All She Has To Be

Rating: PG

Pairing: Donna/Charlie

Spoilers: Gaza and everything up to it.

Word Count: 485

Disclaimer: Not mine

Notes: For the LiveJournal Multifandom1000 “Unrequited Love” challenge.

 

Last year, I sat around the West Wing when Zoey, my ex-girlfriend, the girl for whom I still carried a torch, was kidnapped. I remembered all the dates we’d been on, remembered the conversation we’d had earlier on that night, and I made a list of things I’d tell her if I ever got the chance.

 

I remember thinking at the time that this was the worst thing that could ever happen to me.

 

Then early this morning, we got word about the attack on the CODEL in Gaza, found out that two Congressmen and Admiral Fitzwallace were dead.

 

And that Donna was in the car.

 

All day, Josh has been freaking out, trying to find out where she is, how bad her injuries are. He’s an inch away from unspooling completely, and everyone’s keeping an eye on him, but that’s ok.

 

He’s allowed to do that. He’s her boss, and office scuttlebutt and the betting pool have it that they’re quite a bit more than that.

 

And I’m glad that everyone is looking at Josh, because then they’re not looking at me.

 

Because no-one knows that since I’ve been working at the White House, I’ve had a thing for Donna too. It started that first day that Josh interviewed me, when she was in and out of the room with typing and records and lunch and a hundred things that flew right over my head. I was too bowled over by this blonde goddess who was throwing one-liners back and forth with this big important politico who was scaring the hell out of me.

 

Josh never realised that I wasn’t just nervous about being in the White House, getting picked for a job I hadn’t banked on.

 

Then I got the job, and got to know Donna, found out that the inside was just as good as the outside. She was the one who went out of her way to make sure that I was settling in, that I knew where everything was, telling me confidentially that she knew what it was like to get a job like this where you felt like you weren’t qualified, weren’t good enough to be here. By the time she helped me find out where my grandparents were when they were evacuated from a Georgia hurricane, I was a goner, more than a little bit in love with her.

 

I’d like to say that things have changed over time, but they haven’t, and even when I was dating Zoey, there was always something about Donna that attracted me, something that I’m not so sure I can even define.

 

Bottom line is, she’s one hell of a woman. And even if she’d never look twice at me, even if there’s a thousand different reasons, all of them valid, why nothing could ever happen between us, that doesn’t matter.

 

Because she’s Donna, and that’s all she ever has to be.