A/N: I know it's been a while-in fact, it's been over four months and for that I'm sorry and I hope you can forgive me. I had a review a while back wishing that Donna wasn't so mean to Josh, so I hope this chapter explains that she's hurting just as much as he is, just in a different way.

She had to take Josh to physical therapy because Josh needed to get better again. She had to go to work, because Leo had some things for Josh to look at. She had to be there for physical therapy, otherwise there would be no one there to help him, to make sure he was okay...

Suddenly it was too difficult to breathe and she wanted to cry, she wanted to leave, she wanted to get out of this place where all she could think about was how Josh almost died.

It was morning already. She and Josh were still tangled up in each other one her sofa and part of her wondered if they could just stay there-surely an intern could send over whatever it was that Leo needed Josh to read, and surely his physical therapy could be rescheduled. Surely this wasn't as hard as she was making this to be.

But it was. It was just as hard as she thought and she doubted it would get better. She was going to wake up every day and have to live with the fact that Josh could have died that day and she would never have the chance to say good-bye or anything of the things that suddenly would not go away.

She hoped at the time that it was just a school-girl crush on the kind teacher. Josh had taken her in, like a stray puppy and taught her everything she knew, he talked to her like an equal, not like some dumb girl with silly questions. He needed her, and she needed him. She thought, for a while, that something could happen, that they could be together, but then they came to Washington and she was okay with that. It wasn't torturous, like she thought it would be. Yeah, sometimes she wished that he would just push her up against a wall and kiss her, but what he was doing, what they were doing, was so much more important that her stupid crush. And then he was shot. She wasn't even there, she wasn't there to take care of him and he got himself shot and she had to watch him-she had to watch him almost die and she would be damned if she ever had to go through that experience again.

And then she would be reminded that they were still Josh and Donna, that nothing had changed. This was probably what pissed her off the most, the fact that despite that he almost died, despite the fact that she would have had to somehow pick up the pieces and start over again was inconceivable to her, that something had to have changed, yet here he was, still being Josh, still being stubborn and sometimes stupid, but always Josh, and there was a weird logic to his decisions.

He kissed her. He kissed her yesterday. But he didn't love her. He didn't love her like she loved him. He was just lonely and while she couldn't really blame him, she didn't want it to be like that. She didn't want to wake up and be unable to hide the fact that she was stunningly and irrevocably in love with him, while he would make staccato apologies and try to avoid her. He wouldn't be able to look her in the eye, and suddenly there would be a transfer to another office, she suddenly would find herself at a different desk and she would see him in the hallways and she would call out his name, but he would be too busy with his new assistant to even notice his one night stand.

It had to mean something, they had to mean something. If he decided to take that next step, if he wanted her as much as she wanted him, that was different. He would be there with her when they crossed that line. She wouldn't be alone.

He stirred next to her. She needed to stop thinking so much-she would just end up in an endless spiral and watch the free fall happen. So she ignored the fact that she would quite possibly in love with her boss and she ignored the fact that she was paralyzed with fear at the thought of him dying, smiled, and said good morning.

"Your couch sucks."

She rolled her eyes. "I'm sorry if it doesn't reach the Lyman standard, but I'm a girl on a budget."

"Was there a good reason why we couldn't be in a bed right now?"

Donna blushed. "Because you fell asleep on the couch."

Josh grumbled something about coffee.

"I'll make some in a minute. You have physical therapy in two hours and I'm going to the office because Leo wants your opinion on a couple of things."

"I don't want to go to physical therapy."

"You have to go to physical therapy."

"It's going to hurt."

"It's going to help."

Josh chuckled. "Did you notice that your responses mirrored mine?"

Donna smiled in spite of herself. "Yeah."

"Kinda cool, isn't it?"

Donna nodded. "I'm going to make coffee. Make yourself at home."

"This is practically home," he told her. "I've spent enough time here to consider it home."

She smiled and blushed again. It was so easy to think about them living together, to let herself go to that place where she could think about them waking up together, making coffee together, fighting together and loving together. It was so comfortable and so right that she became scared of it, because there was no way that life would actually work out like that.

"Don-na, where's the paper?"

"Right outside the door," Donna called, jarring herself away from her stupid fantasy. "Remember, only the sports, style and health and/or home sections."

"Those sections are boring. Except the sports."

"You're supposed to avoid any stresses, Josh. So no front nor metro section for you."

"You're mean. And fired."

"You can't fire a friend, Josh."

"Oh," he seemed quite put out with the idea.

She put in the required cream and sugar into his coffee and came back out to hand it to him.

"Thanks," he said, taking a long sip.

"You probably shouldn't have coffee," she half-heartedly admonished him.

"You gave it to me," he said.

"I can't make just one cup of coffee. I have to make two."

Josh raised his eyebrows, waiting for an explanation.

"I always made coffee for my family, so it was always at least four cups. And then, with Chris-"

"Dr. Freeride?"

"Yes, Josh, Dr. Freeride. With Chris I always made at least two cups. Usually one for me and one for him, unless he needed more. I'll make two cups of coffee if my roommate and I happen to cross paths. But I hate making just one cup, it seems so lonely, somehow..."

He looked adorable just then, looking like the Josh no one knew except for her, the one that actually had a heart, despite what everyone in the Senate thought. He held her gaze for a few seconds too long and she wanted to say something, anything, or hell, just kiss him, but he was Josh and she was Donna and it couldn't be like that. So she cleared her throat and offered to take the coffee mugs back into the kitchen.

"Did you want to change before physical therapy?"

He shrugged. "I don't have to. It doesn't really matter."

"It's killing you that you can't wear a button down and a tie, isn't it?" she asked him.

"It's like waking up every day and realizing that I'm not who I used to be."

She started to cry and she couldn't stop. The tears kept coming and the weight was so great that she wasn't sure if she could handle it anymore.

"Donna? Are you crying?" Josh said from the doorway.

"I'm fine, Josh," she said, wiping her eyes, hoping that he wouldn't notice.

"No, you're not," he said quietly.

That just made the tears come more.

"Donna," he said quietly.

She took a deep breath, steadying herself, trying to find some way to make the tears stop.

"I'm fine, Josh. We need to get to physical therapy."

He stared at her for a long moment, obviously trying to decide if he believed her or not.

"Yeah," he told her, "okay."