Work Text:
Donna doesn’t turn the lights on when she slips into the room. She just locks the door and sits down on the bed. She just sits there, staring into the darkness. Her breathing is shallow, irregular. She bows her head and presses her fists to her chest, trying to force some air into her lungs.
She only needs a couple of minutes. A couple of minutes until she calms down, until that painful knot in her stomach loosens a bit. Just a couple of minutes, because she knows it’s all she can afford, that it’s not her time to grieve yet. That soon she has to go back, because there are people to talk to, more calls to make, and there is the age-old job of keeping Josh together, for their work here tonight is not done yet.
During the whole torturously long day, she did all the things she had to. She had called CJ, called Sam, fighting desperately to keep the quiver out of her voice on the phone. She had offered the little comfort she could to an inconsolable Annabeth, made sure no one was bothering Mallory – proud, sad Mallory with her head held high and an expression so like her father’s on her face - with stupid questions and fake condolences, and all the while she managed to keep tabs on the press, the staff, the exit polls and everything, and that drained the last of her strength. But that was her role to play, and she played it well enough. She, at least, did not have time to think.
Now she can only sit, trying to breath, to hold herself up only a little while longer, thinking about the marvelous, terrible unfairness of life. For she was once a fool enough to ask for things in life, and she forgot that one has to be careful about such things. She had asked for more responsibility, and she got it, and with it came pain, uncertainty, and, again, the duty of delivering bad news to those she cared about. She had asked for being a part of something bigger, and she got it: she had her share of tonight’s success but also of it’s grief, for she, too, lost Leo, and his death did not hurt her any less than it had hurt CJ or Annabeth. And she had asked for Josh, and after all these years, here she was in this bizarre relationship that tonight will offer comfort to her body and her mind, but not to her soul, and she had only herself to blame for that.
So this couple of minutes is all she has now. After this she has to go back, playing her role, doing her job. She has only a couple of minutes to grieve, for Leo, for Josh, for an era that had ended tonight, and for Donna Moss herself.