I'm sure after Sunday this will be AU, but I wanted to give it a shot before the finale aired. I'm on the fence about it, but I figured I'd post it before I convinced myself it was terrible and deleted it. The title is from the Neil Young song. That about covers it, I think.
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters.
She's relieved.
In the thousands of emotions that rush over her, swallow her up, she can only clearly define that one. Relief, hot and sudden.
When he asks her not to tell anyone, she nods. She doesn't want to tell anyone. She doesn't want this to be a big deal, she doesn't want to be a martyr, because she's not doing this for the accolades and the glory. She's falling on the knife for Will. And not because she still feels guilty about Brian, because though she knew what buttons to push to tip Will over the edge, she meant it when she asked how long it was going to take to forgive her this time. Six years was long enough, and she's done beating herself up about it. Will's not innocent in all of it either, but she just loves him so goddamn much.
She's falling on the knife for Will, but it's because she can't stand the idea of ruining both his personal life and professional life. She had meant that too; he's always cared more about his professional life than he did about his personal life (but there's a part of her that doesn't think that's true. That thinks that she was, for an all too brief period of time, more important to him than the audience. Maybe she is still. She doesn't know if she wants to hope that she is or not; either way is heartbreaking.) If she can save his job, his reputation, she'll do it. In a heartbeat, in a second, without thought.
When the relief leaves, it leaves quickly, leaving her legs shaky and her face flushed, and it's replaced by an overwhelming need to cry. She's standing in the control room when it hits, and she leans over and braces both hands on the desk and tries to even her breathing.
This is the last time she'll stand here. This is the end of the road. She's not an idiot. When she leaves here, this might be the very last time she ever sees Will McAvoy again. And maybe that's what she needs. She can't move on with him there, with the sharp edge of hope stopping her from doing anything but regret things weren't different and desperately wish that maybe things can change.
After they call it for the President, she whips the headset off and rushes out of the office. She needs to get out of there, get home. She doesn't want to see Will again. She doesn't know if she'll be able to stand it.
She leaves everything she can bear to behind in her office, grabbing only the essential things and shoving them haphazardly into her bag, before throwing her I.D. onto her desk. She doesn't even wait for the elevator, even though it's a long walk to the bottom. She spies Lonny in the lobby, and he catches her eye, but she shakes her head slightly and steps out into the cool, November night and walks towards her apartment.
Jim once asked, while they were in Pakistan, why she had given up her cushy New York job to move to the hot, relentless desert. He meant it slightly teasing, but she knew he was genuinely curious too.
"I broke my heart," she answered, rolling onto her stomach on her narrow cot and resting her head on her folded hands to look at Jim. "And someone else's too. I just needed to get out of the city. This seemed like a great vacation spot. All the amenities you could possibly want." She tried to lighten the mood, but she can feel the hot tears prick at her eyes and she knew she failed.
Jim reached across the small space and gave her arm a squeeze, and he doesn't ask her again. He had done his own research before agreeing to follow Mac to the other side of the world, and he knew the name Will McAvoy, and he knew they had dated for a while, and he didn't know how or why it had ended, but judging by the broken woman lying on the cot near his, he could guess it ended badly.
When she was stabbed, Jim wasn't standing next to her. Although she has told him a thousand times that it wasn't his fault, he has yet to forgive himself for being on the other side of the square when the knife tore through her skin. He saw her eyes widen, and it was so loud, so loud and so hot and so crowded, and the crowd surged towards her, and he threw people out of his way to get there. The blood rushed to his ears and all he heard was a buzzing sound as he dropped to his knees next to Mac, grabbing her hand and ripping off his shirt to press to her wound.
"Will," she said softly, and Jim was quick to lean down over her and reassure her that she was going to be fine, it was all going to be fine. "Will," she repeated, and when Jim realized no one was coming quickly to help, he swallowed his panic and he scooped her up in his arms, her own arms limp and her face pale and carried her through the crowd and the shouting until he found an American solider.
When they come to take her into surgery in a dirty, dusty tent that can't be clean enough, can't be good enough to save her, she reached for Jim's hand one last time and her eyes looked clearer than they had moments ago. Her eyes met his and she spoke calmly.
"If I don't...please tell Will I'm so sorry."
"You'll tell him yourself," Jim told her, unsure what else to do or say.
"Tell him," Mac insisted.
"Yeah, okay, yeah, Mac, I'll tell him," Jim promised, and they roll her away and he's left standing in the middle of the hall, covered in her blood, terrified and overwhelmed.
"You fired her?" Jim doesn't even knock as he barrels into Will's office. Will is smoking a cigarette and looks about ten years older than he had at the beginning of the broadcast. "You fucking fired her?" Will doesn't look over from where he's staring out the window at the quiet New York night.
"She wanted to be fired," Will answers tiredly.
"You prick," Jim's hands clench into fists at his side. "You selfish prick." Will turns his head to meet Jim's eye.
"Careful," he says, and Jim shakes his head.
"I quit," Jim's voice is firm.
"You might not be able to get another job," Will warns. "People aren't exactly lining up to hire our disgraced staff members." Will knows that it's useless to try to argue with Jim, not when he's like this, but he also knows that Mac will be infuriated if she knows he let Jim quit.
Jim would follow Mac to the ends of the earth, and Will gets it, gets his anger.
"Who gives a fuck?" Jim yells, and he storms back out of Will's office, stomping to his desk and throwing items into a box. Will follows Jim out into the bullpen, aware that everyone is watching.
"I don't accept your resignation," Will says calmly, and Jim spins around, his eyes flashing with anger.
"You fired her, after everything you've put her through, after all she's done for this show, for you, you fired her," Jim is seething.
"Jim," Maggie is calm, and tries to step in, but Jim shakes off the hand she placed on his arm.
"She wanted to be fired," Will repeats. He tried to find her after the show, tell her that he was wrong, that he was calmer and that he knows she was goading him into firing her, and he's sorry that he rose to her bait, and that of course she's not fired, whatever they face, they'll face together, but she was already gone, her office empty. Will envies Jim's righteous anger. He'd give anything to feel that kind of fiery anger. All he feels is numb. "Please. Come into my office." Will doesn't want to do this here, in front of the staff. He walks back into his office, and hopes that Jim will follow him.
He's lighting another cigarette when he hears the door open and Jim step inside.
"She wanted to be fired," Will says again.
"You know, she called your name," Jim tells him, and of all the things Will was expecting to hear, this was not one of them. "When she was hurt and bleeding and scared, you were the person that she wanted. Not me. She called your name, you asshole. And where were you? She broke her own heart, too. You weren't the only one who suffered." Jim is breathing hard, and Will can't speak for a moment, can't do anything but see Mackenzie in his head, bleeding and frightened.
"She doesn't want anyone else to have to resign or be fired except for her," Will swallows hard around the lump in his throat. "If you want to do something for her, go back to your desk and do your fucking job." Jim doesn't say anything else, just tears back out of Will's office and Will is once again alone.
She wrote a thousand emails to him while she was gone.
Apologized, explained, signed each one "Yours, Mackenzie."
He never replied to a single one.
She wrote after the stabbing, told him about it, told him how she called his name, and how she wasn't saying that to make him feel guilty, but because she thought he should know that she thinks about him, constantly.
A week after she decided she was going to stop writing, that it was an exercise in futility, Charlie Skinner called her.
"Want to come home?" He asked.
And she did.
Will finds himself standing in front of her apartment later that night. It's late. Too late, actually, in more ways than one, and he shoves his hand in his pockets and glances up at her dark windows.
Lonny is idling in the car behind him, and Will has two choices. He can get back into the car, or he can ring Mackenzie's doorbell.
He read her emails after Jim left his office. Brought up the folder where he had moved them, unopened, and clicked on the first one.
I'm so sorry, Will. I know you'll never forgive me. You shouldn't. I don't deserve it.
He can hear her voice as she explains to him about Jim, about Pakistan, about what she's doing and what she's seeing.
Jim's great. You'd really like him. He's the only silver lining to this trip. It's hot. And loud and crowded, and I'm finally starting to get the Marines to warm to me. I think they thought I was in over my head when I first arrived. They were right, I was in over my head, but I didn't want them to know that. It's awful here, Will.
The ones after she was stabbed are the hardest to read, but he gets through those too. He knows he should have read them when she sent them. Things might have been different, better, but he was so angry and so bitter then that he has a hard time believing that the words would have meant the same thing to him as they do now.
He stubs out his cigarette on the pavement and glances back at Lonny for a moment before calling her phone. She doesn't answer, he didn't think she would, and he makes himself step into her lobby, ask the doorman to buzz her apartment.
"It's awful late," the man says, but he knows Mackenzie keeps pretty late hours, and after Will persuades him with a folded bill and some charming words, he lets Will take the elevator to Mac's floor.
He knocks a couple of times, and waits, and listens and tries again. On the fourth time, the door swings open and Mackenzie is standing there, looking completely exhausted.
"Will, please go home," she pleads softly. "I can't tonight."
"You're not fired," he says.
"Will," her voice is rough, and she shakes her head. "It's the best thing for everyone. Really. I understand. I wanted you to do it. Don't feel badly about this."
"You're not fired," he says again. "I shouldn't have done that. I was angry, but that's not an excuse. It was never my reputation I was worried about." Mac sighs, her arms wrapping tightly around her middle as she steps back and allows him to move forward into the apartment.
"I know," she says as he closes the door behind him. She drops heavily onto the couch and buries her head in her hands. "This was my mistake, Will, my fault."
"You never trusted Dantana," Will says. No, she thinks, she didn't. "It's no more your fault than it is mine, or Charlie's. Why should you take the fall?"
"Will," she says softly.
"You're not fired," he repeats more emphatically. "Whatever happens, happens."
"It's too late," she tells him. "I don't want you to take it back. I don't want...please, Will. Just please, go."
Her voice cracks, and every part of her is tired. She just wants him to leave, leave so that she can crawl into her bed, pull the covers over her head and not wake up for a few days.
"Mac, I'm sorry," he says. "I read your emails. The ones you sent while you were away." She's way too fucking tired for this. She feels exhaustion in every part of her body. "I should have read them before, I should have answered. I should have done a thousand things a thousand different ways."
"But," she licks her lips and rocks back on her heels, "you didn't."
"I'm sorry," he says again.
"You were a good guy, you did a good thing," Mac's voice shakes. "Be a good guy again, Will, and please leave." And she begins to cry, finally, like a dam breaking, and Will is there in a second, without thinking, pulling her shaking body into his arms and running a hand up and down her back.
"Mackenzie," his voice is pained.
"Please," she says, but he's not sure what she's asking for. He's not even sure if she knows what she's asking for.
"You're exhausted," he murmurs into her hair. He can't do much right now. He can't predict what will happen. He can't change a goddamn thing, but he can do this, he can hold Mackenzie in his arms until she's calmer. And it may not be enough, it may not even be close to enough to solve all their problems.
But it's a start.