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The jury isn't back yet when she finds Rachel just outside the courtroom, pacing back and forth in the small hallway, and it doesn't take Donna's level of intuition to tell that her uneasiness can't be rooted on just the pending verdict.
No, something else came up.
"Rachel, hey," she calls, reaching for the brunette's wrist who doesn't even notice her presence until then. "What's going on? Where are Mike and Harvey?"
"I don't know but Harvey ran off when I told him Mike isn't here and I think-"
"They both went to cut a deal," Donna finishes, her stomach twisting in dread at the thought alone.
She doesn't get the time to calm her nerves nor to formulate a more coherent plan. Next thing Donna knows she's out on the street with Rachel as they wordlessly agree on where they have to be.
Stepping off the elevator, they see Mike leaving one of the offices and if his obvious agitation isn't enough, the view of Harvey and Gibbs discussing inside the room he came from would confirm their suspicion.
Harvey lifts his head around that same time and his face falls upon identifying the new presence through the small window of Gibbs' office, as if Donna was some form of reality check that suddenly awakened him to a wider picture of this situation he set himself up for, something that highlights the consequences that would inevitably follow his decision.
He's turning his eyes back to whatever papers he was signing before Donna could get a better read on him.
"Mike, what happened? What did you do?"
"I didn't have the chance to do anything, Rach." His answer lands heavily on all three of them. "I tried to drag him out of there and offer a deal of my own, but Gibbs was set on Harvey."
Of course she was. Mike may be the one on trial but at the end of the day Harvey remains the bigger catch for those on the other side.
Mike moves his gaze from his fiancé and onto Donna the second he mentions Harvey's name and Rachel follows suit, both of them growing more anxious at every second that passes without hearing a single word from her. The couple can't even say for sure if Donna's aware that she's now slumped against the wall and without much support aside from Rachel's tentative hold on her arm.
Donna thinks there are voices around her, probably her two friends trying to cut through the haze she's in, but there's only a loud ringing in her ears, her vision has also started to swim, and it's not until Harvey himself opens the door and comes into view that she's partly pulled back into the present.
She somehow gathers the strength to push herself off the wall and look him in the eye, recognizing a resignation in them that seems to convey too much finality it almost doesn't fit his identity.
He doesn't make the mistake of glancing at her direction again, either because he needed to put a stop to Mike's incessant rambling or because he couldn't handle all that was written on her face.
"It's done."
It's the first sound that Donna clearly registers since Mike dropped the bomb on them, and the earlier ringing gets replaced by the latter's insistence to know everything about Harvey's deal and how he can renegotiate it. Rachel is still struggling between shock and the unmistakable relief that Mike could be off the hook. Harvey looks for all the world like he would rather step into a cell right at this instant if it meant saving himself from how the three of them are receiving his news.
And Donna just watches everything unfold, eyes still trained on Harvey, her impassive demeanor not offering a single hint as to her current state of mind nor what she might do next. Must be because she has no idea as well.
"How long?"
It's Mike who asks the one question that's been on the forefront of her mind but never left her mouth, and there's a pause where Harvey steals a glance at her and just as quickly regrets it.
"Two years," he answers, adding a little speech along the lines of, "I've made myself clear in there that she can't come after any of you or the firm" like that was supposed to rid them off his back.
What it only does is hasten Mike's rambling and before Donna can decide whether she'd prefer to keep up with her company or to lose her mind somewhere more peaceful, her feet begin to slowly distance her from the group.
It's not until her steps grow quicker and she's full on walking away from them that Harvey wordlessly pleads with Rachel to seek her out.
—
The two women never get to engage in an actual conversation, though. Not even until all four of them have returned to the firm. Each time Rachel tries to check up on her, Donna just responds with the tireless, "I'm okay, Rach" that convinces neither one of them but seems to send enough signals for now.
She's not willing to talk about it yet, because feeling this impending doom that surrounds them in every fiber of her being and talking about it are two entirely different things. Talking would make it real. Talking would mean putting her worst fears out in the open for everyone to see. And as her nature dictates it she's already in a downward spiral just thinking about Harvey and worrying how all these would affect him; throwing her own emotions into the mix would do nothing but pull her down further.
So Donna resorts to doing what she does best whenever they face a crisis — deflect from anything too personal and focus on every task that comes her way, anything to make it through the day without giving others even the smallest peek into her inner system as it silently crashes down.
And then there's Harvey.
He stays out of her way and they surprisingly make it through the rest of the hours without uttering a single word to each other despite the nature of their jobs.
It's not until around nine in the evening that he sees her gathering her things, this being what finally prompts him to approach her.
Warning bells ring at the back of his head as she's obviously not interested in making small talk with him, nor anyone else for that matter, but he finds himself walking towards her desk anyway because he's already dreading prison and there's no way he can catch the shortest of sleep tonight without knowing how she's taking all of this.
And if Harvey was to be completely honest with himself right now, maybe what he really needs after today's life altering events is for her to simply tell him that everything's going to be okay, that she believes he can find his way around their current predicament, just as she always had in everything that he's done for the last decade.
Still, his heart pounds rapidly within his chest as he watches Donna's face harden and not halt her preparations to leave, because even his usually unreliable emotional capacity can recognize that her faith is beyond their reach now.
"Is this how it's going to be from now on?"
"What do you want, Harvey?" her tone is detached, and he knows the way he's planning to broach the subject is quite unfair to her. She should be allowed to process this for however long she needs and if what she needs is some space from him then she should get it too.
If only granting her space hasn't always been one of the few things Harvey would admit he's incapable of doing.
"To talk," he starts. "It's been a long day, Donna, and I… it's just you haven't spoken to any of us here since this morning."
He's certain of this because when Rachel went to drop off some files on his desk earlier, the woman just shrugged her shoulders and looked at him helplessly.
"I don't think there's much left to talk about."
"How about you just tell me what you think about all of this?" he tries again, half pleading out of concern and half running out of ways to get her to open up to him.
He assumes the scoff he gets in return is warranted.
"The last time I told you what I thought about it you still decided to have it your way, Harvey. So what's the point in doing that now?"
The fact she would even ask him that and the way she's still avoiding his gaze leaves Harvey shaking his head and reaching for her arm so he could just pull her into his office. If she had resisted, he would've made up an excuse about not wanting to have this conversation out in the hallway where people might still be lingering. Thankfully she didn't because frankly he just needs to quench this certain desire to be closer to her, along with the nagging fear inside him that says she is already pulling away from him before he's even thrown into prison.
They don't touch just for the sake of it and they always make a conscious effort to maintain a safe distance between them, but with the thought of being locked up in a cell very soon and being deprived of any way to reach her hanging over his head tonight — he doesn't have the same restraint to keep her further than he actually wants to.
Donna doesn't seem to share in his struggle, though, seeing as she walks to the other side of the room and cautiously takes a step back for every move he makes towards her.
While Harvey may be desperate to have as much as he can get from her before the inevitable, she can't afford to have him close now only to be reminded of what she's about to lose.
"All I asked was for you to have faith, Harvey," she tells him dejectedly, arms flailing on her side. "Why couldn't you just wait for the verdict?"
His voice begins to raise at the absurdity of Donna still not getting where he stands even after all they've been through. Or at least that's the reason Harvey tells himself; not that he's afraid how the more he tries to explain his actions to everyone, the less convincing they become.
"Because I am guilty, Donna! The last five years is my fault just as much as it is Mike's." His twisted use of her own words from the night before isn't lost on either of them. "I brought Mike here. I kept him here knowing who he was, who he wasn't, and I just had to do something. I thought I've already told you and made it clear last night that-"
"And I told you I didn't want to lose you!" she cuts him off, raising her voice to level with his.
And if it isn't the crux of the matter.
He's visibly taken aback by her outburst, and if the situation was any less daunting, she might have come up with a more logical excuse as to why she's this upset with him. But the only truth she can wrap her mind around in right now is that Harvey will be gone for two fucking years— when they haven't so much as gone two weeks without seeing each other, can't even make it two days not talking— and the anchor that's been keeping her life in a steady pace for the past 12 years will be carried away with him.
Donna turns to face the city skyline and away from him, hands coming up to cover her face and upon seeing her shoulders sag in defeat, it takes everything in Harvey to crush the rising doubt as to whether or not he did make the right call when he offered a deal of his own, because they can't afford to have regrets now.
Part of the reason why he couldn't throw Mike under the bus was that his prodigy had a life to build out here. Mike had someone — an amazing woman who would marry him in a heartbeat if only the world would stop trying to pull them apart for one second. Between saving either one of them, Mike seemed like the obvious choice when placed alongside himself and what they each had to lose. But as Donna's words sink in and as he now takes in every trace of hurt and fear and dare he calls longing that showed on her face when he stepped out of Gibbs' office — Harvey can't help but question it all.
He thought keeping her safe just like everyone else would be enough to provide him peace over his decision. He was in too deep weighing what Mike would have to lose he failed to weigh in this part of his life. What if he also had someone who would willingly wait for him? He knew going to prison would be hard on his relationship with Donna in some sense, but not once did Harvey let his thoughts run further because if he wakes up now, after all those years wasted and right when he's about to leave her side, Harvey wouldn't know what to do with himself.
He doesn't know how to deal with her pain, doesn't know how to find within him what he thinks she deserves — something that's been happening more frequently as of late.
Ignoring the heavy significance of her words, he attempts to steer them into safer grounds except Donna sees the bait for what it is.
"Donna, I can't have Mike take the fall for-"
"Goddamn it, Harvey, it should've been Mike."
She turns to face him again and her tearful eyes render him speechless for the second time tonight.
He's feeling more and more useless to mending her pain by the minute and he hates it.
"Mike was the one that got arrested. Mike was the one in trial. We were preparing for him to go to prison, Harvey, not you," she spits the words out with so much bitterness while walking towards him; it's like they were back to how it was before any of this happened, back to a time when it was just Harvey and Donna against the world and no one else mattered. Maybe because life just made her realize that even after welcoming these new people into their lives, no one could still measure up to him.
"And I know it must make me a horrible person for saying all this after seeing what it could do to him and Rachel, but not even that can change how I feel, Harvey. That I'd rather it was him or anyone else than you."
The crack in her voice becomes in sync with the growing tightness inside her chest. The anguish has melted hours ago and has since made way for Donna's heart breaking in two, which she presumes is all that's left for her to feel from now on.
Two years long of worrying for his present and future, of grieving for the time they'll lose, of nursing the wounds caused by having half of her entirety taken away.
The job was to keep everyone at the firm safe, but if it came down to it, in her mind it was always supposed to be Mike. Saying goodbye to the kid whom she's learned to call a friend would've taken a piece of her, but it's nowhere near how it would be compared to someone who's always been on the verge of becoming so much more.
It's been a long accepted truth for her that she needs Harvey much more than she has the right to, and even if she doesn't, even if they weren't so intricately woven into each other, she still wants him here with her.
So to hell with being less selfish now.
Tears begin to stain her cheeks and Harvey thinks he's never seen her more broken. For once, he surrenders to his need to have her close, threading the remaining distance between them and pulling her against his chest. One arm wraps around her shoulders while his other hand cranes her head as Donna buries her face onto the side of his neck.
He doesn't do comfort and he's told her just as much in the past. The last time one of them was in imminent danger, Harvey threw himself into battle and stopped to comfort her only once she was out of harm's way.
This time he's doing it because they've already lost.
He's two days away from being robbed two years of his life — two years of being at her side, all ready to jump at the front lines should she ever need him.
So he figures he might as well start being here for her now. In all the ways that she'd allow him to.