Author's Notes: Many thanks, again, for all the lovely reviews and responses to "Heartache Tonight." I really am trying to go back and catch up on reading and reviewing all the stories I've missed these last several days or so while I got lost in my own writing. Be patient with me! This fic is my hopeful response to episode 2 x 05. From what I hear about the next couple of episodes, I don't have too much to be hopeful about, but I will try. Thanks for reading!
Home. He looks around in shock, because he has absolutely no memory of getting here. The last thing he remembers is Mackenzie shouting into his earpiece. And isn't that usually the last thing in his brain before he goes to sleep anyway? Sometimes it's a whispered "thirty seconds Will." And sometimes it's an almost pleading "Will…Will?" But it's always her voice in his ear…in his head. Nina had asked him once why he often murmured "ok" or "got it" as he was falling asleep. He'd brushed her off, because there was no way in hell that he could say "oh, I was just answering Mackenzie in my head."
"Why aren't you undressed?" Mackenzie asks, hurrying into his bedroom as if on a mission, and really, isn't she always?
He looks down at the tie in his hands and realizes he was meant to be changing clothes. How long ago had she left him in here with instructions to remove his suit?
"How did we get here?" he whispers. She turns and gazes at him in disbelief and…understanding?
"Lonny drove us here nearly an hour ago, Will. I've talked to your sister. She'll call you tomorrow with information about the funeral arrangements.
He nods dumbly. She just stands there for a few minutes, not quite sure what to do, but that upsets him. Mackenzie always knows what to do when the shit hits the fan. Fix it, Mac. Fix it. And magically, as if she could hear that unvoiced thought, she slowly walks over toward him and takes the tie from his hands. She hangs it over the closet door and grabs some pajama pants and a tee shirt. She unbuttons his dress shirt and removes his cufflinks, laughing slightly when she realizes they're tiny silver guitars, and sets the items on his dresser. She holds her hands out expectantly and he looks at her for a moment, confused.
"Shirt?" she asks, and he slips it off his shoulders. He finally remembers how to undress himself the rest of the way, and does so, not caring that she is still there. He's not sure he should be alone anyway.
"I'm an idiot" he finally mumbles, breaking his silence.
"Sometimes, yes, but not now… not for this Billy" she responds, coming to stand in front of him. He likes that, in this moment, she is towering over him. It's comforting not to be the tallest guy in the room, not to be the one in control, for once. He is sitting on the side of his bed, and she is standing just inches away from him, still in her heels, and it makes him feel like she is blocking out the world for him. He will hide behind five foot eight, plus two inches for the heels, Mackenzie right now.
He leans forward cautiously and sets his head on her stomach. When she doesn't flinch or move away, he wraps his arms around her waist. He isn't expecting it, and neither is she, but he shudders against her and thinks he should be crying, though he isn't. Does that make him an even worse son? He didn't call his dying father and now he can't even shed a tear for him.
Her hands reach up and run through his hair and he realizes that no one has ever done that for him except her. His mother was too busy trying to stay alive and unharmed, his father was too busy trying to beat the shit of him, and the rest of the world saw him as a cold, aloof newsman who took no prisoners and did not suffer fools gladly. Mackenzie was the only one who saw the lost little boy inside. The only one he'd ever let see that part of him, and yet, she loved him anyway. She comforted him in ways others had never thought he needed or wanted. But he did.
"I should have listened to you" he finally says, turning his head slightly so she could hear him, but never removing his head from its resting place on her belly.
"Generally speaking, yes. But maybe it's for the best Will. Maybe you two would have just said something else you would have regretted. Maybe you would have left an angry, bitter message and that would have been the last thing you thought he heard from you. Maybe it was for the best" she tells him firmly, trying to erase any doubts he may have about how he treated his father.
He laughs. Well, it is more of a dry, painful bark...but it's something.
"What?" she asks, her hands stopping their movements through his hair, but they were still there. A comforting presence.
"Are you able to find the good in absolutely any situation Mac?" he chuckles.
"I try. My father always said 'no matter what the journey, no matter what the goal, keep your eye upon the doughnut and not upon the hole.' I try to live by that philosophy" she replies seriously.
He can't help it. He begins to laugh so hard that tears leak from his eyes. He looks up to find her smiling at him, relieved to see that he is rejoining the land of the living again. But then, as suddenly as the laughter starts, it ends. It is replaced by a sob that is so deep and distant that it has probably been hiding in some dark cavern of his soul for nearly forty years. He begins to weep, and he has no idea if it is for his lost father or his lost childhood, but he can't turn it off. He can't even catch his breath.
"It's ok" she soothes over and over. She awkwardly climbs over him and onto the bed and pulls him to rest against her. She rocks him back and forth and he cries into her silk blouse.
He's not sure, but he thinks that maybe, through his tears, he keeps saying "it's not" over and over again. But it is probably coming out sounding more like "it's snot" and because he is exhausted and grieving, that sends him off on a new round of hysterical, teary laughter. And then, for some reason, his totally inappropriate brain reminds him that the term 'hysterical' is actually derived from the Greek word for uterus, because it was once a term used to describe a woman's unmanageable emotional excesses thought the arise from the 'change of life' and what the fuck?! Why did he have this much worthless information in his brain?
"Did you know that the most popular type of doughnut in Pakistan is the Boston Crème doughnut because it mostly closely resembles the popular Navaz Sharif variety of traditional Pakistani fried dough?" she asks out of the blue, and he thinks that, if he hadn't already fallen in love with her years ago, he would have fallen in love with her in that moment. Because useless, arcane trivia comforted them both. And because she is the only person he has ever met whose bottomless pit of ridiculous knowledge rivals his own.
"I did not know that Mac. Tell me more" he begs, and so she rattles off weird fact after weird fact until his eyelids droop.
"He was wrong, you know?" she asks, just as he thinks he might drift off to sleep.
"What?" he questions.
"Your father, he was wrong. And you were wrong if you believed him. If he actually told you that you were a bad person and that was what the world was going to think of you…he was wrong. I can't tell you what the world thinks of you Billy, but I can tell you what I think of you. You don't show it to many people, but you care more than anyone could possibly imagine you do. You hide it so no one will think you're weak. Probably because that's what he told you strength was: never showing fear, or dependency, or any sort of chink in your armor. There was absolutely no reason for you to apologize to that man, because you became so much more than he ever could have dreamed of, despite his abuse. And I don't think he would have wanted you to apologize anyway. Apologies showed weakness in his eyes Will, that's why he never apologized to you. So let it go. "
He settles more heavily against her chest and heaves a sigh of relief. He'd never realized it before, but somewhere along the line he had stopped giving a damn what his father thought and started caring only about what she thought. And if she thought he was good, then that's all that mattered.
"What did you mean earlier?" she asks him.
"When?"
"On the air, in the studio. You said 'well, it's just us now.' What did you mean?" and he had forgotten he'd even said it.
"I couldn't forgive you while he was still alive. Because forgiving your betrayal would have meant I would have had to forgive his as well. I couldn't. Now I can. Now, it's just us Mac."
He can feel the tears leaking from her eyes and landing in his hair. She won't cry out loud right now, because she thinks she has to be there for him, so she cries silent tears of relief.
"Will?" she asks shakily, and he fears she is going to turn this into a night of conversation, and revelation, and voicemail messages, and things he just isn't going to be able to do on the same night he's lost his father.
"What?" he asks worriedly.
"Can we go get doughnuts tomorrow morning? Suddenly I'm craving them" she whispers, and he laughs.
"Yeah, we can do lots of things tomorrow Mac." Because becoming an orphan at age fifty-two finally freed you from the ghosts of your past. It was terrifying, and saddening, and maddening that it had taken this long, but maybe he was his own man now. He alone was responsible for all of his decisions, and it seemed only right and fitting that the first decision he made on his own, and without regret or recrimination, was to let her back in.
"It gets better, Will" she says quietly into his hair.
"What does?"
"Everything."