Chapter Text
1998.
The light is red and Donna wishes it wasn’t.
She was fine, mindlessly driving through the streets away from New Hampshire. If she focused hard enough on the road ahead and the music blasting on the radio (she’d turned on the volume higher than she usually does, as if the sound would drown out any unwelcome thought), she could force herself not to think too hard about what she was doing. What — or who — she was leaving behind.
Now, though… she has nothing else to do but wait for the light to turn green.
And so, as she looks at the view around her, she can’t stop her mind from wandering off anymore. She managed to last this long, at least.
It all started the previous day.
It was a normal day — as normal as a day spent working on a presidential campaign could go —, until Josh’s phone started ringing sometime in the afternoon. Donna didn’t think much of it as she picked it up. After all, answering phone calls was part of her job description. And she was used to answering a lot of them.
Much to her surprise, though, the call didn’t come from a potential donor or anyone else who might be interested, one way or another, in the Bartlet campaign. No; the voice at the other end of the line was one she could recognize all too well. Luke.
Or Dr. Freeride, like Josh would (not so nicely) refer to him.
(Not that they’ve talked much, if ever, about Donna’s ex-boyfriend since that day she hired herself and he could read right through her and her story. Still, somehow the nickname stuck in her mind.)
“Donna?”
Even now, as she’s on her way to get back to him, she’s not so sure how he managed to find her, but the thing is he did, and her heart stopped, if only for a beat, when she heard him say her name again. And she hated herself for that — for the way he still made her feel despite her attempts at moving on ever since he dumped her. She’d been on the right path; she’d actually managed not to think about him for a little while, busying herself in her new job and the long hours spent there.
(Letting the memories of him get replaced by another man, the same man who let her invite herself into that new world, even though she would never admit it out loud.)
Still, one word had been all she needed to be brought back to that time.
“I didn’t know you had any interest in politics,” Donna said without a greeting first. She tried not to let the fact that this phone call was unsettling her show too much in the tone of her voice.
“I’m not calling about politics.” It took her by surprise, although she should have seen it coming. “I needed to talk to you.”
Donna knows she should have ended the call right then and there. She had nothing to say to, nor to hear from, the man who broke her heart, so hard that she’d felt the need to leave home and drive so far away from him. Plus she was at work; she didn’t have the time for whatever it was he wanted to tell her. More important phone calls, that could help with the campaign, were awaiting her.
“I’m working right now.”
“Please,” he insisted. “It’s important.”
She could easily picture his face in her head. He’d guilted her enough in the past with those same words. It’s important, he would talk about his own career that way when he would justify her giving up her studies for him. She knew his moves but clearly wasn’t completely immune to them yet, because the words got her curious to know more.
She looked around the place: nobody was paying attention to her. Everyone was either busy with their own phone calls or passing by in a hurry without so much as glancing in her direction. Josh wasn’t anywhere to be found either; as the person in charge of his schedule, she knew he was stuck in a meeting for at least another half hour. She was ahead on the tasks she needed to complete as well, and hadn’t taken a real break in hours.
So maybe she did have a few minutes to give to Luke.
She sat down on a chair, let out a sigh. “What do you want?” Even if she caved in, she wasn’t going to be nice and polite with him.
(Not yet, at least.)
“Come home to me,” he blurted it out without a warning first. To say Donna wasn’t expecting that was an understatement.
“What?”
“Donna, come home to me,” Luke slowly repeated. She’d never heard him talk with so much seriousness (and a hint of… vulnerability, too?) in his voice before. It took her off-guard, and broke down her walls a little. She didn’t know what to say in return.
Eventually, though, she spoke.
“I—… I can’t. I have a job.” Of all the things she could have said, all the reasons she could have come up with why she couldn’t go, these were the first words that left her mouth.
It didn’t seem to stop him from trying to convince her. “You have one here too. I talked to your boss, and…”
“You talked to Josh?!” Donna cut him off. Her heart started racing in her chest at the idea of Luke and Josh having any kind of conversation. Stalking her out and calling her at her workplace was already crossing a line, but finding a way to contact Josh?! It was simply horrifying. She could already hear him making fun of her (and Luke) about it.
She would never hear the end of it.
“No, your old boss at the diner. He said he’d be willing to take you back even if you left without much warning.” She should have heard the misplaced judgment about her actions in the tone of his voice (after all, he was the reason she had to leave it all behind), but she didn’t, because of what he said next, as if he was just registering what she’d told him. “Wait, who’s Josh?”
She did hear the jealousy in the way he pronounced his name.
“Nobody,” she heard herself answering before she could think too much about it. It was a lie, of course. Josh wasn’t nobody — far from that, really, but for some reason, she found herself not wanting to tell her ex-boyfriend about him. And maybe that’s why she didn’t want to: because he meant a lot to her. She didn’t want to explain he was the man who gave her a chance at starting a new life by letting her hire herself as his assistant.
The man who, when he gave her his I.D. card, made her feel like she was receiving some precious piece of jewelry for the first time, because Luke never bothered to offer her anything of the sort. The man who’d so soon turned into more than just a boss — who was her friend. The man with whom she was spending most of her time awake with.
(Who sometimes followed her in her dreams, too.)
The man who she knew, deep down, she was developing a forbidden crush on.
Which, retrospectively, is probably part of the reason why she ended up accepting her ex-boyfriend’s plea. So that she could prevent those feelings she already had within her to grow into something more. Something she couldn’t deal with. Things were already broken between her and Luke — they could only try to mend them. But with Josh… nothing was broken at all.
Quite the opposite. They would, though, if her so-far rather innocent feelings were to keep growing, and he were to learn about them.
“Look, I have to go,” Luke said after a silent beat. “But think about it. You could get your old life back. Our old life. Don’t you want that? I know that I hurt you, but Donna, I love you. I’m so sorry I was a jerk to you, but you know how stressful med school can be… I should have never broken up with you and let you go. I made a terrible mistake that day. So let me make it up to you. Please. I love you.” He hung up before Donna could answer anything.
Which ended up being perfect timing, since Josh entered his office at the same moment. His mood was far different from her confused one: he had a broad smile lighting up his face, one so contagious that Donna couldn’t help but smile back at the sight he offered despite the very unsettling conversation she’d just had. He didn’t need to say so for her to know that his meeting went very well.
So well, even, that he caught her off-guard when he grabbed her hand to help her up and spinned her around in an improvised victory dance.
“We did it, Donna.” He was still grinning as he stared at her, and she knew, somehow, that he was including her in that ‘we.’ As if she’d been vital to the whole thing.
It made the decision she was about to make even harder.
“We got that big donation we were hoping for!”
“That’s great,” Donna tried to sound as enthusiastic as he was. Inside, though, she was torn — torn between the life she’d been starting to build here, the new routine she was just getting used to, and the familiarity of what could be waiting for her back home with her old friends and a man she’d loved so much for so long and who wanted her back.
She’d caught herself wishing for it more than once, when she was first driving from Winsconsin to New Hampshire, that he would call her and beg her to come home.
“We’re going to celebrate tonight, you have to come and celebrate with us. I’ll buy you a drink.” Josh was literally glowing, too lost in his victory to catch on her own weird mood. (To his credit, though, his happiness made it hard for her to really stay in that state of mind as long as he was there.) His hand was still loosely holding hers from when he spinned her around, and he didn’t look like he was going to let go of it any time soon. And it burned her inside, the feeling of his fingers intertwined with hers — even if she knew it meant nothing.
They just happened to be very tactile, that’s all.
The phone started ringing again before she could agree to (or refuse) his invitation; a welcome distraction.
“Sorry, I need to take that.” She drew away from him and picked up the call. He didn’t leave just yet; Donna could feel his gaze piercing through her as she talked with her interlocutor, in the same way he did on her first day when he offered her the chance to prove her value to him.
(If only he knew. That she was thinking about maybe leaving that job. About leaving him.)
She didn’t show up at the bar that night, too busy replaying her conversation with Luke in her head and making lists of reasons why she should stay or go, and she didn’t show up at work in the morning either after she made up her mind. She had to go. It was the most reasonable decision.
She got in her car and started driving away — driving back to the old life she’d sworn she was leaving behind when she first took on the road. But now Donna’s stopped at a red light, and she has time to think about what she’s doing and what’s probably currently going down in Josh’s office, without her there.
Is this really the right thing to do? She can’t help but have second thoughts.
(There’s probably something to be said of the fact that it somehow seems harder to leave the campaign behind than it ever was to leave her boyfriend, but maybe that’s because this is her choice and her choice only, this time. Just like it was Luke’s choice to dump her in the first place — and maybe that’s why he asked her to come back to him. Because he realized he was making a mistake.)
(She will catch the irony in the future, but not right now; that if it was a mistake for him to let her go, then it’s most likely a mistake for her to run away from the Bartlet people too.)
It was easier before, when she was driving straight ahead and had enough to focus on not to think about looking back. Now that she’s stopped, though, it’s hard to avoid the reality that she could turn around if she wanted to. She could come up with some excuse as to why she’s late for work and act as if the idea to quit never even crossed her mind.
No one has to know about it, ever. After all, she hasn’t told Josh yet.
(It’s another conversation Donna is dreading, to be honest. That’s why she decided it would probably be best to do it on the phone, once she’s already reached her destination, or at least has driven far away enough that she can’t turn back.) (She knows she wouldn’t have been able to leave if she’d told him face-to-face.)
But she can’t do that — because she made her choice, she made lists, and this is all for the best.
Donna’s so lost in thought that she doesn’t realize before the car behind her starts honking at her that she’s actually been sitting there for a while, longer than she should have, and that the light is broken. Stuck on the red. (A red flag? she can’t stop the fleeting thought from crossing her mind but is quick to dismiss it. That’s stupid. A broken red light cannot be a sign that she’s currently making the wrong decision.)
So, with one last look around to make sure there are no vehicles coming the other way, she eventually moves on with her course. As she does so, she turns up the radio a little louder, forcing all of her thoughts away while she sings along the tune that’s currently playing.
(Donna stopped at a red light that day — and she almost turned back.)