On the night of the 2012 State of the Union address, Will asked Mackenzie to join him for a drink at Hang Chew's, to celebrate yet another successful broadcast.
It was nothing they hadn't done a hundred times recently, and Will was looking forward to putting his feet up for the first time all day, finding a secluded corner and relaxing with a cold beer and his best friend. Elliott had told him a funny story just before they went off the air, and ever since, Will had been anticipating the moment when he could share it with Mackenzie, who always provided the most eager and satisfying audience for a good laugh.
Only, not tonight.
Mac listened to Will for a while at first, but it wasn't long before he noticed that she was gazing past him out the darkened window, her eyes glazing over. He trailed off uncertainly, which temporarily dragged her attention back to him, but the same thing happened again and again, tearing into his eternally fragile ego. Each time Mac stopped listening, Will had to work desperately to tamp down on the growing mountain of anxiety that was welling up inside of him.
"Am I boring you?" he asked, nudging her foot with his, when she zoned out of their conversation for a third time, toying absently with the rim of her wine glass. He was only half-joking.
It should have been an unremarkable night, just another drink shared between friends, and yet it felt uncomfortably to Will as though something were changing.
The weeks following the American Taliban broadcast had been tense and uncomfortable, filled with dozens of credible new death threats, and Mac badgering him constantly, trying to find out the contents of the voicemail that she would never hear.
Soon enough, however, things had calmed down, and when they did, all Will could think of was how nice it had been, sitting together with Mackenzie in his office all that week, their heads huddled together over the rundown. They had ordered Chinese food for sustenance one night, and he chuckled at the memory of Mac animatedly waving her chopsticks at him to make her point while they debated the relative merits of a soundbyte from Mitt Romney versus one from John McCain.
Mac got her way in the end. She usually did when it came to these things; she just had a sixth sense about the right way to put a compelling broadcast together, so that it felt like a work of art. Will would never tell her this, but he usually just argued with her so he could watch her get flustered and indignant and passionate about the whole political process.
Yes, that had been a good day, a good week, and Will was determined to repeat the experience as often as possible.
Over countless dinners shared over the next several months, Will and Mac rekindled their friendship, rediscovering a closeness that neither of them thought they would ever find again.
Every day, Will wondered what it would be like if they could take things back to the next level, if he could just forget Brian, and tell Mac that he had forgiven her once and for all, but a worried voice in the back of his mind stopped him every time. Life was so good now – not perfect, by any means, but certainly the best it had been in years. Who knew what would happen if he decided to rock the boat? No, far better to keep things as they were. However Mac really felt about it all, she never pushed him, never said a word.
So why the swarm of angry butterflies in his stomach, why the tightness in his chest? Why the sudden feeling of looming dread, the sense of déjà vu?
If Will was honest with himself, there had been something niggling uneasily at the edge of his consciousness for weeks now, maybe even months, though he hadn't wanted to see it. But the feeling had never been so persistent as it was tonight, buzzing around his ears like an invisible mosquito as he watched Mac lean her head back against her chair, her eyes threatening to flutter shut.
Mac jerked when he nudged her, almost spilling her drink. "What the – oh!" she groaned, her brain catching up with his words. "Will, I'm so sorry," she said, sounding genuinely apologetic as she ran one hand through her hair. "Can I take a rain check? I'm afraid I'm not very good company tonight. I'm just so tired."
"Is everything alright?" he asked at once, failing to keep the anxiety from his voice.
Mac assured him that all was well, but wasted no time in swiftly gathering up her purse and making her exit. She offered him a rueful smile, promised to see him at work the following day, and gave his shoulder a friendly squeeze as she passed.
Will swallowed the rest of his drink in one shot, but it didn't help him to calm his nerves.
Lying sleeplessly in bed that night, Will couldn't help but think that tonight had felt painfully similar to another they had spent together, just before it had all gone up in smoke. Mac had been faraway and distracted then too, before she confessed, in a voice as dry as sandpaper, that the two best years of his life were over.
ooo
In the weeks that followed, Will read boredom and preoccupation in Mac's every word and gesture.
It began the very next morning, when Mac apologized once more for abandoning him, but before Will could even finish formulating a reply, Jim appeared, and promptly pulled her away to deal with some problem with one of the interns. To Will's despairing eyes, she seemed only too glad to go, his unanswered question echoing in her wake.
She was always busy these days, it seemed. She had chosen this precise moment to bestow more responsibility on Jim, even having him take over in Will's ear for a segment or two each night.
Will questioned her about it while they were waiting by the elevators at the end of a long day, making no secret of the fact that Jim's was not the voice he wanted to hear when he went on the air. Mac had been resting her head against the wall, her eyes closed, and she lifted it tiredly, feeding Will some line about it being high time that Jim was given more experience.
Will was certain that there was more to it than that, but the frightened part of him that fretted constantly about being abandoned wanted to keep his head firmly buried in the sand for as long as he could, so he let the matter drop.
Gone were the days when the two of them would have dinner together two or three times a week; she was simply so tired at the end of the day, she said, that she went home and crawled straight into bed.
She could still be persuaded to have coffee with him most days – she could hardly refuse when he bought it for her himself and brought it to her office, sitting himself down across from her while she drank it. But even then, he rarely had her full attention any more, her eyes always breaking away from his, drifting pensively over to the calendar on her desk, her brow furrowing more deeply with every day that passed.
Worse still was the nighttime, when Will's imagination was allowed to go, unchecked, into overdrive. Every night, his stomach churning, his brilliant mind reinterpreted every moment they had shared since last summer, and the outcome never went in his favour. Again and again, he saw her trying to delicately extract herself from his needy company.
A dozen times a day, Will wanted to march into Mackenzie's office and demand to know whether she was bored with him, bored with News Night, whether she was planning on resigning as executive producer. Day after day, the only thing that held him back was the paralyzing fear that she was going to tell him, "Yes."
One day in mid-February, Will had just about worked up the courage to confront Mac about it, but before he could knock on her door, he realized that she was on the phone.
"I know," Mac muttered irritably, like she did when she had already had the same conversation a thousand times before. "It's all arranged, I promise. I've got a meeting after the show tonight to go over the details."
His heart lodged firmly in his mouth, Will hurried back to his office before anyone could see him loitering by her door.
She's leaving ACN, he thought, certain that he was about to be violently ill. She's been offered something better, and she's just waiting until the last possible minute to tell me she's leaving me.
For the rest of the day, Will wavered between wanting to plant himself in the doorway to Mac's office, refusing to budge until she told him what was going on, and being physically incapable of looking her in the eye, lest her gaze tell him something he really didn't want to know after all.
By the end of the broadcast that night, Will had just about made his mind up to seek her out, but coming out of the studio, he was just in time to see her disappear into the elevator, arm in arm with Charlie.
Will waited around in the newsroom for her for at least an hour, but Mac did not return.
ooo
Will went to work early the next morning, resolving to learn the truth once and for all.
He arrived in the newsroom before any of the staffers started their days, and settled himself in Mac's office, determined to catch her alone before she could think up some reason to escape.
He waited half an hour, until well after Mac usually arrived for the day, but she did not appear. Sighing with frustration, Will trudged to his own office, and nearly jumped out of his skin when he shut the door behind him, only to find Mac sitting there in the darkness.
"What are you doing here?" he exclaimed, trying to catch his breath and slow his racing heart.
"You were trying to ambush me just now, weren't you?" she asked calmly. "You've been watching my every move for weeks."
"Mac, what's going on?" Will asked, his whole body suddenly tired and heavy, exasperation and terror warring within him.
"I'm taking a bit of a holiday, that's all," Mac said simply. "Super Tuesday will my last show for a month."
Will gaped at her. "A month?" he demanded, too stupefied to be relieved that she was, apparently, not quitting altogether. "What are you talking about? What's wrong?"
"Will, this is not a big deal," she replied, visibly summoning all of her patience, as if dealing with a particularly troublesome child. "Jim's been doing a fine job in my place lately, and I'll be back before you know it."
"If it's not a big deal, then why were you sitting here in the dark, waiting to break it to me like this?" Will demanded petulantly.
"Because I knew you'd take it badly," Mac replied wryly. "And here you are."
"I'm not taking it badly," Will argued. "I just don't understand why—"
"Aren't I entitled to four weeks holidays a year, the same as you?" Mac interrupted him.
"Of course you're entitled," Will shot back. "But you've never actually taken them. You've never been able to stay out of your control room for more than three days at a time unless you were sick, and even then—" he broke off, his heart thudding to a halt. "You're not sick, are you?" he asked in horror, bile rising in the back of his throat.
"I'm not sick, Will," Mac reassured him tiredly. "I'm just taking a vacation. Now, I'm going back to my office – some of us have work to do."
But a sick feeling was already pooling in the pit of his stomach, and it was a long time before Will was able to turn on his computer that morning.
ooo
The next two weeks were an exercise in torture for Will.
You idiot, Will lambasted himself over and over again. She told you she was tired. Mackenzie is never tired – why didn't you listen? Why didn't you realize that something was wrong? Why do you always assume it's about you?
Will's agony was compounded by the fact that Mac patently refused to discuss the matter with him, cutting him off and sending him back to his office with a stern and exhausted glare each time he tried to bring it up. He quickly learned to hold his tongue, petrified that causing her any additional stress would only make her feel worse, but it was killing him to just stand by silently and watch her deteriorate before his very eyes.
Countless times a day, he watched her sneak off to the washroom to splash cold water on her face, though its effects never seemed to last very long; up close, her skin had begun to look as dry and frail as tissue paper. Her voice, normally so light and musical to his ears, had become a weak and unrecognizable rasp.
She had taken to massaging her temples whenever she thought no one was looking, though Will always had one worried eye on her these days. Finally, at the beginning of her last week, someone else began to take notice.
"Mac, are you okay?" Maggie asked suddenly, in the middle of a rundown meeting.
Will could have hugged her.
Not that it was going to make one bit of difference if Mac decided to deny it, but finally, finally he wasn't alone in realizing that something was amiss.
"I'm fine," Mac insisted, but Will was relieved to see that the team kept whispering about her long after the meeting was over, and that someone other than him had dared to ask the question when he couldn't.
By the end of the two weeks, she scarcely had the energy to make her way to and from the control room at the end of the night.
ooo
By the night of the Super Tuesday broadcast, Will couldn't take it any longer.
He had convinced himself by now that Mac had been diagnosed with some incurable form of cancer, that she was planning on going away and living out her last weeks somewhere quiet and warm without telling a soul. He had lain awake all night, half-crazed with the fear that he was going to lose Mackenzie before they even had another chance.
"Are you sure everything's okay?" he burst out anxiously, throwing caution to the wind and catching Mac by the elbow, dragging her into a corner where they could talk privately. "You'd tell me if you were really sick, wouldn't you?"
Thankfully, Mac was too tired these days to get truly angry, or perhaps she saw the terror in Will's eyes, because she made no effort to escape him this time, her eyes filling with compassion. "Of course, Will," Mac promised, squeezing his arm sympathetically. "Please stop worrying, you're making yourself sick over nothing."
But no amount of soothing words from Mackenzie could convince Will that she wasn't just trying to protect him from the truth, whatever that was, and he vowed to make one last attempt to get it out of her after the show.
Somehow, despite his agitation and a major broadcast that he couldn't have cared less about, Will got through the night without a hitch, but after that he was out of luck. When he dashed back out of the studio after the show, the lights in her office were off.
Mac was already gone.
AUTHOR'S NOTE:
Thank you so much for reading! I really struggled with getting this one right, and I'm still probably going to have to rewrite some of it later, but I desperately wanted to get the first chapter posted before the premiere, so here you have it! Now I don't have to worry about whatever Sorkin decides to throw at us!
Thanks to iworkwithpens for taking a look at an earlier, much worse draft of this!
I flatter myself that you won't be able to guess where I'm going with this one, but if you think you know, could I PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE ask that you PM me, rather than posting it in a public review? I'd really like to keep this one a surprise, if I can!