TITLE: Pretend shadows masquerading as lines

AUTHOR: Demon Faith

CATEGORY: Josh/Donna, Fluff

SPOILERS: General season 1 and 2

RATING: PG (angst)

FEEDBACK: Yes please

SUMMARY: Musings about beginnings and lines

DISCLAIMER: Josh, Donna and Sam are not mine. :(

AUTHOR'S NOTES: Flights and boredom produce strange ficlets.

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There was no beginning to them - they were never that simple. It could be the day they met, the first time she said she was valuable, the first time he gave what wasn't his.

Now, as they sit under the moon, he realises that wasn't the beginning at all.

~

"DONNA!"

Just minding her business as usual, wondering if one and one would ever make three, and if she'd be around to see it.

She bent around the door, her hair falling in her eyes. Angrily, she swiped it back, before blinking stupidly at him. He looked up, and frowned. Standing, he went around his desk and leaned against it.

"I need research for the thing."

Her instinct was to bite, to say all the things that would come naturally, about raises and dates. But she was silent.

She turned and walked away.

~

"JOSH!"

Sam appeared in the doorway, flustered. He ran around the desk, pulling his target to a stand.

"Josh, Donna's hurt."

In that instant, the world ended, then began in a new darkened, shadowed form. He wanted to collapse back down but Sam held him, as he clutched at his friend like a dying man. In truth, he was already dead.

~

He didn't like hospitals. People died in hospitals. He sat down beside her, taking her cold hand, as she slept, oblivious.

He stayed all the time, until exhaustion carried him away.

~

She was awake now, feeling the weight on her legs, feeling her body ache.

Sam appeared in the doorway, as she buried her fingers in his abundant curls. Sam smiled, fetched the nurse, then fled away.

He was awake soon enough, surprised to see her watching him.

"I thought you'd left me."

"Never."

"Don't do it."

"I won't."

This wasn't them - this was too deep, too meaningful. It blurred the lines, crushed them to flaky pieces and threw them to the wind.

They no longer cared for lines.

~

So, as they sit under the moon, fingers entangled, her head on his chest, they think about beginnings.

He thinks beginnings come from endings, or almost-endings or blurry lines.

She thinks there was no beginning, and only a pretend shadow that they called a line.

~

He arrived at her door with his own key, bearing flowers and cards from the entire west wing.

She smiled, and tried to get up, yet couldn't seem to move the sheets. He touched at her face, wiped away the tears of frustration.

"It's okay," he said, "I understand."

~

She was at work again in a few months, always wearing trousers to hide the scars, stubbornly ignoring her limp. He made her sit for an hour every day, and she complained, but never too loud, because he always brought her coffee.

~

They both had nightmares now: his filled with a hail of bullets and hers filled with crushing metal and fire. And when they woke, they held each other, until sleep angels carried them to Morpheus.

~

The moon is bright, like a single eye surveying their late night thinking.

He decides that they are not about beginnings, but moments when the pretend shadow was chased by the light, until there were no shadows.

She decides that they have stopped pretending, and she doesn't complain, because when he holds her, nothing else matters: not scars or nightmares, politics or morals, moons or shadows.

They are simply them, and they do not care for shadows and pretend.