking about it again.

W.W.

Josh looked at the compartment, which was laid out with two reclining seats across a small aisle. One of the beds folded down across them, and the other folded down from the wall above it. There was a small counter space, a smaller closet, and a tiny lavatory completing the family accommodation on the Autotrain. The compartment had a large window that could be covered with a screen or curtains for more privacy.

"Donna, how is this going to work?" He looked at the pile of materials still waiting her review.

"I know, I was thinking about this during dinner. It will only be good if you are on… okay, you very nearly made me make a 'who's on top' joke, Josh. That's not funny."

He grinned, flashing the dimples full force. "I'll take the top and you work down here, ok? I don't want you to have to try to work in the bar. It's too noisy in there."

"Thanks. And thanks for reminding me about the Green Party note from the WTO briefing. I still can't believe I forgot that." She was already mentally footnoting her paper.

"You should get a good assistant. I've been coasting on the skills of mine for years." He tried with a remarkable lack of success to look innocent.

"I refuse to comment on the grounds that my testimony may tend to incriminate me," she quoted.

"Okay, if you'd be so kind as to step out for a minute, I'll lower this thing and get changed, ok?" He hoped she didn't notice how nervous he sounded. Everything seemed different, more nuanced since they had admitted that there were feelings to be discussed, that they had thought about each other in a way other than strictly as friends or coworkers. It was getting harder to bring the banter without obsessing over subtext.

"Actually I was going to brush my teeth. I think that chicken salad had too much dill. I have pickle breath. You mind?"

"Nah, go ahead. Just gimme a minute." She slipped into the lavatory and he untucked his shirt. He called in to her as he began to lower the bunk, "You know, that chicken salad was mine by the way. So glad you enjoyed it!"

"Community food!" came the shout from inside as she started running water in the sink.

Josh had not really paid any attention when the porter had shown Donna how everything worked. He tended to go big picture and let Donna catch details, but that meant it took a lot longer than he expected to get the bed secured.

He had slipped out of his slacks and into a pair of sweat-shorts, and was just taking off his shirt when Donna called out, "You decent, Josh?"

He heard his name and asked, "Yes?" The shirt lifted up over his head as he shrugged out of it.

Donna heard, "Yes" and opened the door, only to see Josh just a foot away taking off his white oxford shirt. He had on a v-neck undershirt today and she could see the top of his pale scar through the wiry brown copper hair that dusted across his chest.

Josh got the shirt off to see her, staring at his chest. He self-consciously raised his shirt to cover the scar. "What are you doing, Donna? Give me half a minute please." He tried to turn away, but with the berth down there was not really room, and he wound up backed into a corner.

"It's okay," she told him. "I've seen it, remember?" She thought back to the time after he'd been shot. She had practically lived with him, and while he'd slept she'd allowed herself to touch his scar, to make sure it was real, and that he was getting better day-by-day. Despite the awful circumstances, she'd never felt more useful, or more needed, than during those days.

"Sorry," he said, lowering his shirt a little. "I was just going, um, I'm just going to lay down and read, ok?"

"Sure," she squeezed past him and ducked under the lowered bunk to slip back into her seat. As she passed, she raised her hand and briefly laid it over his scar, just a few inches from his heart, and let her fingertips rest a split second there before she sat down. He wasn't sure he hadn't imagined it, and she didn't say anything.

He went to the lavatory, and paid special attention to his breath and trying to tame his hair somewhat, then gave his reflection a wry smile at his efforts and went back into the compartment. He climbed the step up into the upper bunk and then realized he didn't have his book.

Instead of reading, he closed his eyes and listened to the sounds of the train, the locomotives up ahead pulling the cars, the cars' wheels clacking over each new set of rails. With it all, there was the intermittent clicking of the keys on Donna's laptop and the occasional sigh or muttered notes to herself as she worked.

It was a very peaceful combination, and despite himself, Josh drifted quickly to sleep, the earliest he had been asleep in over a year.

W.W.

As she finished her work for the night, and nearly completed the paper itself, Donna listened to the soft breathing coming from above her. As quietly as she could, she gathered her materials up and let down the lower bunk, which was a good six inches wider than the top bunk.

She slipped into the lavatory and changed as best she could in the tight quarters. She dispensed with the robe and sweat pants she had brought, and instead opted for a wildly oversized Yale t-shirt she had received one year from Sam Seaborne as gift for some unspecified favor around Christmas time.

She turned out the light and slipped under the thin blue blanket that covered the lower bunk. For her, it was an early night, before 11 for certain, and she wondered if she'd be able to sleep. She decided to just lay her head down and rest for a few minutes.

W.W.

Josh awoke abruptly, unsure of his surroundings for a moment. He sat up quickly, fighting off a sudden feeling of dread, and smacked the top of his head against the top of the compartment with a good whack.

"Urrrrgh," he moaned, rubbing the crown of his head and trying to orient himself in the darkened compartment.

"Josh, are you okay?" Donna's voice was soft and clear and close, and the hairs on his arms all lifted and stood up at the sound.

"I think so. I had a dream, or maybe I heard something, anyway, I was just…" He didn't want to sound like a kid waking up and complaining about a bad dream. "Anyway, I'm okay."

"We crossed a bridge, I think. The last one woke me up, and when we crossed this one, there were some sharp sounds, about three or four sharp cracks as we crossed the far bank. I was worried it would wake you."

"Sorry," he told her, trying to relax, trying to let the calm of her voice wash over him and replace the sound of gunfire that was never too far from the back of his mind.

"You sleep so much better now, Josh. Just listening to you… Well, I used to worry. You really do sound better now compared to then." Her voice really was remarkable. He closed his eyes and drank in the soft voice coming up to him.

"I didn't know you paid that much attention, Donna," he told her. His own voice sounded harsh in is ears, and he lowered his voice somewhat. "But it's kind of nice."

"I've always paid attention to you Josh. The way you dress, the way you walk, and the way you strut in from a fight on the Hill. Even when I don't realize I'm doing it, I'll find myself replaying little bits and pieces hours or even days later. I can't help but notice you."

They continued, talking softly to each other in the darkness, for almost an hour and a half. They shared little observations from the years they'd spent together, and pondered thoughts they'd had during some harder times apart. They didn't declare their undying love and devotion, but they also didn't feel the need to retreat from every compliment with a joke, to offset every intimate moment with a bantering riposte.

Instead, they talked like very old friends, like young lovers, like two people who had gone years talking every day yet rarely said anything intimate. Finally, Josh had to get up to use the lavatory and take a pill for his back, which was bothering him just a bit as it always did while traveling. He hated to get up, to break the spell that had connected them for such a long time, but ultimately his one vodka and coke and the one beer he'd had with dinner caught up to what Donna referred to as his sensitive system and he climbed down to use the lavatory.

The light in the lavatory was bright and harsh, and it did a powerful job ruining the sweet and intimate atmosphere in which Josh and Donna had been wrapped. He washed up, and turned out the lights. He waited a few moments for his dazzled eyes to adjust, and then opened the door. He felt around for the step back up to his bunk. A soft voice called to him.

"Josh?" She was still there, still in that quiet and peaceful place, she'd somehow held on to it for him while he'd been shaken loose. He got a tingle at the nape of his neck briefly.

"Yes, Donnatella?" He tried to match her soft yet confident tone, but his voice cracked. He hated when it did that, but at least he wasn't being shrill.

"You know, I like it when you call me Donnatella. No one else really does that. Anyway, if I were to ask you something, can you promise to not get the wrong idea?"

He was having trouble paying attention to what she was saying. In the darkness, he saw only a pale glint of gold that must have been her hair on her pillow, and her voice was a velvet flame tickling right along the base of his brain.

"No, I don't think I can do that." He moved closer, to climb back up into his bunk. "I mean, I can't promise what I'll think till I think it, you know? But I can promise, I do promise that I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, and give you a chance to explain why whatever thing I thought that's wrong is wrong. Did that make any sense?"

He felt her fingertips touch him on his thigh as he climbed the step to the top bunk. Her touch was warm and soft and stopped him in his tracks.

"Fair enough," she said. "What I wanted to say… Could you stay down here with me? I mean just to talk, for a while?"

He practically fell off the step. "And the wrong thing I'd be thinking here would be…?"

She chuckled, a throaty, joyful sound somewhere deep down in her chest. "Well, if you think this is about some quick train nookie, that would be the wrong thing."

"Of course not. Okay, well, obviously, I'm thinking about that now, thank you very much." He chuckled himself. "But yes, I'd love to keep talking, and stay down here with you, but there's not a lot of space." He was regretfully thinking they'd have to raise the bunks and sit in the chairs.

"There's room if we scoonch over. I don't mind. Do you?"

He paused, trying to clear train nookie images out of his head. "I'd like that."

He carefully ducked under the upper bunk and felt along the edge of her bed, and she helped guide him to the narrow empty strip and little bit of pillow that were his. As he slipped under the light blanket, he felt the tips of his toes sliding along Donna's legs and he thought he heard her make a very quiet, "Mmmm," sound when he did.

As he settled in, or tried to, their noses bumped together they were so close, and there didn't seem enough room for knees and elbows. It was suddenly very crowded and he was intensely aware of her smell, a sort of lavender and rose-petal smell that seemed to follow him wherever he moved.

"Donna," he said, with regret and tenderness, "maybe we should do this another time when we have more…" Her fingertips touching his lips interrupted him.

"Shush," she told him, then proceeded to wiggle and bump and turn around against him in a very distracting way. In a moment, she was rolled over, facing the wall, with his arm over her and wrapped in her arms, his hand clasped in hers under her chin, her body pressed back into his. He could feel the warmth of her skin where the backs of her thighs pressed against the fronts of his. Her hair was against his cheek and in his nose, and he was swimming in lavender and rose-petals.

"Is this ok? You can just stay like this for a while?" She sounded more nervous, more in need of reassurance than she had before.

"Donna," he said, moving his mouth close to her ear and breathing the words like a man nursing a spark into flame. "Donnatella, I could stay like this forever."

She pressed her body back into him, and sighed softly. "You know, Josh, C.J. was right about you."

"You mean," he asked with the same intimate voice they had been using before, "that I am abysmally ignorant of what goes on around me?"

She laughed and it made her press against him, and her breasts to rub along his arm.

"No, you nudnik! I meant she was right about you when she said you really are very sweet. I like that you can show me sweet, I think you spend too much time hiding it."

"I have to be… I have to be this person, to do what I do. A lot of it comes from who I am." He thought for a moment, and she just let him hold her. "I like who I am, mostly, but I don't like it that parts of me get turned off, get shut down and hidden away. Especially from… from the people I care about."

"You're a good man, Josh."

"I could be a better one."

They held each other for a time, and when they spoke again a long while later, they both pulled back from the very raw and intimate place they had been. They talked about her research, and about his first campaign, and what it had been like working for Hoynes.

She told him, not everything, but more than she had ever let herself before, about the relationship that had gone so wrong that it sent her away from home, all the way to Nashua. They both agreed that neither one of them could picture what their lives would have been like had she not come. They didn't seriously try.

When dawn came, the light of day found them still wrapped together, both softly snoring. Josh looked peaceful, the worry lines around his eyes smoothed away with a slightly surprised set to his features. Donna had a subtly smug grin playing at the corners of her full lips, a vision of loveliness somewhat marred by the way she was drooling on her pillow.