A/N: For lilacmermaid25's prompt, "What if Mac had never had Jim in her life?" I posted the first half of this on tumblr last night, but I felt like it needed Will point of view. Warnings for alcoholism. If you're into listening to music while reading, I was partially inspired by "Transatlanticism," by Death Cab For Cutie. (Obviously.)
A-side.
The war swallows her whole. She manages it increments, and gets three weeks in Germany every twenty-five weeks. Shoves herself into the corner of a bar that's frequented by the servicemen and women, and drinks until the vodka wipes her clean. She doesn't care. Her parents are travelling, out of London for a few weeks every month or so, but she wouldn't talk to them anyway. They ask about Will. And she's not close to her team. She's not close to anyone. She doesn't deserve anyone. She fences herself in, and her team minds the boundaries, don't push in.
No one stays for long. It's good that way. No one gets hurt that way.
On base she keeps tequila in a bottle of mouthwash. Knows who to ask for more. Keeps bottles of it in her closet once her handler at CNN arranges for her to stay permanently in the Green Zone. Is never stupid about it, after she finds herself wasted in the middle of a raid in her tiny flat in Baghdad, crawling across the darkened room on her hands and knees, shattered glass tearing her palms and shins raw.
MacKenzie just stops living. She doesn't stop being good at her job — she writes a book, in fact, her second year there, and it wins a Pulitzer — but she stops living. Stops connecting. Stops answering Charlie's emails, her mother's requests for her to visit home. She gets stabbed on her way home one night, in her thigh, and tells no one. Just cleans herself up and dresses the wound, files her stories.
She stays for years, until the troops start pulling out. CNN reassigns her to Atlanta, but her agent (she's written a sequel, and has made millions without ever even going on a book tour) wants her to do the rounds at swanky parties in New York City, stop at a few Barnes and Nobles. She's already done a CNN special report, won her third Peabody.
Like she has for years, MacKenzie shrugs, agrees, and drinks more than is wise once she gets home. (A brownstone that her mother eagerly decorated, and it was the first time Mac could feel like she could share anything at all with her mother.) Goes to see her therapist in the morning, and then stops by the VA to talk to an old friend from Iraq. Goes to a bar with him, and they both wonder if they'll ever live life in color again, or if their will to live never quite made the transatlantic voyage.
(The only times she feels like she's breathing is when she's chasing down a story.
Manhattan is a jungle, not a desert city. She isn't certain how to make her blood pound here, addicted to adrenaline and stress and booze, anything that makes her head swim, makes her feel like more than a mistake.)
Her agent accompanies her to the parties, her publicist finds her gowns, hair-dressers. Once she wore an old necklace from Will, but took it off halfway through the salad course and tucked it into her clutch. She doesn't deserve it.
Emails Charlie, tells him she's doing better. He in turn tells her that he knows of meetings she could go to, meetings with closed doors and privacy policies. Tells her to take her time to respond.
It's a summer of elegant galas and charity cocktails and MacKenzie tries to remember how to hold her head high and smile, fingers curled quietly around the stem of a wine glass, tries to remember how to converse with people about their lives without interrogating them. Tries to remember how to talk about herself without demurring into self-deprecation.
"MacKenzie?"
They're strangers now, and even though she's been in New York for two she hasn't seen him in six years. She never thought he would approach her looking at her like she was spun from glass.
She smiles softly, toying with the chain around her neck. "Hi, Will. Didn't think you liked parties."
Uncertain, he laughs. He's in a tux. He looks good. He looks older, but so does she. "I don't," he tells her, shoving his hands into his pockets. "But Charlie told me you'd be here. You look… great."
Her mother says she's too thin, and years of having clear liquor as her only friend has made her skin dry and her hair dull despite her best efforts, but Will looks sincere, leaning towards her in a way that is entirely unconscious. Laughing quietly, she returns his smile. "You look pretty good yourself." And then quieter, poised to leave. "I've missed you."
He startles, but recovers quickly. "I, um… the show's never been the same without you."
Her lips quirk into a teasing grin without her permission. "That happens when you bring kitten cams and twitter feeds into the game."
"Hey!" he protests halfheartedly. MacKenzie frowns. Will doesn't seem happy either, shoulders curved, posture slack. He scuffs the floor with the bottom his dress shoe. "Anyway, I just wanted to say hi. Unless…"
She perks up, feeling a pang of hope, something like lightness in her chest for the first time in years. "Yes?"
"Can I get you a drink?"
She considers the alcohol she's already consumed tonight, the vaguely watery feeling in her head. Licking her lips, she ducks her chin. "I haven't been fond of parties in years, to tell you the truth. How about if you buy us dinner?"
"You're here alone?" he asks, half-surprised, and she knows that in their echelon of journalism that gossip flows freely and quickly, even if she's never been scandalous enough to make the tabloids. But her publicist has connected her to marine officers and writers and executives over the years, and she obliged for a few dates, and Mac has no problem believing that Charlie knows about them.
Smiling (god, she's dreamed of Will smiling at her for years), he offers her his arm.
"My agent, but he's more interested in the football player over there."
Will laughs, sweeping them towards the door. "You mean soccer?"
She swats at him. The normalcy of it is terrifying, and she fears she's going to shatter it at any moment, forget how to speak to him at the next turn. "I spent four years overseas. Shut it."
They step out of the party, and into the night.
B-side.
They wind up at an all-night diner, a tiny place that will let them sit and sip cup of coffee after cup of coffee for hours in their formalwear. Mac ditches her shoes almost immediately, and he watches her curl her legs up under her across the booth from him. It's unfair, almost, how beautiful she is. By all rights he should be indifferent to her.
And maybe, to this woman, he is. There are years and miles between them, jagged edges shaped and reformed and smoothed, broken again.
They have trouble trying to figure out what to talk about. She's reluctant to bring up anything about herself, understandably so, he thinks. The last time they spoke he was kicking her out of his office. Of course she's closed off.
Will clears his throat, watching his finger trace the rim of the eggshell colored coffee cup. "I read your book. A year ago. My EP at the time made me."
"That's encouraging," she says, with a laughing sort of sigh.
"And then I read your emails, finally." Eight months ago, when he had two weeks off for Christmas and New Year's. "But I figured you had… moved on, obviously."
She laughs again, smiles wistfully behind her cup. "I have a drinking problem and PTSD, I don't exactly move on from things."
He doesn't quite know how to respond to that.
"What?" Mac asks softly, drops her eyes to the grease-stained paper placemats on the table. "I'm sure Charlie told you a sob story to get you to the party tonight."
Inclining his head, he concedes. "He did."
"I am working on it… the drinking. I see a psychiatrist." Uncomfortable now, he thinks, she pushes the corner of her placemat up and down. "I was… alone, and you know I was in Chechnya and Russia but Afghanistan and Iraq were far more… I shouldn't have let myself be alone. It's my own fault. That's one the twelve steps, right? That, and making apologies."
Time, he found, helped him forgive Mac where he never could his own father. Time, and Mac never stopped trying, for years. And he can't fault her for stopping the emails. "I forgave you. A long time ago. If that helps."
"I wasn't drunk when I was fucking Brian behind your back," she snorts, before a horrified look crosses her face. Something digs into his chest and stays there, nothing quite like anger. Fear perhaps. This is not the woman he loved. But he's not the man she loved either. "I'm sorry, that was—thank you. You don't know how long I've hoped to hear you say—" Biting her lip, she ducks her chin, forcing herself to look up at him, nervous. "I didn't go over there to—"
He cuts her off. "I read your emails, Mac." And then, softer, "I know." Even still, her eyes flicker down to the table. "What?"
"Sometimes I feel like I left myself in Baghdad." She giggles, seemingly by habit. That, he remembers. That came back. Will wonders, clenching his cup tightly, if she doesn't laugh often. "The woman who wrote those emails didn't make it back."
He wonders if it's as simple as that; Will is well-versed in the things you can come back from, if you take years. But he has experience with that that she does not. "I like this woman," he says, instead, and grins in a way that he hopes is appropriately understanding. "She wrote a very smart book. I wrangled an advanced copy of the sequel, too."
When he realizes he's knocked her off-level with that, he awkwardly steers the conversation back to a safer topic, News Night. He pries out of her that she helps with the Columbia Journalism Review, but she demurs in a self-deprecating way, says that she hasn't stepped foot inside a control room since 2007.
Offhandedly, without realizing it, he offers her the chance to try it. His EP is leaving in a month. Laughing tersely, he recovers, saying he could take a look at her resume.
He's not as off-put by the alcoholism as he knows he should be. But he overdosed on Vicodin two years ago, and now ACN owns him in most ways, contractually, from the cover up. He moved. New apartment, new furniture. Gleaming countertops, stunning views, floor to ceiling windows and a terrace that looks out over the New York Harbor. It's mostly empty.
But it's better than the apartment where his old assistant—Maggie, he thinks, she stuck around for a while, got promoted to AP on Elliot's show, before leaving for CNN with Don—found him face down in his bathroom aspirating his own vomit after not showing up or answering any of his calls by 2 PM. Loneliness had swallowed him whole.
He has Charlie, who kicked him in the ass. You used to be a nice guy. It's been five goddamn years, William. There comes a point where you can't blame it all on her anymore. He has his shrink. The trick isn't not minding. The trick is taking your hand off the flame. He had MacKenzie, in a far-off, uncertain way, slowly combing his way through her emails, picking apart syntax and syllables as the ocean grew between them, almost like the Atlantic was born then, in 2011, and he was an island dotting the sea.
He saw his father. Tries to start living, moving on. The John McAvoy he sees is a shrunken husk, the man now diminutive by age and stature. Will towers over him, it seems. Broader shoulders, bigger hands. It's almost too easy to call him Dad, but the word sticks in his throat. Will calls John nothing at all. It's not forgiveness, he tells himself, but he owes himself this much. Closure. The opportunity to understand. Will doesn't, not very well, but the smaller man is pitiable and dying, and that is enough to assuage the little wounded boy.
Now he flies out to Nebraska every few months.
Sees his sisters, his nieces and nephews. He has a niece at Columbia now, studying biochemistry. Social awkwardness appears to run in their genes, or perhaps she's just particularly understanding, but she steals into his apartment at least once a week and leaves a plate of cupcakes or cookies or whatever she's stress-baked that week. Sometimes he's waiting outside her building after her seminar, and he takes her out for lunch. Mom said I should suck up to you, she teased him once. You're old and rich and have no heirs.
John died in March.
And for some reason, now Will's trying again. To have a real news show, not the petty pedestrian crap he's been broadcasting for half a decade. And now maybe help Mac, who looks just as consumed by loneliness as he is, even if he doesn't know her anymore.
It takes him all night, but by sunrise, around a mouthful of bacon, Mac agrees to produce for him.
Thanks for reading!