When you love someone, really truly love someone, you can always recall the feeling in the air. The air shared between two people, the warmth, the electricity, the catching of the breath and every once and a while, the sheer feeling of all of the oxygen being sucked out of the room.
She had wondered, after not sharing the same room with him for so very long, if it would be like the last time when they shared a room together and when all of the oxygen was sucked out of the room. The stricken look on his face (that she couldn't forget and haunted her) after she had told him about Brian. Yet, it wasn't like that.
It was more like standing in front of a volcano, oozing lava from a pulsing, open wound, something to that effect. He just radiated anger, hot smoking anger that spilled all over everything for those first few weeks. Just like lava, however, it began to cool. Yes, it was still all over everything and everyone, but after it had begun to cool and the people that they worked with could begin to walk on it and begin to function with every one of them navigating all of his resentment that was all over the place.
She had also been ready for him to throw things at her like a three year old child that didn't have the words to accurately and acutely express the anger that he carried for all of those years. The cold comments, the blatant smoking in her presence because he knew it was something she didn't like. He constantly, at first, was making her jump through hoops, dragging Brian into the bullpen so everyone could see the inferior man that she cheated on him with. By that point, she surmised, the whole team was involved at that point, why not show him off so they had a face to go with the name.
Then, with the beauty of time, things had changed. He still reminded her that she was in no way forgiven, but he had softened on some things. They had reached an assorted new normal, one step away from a truce between them, where they were able to function. Once the team understood the dynamic and landscape before them, all of them were able to move forward. Yes, Will McAvoy was not the easiest person to work for, with, or manage, but people could take their cues from her and the place actually began to function better than it had ever did before.
Mackenzie McHale couldn't have told you what was different when she woke up early that November morning. Maybe it was the excitement of the holiday season coming for them. Perhaps she was looking forward to the fellowship of the Thanksgiving holiday approaching. Maybe it was the fact that she was looking forward to her parent's visit in December. She wasn't sure what it was, but today felt good and everything felt right with the world.
She had stopped for her usual coffee from the café on the thirtieth floor and decided to skip the usual skinny version of a latte and picked the pumpkin spice. Something just seemed warm and comforting about the idea. She wished fleetingly that she knew how to bake a pie. That would be so nice, to have this smell greet her. She'd have no one to enjoy it with, but just dreaming of the idea made her feel good.
So imagine her surprise when she arrives on the floor and notices a light on. Not her office, his office. Her brow crinkles a little, because this means he didn't sleep. Or perhaps he never went home? She doesn't know why she passes the light switches, because that's part of her morning routine, a motherly impulse to turn on the lights for the staffers that will be wandering in a few hours. Her stride is a little more purposeful as she heads to his door, because she's feeling motherly and is starting to assemble a few choice words on how he needs to rest and he better not look completely shredded before he goes on the air today.
She opens the door to his office and the only words that she can manage are "Will what…" before the scene before her completely registers in her mind. He's sitting at his desk and is very much entangled in the limbs and body of Nina Howard who, up until that second was probably having a fabulous time.
Mackenzie is stuck in slow motion at first. The latte slipping from her hand doesn't even register with her brain. What does spur her into to motion is the stinging sensation from the splash as the paper cup crashes into the glass door and bounces off the floor, spilling hot liquid on her legs. Her legs feel the pain as she feels all of the oxygen being sucked out of the room. She can't breathe, she suddenly can't begin to breathe and yet her legs register to her mind only one thought: run.
Her laptop and her shoulder bag were abandoned somewhere in the middle of the bullpen. As she made it to the elevator bay one hand absently pushes the button for down as her shoes are somehow off her feet. She doesn't wait for the doors to open but finds the exit to the stairs and like that, she is gone.
Up. Her first thought is up. The concrete is shredding her stockings to pieces, but she's not even thinking about how she looks or the pain in her legs. All she can think is that she can't breathe. That there's no air left even though her chest is pulling it into her body to fuel this desperate escape. Air is all that she can think about and she continues up and up, waiting to bust through to the roof and attempt to breathe.
Maybe if she could start breathing again, she might be able to function again and move on.
Just breathe.