Thanks again to my betas, HarmonyLover and chai4anne.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Donna sat on the cot in a small jail cell, shaking. She was grateful that at least she had a cell by herself; they didn't put national security threats in with other inmates, she supposed bitterly. Or maybe it was because they feared she was sick and contagious; she'd been so distraught she'd thrown up twice, once in the back of the patrol car and once in the police station waiting to be booked – something which hadn't exactly endeared her to the officers who had been escorting her.

This whole day was feeling more and more like a bad dream, except she knew it wasn't. She'd barely stopped crying since the incident with the Vice President. When she remembered sitting in Peter Burton's living room, cheerily telling him how important his ideas were and how he needed to shake up the presidential race, while all the while wheels were turning in his head about bringing down the airplane that Josh was getting ready to board…she found herself nearly throwing up again at the thought.

She'd known the man was unstable. She'd known almost every one of the fringe candidates she'd visited that morning was unstable. Thirty seconds into that meeting, she should have announced she'd made a mistake and left. She shouldn't have continued with an absurd campaign strategy that, at best, would have embarrassed the Democratic Party with a debate filled with nuts, and at worst…she shuddered involuntarily. In her wildest imagination, she couldn't picture Jed Bartlet going along with such a tactic when he'd first run for President. He would have seen it for the irresponsible, indefensible, cowardly move it was. He would have understood that if he needed to be standing next to the likes of Peter Burton to appear presidential, he wasn't presidential.

She'd long recognized, of course, that Bob Russell was no Jed Bartlet, but what horrified her now was how little she'd cared about that fact. Russell was the front-runner, and that was all that had mattered. His was the most prestigious campaign to be working on, and he'd hired her to be a part of his team. Whenever questions had surfaced in her mind about whether the man she was trying to get elected should actually be President, she'd ignored them, reminding herself of her new title and her new paycheck. Wasn't it normal to want to get ahead in the workplace, after all?

Maybe, she realized glumly now, but most normal people weren't working for presidents and vice presidents. Most normal people's careers didn't have direct implications for the welfare of the nation, even the world. Most normal people couldn't, with one ill-advised visit to a nutcase, inadvertently convince him to sabotage a congressman's plane.

She let out a long, shuddering breath. She didn't know what was going to happen to her now. She'd been questioned by the Secret Service and had been about to tell them everything that had happened in the hotel room when at the last minute she'd thought better of it. Without a lawyer, with Russell lying about what had happened, and given the fact that she'd been too upset to think straight anyway, she'd decided it was best to exercise her right to remain silent. She'd see about getting a lawyer in the morning; at the moment, she just didn't have the strength for it. She'd been told she'd have a court appearance, probably sometime the next day. She hadn't used her one phone call yet. In her anguish and humiliation, there was only one person she could imagine being able to bring herself to talk to, and she couldn't call him. She closed her eyes, longing for Josh. If he was dead, she knew with certainty that she would never forgive herself.

She glanced up in time to see a female guard walking by the cell, and quickly got to her feet. "Hey!" she called out. The guard ignored her, and she ran to the front of her cell. "Excuse me? Ma'am?"

The guard stopped walking and slowly turned around. "Yes?"

"I was wondering…could you do me a huge favor…?" Donna's voice shook.

"A favor?" The guard raised her eyebrows skeptically.

"Please…I just need…" Donna found herself stammering. "Please. Could you just tell me if there's any news…if they've found that plane…the Santos plane?" She suddenly felt her heart racing, terrified of the answer, whatever it might be.

"Lady, I'm at work. You think I get to sit around and watch TV all day?"

"No, but…maybe you could ask someone. Or check the internet. Or something. Please?"

The guard shook her head in disgust. "You spoiled, prima donna DC types. You really do think a lowly prison guard like me must have nothing better to do with her day than check the internet and bring you the latest news headlines as you sit in your jail cell."

"I don't…I don't think that…it's just that it's important. You don't understand-" Donna's voice was tinged with desperation.

"Look, sweetie, I'm sure some high-priced lawyer will have you out of here in no time. You'll have to wait until then to get your cable news fix." The guard shook her head and walked away.

As Donna walked back to the cot, she realized there was a part of her that was relieved by the guard's refusal to help her. She was dangerously close to a complete breakdown as it was. Hearing that Josh was dead might be more than she could have taken at the moment.

But he was, wasn't he? She closed her eyes. An image of his mangled body lying amidst twisted metal filled her mind, tormenting her. Every hour that passed without news on the plane made it harder for her to convince herself of anything but the worst. If he hadn't been killed instantly in the crash, he'd succumbed to hypothermia in the hours that had followed. She would never see him again. And her taunting of him in New Hampshire, her frostiness when they'd encountered each other in the hotel – those would turn out to be the last words she'd ever speak to him. She sobbed bitterly. Her rationalizations for her behavior toward him began to echo in her head, now sounding hollow and absurd. She'd needed to get over him. She'd needed to convince him she was over him. And then a new sense of horror swept over her. What if she'd succeeded at that last part? Had he died thinking she didn't even care about him?

Suddenly she couldn't even remember what the point of it all had been. Why had she needed to get over him, anyway? Why had she ever needed or wanted to get him out of her life? Yes, she'd begun to despair of the notion that there would ever be anything romantic between them. For all the moments that she'd interpreted as hints that he might be interested in her, he'd never made a move, not even after Gaza. Knowing on a rational level that he was her boss and there were a million reasons why he shouldn't make a move hadn't stopped it from feeling like a rejection. And yes, she'd felt a strong desire to do something important with her life, and she'd somehow concluded that assistant work in service of an administration she believed in with all her heart didn't fit the bill, that her life wouldn't matter unless she could obtain a fancy, prestigious job title, even if it meant working for someone like Bingo Bob. And the string of canceled lunches had been just the impetus she'd needed to start nursing a bona fide grudge against Josh, telling herself it was proof of just how low she was on his priority list. But those all seemed like pathetic excuses now. None of that mattered; you still didn't just walk away from someone you cared about, discarding him like old furniture that had served its purpose and was no longer needed.

"Trust me, you're not so invaluable to this campaign that you can't be replaced in about five minutes." Bob Russell's icy words echoed in her head, along with other words.

"I think you might find me valuable…"

"You have tremendous value to me…"

"Donna's here because she's invaluable…"

The contrast tore at her heart. She knew Josh would never have said something like what Russell had said to her. She'd never been replaceable to him, not as an assistant or as anything else. She'd known that, even if she'd been pretending not to know it lately. She'd known it, and she'd still walked out on her job and on him without so much as a goodbye. The times when she'd felt ignored by him, particularly during the last weeks of her job…it hadn't been because he didn't care about her. It was because he'd been, as he always was, so consumed by the welfare of the President and the administration, and by extension the country, that he'd lost track of things like non-business related lunch dates. It was an ethic they'd all shared in the Bartlet White House: their jobs came first, because their jobs were so critical, not just for themselves but for the nation and the world.

Work consumed every waking minute on the Russell campaign, too, but the difference couldn't be starker. There were some young staffers who obviously believed in the Vice President, who didn't really know him but figured that if President Bartlet had chosen him for VP, he must be pretty amazing. But Donna had always known better, and she was pretty sure Will did too. They both knew they were working to serve the interests of one man, their boss – and that their boss was motivated by his own ambition, not by any particular sense of patriotism or altruism. And of course, she and Will had been serving their own interests, too, because if Russell got to the White House he'd most likely take them with him. Donna knew now with devastating clarity which of her two most recent jobs she was most proud of. But now it was too late.

"I'm sorry, Josh," she whispered out loud, hoping that maybe somehow, wherever he was, he could hear her.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Josh and Matt sat together under the dark sky, huddled even closer together than they had been earlier. The snow had finally stopped and the skies had cleared. There was a full moon out, which provided them with some light. Not much, but before the clouds had cleared it had been almost pitch black in their little spot in the woods. The clear sky was good, Josh figured; it would make it easier for the rescuers to find them. But it also meant that the temperature was dropping rapidly. Josh's mind felt foggy, as if he'd had too much to drink. He was pretty sure he remembered reading that that was a symptom of hypothermia. It could probably also be the result of a head injury, he supposed. Either way, he was pretty sure it wasn't a good thing.

He didn't know how long they'd been there. The hours had passed incredibly slowly. After he and Matt had gotten as warm as they reasonably could have, it had occurred to Matt that they should find a way to splint their injured limbs. Matt had found some sticks the right size, and they'd used their belts to secure the sticks to Josh's leg and Matt's wrist. Josh wasn't sure how much good the splints actually did, but he supposed they were better than nothing.

Then they'd both started to notice how thirsty they were getting. It had been hours since they'd had anything to drink. They'd resorted to drinking melted snow, hoping they weren't ingesting any noxious germs.

After the snow had stopped, he and Matt had made another feeble effort to build a fire, but by that time their hands were so cold they could barely hold the matches. Now they were sitting under their shelter, still wrapped tightly in the foil emergency blankets, shivering almost incessantly. Matt had told him the shivering was actually a good thing; when and if the shivering stopped, they'd know they were really in trouble. On one level, that information was comforting; on another, it was a terrifying reminder of how much worse things could – would – get if they weren't rescued soon. Josh realized he was barely able to detect the pain from his broken leg anymore; instead, his whole body hurt from the cold. Even breathing was painful.

He took a moment to steel himself. They couldn't give in; they had to keep their spirits up. He felt Matt lean in against him for warmth, and let himself chuckle. "Imagine the scandal if someone were to spot us with a telephoto lens right about now."

"If anyone spots us, with a telephoto lens or anything else, I'd hope their first call would be to search and rescue, not The National Enquirer," Matt responded, his voice chattering from the cold.

"Well, yeah."

"Man, Helen's going to kill me when…" Matt's voice broke off, as if he'd belatedly noticed the irony of what he'd just said. "She hates it when I fly these planes. Whenever there's a news story about a small plane crashing, she uses it as an excuse to lecture me about how dangerous they are, and how it's high time I find a new hobby and start flying commercial like everyone else."

"Like commercial jets never crash."

"Well yeah, but..." Matt's voice trailed off. "What about you? Any girlfriends to yell at you for getting on a plane the size of a large bird?" He paused and glanced at Josh. "Or, you know, boyfriends?"

"You asking me out on a date or something?" Josh quipped. This conversation was getting weird.

"No, no. It's just…it occurs to me that I know all about your professional life, but I don't think I know anything about your personal life."

"Personal life? What's that?"

Matt didn't respond right away, and Josh shook his head, feeling inexplicably sad. "No. I think I've accepted my fate as a perpetual bachelor."

"You know, I could never imagine myself married either, until I met Helen. You'll find the right person eventually."

Josh shuddered hard, not just from the cold. Suddenly the feeling of sadness was overwhelming. "That's just it," he found himself responding, his voice sounding distant. "I did meet the right person."

"Really?" Matt glanced at him. "What happened?"

Josh was quiet for a long moment, trying to figure out the best way to answer that question. Finally, he just shrugged, unable to keep the pain out of his voice as he said, "She left me."

"Oh." Matt looked down. "Sorry."

"Well, technically we weren't exactly…" Josh began to try to explain, and then gave up. "It's a long story."

They sat in silence for a moment, and then Matt spoke. "What did you mean before, when you said you didn't want one more death on your conscience?"

"Nothing."

"Come on, Josh. No one says something like that unless they mean something by it." Then he shook his head. "Never mind. I don't mean to pry; it's none of my business."

Josh sat silently for a long moment. "When I was seven years old, my sister died in a house fire. She was babysitting me. I ran out of the house. She didn't."

"God. I'm sorry." He heard Matt let out a breath, then do a double take as he realized the full implication of Josh's words. "Wait – and you think that was your fault?"

"Well…you know."

"Jesus, Josh. You were seven."

"So people keep telling me."

They sat quietly for awhile. Josh could feel his eyelids drooping. He wasn't sure whether he was just falling asleep or starting to lose consciousness, but he knew he had to fight it. He began deliberately fidgeting, trying to generate a bit of warmth, but it didn't seem to help. His muscles felt heavy, and even that slight movement was much more difficult than it should have been.

He was beginning to lose the battle to stay awake when his ears registered the unmistakable sound of a helicopter in the sky. It was faint at first, but quickly got louder. He looked at Matt, trying to determine whether the congressman heard it too or if it was just a figment of his imagination. The look on Matt's face confirmed that he did hear it.

"Hey! We're here!" Josh called out irrationally at the chopper, as loudly as his voice, feeble and shaking from the cold, would allow him to. He watched as Matt, with substantial effort, managed to stand up and start waving. Josh waved helplessly from his sitting position. He couldn't stand up with his broken leg, and even if his leg hadn't been broken, he wasn't sure he'd have had the strength to get up.

After a few more minutes, the helicopter started descending on a location that didn't look all that far away from them. It was in the direction they'd come from when they'd started walking. With the fog in his brain, it took Josh several minutes to realize that the helicopter must have spotted the airplane wreckage.

And that had to mean it was only a matter of time before they were found as well. Josh and Matt exchanged relieved glances. Their ordeal was almost over.