Rating: PG
Pairing: Josh/Amy, Josh/Donna
Spoilers: Everything up to Commencement
Feedback: Makes my day
Disclaimer: If it was in the show, it's not mine.
Archive: At my site The Band Gazebo Anywhere else please ask first.
Summary: Amy looks up and sees something surprising.
Author's Note: I suck at titles. Also at summaries. Probably at fic, but that's up to you. This is for Bekki, who decided that she wanted A/J/D triangle fic, and prevailed upon me to write it. Can't quite remember why I agreed, but I'm insane like that. And for Christine, who wanted to be cheered up. Not sure that this is going to do it, but I'm doing my best!

Amy is walking through the halls of the West Wing, looking for Josh when her world falls apart around her.

She's preoccupied, her mind whirling, thinking of a hundred different things; amongst them, a rider on a bill that was added this morning, a conference that the First Lady is attending next week, a speech she's giving tomorrow. She needs to get dog food for Henry, pick up her dry cleaning, she and Josh are going to dinner tomorrow night, and she thinks that her little red dress, his favourite on her, might need cleaning too, or at least a good ironing.

She's thinking of all these things, and she's walking through the West Wing looking for Josh, intending to ask him what they're doing for dinner that night (translation, which takeout at whose apartment) and she thinks she hears his voice, so she looks up.

What she sees there stops her in her tracks.

She's not sure why it does, why it should. After all, it wouldn't be the first time in her life that she's seen Josh and Donna like this, Donna sitting at her desk, rifling through a stack of paper, rattling on at a mile a minute as Josh stands in front of her, arms crossed over his chest, looking down at her. Amy knows, knows like she knows her own name, that they're talking about work, that Josh has undoubtedly lost something of import, that Donna's searching for the back-up copy she's surely made, all the while giving him an earful about being more careful.

It's an ordinary, every day occurrence.

It's happened before. It will happen again.

But today, Amy looks up from her thoughts and sees it, and it's like she's seeing it for the first time.

Sees the expression on Josh's face as he looks down at Donna. Not the smug smirk that perpetually adorns his face, though that's there too. But even from this distance, Amy can see a softness to the smirk that's not usually there, a relaxing of his posture, something that she rarely sees in Josh Lyman.

She can see the expression on Donna's face as she looks up at him, handing him a sheet of paper. It's the resigned expression of one who's used to doing this, but Amy can see the tell-tale twitching of the corners of her mouth, can see that she's as relaxed as he is. Donna's lips move, and Amy doesn't need to hear the words to know that she's teasing him, warning him that one day she's not going to be there to bail him out.

Just like she doesn't need to hear Josh's response, that that day will never come.

And she stands there, and she observes this whole little by-play, and that's when she knows.

She's known Josh Lyman a long time, since college days when she was dating his roommate. She knew him, knew his reputation, heard the stories that went the rounds about him. She'd known enough about him to know that he was the kind of guy she'd definitely been interested in dating, and when he'd walked into her old office, to talk to her about leaving out a word in a UN treaty, she'd asked him point blank about some of the other rumours she'd heard about him.

She'd asked if he was dating his assistant.

He'd told her no, that Donna was his assistant, and because she knew Josh Lyman, because she knew he was a lousy liar, she'd believed him.

She'd fallen into dating him, kissing him on a snowy stoop outside his apartment, inside his apartment when it was all decorated in Tahiti-fashion, and by that summer, they'd been all but living together. And Amy hadn't worried about Donna, because she'd got to know her over the time that she was Josh's girlfriend, and she'd realised that there really was nothing going on, that there never had been anything going on, and she'd realised that Donna was a nice person, not a threat at all.

She and Josh had been happy, until, that is, the brouhaha over the Welfare to Work Act had caused the break-up of their relationship, but there had still been something between them, something that had never really gone away.

Amy had gone on with her life, even though she'd missed Josh. She'd dated, she'd worked, and she'd eventually ended up working in the East Wing of the White House. She saw plenty of Josh, had been in conflict with him more than once, and she got the chance to look at him and Donna as they worked together, something that she'd never really had a chance to do before.

Then, on the day of Zoey's commencement, she'd shared a car to Georgetown with Donna. She'd talked to her, and later on that night, she'd enlisted her help in not pissing off someone - after all she'd reasoned, working with Josh for five years, Donna had to have lots of practice in that regard. Somehow, Amy doesn't remember how, they'd got to talking about Josh, and something that Donna had said, though not as much what she said as how she said it, made Amy uncomfortably aware of a suspicion falling into place.

So she'd asked Donna a variation of what she'd once asked Josh.

"Are you in love with Josh?"

From clear across the room, she'd seen Donna freeze, and when Donna had turned, smiling as she rolled her eyes, rubbishing the very idea, Amy had been less than convinced. But then the first phone call came in, and with it a phalanx of staffers and it had been all hands to the battle stations.

In the ensuing mayhem, Amy had almost forgotten about her revelation.

Today, she's walking through the West Wing, and she hears Josh's voice and she looks up and it all comes back to her.

Because she looks up and she sees Josh and Donna not doing anything untoward, or out of the ordinary, just being Josh and Donna and she knows.

Even if they don't, she does.

She sees the conversation, the easy banter, and it calls to mind a thousand times when she's seen them together, completely simpatico, acting as if they're the only two people in the room, in the world.

She and Josh aren't like that, could never be like that. They're all sparks and clashes, conflict and resolution, probably too alike for their own good.

Josh and Donna are complementary, two people coming together to make a seamless unit, a team.

Part of Amy has always known that. But until today, standing the West Wing, looking at the ordinary, she realises that she's never really understood all that it entails.

Just like she realises that she might have Josh now. His toothbrush might be in her bathroom, his clothes in her closet, their pictures on her mantelpiece. They spend their nights together, are all but living together, they talk about everything under the sun.

She has his time, and his body, and from conversations that they've been having lately, she knows that one day, she might have his ring, his name.

But she realises now that she'll never have his heart.

And without that, the rest of the package doesn't seem as appealing.