This is a companion story to my other oneshot The Chain. If you haven't read that: PLEASE DO SO. You'll understand this better then, I promise.

Synopsis: Macey's POV during the timeline of The Chain. How is life for her after Gallagher? Is it everything she'd hoped it be?

Below is a list of the different kinds of friends you will have in life:

1. Friends that you make small talk with at school or event functions

2. Friends that you exchange some correspondence with.

3. Friends that you text and talk with regularly

4. Friends that you ask for advice on life

5. Friends that you cannot live life without

The majority of friends will fall under options 1-4. Only a few will ever reach level 5 status. Only a few will ever change your life in such a fashion that you wonder how you ever survived without them. They fill a hollow place within your heart that you didn't even know existed before.

Those were my thoughts as I watched the coffin descend into the ground. One of my level 5 friends - a level 5 I didn't even realize was a 5 until it was too late - had died and taken all the joy out of the circle of friends left behind.

He was irreplaceable.

He was unreachable.

He was vital to the continued existence of my dearest friend which made him level 5 by association. How was she supposed to recover from this? How could any of us recover from this?

Liz was wracked with guilt; she had pushed the self-destruct button. She had signed the death warrant. Bex was beside herself thinking of all the different ways she could have gotten to him in time. She could have fought harder, run faster, spied better. I hadn't been on the mission which almost made it worse. I had let my team down and abandoned them when they needed me most. Sure, I was at home with my one month old and couldn't have been expected to shirk that responsibility but that didn't shake the regret.

It was no surprise that Cammie was taking the death of her husband worse than the rest of us. She refused to talk to anyone about the mission and, for the first time in her life, had failed to write a fully detailed report.

She had turned a report in. It was two lines on a Subway napkin that she grabbed out of the passenger compartment in my car:

We got the disc. My husband died.

Needless to say, the director had given her some time off.

I felt anger boil in my chest. There wasn't even a body in the coffin we were burying. We were putting a hollow shell into the ground just as ones took up residence in all of our hearts. It was horrible, what the Agency was doing to us. Kicking us while we were down.

Cammie stood resolute as the coffin hit the bottom of the grave. She was gripping Morgan's hand. The little girl still didn't seem to understand what was going on. She was clearly bored with the proceedings because she was twirling a dandelion in her free hand. She lifted it up toward Cammie's face. "Look, Mama," she said.

"It's beautiful, sweetie." Cammie whispered.

Most of the attendees were heading back to their vehicles but Bex, Liz, and I stayed. I noticed that many of the Gallagher teachers had come and were standing a little apart from everything. But they were staying, too.

"Mama," Morgan said, a question in her eyes. "When is Daddy coming home? He's been gone a long time."

A sob escaped from Liz. Bex and I shot her warning glares, and she shook her head. She turned and walked away. We had all agreed that we couldn't let Morgan or Cammie see us crying. It was vital that we stay strong for them in this critical time.

Morgan was still waiting for an answer from her mom who seemed to have turned to stone. I took a step forward. "Morgan, do you want to hold Julian?"

Her eyes lit up, and her little head nodded vigorously. She was the typical five-year-old, easily distracted by shiny objects. Although my baby wasn't shiny. He was cherubic.

Morgan easily slipped her hand out of her mother's limp fingers and bounded over to where my husband was manning the stroller. She leaned over to look into the stroller and cooed at the little guy in it. She dipped her hand in and poked his arm. "He's so squishy!"

I smiled. "You were too when you were his age."

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Bex walk over to Cammie and place a hand on her shoulder. Cammie rose slowly until she was standing straight again.

I wondered how long it would take until she was able to pick the rest of herself up from the ground.

A Year Later

Kiev, Ukraine

I couldn't believe it. Cammie had gotten run over. What was it with Kiev that bad things just kept happening to her here? The Agency would not be pleased when they heard about this. They had already been apprehensive about sending her here in the first place but after this fiasco, they might just end up benching her.

That would hardly be appropriate for Cammie's personality.

Thankfully, the mission was not a complete goner. We were able to keep eyes on the target and the Interpol agents managed to snag a couple compromising shots of Monsalo meeting with the Ukrainian equivalent of Capone.

The man was made and the Interpol agents were taking him in right now. Bex, Liz, and I were on reprieve, sitting in the motel that we were supposed to also be sharing with Cammie.

Liz was on the computer, trying to locate her. "Found her." She said triumphantly. "She's been admitted overnight at the hospital a few blocks down for a concussion and a severe ankle sprain."

"Well, that's nothing!" Bex exclaimed. "She's run the length of a marathon with a dislocated shoulder and three broken toes. Let's go get her."

I shook my head. "We can't. That could blow our cover."

Liz nodded her head in agreement. "We just have to wait until she's released from the hospital. There's nothing more we can do."

Bex looked like she was going to protest so I grabbed her arm to try and keep her grounded in sanity. "We know where she is if there's an emergency. But Cam's a big girl. She can take care of herself."

Bex rolled her eyes at me. "Obviously not if she's getting hit by cars."

"It could happen to any of us." Liz said seriously. I'm sure she was thinking about the one time the Agency had sent her out in the field and she had somehow ended up running a golf cart into a pond. She hadn't even been anywhere near a golf course. To this day she still won't tell us what exactly happened on that mission.

"I just...I don't want to leave her alone in this city." Bex said. She looked down at her feet. "I don't know about you guys, but the wounds still feel kind of fresh."

I rubbed her back, my acquired mothering instincts coming in. "I know, honey. I know."

The three of us turned out the lights early that night after Interpol had called to say they had Monsalo in custody, but none of slept soundly. I finally drifted off around one only to be shocked awake at three when Bex's arm stretched itself across my face. I pushed her back onto her side of the bed but couldn't fall back asleep. There was a nagging feeling in my stomach like I was missing something, but I couldn't for the life of me figure out what it was.

I dozed in and out for the next four hours. At seven, Bex shook my shoulder roughly and said, "Come on, it's time to rescue Cam."

The three of us got ready in silence, a weird emotion having come over all of us. The feeling followed us to the hospital and down to the end of the hall where the nurse had told us Cammie's room was. I was the first to reach the door, but something made me pause before I twisted the handle. The weird feeling was building and building; I felt like I could almost taste it.

"Do you guys feel that, too?" I asked my friends.

"The feeling that something's pressing up on my diaphragm?" Bex said. "Yeah, I feel it."

"Okay, good. So I'm not going crazy."

"Or maybe we're all going a little bit mad." Liz whispered behind me, her breath tickling the back of my neck.

"All the best people are." I quoted Alice in Wonderland.

Now, I grabbed the door knob and pushed the door in. For a second, I didn't see anything. The room had the lights off and it was much darker than the hall. But then my eyes adjusted and I took in the two beds. The closest one was empty but the one on the far end was occupied by a very wide person.

"Cammie?" Bex whispered-yelled.

A head popped up from the bed farthest from us. "Guys! You're here."

She slipped out of the bed and limped around it toward us. I furrowed my brow and looked at the bed. There was still the shape of a person in it. "Cammie?" I said, not bothering to lower my voice. "Who is that?"

Cam didn't bother to follow my gaze. She knew who I was referring to. Instead, she swept her hair behind her hair and smiled the biggest, most genuine smile I'd seen her smile in over a year. "You'll never believe what happened last night."

Five Years Later

Outside Washington, D.C.

"Julian, hurry up!" I yelled at the bottom of the stairs. "We're on the clock here!"

"I'm coming!" My son called back. He appeared through the banisters. He was walking backwards and was attempting to tug his heavy suitcase down the carpeted floors. There was a ripping noise, and he froze. "Oops."

"Was that the carpeting?" I said.

He looked down at me through the bars like a prisoner and tried to act innocent. "Nooooo."

"Jules."

He smiled beatifically at me. "I love you, Mommy. You're the best Mama a boy could ask for."

I sighed and gave him a little smile of my own. "Well you're the best little boy a Mama could ask for."

When he isn't ripping holes in my carpets.

"Now, come on. We're already running late." I said. He grabbed the suit case again and started pulling it down the stairs one step at a time. "We're picking your father up on the way there."

"Okay."

"And you have to promise not get into any shenanigans this time."

"I won't."

"Uh-huh." I looked at his hair. Last month he had been hanging out at his friend's house when he got the wonderful idea to dye his hair. When his friend's mother had called me in a panic I thought he had fallen down the stairs or tried to fly out of the second story window or something. Nope, he had died his hair blue.

I tried to get him to dye it back to its normal blonde color but he insisted that he liked his hair this way better. For a six-year-old, he was incredibly stubborn.

"Mom, is Hannah gonna be there?"

"Yep."

"And Joey?"

"He'll be there, too. But don't you guys go ganging up on him. He's not as young as all of you are. He can't keep up."

Julian had gotten to the bottom of the stairs now and I grabbed his suitcase from him. "Let's hit the road."

It was a short drive from the small and secluded suburb community that we lived in to Preston's offices in D.C. I parked the car in the visitor's lot but couldn't see Preston in the lobby area through the floor-to-ceiling windows. I sighed and turned the car off.

"Come on, honey." I said, unbuckling my seatbelt. "Your father must still be in his office."

Julian hurried to keep pace with me as I walked into the building and strode across the large expanse of open floor to the elevators. My fingers tingled as I pressed the button to call the elevator. After years of working missions, I hated open spaces like this foyer. There was little cover to protect yourself with should there be a surprise attack.

Although, hopefully, no one was planning on attacking a United States government building anytime soon.

When the doors opened I ushered Julian in and held the button down to close the doors quickly. It was a short ride up to the fourth floor and Preston's offices. His secretary, Kendra, greeted us when she spotted us walking down the hallway.

"Mrs. Winters, how are you today?" She asked, her eyes bright with genuine curiosity. She was extremely kind-spirited and highly ambitious. She was working full-time as Preston's secretary while she attended law school part-time. She had her eyes set on a Senate seat one day.

"I'm good. Just picking Preston up for the long weekend." I said. "Is he in his office?"

"Yes, he is."

"Alright. Do you mind watching Julian for a moment?"

She smiled so widely I could see her molars. "Of course!"

Without a word, Julian walked around her desk and sat at the little table against the wall behind it. He'd spent enough afternoons here after pre-school that he knew the drill. I walked the rest of the way down the hall and paused at the closed door at the end of it. A few years ago, I wouldn't have given a second thought about going right in, but now it seemed almost like an intrusion. So much had changed between Preston and me since then. I wasn't sure what kind of liberties I was allowed to take anymore.

I rolled my eyes. When did I become concerned with propriety?

Probably around the time I married a politician.

I straightened my shoulders and decided to meet myself somewhere in the middle. I gave a short knock on the door but didn't wait for him to respond before turning the handle and walking into my soon-to-be-ex-husband's office.

He was at his desk reading a document, but he looked up when I came in. He gave a small smile and held up his finger in the age-old "just a minute" signal. That shit never got less irritating.

One minute turned into five, and I started tapping my foot on the floor. Preston gave a deep sigh and finally stopped reading. He placed his elbows on the surface of his and steepled his fingers. "Yes?"

"We have to get to Cammie and Zach's." I said. "We're late as it is."

A look of indecision crossed his face. He broke eye contact with me and looked down at the paperwork still spread across his work space. "Is it really necessary for me to come?"

"What do you mean? Of course you have to." I crossed my arms and gave him a stern glare even though he still wasn't looking at me. "They're your friends, too."

"I suppose."

A flash of irritation swept through me. When had he become so blasé?

"And they also don't know about the impending divorce, so..."

A swept my hands towards the door, trying to urge his ass out of the chair. He still didn't move.

"So what this comes down to," he said slowly, "is your desire not to lose face with your friends."

I pursed my lips. What was with him lately and trying to pick a fight with me? How did we go from the bickering teenagers to the happily married couple back to bickering teenagers again? It was thoughts like this that plagued me at night and had resulted in me asking for a leave of absence from the Agency. I told them I had to work on my marriage for a few months - a request they were familiar with; the stress of being in the CIA often had a negative effect on relationships.

And, boy, had it hard-balled mine.

"You really want to announce this kind of news on Christmas Eve? What kind of effect do you think that'll have on Julian? He'll think Santa Claus is the Devil Incarnate!"

"I think you're being a little overdramatic."

"And I think you don't understand the extent of our son's emotions."

He groaned. "I'm fully aware that you think that I'm not present enough in Julian's life. Which is ironic considering how often you're out of the country on missions that you can't tell me anything about."

My hands curled into fists at my sides. "It's a matter of national security."

"Well, soon it'll be no matter of mine."

Silence filled the room. You could have heard a pin drop.

This was what our conversations always seemed to dissolve into. Snide remarks and voices laced with venom. It was enough that I tried to keep Julian as detached from it as possible. The kid was smart though; I wouldn't be surprised if he had an idea of what was going on between his father and me behind closed doors.

I shook my head. "Fine. Stay."

"Oh, no," Preston exclaimed. He pushed away from his desk and grabbed his suitcase, sliding a few folders into it. "We have to keep up appearances."

"It's nearly a two hour drive there. Do you think you can stay civil that long?"

"Isn't this what you want, Macey? You're the one who filed the paperwork."

I had nothing to say in reply to that. It was true that I had gone down to the courts and filled out the divorce papers. In a moment of uncharacteristic shyness, I had mailed them to his office rather than hand them to him myself. There was something so final about giving him those papers. There was no coming back from them.

We were signing the death certificate of our marriage.

Years of hard work and love, thousands of hugs and kisses, and even more moments spent in each other's company purely for the pleasure of it were all being ended with just a few signatures.

Part of me had hoped the papers would get lost in the mail. I would have taken it as a sign from the universe telling me that I was supposed to be with Preston. But they had reached him and he had been furious.

I took a deep breath and followed Preston out of his office. Julian was still sitting at the table behind Kendra's desk but he jumped up when he saw us. He darted towards us and plowed into his dad's open arms.

"Hey there, sport." Preston said. He squeezed Julian and pulled him up in his arms although the boy was getting too old to be held. "How was your day?"

"Mom made me clean my room before we left." Julian mumbled into his dad's shoulder. "I even had to vacuum."

"The horror."

I pasted a smile on my face and turned to Kendra. "Thanks for watching him. Have a nice weekend."

"Thanks. Happy holidays!"

I nodded curtly. "You, too."

Preston and Julian gave her their farewells and then the three of us were off: the picture-perfect but real-life dysfunctional family.

The beginning of the car ride was awkward. No was talking and the radio was off and it was easy for me to let my thoughts stray since Preston was manning the wheel. I looked out the passenger window and watched the other cars on the highway. I wondered how many other couples were in the same position as Preston and me. Not the divorce position - I knew that statistic, a whopping +50% - but the limbo position. On the precipice of separation and yet I felt this urge to stay.

I was never one to shy away from a challenge, boldness had always been my forte and had only been reinforced by my years at Gallagher. But now, I wanted to leave this unknown world just like that: unknown.

I just didn't know what else to do. Preston and I seemed unfixable, irreconcilable, wholly misfitted.

I bit my lip and pushed back the urge to cry. I was stronger than that. So, my marriage had failed. Most did. I had to stop kicking myself about it and learn to move on. Preston certainly seemed to have done so.

It wasn't long until Julian had fallen asleep in the backseat. He was so adorable with his head pressing a pillow into the window and his mouth wide open. I was smiling as I turned away from looking at him to face the front again. My eyes met with Preston's for a moment in the rearview mirror, and I thought I saw something in them but it was gone before I could figure out what.

Preston was good at hiding what he didn't want me to know. I suppose you learn to keep things bottled up when you know your wife works for the CIA.

He cleared his throat. "Look, about what I said earlier -"

"It's fine." I cut him off. "I get it."

"I don't think you do."

I looked at him quizzically. He hurried to explain.

"You have to realize that all of this, the fighting, the divorce...it's not something I would have chosen for us."

"Well, I doubt people intend to get divorced when they get married. Except for maybe Kim Kardashian."

"I know, but you have to know..."

"Yes?" I was twiddling my thumbs together in my lap as I waited for him to make his point. It was a habit I'd picked up from him back when we were still young, in love, and dating.

"I never wanted it to end like this. I don't like this fighting." He whispered. He took his eyes off the road for a second to look me in the eye. "I want us to be able to find some middle ground. Maybe work things out."

"Work things out? Now you want to work on our marriage? When it's almost over." How many times had I mentioned counseling? Every time he had come up with an excuse: all marriages have their bumps, our situation is too particular, the press would attack us for it, how do we explain what you do for a living?

He was silent for a moment and had his sight focused on the road in front of him again. Then, he said deeply, "Yes."

I was incredulous. "I don't know what to say to that."

"I know. I'm going all one-eighty on you." He said. He lifted his hand off the wheel, assumedly to grab one of my own but stopped. He sighed and dropped it back onto the wheel. "But I've been thinking this through ever since you gave me those papers. I can try harder. I can be a better husband and a better father. I don't want to lose you."

I blinked rapidly, whether from shock or because I felt close to tears, I wasn't sure. A silence stretched out between us. There was only a small space between us but it felt like such a large distance.

"I-I need to think."

He nodded. "Of course."

In the backseat, Julian stirred. There would be no talk of this in the car.

Half an hour later we were driving down the roads of Roseville. I felt a rush of nostalgia for this little town that was so close to the first place I truly considered home, and for the first time, I understood why Cammie and Zach had chosen to move back here. After Zach's accident, I could see why the two of them wanted to be close to where so many of their greatest memories together were. Roseville represented the start of their relationship and now it also represented their new life together post-Kiev.

Was a fresh start possible for Preston and me too?

When we turned down onto Cammie and Zach's street I saw Rachel getting out of a black sedan with Bex and her husband, Logan. Liz and her own husband, Ryan (who was even nerdier than Liz) were closing the doors of their own car. The kids had already run off into the snow. They must have made a stop at Gallagher on their way into town.

Julian was bouncing up and down in his car seat as Preston parked the car. "Mama, Mama. Can I get out yet? Please?"

I rolled my eyes. "Fine. But wear your hat!"

He beamed at me and grabbed his hat and gloves off the seat next to him. He'd worn his coat all the way here. He dashed out of the car, leaving the door ajar. I watched him run through the yard trying to catch up with the other kids, his stupid blue hair standing out against the white snow like some kind of neon sign.

"He's something else, isn't he?" Preston said. I could see him out of the corner of my leaning across the console to get a better view of our wild boy.

"Yeah." I sighed.

I shifted my attention to Preston's face. He was looking at me too, and I was reminded of how intense the feelings used to be just from looking at each other. I could feel the emotions there even now, but they seemed to have been muted over time.

But Preston wanted to work on us. He wanted to bring the volume back up on our passion just as much as I did. Perhaps I had rushed into the divorce.

But it was more than just passion missing from our relationship. We had lost the connection we once had and our capacity to understand one another.

There were too many arguments warring inside my head. I needed an aspirin. Pronto.

I got out of my own door, and after a second of hesitation, Preston did the same. The others were waiting for us on the front stoop. They all smiled and waved as we approached. As we neared them, Preston's hand slipped into mine and grasped it tightly. It was the most intimate touch we'd shared in months.

"So," Bex drawled, "how's the sabbatical?"

"So boring." I replied. "I'm coming back as soon as possible."

She laughed. "I could have told you that. We Gallagher Girls are not designed to handle household chores. We need excitement and adrenaline. We need the threat of impending doom from cocky, supremacist nations to feel like we're actually facing at least a little bit of a challenge."

"I couldn't have said it better myself."

The front door opened, and there was Cammie. She'd gotten a haircut since I'd seen her last and she looked paler (although that could have had to do with the fact that I'd last seen her on a mission in the Mediterranean where she'd gotten quite a tan).

"Look what the cat dragged in." Rachel said, referring to the mass of people behind her, me included.

Cammie smiled at her and asked the rest us, "Where are the kids?"

"Outside having a snow fight." Bex grumbled as we stepped into the house. Knowing her daughter, Bex had probably gotten a few fistfuls of snow thrown at her already today.

I decided to rub it in that my kid was so well-behaved compared to her wild child. "Well, my little boy certainly isn't playing with that crap."

As if by magic, my little boy went barreling by on the other side of the window, his hat nowhere to be seen and a snowball in both hands. Bex looked at Liz and then quirked her eyebrow at me as if to say, don't you feel like an idiot now? I stuck my tongue out at her.

Oh, we'd matured so much.

Cammie bit back a laugh. "Of course not."

From there, the conversation flowed smoothly. It was great to see my friends again and hear their new stories, although I couldn't shake the nagging feeling of guilt. I was keeping this huge secret about Preston and me from them, the three people who taught me what true friendship was and who helped me become the person I was today. I tried to tell myself that I was a spy, and it was in my nature to withhold information but deep down I knew I was just afraid.

I was afraid of what they might think - I knew they wouldn't judge me but surely they'd have questions, and I wasn't sure I could handle the questions. I was afraid of how they would react because as much as he tried to act as if he didn't care, Preston was friends with the three of them too, and I didn't want them to ice him out.

But most of all, I was afraid that if I admitted to my best friends that my marriage had failed that it would make it all real.

And it was then, sitting in that room with my old friends, that I realized it wasn't just about not wanting to tell them: I couldn't tell them.

Because I didn't really think this was the ending to my and Preston's story. This was just part of the story, one chapter of it. A rough, difficult-to-get-through chapter no doubt, but it certainly wasn't an epilogue.

Preston was standing at the other end of the room, chatting with Zach and Ryan. He tilted his head back and laughed at something. He captivated me.

He had always captivated me, even when he annoyed me.

And you don't give that up, no matter how long the battle takes it's a fight worth dying for. This moment in our lives was the defining battle of our marriage. We could give up and surrender, or we could persevere.

We would persevere.

It's strange how when we experience life-changing epiphanies, we see everything differently but everyone is still looking at life the same way. Or maybe I was finally seeing life the way they did.

I caught Preston's eye from across the room. He looked back at me, a hopeful question in his eye.

I nodded.

And that was that.

I grabbed the hands of the two girls next to me. They gave me surprised expressions but I just shook my head. "It's just so good to see you guys. Everything just feels...better."

And it did. It felt better.

Preston and I weren't fixed by any means. We had a lot of work left to do on our marriage. But I was looking at life more hopefully now. And in time, I believed that we would be O.K.

This was fairly ridiculously long for me for a post. Hope you enjoyed!

What did you think of Macey's life? Leave a review with any questions or comments you have! :)