A little post-Election Night AU free association. What if Mac bolted?
Chapter 1 – Drummers Start Drumming
When they returned from break, Don's voice was in Will's ear. At first, nothing seemed out of place with that, since Mac and Don had alternated in Control throughout the election night coverage. But after a few minutes, as Elliot droned on about ballots in Racine, Will began to suspect that perhaps Mac wasn't in the booth. His eyes darted around with the realization.
For Mac to have abandoned her post during election night coverage—well, he knew then how deeply he must have wounded her in their earlier confrontation in Hair and Makeup.
"Cage your eyes, Will," Don instructed through the earpiece. "We're going back to you in ten seconds. Elliot, start to wind it up."
That cinched it. Mac wasn't in Control. She would never have let Don handle the rebuke; she would have done it herself.
When Will heard Herb's signal for break, he ripped the earpiece from his ear and went directly to his office. He needed a smoke and time to think about this. But then Charlie intercepted him with some babble about the Pretraeus timeline and someone named Jedediah Purdy.
"Will? It's gotten strange now—"
"She. Except for the things she did wrong, she did everything right, too. The rest was me."
Me. It was me. I staged a confrontation where I was guaranteed to win, because I had stacked the deck. I lied.
Lie upon lie, culminating in the worst one, that not only had the ring had been a joke, a rejoinder (an actual literal riposte, really, one that was sharp and wounding), but that he had returned the ring after its dirty work.
This lie was eminently believable. After all, what would be the problem with having blown a quarter million on a ring to punish her in an afternoon's time, when he'd already given back three million to be able to fire her at will?
He had to find her and stop this.
Her office was dark and empty. Hair and Makeup, too, was deserted. He returned to the floor and poked his head into Control, hoping she may have returned. "Does anyone know where MacKenzie is?"
"I think she's in the Hair and Makeup room."
"She's not."
"Did you look in her office?"
"So, no—no one knows where she is?" His aggravation spiked exponentially.
Herb's reminder that, "We're back in seven minutes, so she's gonna turn up," was no consolation.
Will dashed back to the bullpen and intercepted by Tess mouthing some nonsense about the mid-west.
"At this moment, I have never cared less about the Great Lakes region." Then, throwing discretion to the wind, he shouted, "Has anyone seen Mac?"
But no one had.
Distracted, with a growing sense of foreboding, Will allowed Maggie to take him back to the desk for the remainder of election coverage.
He'd fix this. He'd find her, he'd tell her it was a misunderstanding, he didn't mean it—that there was no way they could do the show without her. No way he could do the show without her. He needed her, and not just for the show. That he'd waited too long and he was sorry, but they could fix this.
After the show, Don and Sloan trailed Will back to his office.
"She didn't say anything?"
"She didn't say she was going AWOL, if that's what you mean," Don hedged. "She asked me if I could take the show for a bit longer. I just thought she meant she needed a longer break."
Will looked at Sloan.
"Don't ask me. You know where I've been all night."
He began sloughing off his jacket and tie.
"Wait—here's Jim—he might—"
Jim barreled through the glass door, eyes fixed on Will.
"You miserable piece of shit. How could you do that? You should have begged her to stay, out of self-interest, if nothing else—but, no, not you—"
Sloan turned back to Will. "Will, what's this about?"
"Tess overheard—you fired her, and now she's gone, and you did this—"
"It was a mistake—I'm going to tell her—"
"Well, she took you at your word, because she's gone." Jim glared at him. "No need to call Charlie about my insubordination, that's my next stop."
He turned and left.
"Fired who, Will?" Sloan pressed, the obvious name already occurring to her. "Not Mac—"
Will sagged against the edge of his desk. "It wasn't—it wasn't like that. She wanted me to—"
Sloan clapped a hand over her mouth.
Don stepped back. "You sit there and think about this, Will. Get all your ducks in formation, because Charlie's going to be down here in about two minutes and he's going to want to know why. And don't be surprised if Rebecca Halliday doesn't show up soon, too, because you probably just handed Dantana a settlement." He shook his head. "This is seriously fucked up."
"What the fuck were you thinking?" Charlie raged for the umpteenth time, beyond any expectation of receiving a reasonable response. "You fired your EP—which, by itself, is a fuck up of monumental proportions—you compromised AWM's standing in a high profile lawsuit—you'll probably be in the headlines tomorrow, News Night Anchor Fires Producer in a Snit During Live Election Coverage." He brought both hands up to his head in frustration, fingers splayed and clawing at the air.
"—And not only has this network lost the best EP in fucking television, but one of our brightest senior producers just quit."
"Jim'll come around. Mac'll make him. And she—she'll be back as soon as I can reach her—"
"Your optimism warms my heart," Charlie returned sarcastically. "Nice to see you're capable of utter delusion—"
"Charlie, I—"
"Will, you're very near the unemployment line yourself right now. I've got to get ahold of Leona and she's going to be furious. She went to bat for us and you just sunk the legal strategy with the lawsuit. Not to mention the fact that now we're down two producers, two really good producers, and the bench isn't deep enough to sustain that kind of loss." Charlie stopped for effect. "Why, Will? What so provoked you that you lost your fucking mind—"
"She asked me to—but that's not entirely—"
Charlie dipped his chin. "I should hope."
"There was an argument—rehashing some things that happened years ago—"
"So. Firing MacKenzie was a history practicum?"
Fuck. Will felt too sick to respond.
"Did you tell HR you fired her?"
"When have I had time?"
Charlie locked his arms across his chest and moved back to lean against the table. "She isn't fired if HR doesn't know about it. You can still turn this around."
"I'm trying. No one knows more than I do how quickly and how badly this went to worms." Will exhaled heavily. "She isn't picking up her phone—"
"I'm sure I can't imagine why she wouldn't want to take your calls right now."
"Sloan's tried, too—"
"Well, have her keep trying. You've got to walk this back." Charlie turned his face heavenward. "Christ. What the fuck were you thinking?"
Next morning, Dantana's petition proved only a minor blip on the ACN radar screen, overshadowed by breaking news of the Guatemalan earthquake, a car bomb in Damascus, and the on-going tallying of votes in Florida, where the presidential election was still considered too close to call.
Any disingenuous whining about an absence of professionalism at ACN was stifled by actual news, and if Charlie Skinner was grateful for that, he was more so that there was no media mention of any discord at ACN the night before. Specifically, no mention of an EP having been terminated in the midst of a broadcast.
Neither had there been any known contact with Mac, although Charlie had an update.
"I got a call this morning from Franklin Sears at ITV, wanting to know why MacKenzie was calling him about a position." Charlie fanned his fingertips over the surface of his desk. "So Mac's not only left the studio, she's leaving the damn country."
Will stumbled to his feet. "What's the job? Tell me where and—I'll go and—"
"Sit down." Charlie moved some papers around to reveal his cell phone and seized it. "Frankly, you don't have the skill-set needed to go anywhere Mackenzie might be heading. Even if I knew where to send you, which I don't. Some Director of Morale you turned out to be," he harrumphed. "The bullpen looked as collegial as an Arctic ice-sheet when you walked in today. Anyone speak to you?"
Will shook his head slowly.
"You're off the show, Will. Two weeks. Leona's mad as hell right now and she'll definitely buy into a little disciplinary leave of absence, which we'll publicly characterize as vacation. Jane can keep your desk warm."
Will rolled his eyes.
Charlie scrolled through his cell phone contacts. "I've got to make a few calls. Make yourself scarce around here."
Will was careful to watch the opening of News Night that night. Charlie hadn't mentioned taking Will's name off the show during this leave of absence, and, contractually, Will would've had to buy into such an action, as he had on the 9/11 broadcast. When Jane Barrow was characterized as "sitting in for Will McAvoy," he muted the sound and twisted the cap to his third beer.
His name still being on the show was a relief. Leona might be mad but she wouldn't axe the show.
MacKenzie still hadn't returned a call or text message.
He took a long pull from the bottle and opened his email account.
Mac, I'm sorry. I lost my temper and things got out of hand. You're not fired. I need you on the show. Please call me.
It didn't seem enough, so he hesitated hitting the send key.
As his fingers lifted from the keyboard, the phone rang. Perfect timing, he thought.
Except the phone indicated the caller was Sloan Sabbith.
"Aren't you supposed to be on TV right now?"
"Nah. Since Jane's on, Don says there'd be an explosion of estrogen on the set. I'll be counter-balancing Elliot later."
He grunted.
"Will? She's not returning my calls. And I'm not supposed to tell you this, but Maggie went by her place and managed to talk the supe into letting her in. Mac's just gone." When he didn't say anything she prompted him again. "Will?"
"I think Jane needs to lose weight," he deflected, looking at the TV screen.
"I'm not buying your non sequitur, and by the way, that's the most misogynistic thing I've ever heard fall from your lips. What Jane needs to lose is twenty gross of bitchiness."
"Hey, Sloan, in your little fractured fairy tale, was I Goldilocks or was I the bear? Because I really—"
"Planets, not bears. And perfection and radioactivity. Didn't think I was being obscure about any of that."
"Guess I confused myself, then."
"Nothing new there. Will, I've got to go to final rundown. Are you going to be okay?"
"Yeah. I'm okay. Good show, Sloan."
Charlie called three days later with an update. Mac had abruptly cancelled the meeting with Charlie's ITV counterpart, although Charlie felt it meant that a different opportunity had suddenly cropped up and she had availed herself of it.
"I'm still running this down, but I think she may have hooked up with the German public broadcasting arm. Das Erste—that's the national broadcast, sort of like 60 Minutes but with people not yet eligible for AARP—has a crew in Lebanon, right on the Beruit-to-Damascus road."
"Lebanon—hang on—" Will pulled up a map on his laptop. "That's adjacent to—"
"Syria. Lebanon's probably the safest dangerous place for a journalist to be in those parts." Charlie sighed. "Have you talked to Mac's parents?"
There was a protracted silence, then, "I haven't talked to them in years. It would be—awkward."
"Right. Well, evidently, Mac hasn't talked to her parents recently, either. And, awkwardness aside, I called them. So, of course, now they're worried. Wondering what else they don't know. But the ambassador reminded me she has dual citizenship—"
"And?—"
"Two passports. And personal contacts in the U.K. Foreign Ministry. What he was getting at was, she has a broad range of options open to her. I don't know, Will. Seems to me like she's bound to try to contact Sloan or one of the kids downstairs eventually—perhaps it would be better if we waited."
"You wait, Charlie. I'm not waiting. How can I get in touch with this German crew?"
"They're based in Zahle. They probably zip into Aleppo or Damascus and then back out before it gets dicey."
"Zahle isn't that far from Beruit."
"—But Beruit isn't the Paris of the Middle East anymore. Hasn't been since the seventies, before the civil war. Infrastructure is still coming back and transportation in-country may be problematic. Not to mention—it's still near dangerous places—"
"I can handle myself—"
"Are you fucking kidding me? You're a talking head, Will. You're not a field correspondent. You have no clue what you would be getting into."
"I'm on vacation, remember?" Will never liked raising his voice to Charlie, but he had to get this through. "I can do any damned thing I want on vacation. And besides—ACN has me insured." He cultivated a flippant tone. "Reese would get a—"
"Shut up." Charlie wanted to put the kibosh on that entire line of thought. It might jinx things. Another long pause, and Will could picture Charlie twisting his mouth in thought.
"Well, if ACN is going to underwrite this ridiculous little adventure, you'll have to do it my way. Hang tight. I'll get back to you."
A week after election day, Will dropped his carry-on in a cushioned chair at the Admirals Club Lounge at JFK. He accepted a Diet Coke from the server and dug out his boarding pass. There weren't many options for nonstop service to Lebanon, but Royal Jordanian promised greater creature comforts than, say, Aeroflot. He reviewed the itinerary again, then scanned the room. A familiar figure sat far away from the door.
Jim Harper.
Will walked over to him and stood there until Jim acknowledged him.
"Charlie send you here to tell me you're sorry?"
"I'm here because Charlie thinks you'll need a producer." Jim folded his newspaper. "And, by the way, I'm not sorry."
"You know where she—"
Jim held up his own boarding pass. "Would I be going this route if I did?"
Will shifted his weight. "Something to drink?"
"I'll wait till we board."
Jim was trying to make a point with his frosty demeanor. Charlie Skinner had wooed him into going, more to afford a level of safety to McAvoy than do much significant producing. But this would be no partnership. This was merely a means to an end, and the end was finding Mac. Convince her that Genoa wasn't her fault, and that McAvoy, even News Night, was better left in the rear view mirror. Convince her to come back to the States, anyway, where there were options at ABC or even the D.C. or west coast bureaus of ACN. Charlie would do whatever it took to keep Mac in the fold. And if Mac wouldn't return, then Jim would insist that she find him a place on her new team, wherever it was.
"Do you know what parachute journalism is? It's when some pretty boy television reporter shows up in a hot spot for a short period of time, covering only one story, then bugs out. Really burns the hell out of the correspondents who've been on the ground for months, years, specializing in one locale or one story."
"And your point is—?"
"Having seen enough of it, I never thought I'd be doing it myself."
"Well, I won't deny this is self-serving, in a way. But it isn't self-aggrandisement."
Jim grunted. "I just want us to be clear on this. Mac left you and I'm not going to second guess why. I'm only going on this jaunt to find Mac. You and I are going to stay out of each other's way. Got it?"
Will turned. "I read you."
Twenty three hours and a layover in Amman later, they were met at the airport by a pre-arranged driver with a Subaru, and then driven 90 minutes over an ill-maintained, crowded four lane highway before being finally deposited at the Zahle centerpiece, the Cristal Grand Hotel Kahdri.
The only message waiting for Will was from Charlie.
Call.
It was 5am in New York. He'd return the call later. Instead, Will hovered nearby as Jim made calls to pinpoint the Das Erste team.
The Germans were in motion, having just returned from a few days over the border. Men were unloading camera gear, bedding, and coolers from their SUV. Jim introduced himself and Will to the leader of the team, Mathias, who told them the team from Danmarks Radio, which pooled coverage with Das Erste, had just relieved them in Damascus.
Mathias shook his head at Jim's rushed questions in pidgin German. "Nein, nein, hier ist niemand Namens MacKenzie."
Will didn't need a translator to get the gist of the conversation. MacKenzie wasn't with the Das Erste team. He needed to talk to Charlie, have him do further investigation from his end.
Mathias indicated his team would return to Syria in a few days. He scrawled a name on the back of a card and passed it to Jim. "Sprecher. Fixer for you. You have time to establish your situation." He paused. "Nehmen Sie eine Dusche," he added with a grin and a shrug before turning to follow his laughing mates. "Der Zirkus kommt in die Stadt."
Jim tugged at his ear as he watched the Germans walk away.
Will exhaled. "I'll call Charlie in a few hours, see if anything has popped up. In the meantime, I think we owe it to the company to file something."
"You're not still thinking of going with them to Damascus?" Jim asked, inclining his head to indicate the German journalists.
"I don't know—if I knew for sure where Mac—"
"Look, Will, this is your show. But I didn't particularly like the way Mathias talked, and—"
"You don't trust him?" Will's eyebrow shot up. "What's up?"
"I didn't say I don't trust him. I just don't like some of the things he said."
"You aren't going to tell me."
"I'd rather be sure. Let's make the call to ACN together, and maybe Gary can help me out with my German."
Will returned to the hotel and napped for a few hours. In early evening, when Jim knocked at the door, he entered carrying a guitar case.
"Bought it off an expat who was leaving to go back to the States." He flicked open one of the fasteners. "Have you called Charlie yet?"
"Calling now." Will hit the number on his cell as Jim lifted an inexpensive Yamaha dreadnought from the case.
Will began laughing. "Were you looking in a mirror when you bought it?"
"No. Why, what's—shit."
Will was still laughing. "You gonna do Kurt Cobain's greatest hits?"
"Shit," Jim repeated, staring at the decidedly left-handed guitar.
Will took pity on him. "Okay, you can make a little modification to the bridge and restring it—" He turned his attention back to the phone. "Millie, it's Will. Is the old man in his office yet?"
"Oh, to be young again and on assignment—" Charlie's voice crooned over the cell.
"Knock it off, Charlie. She's not here. We met up with the ARD crew today and she's not with them."
"Oh, she's there," Charlie returned, and Will could picture him pulling his head back in his characteristic pose of determination, the wind-up before the pitch. "But we were wrong about the Germans. She's with an outfit called DR—"
"Danmarks Radio," Will finished for him. "Jim's with me so I'm putting you on speaker, okay?"
"It seems the Danes and the Germans have an arrangement, some sort of journalistic tag-team approach. That's what confused things. But she's there. I have it from Magnus Lunde, my counterpart at DR."
"Then she's in Damascus now," Will said, shooting a significant look at Jim, who had put down the guitar and moved nearer.
"And she'll be back in a few days. Magnus said the rotation was regular. You know, the most insidious part of live reportage from warzones isn't the exposure to live fire or IEDs or the threat of chemical weapons. It's the tedium."
"Do you actually believe anything you're saying right now?"
"Every fucking word. News doesn't always arrive on a timetable to that synchs with your deadline. These guys are on a beat. Unfortunately for them—and, incidentally, fortunately for us—there doesn't seem to be much news on their beat right now." Charlie sighed audibly. "Patience, Will. She's coming back. Just wait a day or two. And you know you can always pass the time by reporting."
"We had an idea," Jim spoke up, surprising Will by including him under the umbrella of credit. "There's a helluva influx of Syrian refugees and Lebanon is absorbing the brunt of it. Perhaps upwards of one million by the end of the year. We thought we'd go out and look at some of the camps—"
"There you go, that's the kind of pluck I'm looking for."
"Hey, Charlie, can you transfer me down to Gary Cooper in the bullpen? I need some German language skills—"
"Better, I'll transfer you to Sloan. Did you know she's fluent in a trifecta of Axis Powers languages?" Then Charlie's voice changed timbre. "Both of you stay safe out there. It's an unfamiliar environment, one slightly removed from the urban dangers of Manhattan. And Jim Harper, I just want to make sure you know that in the history of television, no producer has ever advanced who got his on camera talent injured."
Jim rolled his eyes. "Roger that."
"I'll transfer the call now—Millie, how do I—"
A few hours later, Jim found Will at the hotel bar.
"Sprechen Sie Deutsch? You get your translations?"
"Yeah. The German guy—Mathias—was just being a smart-ass."
"What did he say to get you so fired up?"
"He said we should take a bubble bath. Probably a dig about our hotel and ACN having deeper pockets than the ARD. But then he said that the circus had come to town and that's what his pals were laughing at. He meant us. We're the circus."
"Celebrity journalist. Or whatever it was you said the other day about parachutes." Will dug a thumbnail under the beer's label and began to peel it up. "Fuck 'em."
"Fuck 'em," Jim echoed as the barkeep put a beer in front of him. "You want to do the refugee story? No one's been covering it, it's valid and newsworthy. Charlie seemed interested."
"Sure. Let's do the news. To pass the time."
Jim caught Will's tone but wasn't sure what else to say, so they both sat silent for long minutes. Then, finally, "I've given this a lot of thought these past few days, and I don't think she was throwing herself on the grenade for you. Or ACN. She felt she'd betrayed your trust—" As the words left his mouth, Jim realized he should have used more discriminating phraseology; he wanted to be clear he was speaking of Genoa, not whatever had occurred between Will and Mac years before. "She didn't see it as sacrifice, she saw it as punishment, something she deserved."
Will looked up again, jaw clenched, and Jim once more guiltily noted the strong potential for elided meaning.
"I mean, she knew she had your professional trust and she felt that she'd misused it. Not riding Jerry harder. The fucked up Stomtonovich interview. Not asking more questions."
"Stop." Will held up the flat of his hand. "What I said was, I trust Charlie and Mac. I still trust Charlie and Mac. Genoa had nothing to do with—with her—" He couldn't find words to continue.
"I'm fairly certain that wouldn't be what she thought. She heard, you trusted her. That's why it's so personal. I mean, this isn't really professional embarrassment—it's penance."
"It's neither, Jim," Will responded testily. "I fired her. I shot off my goddam mouth and said things just to hurt her. It had nothing to do with Genoa. It was—personal."
Another few minutes passed silently between them. Jim wasn't sure why he felt suddenly conciliatory instead of angry with McAvoy, with this mess that Will acknowledged that he had instigated. Maybe he felt sorry for him. But Jim wanted to be careful not to say the wrong thing, although he wasn't at all sure what the right thing was.
"It's hard to pin down, this—regard I have for her. It isn't a brother-sister thing, because I've got a sister, you know. Mac's good at what she does, really good, so I guess some of it is admiration. I think—I think I might have been in love with her for the first fifteen minutes after meeting her. Until I figured out it wouldn't do any good."
Will wouldn't look at him.
Jim drained the last of his beer. "In 2007, a comet passed through my life. I was dazzled and I've been pulled along by gravity ever since." He stood and threw a wad of Lebanese pound notes on the bar. "We've got a driver to take us to Bar Elias, the nearest of the refugee camps, tomorrow. It isn't far but it may be a rough ride. Get some sleep, Will."
"Wait—Jim—"
"Yeah?"
"You think she ever worries about stray bullets in small wars?"
"For herself, you mean?" He shook his head. "I wish she did."
Two nights later, Jim returned Will to the Grand Hotel Kahdri and called room service for ice and scotch and housekeeping for extra towels. After seeing to the administration of the first shot of painkilling booze, Jim went in search of Mathias and his crew. Restaurants attractive to Westerners were sparse enough that he found the Germans on the third try. He made sure to catch Mathias' eye as he walked in.
"Hallo! Unser amerikanischer Freund!" Our American friend.
Mathias nudged his mates.
"Wie war—" he pantomimed driving. "Your ride?"
Wearing a thin smile, Jim came over.
The crew roared with laughter. Jim was handling having been made the butt of a joke with admirable dignity, but the German journalists, now well into their cups, still found great amusement in remembering the prank on their American colleagues.
"Reisezirkus," Jim shrugged. Traveling circus.
More laughter. Jim motioned to the waiter to bring another round of beers. Mathias kicked a chair toward him and Jim sat, trying to maintain his sheepish little smile as he coolly assessed how drunk they were and how drunk they might become if he assisted. He joined them in the first round, but neglected to keep up, so that they plowed into the second round he bought without him. By the third round, Jim had managed to convince Mathias and the others that he held no grudge, that he didn't much care for the "zirkus" either.
Jim slipped away after that, having palmed Mathias' key ring during a moment of calculated bonhomie. He went to the dowdy ground floor apartment the Germans used as a base and looked around. Their gear was packed, the duffels stacked and ready for an early morning departure. Rows of battery chargers glowed, charging the deep cycle nickel-cadmium batteries needed for the cameras.
Jim unplugged every one.
"When you're a Jet, motherfuckers."