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[donna/3rd person pov]

It wasn’t meant to be like this. It was supposed to be different.

Like Cinderella got Prince Charming and Snow White her prince, that was the way it was supposed to work out.

Every fairy tale from her childhood had instructed her on the way life worked. Girl is lonely/neglected/hated by family. Girl (preferably a princess of some description) meets boy (usually a prince). Girl and boy have some problems. Girl and boy work out problems. Girl and boy get married and live happily ever after.

Life worked out that way.

Except that it didn’t. It hadn’t.

The invitation in her hand was telling her otherwise. She had to believe the black writing on the cream card.

But she couldn’t believe that this was it.

They were meant to be.

~

January, 2007

I’ve spent the last eight years dreading this moment. We’ve got to say goodbye. And I don’t know what to say.

Of course, I’m going to see him and everyone else again tomorrow when we go to the bar to lament over our lives and moving on.

But this moment, the one right now, I’m standing here as I put one last photograph in my cardboard box, and I know he’s looking at me.

And I’m looking right back.

We’re staring at each other in the middle of the White House and I just don’t care.

He walks over to me and says my name.

I continue to stare. Transfixed, I cannot speak; I cannot move.

He hugs me, his arms wrapped tight around me, and we stand there like that for what seems like seconds, but in truth is much longer.

He pulls away and I feel the loss immediately.

"We’ve got to go, Donnatella," he tells me.

That’s it then, we’ve got to go. I pick up my box and follow him out of the White House, looking back only one last time.

Goodbye old life; I’m going to miss you.

~

The invitation discarded on the table, she sits down.

And looks at it.

It taunts her; informs her that she was wrong about his love for her – that one belief she has always been convinced by.

It had to be wrong. He wouldn’t be getting married now.

He loved her. He needed her. He was lost without her.

She knew it.

She lays her head on the table over the card and cries until the ink becomes an illegible blur.

~

2007

I walk into the bar on time and quickly spot a number of familiar White House workers.

Ex-White House workers, I mentally correct mournfully. I know I’ve just started to set myself up to get drunk, in keeping with the mood of the others.

As I near the group, I can see that a number of them are already on the way to the drunken oblivion that they’ve avoided for years in favour of something nearing maturity.

But the giddiness that accompanies the alcohol has sorrowful undertones.

Josh hasn’t arrived yet, and I don’t expect him to come for a good while.

Which is why I’m surprised when he walks in mere minutes later.

"Tonight, Donnatella," he greets me, "Tonight we shall be masters of our own fate."

And so we are.

The alcohol takes over my senses quickly and without too much warning. I allow it, caring less about the looks others give me as it consumes me more. The looks that observe how I sit, how I react, how I lean in too close and sit staring at him as he gazes back.

I’m not sure what this means, but I suspect that I shall soon find out.

~

In remembering what they had, she recalls the good times and forgets the bad.

It’s harder this way, but she remains in her conviction that what they had - it was real.

She has forgotten the truth; this favoured romanticised version clouds the actuality.

For the reality of the situation might contradict her opinion, her belief, and she doesn’t want that. She couldn’t cope with that.

Her life would fit better with those fantasy stories of everlasting love that she used to adore.

Men have been in and out of her life, she would never disagree with that, but he was special. He was different to the rest.

He belongs to her as much as she belongs to him.

And she just needs the opportunity to tell him.

~

2007

It’s late. I have no plans for tomorrow except to sleep off my inevitable hangover.

But the evening has to end.

It’s been a memorable goodbye. At least, the myriad photographs will render it memorable. The alcohol serves only to erase it.

And yet I sense that the evening has only just begun.

He approaches me, a smile on his lips, and I wonder how much he has had to drink.

But I choose not to question it. Instead I smile back.

We are almost last to leave the bar, others having gone home long before.

He offers to take me home. I say nothing as he tells the cab driver his address and not my own.

This night has been too long in coming, and I have decided to embrace this fate wholeheartedly.

And as he kisses me minutes after closing the door to his apartment, I reciprocate happily and take it upon myself to advance the situation quickly.

Minutes later we lie on his bed and he whispers words that have only echoed in my dreams.

The rest is better than I could ever imagine.

~

She wonders why they had to end it, the invitation on her table, soaked through, still taunting her.

The words unreadable, they still haven’t changed.

He picked someone else.

He loved someone else.

He needed someone else.

But she loved him.

She needed him.

She wanted him.

Didn’t that count for something?

~

2008

I wake up to find myself alone, as I have been for the most part since the beginning of the Bartlet administration.

Dreams of relationships and love no longer plague my sleep; instead the men are faceless, indistinguishable, and there’s little to do with love.

I wonder if this is something to do with what I was told 6 months ago as I sat on his porch. I don’t think it’s much of a coincidence that it was then that the dreams lessened.

He met her in March, at a Congressional party and they sat together and commiserated over the Republicans in office.

They hit it off instantly.

I smiled and congratulated him, and he asked me if I would come to dinner with them.

I agreed. A best friend’s duty.

It bothered me that there was little about Sara that I could dislike. She was the sort of person I had always aspired to be.

That in itself irritated me.

~

After some time the words on the invitation begin to sink in.

The idea that this is a forever with someone else goes through her mind over and over.

The implications of this are too agonising for her to contemplate.

But that doesn’t stop the torture.

~

2008

We would never have lasted.

A one-night thing, in the spur of the moment, which we both agreed was a mistake.

I should have objected and said that it wasn't. That’s my only regret.

That and the fact that there was someone else in his life now and I couldn’t complain. It was my own fault.

I told him that I liked her. It was a semi-truth.

He sighed and told me that he was relieved. As his best friend, my opinion counted.

I wish that it counted for more.

~

She tries to convince herself that it wasn’t as bad as she thought.

She had been expecting it; she thought that she was okay with it.

So why a piece of paper served to pull her apart again confuses her.

Eventually, she decides that it’s the finality.

It’s over.

~

2008

A knock on the door, I go to answer it.

He stands there, grinning widely and shows me something.

It glints in the sunlight, the diamond small and contrasting sharply with the smooth gold band.

"Josh?" I ask. I know it’s not for me, but I permit myself the twisted little fantasy regardless. I know that it’s all I have left now.

"I’m going to do it!" he says. "I’m going to ask Sara to marry me."

My stomach twists and turns; the knots cause more pain than I believed imaginable.

My mouth slowly bends into a smile, and I don’t know how.

"Congratulations!" I declare, my voice sincere, my heart less so. I invite him in.

His excitement is contagious; I only wish I could be as inwardly happy as I try to appear. He asks my opinion of the ring; I tell him that I couldn’t have picked it better myself.

He misses the irony.

He rambles on and I say little more than the encouraging umm-ing and ahh-ing that seems appropriate.

He leaves to go and ask her.

I feel my heart shatter as I close the door behind him.

~

The fact that they had an amicable break up and remained friends does not help her.

It makes it worse in a way.

It means that Christmas cards and wedding invitations get sent to her without the fear of repercussions or hurt.

If only he knew the truth.

She was going to tell him the truth.

She picks up a pen and some paper and writes to tell him that she'd love to come to the wedding.

She smiles.

~

2009

It’s the day of the wedding and those uncertain feelings that I had dissipated. I’m thankful for that.

I see him watching me as I enter the room. My heart gives a nervous flutter as I prepare myself and tell myself that this is it.

After this, there’s no going back.

There’ll be no more discussion, no more planning, no more fake smiles as one more person wishes him well for ‘the big day’. We’ll all be glad of that.

This is it. Forever.

I begin to walk towards him.

~

She looks at her watch as she sits in her car outside the place where he was married.

In the end she offered her congratulations but said nothing more.

She watches as the happy couple standing in the sun, rice thrown, cheers, photographs taken.

She missed her chance; back then she wasn’t ready. And she was less sure that he was. Turns out she was right.

She told him that she thought they should just be friends.

And they were.

It was only as he started dating his ex-assistant that she started to realise the true depth of the feelings that she had for him.

They drifted after that; she couldn’t face them.

She knows that she’ll always love him.

She looks forward to the time when he discovers that he’s made the wrong decision. That he shouldn’t have married Donna. He should have married her. Sara.

She’ll be waiting.

Always waiting.

Because they were meant to be.

THE END

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