Josh has never liked small airplanes. Set during King Corn; canon applies up until (but not including all of) that episode.

Shocker: no, I'm not Aaron Sorkin. Therefore, I don't own the characters from The West Wing, or the pieces of dialogue taken from the show.

Many thanks to HarmonyLover for beta reading this, and to chai4anne, for kicking ideas around with me and making this a better story.

Also, I know little or nothing about airplanes or aviation, so please forgive any mistakes I've made, or will make, in that area…

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Donna sat across from the slightly overweight, balding airline mechanic, in a small living room in a home in the middle of rural Iowa that looked to be in desperate need of repair. She was with Christine and Greg, two of her colleagues on the Russell campaign, and Peter Burton was the first stop on the list of "fringe candidates" they were visiting that day, a collection of eccentrics who had filed to run for President and whom they hoped to get into the upcoming debate. The idea was that stacking the debate with lunatics would make Russell look presidential by comparison, and cause Hoynes to be lumped in with the fringe candidates. "Just another clown," as Will had said when they'd discussed the strategy over a late dinner the night before.

"So let me get this straight," Peter stared at the three of them. "The Democratic Party is actually taking an interest in my campaign?"

"We are," Donna gave him her most sincere smile, though she couldn't deny that the guy gave her the creeps. In fact, one look at Mr. Burton was causing her to have serious doubts about the whole strategy. This guy was clearly not even close to being presidential material; Donna wouldn't even trust him to look after her dog. If she had a dog, which of course she didn't. How could she have a dog when she hadn't seen the inside of her apartment in at least three weeks? She was actually thinking of subletting the unit, since it seemed to make no sense to keep paying rent for an apartment she never used anymore.

"We read over your campaign materials on your website, and we were all really impressed," Christine added, bringing Donna's thoughts back to the task at hand.

Two recently released federal inmates, an airline mechanic, two men over the age of 80, a comedian, a nun… she remembered the list of candidates Christine had rattled off at the hotel dining room the night before. Out of the group of them, she'd have guessed the two recently-released inmates would be the craziest, not the airline mechanic, but now she was having a hard time imagining how any of the others could beat this guy.

"What did you say your names were, again?" Peter asked.

"I hope you understand why we can't tell you," Donna responded conspiratorially. They were under strict instructions not to give any indication of who they were or whom they worked for; if it got out to the media that the Vice President's campaign was trying to recruit these losers for the debate, it would be an embarrassment to say the least. She smiled at Peter, giving him the line they'd agreed on. "If our bosses ever found out we were here, we'd be in big trouble. You see, the Democratic Party is…well, it's an institution. And institutions don't like change. They want everyone to fall in line behind Bob Russell. But Russell…"

"He's an idiot," Peter cut in, his voice filled with contempt. "Claims he cares about working people, but really he's in the pocket of big business and big bureaucracy. All of them are. Both parties, they're just the same."

"So if you were President, in addition to having the military occupy schools to prevent gun violence, you would…" Donna prompted.

"Abolish all federal agencies."

Donna tried to hide her incredulity. She had to look like she was taking him seriously. "All of them?"

"Every last one. Get rid of 'em all, see which ones we actually miss, and think about reinstating those. Rebuild the whole damn system from the ground up, that's what I say. It's the only way to start cleaning up the train wreck the federal government has become."

"Except for the Department of Defense, I assume," Donna couldn't resist interjecting. "Since, you know, you'd need them to occupy the schools."

"The Department of Defense isn't a 'government agency,' lady. It is the government."

"Right." Donna didn't bother trying to parse the logic of that statement. "And the schools would be run by…"

"Running the schools is the states' job, and the federal government knows it. The Department of Education has one mission, and that's to indoctrinate our kids. It's a scandal."

"That makes total sense," Donna responded earnestly.

He looked at the group of them wonderingly. "So you guys are actually with me on this, huh?"

"Absolutely. We think your ideas need to be discussed at the debate. The major candidates are going to be playing it safe, sticking to canned talking points. They need you to shake things up. The country needs you to shake things up." Donna paused. "And just imagine, sir, if the people like what they hear from you, if they agree that something drastic needs to be done to fix our system…you never know what could happen. You could end up coming from behind and winning this thing. You could be our next President. Wouldn't that be something?"

"Yes, it would." A smile crossed Peter's face. "You know, when I first filed to run, it was just to make a point. Get on the ballot, make 'em print my ideas in the Voter's Pamphlet. You know. I wasn't expecting to win, to be honest with you. I didn't even think anyone would really notice me. But here you guys are."

"We definitely noticed you," Christine put in.

"Very true." The wheels in Peter's brain seemed to be turning. "Thank you all, for coming out here. I have to get to work, but you've given me a lot to think about."

"I'm glad," Donna said, though she felt kind of queasy as Peter got up to escort them to the door. She couldn't wait to get out of the house. But she smiled at him and added, "Be sure to get yourself in that debate."

He nodded. "I'll do whatever it takes to make that happen."

Donna waited until Peter had closed the door and was safely out of earshot before speaking.

"Anyone else feel like taking a shower?"

Greg laughed. "You were fantastic in there. You almost had me convinced you were taking him seriously."

"You ever consider a career in acting?" Christine asked.

Donna wasn't amused. "We can't put him on that stage with Bob Russell – him or anyone like him. It'll be a national embarrassment to the Democratic Party."

"Too late," Greg shrugged. "If he wasn't taking his own candidacy seriously before, I have a feeling he is now. Did you see the way his eyes lit up when he thought we were really interested in his views?"

Donna didn't answer. She had seen that, and she'd found it more than a little unsettling.

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"You're trying to steer me toward middle-of-the-road positions that appeal to C-SPAN viewers."

"All six of them who will be watching the debate, yeah, God bless 'em."

Josh and Congressman Santos walked down the tarmac toward the small airplane that would be taking them to the Corn Growers' Association Expo. The two men were engrossed in an intense discussion about the upcoming brown and black debate. Ned and Ronna, as well as Lucy and Andrew, two other Santos campaign aides, followed behind them. Helen had stayed at the hotel because Peter had the beginnings of a cold; she and some of the other staffers would be taking the bus and meeting them at the Expo.

But what exactly the congressman was going to say to the corn growers was still very much up in the air. Matt hated the endorsement of the ethanol pledge that had been written into the speech. Helen Santos hated it even more. Hell, on substance, Josh hated it too, but it was what needed to be said. Yes, it was a pander, but the congressman was polling at 3% in Iowa. He couldn't afford to piss these people off, not if he wanted to have a chance at pulling any kind of upset.

He just didn't understand, Josh thought. He didn't understand that sometimes you had to pander. In a way, of course, Josh liked that about him. If he'd wanted a candidate who would have no qualms about telling voters whatever they wanted to hear in order to get votes, he would have accepted Hoynes's offer. Not Russell's; that had been a non-starter for Josh. The guy was a lightweight, and a malicious lightweight at that. Russell might not realize it, but his dull-as-a-block-of-wood persona was actually his best friend; it masked the cold, selfish ambition, the lack of any observable scruples, that Josh had witnessed firsthand more than once.

He and Toby had pieced together pretty easily that Russell and his wife had been responsible for leaking the information about Ellie Bartlet's research lab to the press a few years ago, in order to benefit Mrs. Russell's own career. And even that had been nothing compared to Russell's unforgivable press conference following President Bartlet's MS episode; Josh still felt his blood boil when he thought about that. The Vice President was either so clueless as to be unaware of the implications for everything from the stock market to international relations of calling the President's mental functioning into question, or he just didn't care as long as he got to look like the acting President, even if it was only for a few hours. Josh was pretty sure it was the latter; he didn't care about anything other than his own ambitions. If he'd had any doubts about his decision to turn down Russell's offer, they'd been erased on that day, that miserable day that had begun with the news that the President couldn't walk and ended with Donna casually quitting her job. To go work for Russell. After having just seen what he'd done to the President. Josh gritted his teeth and did his best to cut off that line of thought before he got too upset.

Hoynes was better than Russell, and despite the rocky relationship they'd had ever since Josh had quit his campaign, he still had a lot of affection for his old boss. John Hoynes had his flaws, of course, but history was filled with evidence that men could be philanderers and still be good or even great leaders. And sex wasn't what it used to be, as he'd told Will. Sex scandals were at least sometimes survivable these days.

But Hoynes hadn't just cheated on his wife; he'd also divulged classified information to his mistress. Josh didn't relish the thought of having to spend an entire presidential campaign trying to explain that away. The opposition attack ads would write themselves. And Josh also had a strong suspicion that Helen Baldwin hadn't been Hoynes's only indiscretion. He was almost certain there were other women, maybe many of them, whom the public didn't know about yet. Another shoe of that nature dropping could finish Hoynes off, and if it dropped after he'd won the nomination, it could hand the White House to the Republicans.

And beyond that, when it came right down to it, Hoynes was a consummate politician. He would choose political expedience over principle almost every time. That wasn't what Josh wanted in a president, and in the end he'd concluded that he couldn't bring himself to settle for a candidate who was just "better than Russell." The willingness to speak the truth even at the risk of losing votes had been what had first drawn Josh to Jed Bartlet. And it had been what had drawn him to Matt Santos.

Josh's all-too-frequent arguments with Congressman Santos never failed to give him headaches, but he was keenly aware that he'd rather be trying to talk his candidate down from principled but politically losing positions, than be practically begging his candidate to show he had any principles. And he'd meant what he'd told Joey Lucas; the last thing he wanted the congressman to be was pliable. Part of being President was having countless numbers of smart, persuasive people constantly trying to push you in all different directions; a president who didn't have the fortitude to tell those people "no" would be eaten alive. It was reassuring, if also at times maddening, that the congressman seemed to have no difficulty whatsoever saying "no."

But it wouldn't matter how good a president Santos would be if he got wiped out in Iowa and New Hampshire. It was Josh's job to make sure that didn't happen, even if it meant getting his candidate to compromise some of his lofty ideals about how campaigns should work. He found himself silently wondering if politics would always have to be that way, if candidates who were willing to unflinchingly tell voters what they really believed would be forever doomed to poll in the single digits with no hope of ever winning a national election. President Bartlet had told that dairy farmer in Nashua something he hadn't wanted to hear, and still won the presidency. On the other hand, he'd also endorsed ethanol subsidies against his better judgment, and he'd hidden his MS from the country in order to win.

"You really want me to talk about the economic problems in the minority community?" Matt's voice interrupted Josh's thoughts as they walked toward the airplane.

"Yeah, I really do." Black and brown debate. Josh brought his mind back to the issue at hand.

"Okay. How about the fact that minority kids are five times more likely to grow up poor and fatherless?"

"You know you can't go there."

"I'm serious. Kids who grow up fatherless are more likely to suffer emotional consequences, and twice as likely to engage in criminal activity." As they talked, Josh noticed the congressman carefully examining the wing of the small airplane. He seemed fascinated by the aircraft, probably a holdover from his days as a fighter pilot in the Marines, Josh figured.

"We need to be challenging Hoynes, not fringe candidates like Atkins."

"We reformed welfare to require women to work – that is, when they can find a job. But we haven't done half as much to force deadbeat dads pay for child support." Matt became more animated, his voice rising slightly.

"You know damn well less than a quarter of Latino kids grow up without their fathers. It's nearly half of African-American children."

"I don't care if it's three Bosnians, an Armenian, and a bus full of party clowns. It's a huge economic problem, Josh."

"It's going to look like you're lecturing African-Americans."

"Oh, so if I'm President I can only use the bully pulpit to talk to Latinos? What – does my State of the Union only run on Telemundo, too?"

"No. Tell me right now: what's going to help everyone, broadly? Make a difference across all the races?"

The congressman turned to look at him. "Values issues are important, too, Josh. And supporting ethanol is a mistake; I want to see that speech."

Matt turned and climbed aboard the plane. Josh found himself for the first time really looking at the aircraft. He swallowed, suddenly feeling his heart rate increase.

"Small plane," he commented nervously to Ned.

"Don't like small planes?"

"Buddy Holly small. Big Bopper small."

"Jiles Perry Richardson – Bopper's real name. Ritchie Valens, too. All went down right here in Iowa," Ned informed him in a shockingly casual tone before hopping up the steps onto the airplane.

After taking a moment to steel himself, Josh also climbed onboard the plane and took a seat.

"Where's the congressman?" he asked Ronna, who was sitting across from him.

"Up front."

"Up front?"

She grinned. "Well, he can't exactly fly it from back here."

Somehow, Josh had missed the fact that Matt was going to be flying the plane. He didn't know whether that piece of information made him more nervous or less.

"Everybody set?" Matt called from the cockpit, receiving a thumbs-up from Ronna.

"You might want to buckle up, Josh. Don't think I'll ever get tired of doing barrel rolls." Matt winked teasingly at him before turning back to the controls.

Definitely more nervous, Josh decided, his face turning several shades whiter as the plane began to taxi down the tarmac.

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"Great job on the Carolina trip – keep those boulders rolling," Vice President Russell praised Donna as they walked down the hall toward the stage at the Corn Growers' event. Hoynes had spoken that morning, and now it was the Vice President's turn to make his case to the corn growers. Matt Santos would be speaking later in the afternoon, and then Arnold Vinick would be the last candidate to speak.

"Thank you, sir." Donna smiled. She had done well on that trip, if she did say so herself. Half a million dollars – she was still trying to get her head around the fact that she now had enough power and influence to get big party donors to write big checks for her candidate. It was dizzying to think how far she'd come in such a short time. She was no longer Josh Lyman's personal servant, that was for sure.

Josh. She felt herself tense slightly at that name. She'd thought she'd been having auditory hallucinations due to fatigue the previous night when she'd gotten on the elevator and heard a voice that sounded exactly like his yelling to hold the door. But no – it really had been him. And then they'd gotten off on the same floor, and walked down the same hall, and then discovered that their rooms were right across the hall from each other. It was like a cruel joke. She'd quit her job to get him out of her system, or at least that had been part of the reason. But now he was on the campaign trail, too. He'd been there in New Hampshire. He was here in Iowa – a few steps away from her hotel room, to be exact. How was she supposed to forget about him if he was there every time she turned around?

Not that there weren't a few advantages. She couldn't deny it: she was loving throwing her newfound professional status in Josh's face. In a matter of weeks, she had gone from being his assistant, answering his phones and tracking down his luggage, to essentially holding down a more prestigious position than her former boss. She was a high-level deputy on the presidential campaign of the Vice President of the United States. Josh was campaign manager to a nearly unknown congressman whose single-digit campaign would be a memory after New Hampshire.

In the back of her mind, of course, she knew that situation was Josh's choice. She knew he'd turned down an offer to run Russell's campaign. She knew Hoynes had also offered him campaign manager, and Josh had turned him down, too. But that didn't change the facts, did it? She was a more powerful political operative than Josh Lyman. That statement felt so good to say to herself that she didn't care how many asterisks belonged after it.

Your whole campaign is like some Dr. Seuss nightmare. One fish, two fish, dead fish, 'we fought the good fight' fish. She smiled inwardly as she remembered the stung, befuddled look on his face during their little chat back in New Hampshire. She'd only been pointing out the obvious. The Santos campaign had already proven itself to be a joke, what with the Mayflower quote, and Doug Westin publicly humiliating the congressman, and Matt Santos's insane determination to talk about education in New Hampshire. Meanwhile, the campaign of the Vice President was cruising along nicely. It had been kind of fun to rub it in to Josh that she was on the winning team and he wasn't.

In the old days, she knew she would have been trying to support and encourage Josh as he endured the stresses of the struggling campaign, not going out of her way to twist the knife. Her comments hadn't exactly been nice, she supposed. She knew all too well what it must have taken for Josh to leave President Bartlet, and not to work for the top-tier candidates who had courted him, but to run the campaign of a long-shot candidate he'd recruited. Donna had to admit that Matt Santos seemed smart and idealistic, the kind of person she might want as President, if only he had a chance to win. He was certainly a far cry from the lunatics she'd spent the morning talking to. Josh's efforts on his behalf probably deserved better than the sneering derision she'd thrown at him. But too bad. Josh Lyman's feelings were no longer her responsibility. She'd moved on from him, and she was intent on proving it every time she ran into him, if necessary.

And no, she wasn't completely oblivious to the fact that if she'd really moved on, she wouldn't be spending this much time thinking about Josh, and she wouldn't care whether he had the hotel room across from hers. She wouldn't have spent so much time staring through the peephole of her door whenever she thought Josh might be coming or going. She wouldn't have felt that completely irrational stab of pain in her heart when she'd watched him, after a try or two, master the key card and let himself into his room. See? He doesn't need you anymore, she hadn't been able to stop herself from thinking miserably, before reminding herself that it was good that Josh didn't need her, because she certainly didn't need him anymore.

And she also couldn't completely suppress an uncomfortable awareness that eight years ago, it was the Bartlet campaign that had been unceremoniously written off by all the best-respected political experts. But the Santos campaign was much more of a long shot than Bartlet ever had been, wasn't it? And as for Josh…well, the more she acted like he was a non-factor in her life, the harder she tried to convince him that she was over him, the sooner it would be true. Fake it till you make it, right?

"Please welcome the Vice President of the United States, Bob Russell!" Donna smiled and applauded as she watched Bob Russell take the stage, the speech containing the ethanol pledge loaded into the teleprompter.

She noticed Will standing next to her, and took the opportunity to make her case about their debate strategy. "We can't give these fringe candidates a megaphone; they're lunatics. It'll be a circus without the jugglers."

Will barely seemed to hear her, his attention focused solely on the Vice President's speech.

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"Don't you think the voters deserve honesty from their elected officials?" Matt demanded from the cockpit.

"No. I mean, yes, but…" Josh sighed in frustration. His eyes darted to Ned and Ronna. They rarely weighed in during these heated discussions between Josh and the congressman, but he could always tell they were listening with intense fascination. He supposed it was quite a political education for them. "Voters may say they want honesty, congressman, but believe me, they don't reward it. You go up there and tell the Iowa corn growers you're against ethanol subsidies, and they will organize. They'll get all their people out to the caucuses and make sure you are completely shut out. It'll be political suicide."

"As opposed to what?" Matt glanced back briefly to look at him. "I'm not going to win the Iowa caucus, Josh. It wouldn't matter if I got up on that stage and took a shower in ethanol; I'd still get my ass handed to me. So what is it, exactly, that I'm selling my soul for, anyway?"

"You're not selling your soul. It's just pragmatism, congressman. And we've been over this: you don't need to win the Iowa caucus. What you do need to do is beat expectations. You need to finish well enough to get people's attention, so that all of a sudden the media and the electorate will sit up and say, 'hey, wait a minute, who's this Matt Santos guy?'"

"'Who's this Matt Santos guy?' That's what we're pinning our hopes on?"

"…Then we go back to New Hampshire with some momentum, hopefully enough to put the Mayflower quote behind us, and pull off a strong third place there. Then all of a sudden it's a three-person race, and we'll be going into Arizona, New Mexico, and South Carolina. Hoynes will take South Carolina, but with the Latino population in Arizona and New Mexico-"

Josh's voice broke off as he suddenly felt the plane lurch. There seemed to be a shaking coming from the engines that hadn't been there before.

"Everything okay?" A knot started forming in Josh's stomach. It had to be the weather; they were flying through a nasty rainstorm. It didn't feel like usual airline turbulence, but then, he was used to flying on commercial jets and Air Force One.

"Something's wrong."

Two words you definitely did not want to hear from someone flying an airplane. "What is it?"

Matt didn't answer. He turned on his radio, and Josh listened as he tried to contact the nearest air traffic control station; the only response was silence.

All of a sudden, the shaking from the engines stopped, and there was an eerie quiet. A sickening feeling of horror came over Josh as he realized that the engines had stopped running altogether. The next second, the plane was losing altitude. Ronna and Lucy both let out screams. Josh sat frozen, too stunned and frightened to move. Things seemed to be happening in slow motion. He looked out the window at a solid sheet of gray; they were descending through clouds. A few seconds later, they broke out of the cloud bank, and Josh saw they were over a hilly and forested area. Damnit. It was Iowa, for chrissakes, one of the flattest states in the country, and they had to be over hills when this happened? As little as Josh knew about flying, he was pretty sure their best shot for a safe emergency landing would be over clear, flat ground.

"Mayday. Mayday. Mayday," he heard Matt saying into the radio, although there was no reason to think anyone could hear him. "…Engines have failed. We're going down over forested hills. There is cloud cover and rain. Attempting to land in a small clearing ahead. Six souls on board."

Six souls. Josh knew that was standard airline lingo, but it made his blood run cold. Who had come up with that, anyway? Souls. As if the bodies were already as good as dead.

All sorts of thoughts started racing through Josh's mind in quick succession. His mom – how would she take this? She'd already lost one child. It wasn't fair that she should have to lose another. Joanie. Josh didn't know if he believed in an afterlife or not, but if there was one, maybe he'd see Joanie and would finally be able to tell her how sorry he was about the popcorn, and about running out of the house that day. And Donna…his heart suddenly ached with regret for never having told her how he felt about her. He loved her desperately, and now she would never know. Not that it would have changed anything. She didn't return his feelings, that much was plainly obvious by now. She didn't love him. She didn't even like him anymore. If he'd told her how he felt, she probably would have gotten angry and accused him of trying to interfere with her relationship with Colin. But at least she would have known.

He glanced out the window again to see the ground speeding toward them. And then everything went black.

To be continued…