Chapter Text
After her last meeting with Donna, Cameron had happily focused on work, but would pause occasionally to puzzle over what Donna had said. I won't bother you again. Donna had never done anything but bother her, and for to claim that she would stop had seemed so strange to Cameron. Everything about Donna had seemed strange to her that day, but then they'd been strangers to each other for years by then. Cameron kept thinking about it though, and after several days, she decided that she wanted to speak to Donna.
And so that Saturday afternoon, after she answered some emails and changed into a button down shirt and jeans, she got Donna's home address, wrote out the directions, and drove to her house. It was a long but pleasant drive, in sunny but comfortable weather, and Cameron felt relaxed. She wasn't quite sure what she would say if she saw Donna that day, but it would come to her, Cameron thought to herself. She pulled up to Donna's house, parked the truck out front, and walked slowly up to the front door. She rang the bell, and waited.
Donna had spent most of her little free time since she'd left Cameron's trailer in bed, either crying or close to it. Her home felt empty when she was there, but she didn't have anywhere else to go. Most of her house looked empty, untouched, as if its tenant had been out of town that week, but her bedroom was full of empty bottles and dirty mugs, and her worn clothes sat in a heap on the floor in her closet. Her wastebasket was overflowing with used tissues, and her bed went unmade. Donna felt stuck, too stuck at that point to even bother with alcohol, her consumption of which had become embarrassing. Everything felt embarrassing to Donna, an apparent failure. She hid under her comforter, ashamed of every feeling she'd ever felt, and every poor choice she'd made; of course every choice she'd made had been poor. She thought about Cameron, happily living her life, with no need for Donna. She'd never needed her.
Donna was lying in bed, staring up at the ceiling, just starting to admit to herself why she'd wanted so badly for Cameron to need her and how Donna needed to stop, for the love of God, when she heard her doorbell. She sat up, deciding that she could use a distraction, pulled on her robe, and went to see who was there.
When she saw what looked like Cameron, waiting there in front of her glass door, her arms hanging gracefully at her sides, looking around curiously, Donna wondered if maybe she had been drinking, or if she might be hallucinating. Cameron looked straight ahead and saw her through the glass, and for a moment they looked at each other.
Donna seriously considered leaving her there and going back to bed, but then after a second she pulled her robe more tightly around her body and started down the stairs. A little more pain, a little more humiliation? Why not, she thought as she walked to the door. She tried to not seem upset as she unlocked the door and pulled it open.
"Hi," Cameron smiled tentatively at her.
Hand still on the doorknob, Donna made an effort to keep her voice neutral and steady, and asked, "Is everything okay? Do you need something?"
Cameron looked at Donna, standing there in a set of light blue silk pajamas and a very expensive-looking grey robe. Her face was bare, her eyes looked a little puffy, and her hair hadn't been done, but it still fell elegantly around her face, ruffling slightly in the breeze. She looked like Donna, as she remembered her, from Dallas, and just as she'd trusted, the words she'd been looking for over the past few days came to her. "I love you," Cameron said. "And I've been worried about you. Because I love you."
Donna felt as though she'd been poked in the eye. Her face creased with confusion, and she said, "…What?"
"I said I love -- "
"Yeah, okay, I heard you," Donna took her hand off the doorknob to wave it dismissively. "I meant…." She clutched at her robe's lapel again, pulling it closed. She couldn't remember the last time anyone who wasn't one of her daughters, rushing out of her house to school or work, had said that to her. Eyes burning, Donna swallowed hard. She couldn't bring herself to say 'I love you too' to her, but she didn't know what else she could say, what she should say to Cameron after everything that had happened. She whispered what she was really thinking: "Since when?"
The sky changed above them, clouds shifting, and Cameron glanced upward for a moment. She looked back at Donna, squinting against the sun, and said, "Since always. You know how people say things like, 'love at first sight?' Or, 'I just knew he was the one?' That's never happened to me, it probably never will. But that first day you came to work at Mutiny, I looked at you and I think that's how it felt," she shrugged helplessly. "Like, that's her, she's the one. She's my partner.'" Cameron sighed sadly. "It felt like, 'I wanna work with her for the rest of my life.'"
Donna wondered again if she might be having some kind of delusion. It sounded very much like what she'd longed to hear from Cameron, and also seemingly bore very little resemblance to what Donna understood to be reality. Without any bitterness, Donna managed to say, "I didn't know that. It never seemed like that to me."
Cameron looked at the ground, and guiltily tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "I didn't really know it then either. I just felt like some dumb kid who was never really gonna fit into your perfect life or be part of your family."
Donna smiled ruefully at her. "And now I'm divorced, I drink too much, and I don't have any friends, and you spend more time with my kid and my ex-husband than I do, and you all like each other better than you ever liked me."
Cameron looked up, eyes suddenly wide with horror. "Donna, I didn't mean -- "
"It's fine," Donna cut her off. "It's fine. It is what it is. It's just…funny."
Cameron looked at Donna, and saw the exhaustion and disappointment in her beautiful face and delicate shoulders. She stood there in her doorway, hugging herself, like she was literally trying to hold herself together. Cameron had never thought of Donna as capable of feeling as defeated as she looked, or as hurt as she sounded. She suddenly felt young and foolish, and unsure of what to say.
Donna looked back at her, really looked at her for the first time in years, and saw the same nervous, stressed out kid whose BIOS code she'd saved. That was the first time she'd really seen Cameron, and this felt like the last time she would see her, after which she would have to really accept that their relationship was truly over. She took a deep breath, and then she said, "I'm sorry."
"For what?" Cameron asked.
Donna struggled to hold back tears, again. "For Mutiny," she said. "For all of it."
"I'm not," Cameron shook her head.
Well, you wouldn't be, Donna thought acidly. Your life worked out.
"I'm sorry that I walked out on Mutiny," Cameron corrected herself. As soon as she said it, the way that she'd felt then, after the vote, after she'd found out that Donna had lied to her, came back to her, made her chest hurt the same way it had then. Wincing, she said, "I felt like I had to, though. I felt like you really didn't want me there, and I didn't know what else to do."
"Sure." She remembered everything she'd told Cameron that night, every petty, needless barb she'd unleashed in the Mutiny conference room. "I can see why you would've felt that way," Donna nodded. Fresh tears welled up in her eyes.
"I hate it when you cry," Cameron said.
Donna looked away, and bashfully used her sleeve to wipe away the tears. Gruffly, she said, "You've never seen me cry."
"I didn't have to see it to hate it," Cameron said. "Or to know when you were unhappy."
More tears came, and Donna tried and failed to stop them. Cameron found that Donna's distress didn't make her as anxious as it used to, and so she stood there silently with her. She was surprised when Donna stopped crying, seemingly on command, cleared her throat and said, "Was there anything else you wanted to say, or…?"
Cameron laughed incredulously. "Are you kidding?" When Donna didn't say anything, she said, "Of course there is. There is a lot to say. Can I come in?"
Donna had barely gotten used to the idea of Cameron being at her house, and hadn't even considered that she might want to go inside and stay there for an unspecified amount of time. "Are you sure?" she asked awkwardly.
"Oh my God, yes," Cameron sighed, exasperated. "This is stupid, we're in the same place, finally, it took me forever to get here. I don't want it to be like this anymore."
Donna stood there for a few seconds feeling frozen. And then she turned around, pulling the door with her, held it open, and waited, one hand still holding her robe closed.
Cameron stepped forward, and then over the threshold.