TITLE: End of the World (As I Know It) AUTHOR: Kasey POST EP: War Crimes RATING: PG-13 Donnafic SUMMARY: “And my world is coming to an end.” We sit on the bench for a long time – well, for about an hour because that’s how long Josh told Cliff he had and he was watching his watch like a hawk. Watching his watch.  Vaguely amusing to me at this moment. As I ponder the word-duplication, I notice that it’s cold.  Strangely cold for early October.  Especially since it probably wouldn’t even normally be this cold back home let alone here “down south” as my mother calls it, in DC. So it’s cold for this time of year and my world is coming to an end. I don’t realize I’ve said anything out loud, or maybe I haven’t and Josh just says it anyway.  “It’ll be fine, Donna.” And I think “easy for you to say, your private thoughts and emotions aren’t being passed around in the book-of-the-month club.” But what I say is “No, it won’t.” So Josh responds by hesitating a moment, then putting his arm carefully around my shoulder, as though he’s trying to do it in some sort of proper way ‘cause the one thing we DON’T need right now is whispering of impropriety. There are a LOT of things we don’t need right now.  Most of which we have anyway. And y’know what he says? I mean what he says as he puts his arm carefully around my shoulder? “Sure it will.  We’ll fix it.  There’s nothing in there that’s incriminating, it’s not like you’ve been putting state secrets in there, right?” he jokes weakly. He JOKES. Like this is a time for joking. I give a little laugh.  “Nah, just everything I’ve thought and felt in the past year, nothing important or anything.” Because my world is coming to an end so I make a little joke.  What else is there to do, it’s not like I can run across the street and rip the diary from Cliff’s hands, then go back and change history, so what else is there to do but make a stupid sarcastic and snarky remark? Josh hasn’t read it.  He told Cliff so.  “I haven’t read it…” …Yet?  Because if Cliff finds ANYTHING or says so much as a WORD that suggests, then Josh is gonna HAVE to read it. At which point I’m gone.  He won’t fire me – he won’t have the heart to, he never does – but I’ll resign.  If he reads the diary, I’ll resign.  I’ll have to – I won’t be able to look him in the eye. I’ve had a crush on him since very early in the campaign, I’ve mentioned it in passing in the diary – things he’d do that I’d think were cute or…jeez, when he wrote me that sweet note in the book he gave me on Christmas Eve?  Gushing for like two pages. My life is over.  The world is ending. But the good news is if I were to hurl myself into the Potomac it wouldn’t be nearly so cold as the air ‘cause water cools down and warms up much more slowly than the air around it, which is another interesting tidbit of information I’ve learned from listening to the people who do little all day but rattle off trivia facts. One of those people happens to be Josh. This sucks. It’s the end of the world as I know it… …And I feel like shit.