Happy new-episode day! Another chapter update, way earlier than anticipated. This takes us on a detour all the way to Pakistan, but we'll return to New York shortly, and will focus more on the work/life balance of the characters. Most of this takes place in the past — both when Jim and Mac were in Pakistan pre-NewsNight, and before the start of this story as one is also shorter (ie, more readable!) than the last one. Thanks to everyone for sticking through this. There may be some time (and some rewrites) before the last chapter. I want to get everything synced to s2, more or less.

Oh, and the thing, at the end? Had to happen. I promise. I'd love to hear people's thoughts on everything.

"Nothing was irrevocable; everything was within reach... I could make promises to myself and to other people and there would be all the time in the world to keep them. I could stay up all night and make mistakes, and none of it would count."
-Joan Didion

Mac

June 18

Along the long line of her career, someone — she forgets who, exactly, but it probably was a colleague or a lover or, most likely, a man who was both — had given MacKenzie Morgan McHale a camera and taught her how to use it. She would never pretend to be a talented photographer, but she was competent, for an amateur. Will certainly liked her work, and had turned a few of her photos into prints that adorned his office walls. They weren't anything fancy, mostly grays and whites. She knew she was much more adept, technically speaking, at landscapes, but taking photos of people was her favorite.

She doesn't have much these days, so her most popular subjects are by default the Keefer children. Once upon a time, though, in her heady first days abroad in Pakistan, lost and angry and confused at everything with Will and Brian, she had stumbled into photographing children playing in the streets. Cliche, she knew, perhaps even a bit paternalistic. But she liked the juxtapositions — these children were often surrounded by war and hunger and oppressed in sometimes-horrific ways, but were still joyful. They still raced in the streets and animated objects into dolls by wrapping them in blankets and shared apples as they gossiped on street curbs.

She didn't spend much time in the country — she was mostly embedded with various troops, across the border in Afghanistan, and would only fly back when something was happening. When she was in the country, she was usually in Islamabad, living in a sterile efficiency around the corner from the American embassy. The Marriott bombing hadn't happened yet, but the city was wary, dangerous and slightly edgy with unrest. It was as itchy and ill-tempered as she was, and she simply couldn't handle her father's or the government's warnings. Although Jim urged her to stay close, she would go wandering the streets with only her cell phone, her thumb idly passing over the numbers it would take to dial Will, apologize, try and work things out.

On one of those sojourns, she stumbled onto a square building, surrounded by a high, chain-link fence and with two rows of windows running across it. It's shabby, but very clean. It's nondescript and she would have passed it without blinking, save for the children in the tiny yard. It's an orphanage.

She began to pass it regularly, at first just stopping to smile and then to converse in broken Urdu with the children; eventually, a young woman invited her in. Her name was Zahra, and she is slim and motherly and old and young at the same time. She cared for the children.

Mac flew in and out, but whenever she was in Islamabad, she visited the orphanage. She brought them supplies and watched them color and fantasized, briefly, about saying fuck it to everything, adopting a daughter, and going back to New York or London to raise her into a fabulously independent woman.

She dropped those thoughts almost immediately.

A few months later, at a draggy British Embassy party that she only went to because Jim wanted to flirt with a cultural attache, the U.S. deputy counsel introduced her to Ayeesha Khan, a matronly woman in her early sixties, who carried herself simply and with great dignity. She was wearing a printed cotton dress and flat, worn sandals. Her feet were cracked and her toenails yellowed. "Mrs. Khan and her husband run the largest private philanthropy in the country," Harris explained.

"Oh, that's quite wonderful," Mac said, feigning interest. She'd been attending these parties since the age of six, and knew the questions and the answers by heart. "What is it that you do?"

"Health care, mostly. We work with mothers to get prenatal care, children to get vaccines, our elders to get proper medication. Hospitals, drug-treatment centers. And orphanages, of course. We ensure that orphans are well taken care of. We oversee a network of cradles, into which parents can leave children they cannot care for."

"Oh," Mac said. "There's an orphanage, that I visit sometimes. The children are quite bright, friendly. It's in Aapbara."

"Oh, yes, that is one of ours," Mrs. Khan smiled. "What do you think of it?"

Mrs. Khan was the most interesting person at this deadly boring party, and they talked for the rest of the night, well past Jim's departure with the attache. Mrs. Khan was an obstetrician, trained in London before returning to her home country, falling in love with a businessman, and choosing to live a spartan life while investing everything they had in charity. The two of struck up an unlikely friendship, meeting for chai whenever Mac was in Islamabad.

The fleeting idea that she should adopt a child grew stronger. She could do it, she knew. She had means and money and, hell, she'd thrown away multiple shots at happiness, so this could be a fresh start. She had never wanted children, but now was terrified of dying alone, and that curdled into an unquantifiable yearn. Confronting life and death on the regular also probably has somthing to do with it. She brought it up at tea with Mrs. Khan one day, when she was recuperating after her stabbing.

Her new friend was quiet. "A child is not a talisman, something for you to take back to New York as a reminder of your time abroad," she pointed out, gesturing toward Mac's middle, thick with bandages.

"It's not that," Mac insisted, wetting her lips. "I've lived for myself for so long, and I'm probably not going to settle down with a partner. I've lost those chances. I'm not going to become a mother the typical way." She did still have time — she was 35 at the time, plenty of women conceived after 35 — but she knew with a bleak certainty that that wasn't going to happen. She didn't believe in god, exactly, but she believed in karma and paying it forward and consequences, and she knew she had to live with hers. "I can be a good mother. The child would be abandoned, and I am alone. We could keep each other company. Two drifters, off to see the world."

Mrs. Khan was quiet. "Yes. Unfortunately, though, Pakistani law prohibits children being adopted outside their religious faith, and considers all children Muslim unless proven otherwise. Even if you could get the courts to allow it — and they might, for you — there is no getting around that."

She returned to New York months later, the idea buried. She tried to keep in touch with Mrs. Khan, but truthfully, life happened. She and Will sorted their nonsense out and married in Italy, and while that was huge and life-changing and important, her mother's sudden death, at 76, was what really spun her off her axis. She and Will flew back to London, kissed cheeks, and listened to people murmur, "Maureen was a lovely woman." She sent Will back to New York, over his protestations, the day after the funeral, but stayed with her father for an extra two weeks.

She had wanted to persuade him to come to New York, but ended up just packing her mother's things and shuffling him around town. She kept pushing him, though, and on the last day, when selfish wheedling (I miss you and I love you and I want you nearby) and practical assertions (you're getting older and you'll need help) both failed, she finally asked, "aren't you scared?"

Startled, he asked, "Of what?"

"Of being alone! Of ..."

"Of what, MacKenzie? Of dying alone?" he laughs.

Yes. That is exactly it. But she couldn't verbalize it, so she just nods. It was a striking and cold fear she had never experienced before.

"My dear girl," he said, clapping his hands on her upper arms and making her feel like she was 16 again, dragging her father out of the UN General Assembly to reprimand her for smoking in the school bathrooms. "No matter where in this wide world you are, I always have you."

She headed back to New York a week later (alone, obviously), the conversation brooding on her mind. When she finally got Sloan, who was in a raggedy, hellish, hectic phase following the twins' birth, to come out to tea with her, the first thing she blurted out was, "Are you ever afraid of dying alone?"

Sloan, who looked beyond dead-eyed — honestly, nobody in that house got any sleep that first year after the twins' birth, and on top of that, Sloan had to be pert and perfect for television every day — chewed on a swizzle stick contemplatively. "Yes," she finally said, and Mac could tell she was queuing up some self-deprecation. "Because if I die alone, that means Don and the kids are dead — probably because I've killed them — or I've driven them all away. Which is definitely a pretty real possibility," she cocks her head. "I bet I could calculate the odds on that. Give me a sec."

"Sloan," Mac groaned, grabbing her friend's forearm to get her to focus. "I'm serious."

Sloan shrugged self-consciously. "I don't," she said. "Is this about your mom?"

"No. Yes. No. I don't know," Mac covered her face with her hands before looking up. "I suppose it is, at the most Freudian level."

"No, it's about your mom at all the levels. And you aren't alone. You have Will."

"Who is 13 years older than me, smokes like a chimney, considers walking to pour another beer working out, and eats like a 19-year-old frat boy. I love him, but he's going to die first, Sloan."

"I wouldn't put it past Will to live to 105 just to be a jackass, but you have tons of friends. You're the type of person who makes an impression, Mac. You won't be a hermit, if he … dies first. Can we not talk about Will dying? This is weird."

"When I was in London I tried to get my father to come back with me. He's 81, my mother died at 76, surely he hasn't much time. But he said no. And then he said that no matter where he was, he wouldn't die alone, because he has me."

Sloan looked confused. "OK? Yes, that's true. So what."

"So what if Will dies and leaves me alone? And then I die and people are sad for a day, and then they move on, because they have families and lives to attend to!"

The look of confusion on Sloan's face deepened. "Do you want kids, Kenzie? Because let me tell you, they are a lot of effort to go through in order to have someone who you presume will want to take care of you in 30 years."

"No! Yes. Maybe. I don't know!"

"Have you talked this over with Will? You know, checked, like, hey honey, I'm thinking we should have children. Don't worry, it's just for after you're dead."

"Sloan. Why did you and Don have kids?"

"A 25-hour-long flight messed up my birth control on my honeymoon."

"You're going to have to stop saying that when Max gets old enough to understand. You two were going to have a baby eventually, don't lie. I know you."

"I don't know. It was just … when we were dating, when we were talking about maybe getting married, I just thought, 'yes. I want to have children with this man.' And I had never thought that before, so we ran with it."

"That. Yes. I never had that thought. Ever. Not even with Will, not even the first time around," Mac shifted. "I never saw the need. And then, with my mother … I miss that dynamic. Already, I miss being in a mother-daughter relationship," she sighed as a shudder overtook her body. "So no, it's not about creating a new life or wondering whether this little person has my nose or Will's lips or any of that nonsense. I want to ... matter in that way to someone."

Sloan's eyes filled with tears, and she reached out to Mac. "I think you need to talk to Will."

Will had gone ashen the first time she brought it up, later that week. "Mac — I'm too old," he said. "And where would we put it?"

"We do have a few extra bedrooms. And Picasso fathered children into his eighties."

"Fathered, not parented."

"You like kids."

"I love em. You know what the best part about them is? You hand them back to their parents when you're done playing with them. Bonus points if you get them sugared up first."

She stared at him for a second, before climbing into his lap. "Listen to me, Will McAvoy," she said. "You will never, ever, be anything like your father. I know that in my bones. So don't let that factor into your thoughts on this," she kissed him softly. "I'm only telling you that once, alright?"

They had tabled it for awhile, several months really, as they produced a show and ate takeout in their underwear and slept in till eleven on the weekends and watched Sloan and Don struggle through that year with the newborn twins. But every so often, they would discuss it, lobbing hypotheticals back and forth like oranges. Are we young enough? Would we move? What would we name him or her, if there was a him or her? What if we put a nursery in ACN? Everything was still firmly in the future tense, but the feeling, the thought, of wanting an adoption was an ever-present ache that she didn't know how to treat.

Until one day when she got a call from Mrs. Khan out of the blue. "Oh, my goodness. How … how are you?" Mac asked.

"I am well," Mrs. Khan hesitated. "I know it has been far too long, but I am calling for a professional matter. You remember your orphanage, in Aapbara?"

"Of course," she said, wondering if she perhaps needed to write a check.

"Wonderful. I had hoped so. They've just had a young girl come into their care, a legal orphan. She is almost three years old. Her mother and father both died in a car accident; there are no other relatives. However, they were both Christian, which makes adopting her out quite problematic. Then I remembered my conversation with you, and I thought I would give you a call. Her name is Naureen." When Mac heard the name — so close to Maureen — she gasped. "Yes. Let me talk with my husband, but yes. Absolutely."

And that is how Mac finds herself, on a humid summer's day, setting off for Pakistan by herself, feeling a bit like this whole situation has snowballed and she never really made a decision. She and Will both made the gear-shift, agreed that if they were going to do it, they were going to do it right — promotions would get them home in time, a larger apartment would give them the space to raise her properly. Both were mutual; if anything, Will almost seems more game — more fearful, but more game — than she does.

But Mac has yet to consciously take her thoughts from a what-if to a this is life now. She spent all this time and money and effort petitioning the government to allow the adoption, and she's still not sure. She's not sure how she will feel when she gets to Islamabad, when she sees Naureen for the first time, when she takes her home. This is a person, not a baby she can train. Will Nora like her? Are she and Will equipped emotionally to become parents, to step forward in place of two dead ones that the girl likely still remembers? There are two many questions. The plan is for her to spend two weeks in Pakistan, the first week with Nora still living in the orphanage and Mac seeing her for progressively longer periods; the second with them both in the hotel and spending their days together, preparing to head home. She hopes this will ease the transition.

The first meeting is anticlimactic, really – Naureen has no idea what is going on. She's a calm toddler, with quiet wide eyes that seem to see everything and betray an old soul. Her hair is thick and chin-length, and she's got short, neat bangs cut exactly above her eyebrows. Mac wonders if the girl will get along with the boisterous Max Keefer, who is really the only age-appropriate playmate they have lined up, but whose (entirely apt) nickname is Wild Thing. Nora invites Mac to play whatever game she's playing, but Mac's hopeless at following along with her chattering in Urdu. She thinks maybe it is a tea party? When she leaves, though, the girl hugs her and clutches the soft blonde bear she'd brought.

Her visits get longer, and she's relieved to find that by the end of the week they have a patchwork way of communicating with each other. Zahra explains to Naureen that she'll be going to live with MacKenzie in a new home now, and at first Nora seems fine with that. They go back to the hotel and Skype Will, who can't understand a damn thing Nora tries to say, but his bluster and the screen distract and entertain her enough. The first night is tear-filled, and Naureen even has a few nightmares. But they make it through together, and while Mac doesn't feel like a mother, at all, she certainly feels accomplished.

On day two, she's trying to wrestle Nora out the door for some shopping when she gets an email from Jim. Mac — heard you're in Islamabad. I'm actually here for one more day. Would love to have lunch, if you're free. Nora is crying incoherently, and there is nothing more she would love than to see a familiar face.

She hasn't seen Jim in years. Shortly after he left New York in an acrimonious flurry, she had followed him to Saudi Arabia, tried to bully him back, and failed. He needed to do his own thing, and she got that. He and Maggie weren't her and Will, he'd said. The accident and the pregnancy and the grief was immensely more complicated, more sorrowful, and they needed to be apart in order to survive. She'd accepted, recognizing that the only way to ever get him back was to let him go.

Now he looks taller, but she assumes that means he's lost a bit of weight. His hair is closely cropped and he's dressed in a loose tan shirt and khakis, like what he wore when they were covering Afghanistan together. He's got a scruffy beard, which looks so startlingly old on his baby face that it makes her blink, hard. They meet at a park, so that Nora can run around in a familiar area and she can speak with Jim as they sip tea. Her face crinkles into a wide grin when she sees him.

"Jimmy," she says, hugging him tight. He fairly sinks into her. "Jimmy, Jim, Jim. I am so happy to see you."

"Good to see you too," he whispers against her neck. He pulls back, his eyes bright and haunted. "God, it's been … It's been forever."

"Well, that's going to change soon," she smiles, patting his cheek. So scruffy. "I didn't know you were in Islamabad. I'm glad I got to see you."

"Chasing one final lead. I fly out tomorrow. New York two days later." She wants to know more about what he's reporting on — maybe she can use it — but then he gestures towards the playing children. "Which one's yours?"

She scans the playground, then points to where Nora is happily making a sandcastle with another girl. "There."

"Nora, right?"

"Naureen, yeah."

"How's it going?"

"It … is," she smiles. "I can't really make a judgement on it yet. I worry about the flight home. And, you know, the rest of her life."

"Is Will getting excited to meet her?"

"I think so. It'll be better when it's not hypothetical. I think he's a little terrified, personally."

Jim shrugs. "You two pseudo-parented half the News Night crew, and we turned out great. Questionably sane, but great. You guys will do the same with her."

She cocks her head. "Not sure I did so great with any of you, actually."

He shrugged. "Well, Neal turned out alright, it sounds like. But, yeah. Some of your advice … Kind of questionable."

"'Gather ye rosebuds,' was great advice," she says, before she fully realizes what she is saying. "I mean …"

"I was talking about the time you suggested I go with you to Afghanistan and I got shot in the ass, but sure. That was questionable too," he lets out a half-chuckle.

She stares at him, plaintive. "You two are gonna be OK, you know that, right? You will be."

He shrugs. "I'm ready to come back. I guess she is too."

She nods. She is, as she always has been about this issue, strangely at a loss for words. "I think it'll be good for you two to work things out. You can't avoid problems. Sooner or later, you have to face them." She makes a tiny fist pump. "It'll be good, to work things out."

"We're adults. We've both moved on. I'm not sure how much we need to 'work out,' Mac."

"What the hell happened? Why can't you go back?"

"A lot happened, Mac."

"Yes, but that's life. A lot always happens. You're you, you're you and Maggie. You were in love with her from the moment you walked into that newsroom. You can work this out."

"No, Mac, we can't. I promise."

"It's broken, so you can fix it. It can be fixed, Jim, I promise. Not in a day or in a month — it takes time — but it can be fixed. I promise." She's lived it. She knows this.

"Mac, I'm pretty sure neither of us want it to be fixed," he says gently. "Things happened, we moved on, end of story. I need you to respect that."

"I'm not sure I can," she says stubbornly.

"You're going to have to," he says, and he waves his left hand in front of her. She's not sure how she didn't notice it before, and she's about to ask when he confirms. "I'm married now."

Thoughts? Would love to see some more reviews.