A/N: Thanks to everyone who was super awesome and left reviews on Part I. I am firmly settled into my new house, and am currently sitting in the campus coffee shop waiting to head over to the history building for my 2 o'clock. Also I decided (because when have brevity and I ever been friends?) that in addition to this part that there will be an epilogue, which I hope I have the time to write tomorrow night.
Thanks as usual to Meg and Pippa, my betas.
PART II: NEVER FALL AWAY
It happens slowly, and then all at once. Her insomnia worsens, and when she can sleep it's violent, her head filled with images of the crowd crushing in, the face of the man who slipped the knife into her belly, and being unable to breathe as she fights her way, being swallowed up whole by the concrete. Her mouth perpetually tastes bitter, and she's forever bringing a bottle of water to her lips to try and wash it away. She buries herself back into work after the holiday, revisiting sources again and again, and when she refuses to sleep, numbs the anxiety by tracking the guards down again in the records, going over her notes, going over the footage.
She winds up eating very little, her stomach clenching down on any food she brings herself to swallow and sending it back up again.
Her team she sends out more and more without her, instead choosing to hide in the tiny kitchen in their apartment as her panic waxes and wanes in twenty-four hour cycles, eventually leaving her nerves deadened enough that she can bear a few hours of sleep without waking up with the taste of dirt and blood in her mouth.
Emails from Will get pushed to the wayside along with food and leaving the apartment and every so often she looks at his newest email and feels a pang of guilt at her lack of response that motivates her to come up with a reply. But the doubt in her head grows louder, tells her that she should just leave him alone, that he's better off without her, just like how her team works better with her here, at their makeshift work space at the kitchen table.
January slides by quickly, but February is missed calls with CNN higher ups and psychiatric evaluations evaded—a blur, really, and March seems like it will be too, until:
To: mmchale
From: wdmcavoy
4:19 AM on March 3 2010
I think we should video chat. I want to actually talk to you. Getting made fun of by you in real time is a lot more fun than the text medium.
Taking a gulp of water from her bottle, she leans back in her chair to peer into the living room where Jim is sprawled out on the sofa, the soft glow from the television illuminating his sleep-slacked body. Unlike her, Jim came out of a war zone a heavy sleeper.
She considers it, even though there's not a chance in the world that it won't be wholly awkward, and that she won't run out of things to say quickly before blurting out her apologies, or saying something insensitive about Brian or the breakup that they still quite haven't figured out how to navigate, even since Christmas.
Still. If it's what Will wants.
More quietly, her nerves laid out raw, she acknowledges that it's what she wants, too. Seeing Will's face might do her some good.
To: wdmcavoy
From: mmchale
4:23 AM on March 3 2010
Sure. When?
To: mmchale
From: wdmcavoy
4:25 AM on March 3 2010
Why in the hell are you still awake, you lunatic?
To: wdmcavoy
From: mmchale
4:28 AM on March 3 2010
I have a filing deadline in two hours.
I just finished, though.
The bitter taste rises in her mouth at the lie of it, but she swallows it down. And then startles when a new window pops open on her desktop, Google asking her if she wishes to decline or accept the video call.
She's sure that she looks like she's crawled out of some dark crevice of the Earth, but clicks accept before she freezes and does nothing at all.
The last time he saw MacKenzie her hair was cropped at her shoulders, her face was made up, and all her clothes had designer labels. His mental image of her—a woman with a carefully maintained professional image—is immediately and jarringly overwritten by the woman who appears on his computer screen.
She's beautiful, Will thinks. Beautiful, but battered. Not fragile, by any stretch, but exhausted and weary-bruised.
Her hair is longer, half-piled on top of her head and sliding out of a clip. A cheap pair drugstore reading glasses (or so he guesses) are perched crookedly on her nose, the glare on the lenses momentarily obscuring the deep purple shadows ringing her eyes. The list that his brain compiles without his permission stacks up quickly—she's too thin, the bones of her wrists sticking out through her skin, she's too pale, her skin taking an unhealthy turn from pink to grey, or so it seems in the dim light. And then something else: a red and navy plaid flannel shirt that hangs loosely off her shoulders.
It's his; it's been missing for years.
"Nice shirt."
He tries to forget his reason for wanting to see her face—the ebb of replies to his emails, the abrupt changes of tone in her messages, the flux of reports hitting the wires coming out of Islamabad—when she blanches, but recovers quickly.
"You want it back?" she asks, eyes flickering towards her own screen before she turns to shuffle a stack of notes on the table and foist them out of camera.
"Nice glasses."
Mac rolls her eyes, leaning back in her chair and stretching her arms up and behind her head. "Thanks, I'm getting old."
"That's a recent development," he muses, acting as if he doesn't care at all.
Pushing her glasses up her nose, she scoffs at him. "Not all of us have a hair and makeup team to pretty us up, thank you."
"Does it look like I've seen hair and makeup recently?"
"No, your cowlick is sticking up," she says, snorting at the tabletop. Absently, he pats down the hair at the crown of her head, which Mac looks up just in time to see. "Did you seriously just—"
"It's a reflex," he demurs. "So, this is your apartment?" he asks, and Mac rolls her eyes at the obvious attempt at the change in topic, but leans back in her chair glancing behind her anyway.
Even with the spotty webcam feed, he can tell that the apartment is typical embed fare: cinderblock walls, low-rate appliances, shitty furniture, dim lighting. The neighborhood is probably secure enough, even if Mac and her team are reporting from areas in Islamabad that aren't. He wonders if he could get Mac to divulge enough information that he could track down which building she's in, and see if he could do anything to make it any better.
A real bed, at least. She's recovering from a massive abdominal injury. CNN owes her a fucking bed, and failing that, he can buy her one.
"It's not a Tribeca loft, but it's home… enough. We were living in the Marriott at first, until the assignment became long term," she says, glancing sideways into what he assumes must be the main room. "At least we're no longer making ramen in the coffeemaker. Well, I'm not. Jim still is." Leaning back even more, she casts her face into the light. The lines on her face and the deep bags under her eyes become more pronounced, her hair appearing to be greasy and limp. Sighing, she faces forward again. "What?"
He's been staring.
"You look…"
Sick? he thinks, but wonders if she'd balk at that, from him.
"Like shit?" she finishes with a dry, self-deprecating laugh.
Will opens and closes his mouth around a few aborted replies. "I wouldn't disparage you a good night's sleep."
MacKenzie clearly needs much more than that, but that's not a conversation to have when you're well over three thousand miles away from each other, and exes nonetheless. One of the members of her team, he thinks. One of them has to be able to get her to take better care of herself. Or maybe he's overreacting; this is Mac, after all.
She makes her own decisions.
"Yeah, that's not happening," she says drolly, scrubbing her hands over her face. "We have to report to the DAO in ninety minutes."
"Then I'll say that I'm a little alarmed that you're about to go out there on the very little sleep you've gotten."
Is this how the stabbing happened?
"Honestly, Will, I'm used to it. I'll sleep when our meetings are over." Folding her arms behind her head again, she stretches her shoulders and neck, tendons popping loudly. She closes her eyes for a long moment, breathing deeply before slitting her eyes back open. "Don't look at me like that. Islamabad is one of the safest cities we've reported from."
"Hon, you were stabbed," he gently reminds her.
She waves it off. "That was inconvenient, yes—"
"Mac!"
The terror he felt when he learned that she was the one in critical condition surges up his spine, cold fear pooling in his stomach.
She scoffs. "What? I'm perfectly capable of making my own bad decisions, thank you."
"You could, you know, come home where you're not in danger of being stabbed." Mac lifts an eyebrow at him, lips quirking into an ephemeral, and entirely sardonic, grin. "Well, considerably less danger. In a control room, at least—"
Unless she's gotten rid of her apartment, she's in midtown, which is relatively safe.
"And do what? Broadcast journalism has, by and large, seemed to have decided to capitalize on voyeurism and for-sale bullshit rather than do actual fucking news. At least here I feel like—like I'm doing something, rather than working under some executive who wants me to jump through hoops and fill ratings quotas."
"Doing something? Throwing yourself into harm every day?" Being reckless does not inherently count as something. Although, Will supposes, it's probably good that Mac has transferred her carelessness from her personal life to her professional life.
—until his brain supplies him with the image he's agonized over, the vision of Mac, bloodied and pale, her limbs splayed in unnatural angles on the pavement. Unmoving, unbreathing, her notebook in her hand.
(He doesn't want Mac to be willing to make a martyr of herself for the story.)
Uncomfortable, she squirms in her seat. "Well—"
(Or find a way to place blame on him for whatever she's transferred her guilt over Brian to.)
"And Christ, Mac," he continues, sitting up on his couch, "the county as polarized today as it was during the Civil War. The Civil War , what exactly do you expect us to do?"
"Your jobs," she replies heavily. "So those of us over here don't feel like we're being left in the goddamn lurch while you report on panda cams with twitter feeds scurrying across the bottom of your screens."
He barely refrains from rolling his eyes, dropping his feet down from his coffee table to sit up fully. "Well I'm sorry I can't live up to your standards."
She swallows hard, picking lint off the shoulder of the flannel shirt. He notices then just how tattered it is.
"You're being sarcastic," she delicately apprises, not quite looking at her computer screen.
"Oh how you know me," he answers facetiously.
It isn't supposed to be happening like this. He's not supposed to ask about her health, or tell her she should be somewhere safer. He's not supposed to be gentle with her, he's not supposed to be looking at her like this, like nothing has changed and they can spar without ripping themselves in two.
They're going to rip themselves in two again—she's already begun with herself.
Why not keep going?
"There's nothing more important in a democracy than a well-informed electorate. When there's no information or, much worse, wrong information, it can lead to calamitous decisions and clobber any attempts at vigorous debate. That's why I produce the news," she says, hugging her arms around herself. And then more quietly, reminding herself that she hasn't seen the inside of a newsroom in three years. "Or at least try to."
She wants to touch him. Not that she could, if they weren't speaking via webcam, but she wants to touch him, put her hands on his shoulders or brush her fingers around a wrist or fix his goddamn hair.
"I still don't see the argument for what you're doing over there." His face shutters with a disgruntled expression. He leans almost out of frame, giving her a glimpse at the penthouse loft he's moved into since they broke up.
"You do understand that I have emails which state that I've reported more news in a day than you have in an entire career—" she starts, wondering why she's wearing his stupid flannel shirt, why she's kept it for this long, even though the hems are frayed and the elbows are threadbare. And she knows why. "You're spinning out of control."
( No , she desperately thinks, the sentiment whirling opaque just below the level of consciousness. You are, MacKenzie. )
"No I'm not."
"You are!"
"This isn't non-profit theater, Mac, you know that we have advertisers and—"
"And this is why I'm over here, risking my neck—so maybe two hundred people see a good story, rather than the two million watching you not bothering anyone." She's angry, even though some stalwart part of her reminds her that she has no right to be. But for everything that embedding has taken away from her, it has given her a startlingly uncompromising perspective. For-entertainment news is unpalatable to her, now, after seeing limbs blown off and watching people die while waiting for medics who would never come. "What the hell happened, Will? When I left it was a good show, Leno. "
"Like I've said, I kind of like getting paid, if it's all the same to you," he answers, narrowing his eyes at her.
This Will is not the Will that she left behind, she has to remind herself. This Will talks to her, and answers her from behind carefully-maintained fences, careful to respond without giving up too much of himself. This Will doesn't care about the show that they used to do together, this Will doesn't want her as his EP, he doesn't want her opinion.
"It's not all the same to me, you punk," she says with a scowl, keeping her voice low enough not to wake Jim. God, sleep. She should have slept, but then it was 4 AM and she had essentially committed herself to pulling an all-nighter but she hasn't slept in thirty-six hours and every emotion is hitting her harder than it should be, is pulling words out of her with more force than they should be spoken. "I have a six-inch scar still healing on my stomach. And with your IQ and your talent… you should put it to some patriotic fucking use! You were perfect, and now you're a hack in an ill-fitting suit and in desperate need a of a haircut. Which demographic does that hit? And where does it say that a good news show can't be popular?"
"Nielsen ratings," Will quips, quick on a snappish retort. "God, did you find a leftover Vicodin in your stash, or something?"
She ignores his attempt to shrug her off.
"Between your brains, charm, good looks and affability—"
"And with what fucking producer, Mac?" he asks, spitting the words out quickly and venomously. "You know what happened to the show? You walked out on it."
That stops her short.
"I walked out on you, too," she tells him carefully, voice trembling under the strain of her anger. He was there , she thinks. "But you let me. You told me to. And here I am, exactly where you told me to be: far, far away from you."
She doesn't quite know how to read the expression on his face in response to that, and that makes her angry too. Angry, because it's easier to be angry that it is to be scared that she could fall out of love with him, that doing this to herself has been a waste. Because it's easier to be angry than to feel fear in this aspect of her life, in addition to all other things.
But he never gets the chance to respond to her.
"What's that?" he asks.
From the bedroom the opening to Hooked On a Feeling is blaring from Molly's alarm clock radio, playing the first track on the mixed CD of 70s and 80s love songs that Noah made for her months ago, the same CD that they wake up to every damn day. Molly herself won't actually make an appearance until Come and Get Your Love , but Jim and Danny will.
"Molly's awake," she tells him, hovering the cursor over the end-call button. "I have to go."
Barely giving him a chance to respond, she hangs up, immediately feeling a pang of guilt at the brief expression of desperation that she saw on his face before doing so.
To: mmchale
From: wdmcavoy
10:48 PM on March 11 2010
So I guess it's your turn to ignore me now.
To: mmchale
From: wdmcavoy
2:08 PM on March 13 2010
I didn't mean that as a suggestion.
To: mmchale
From: wdmcavoy
1:33 AM on March 14 2010
Okay, fine. I'll say it first. I'm sorry. I let my temper get the better of me, and it was insensitive to bring up what happened to you like I did. It's your life, and I have a lot of respect for what you're doing over there. But it's your life, and I live mine. And sometimes I get worried about you. It's a weird thing I do.
To: mmchale
From: wdmcavoy
1:18 PM on March 14 2010
That's why I wanted to see you, anyway. Not that I don't… want to see you.
To: mmchale
From: wdmcavoy
5:20 PM on March 19 2010
Mac, Jesus Christ. I said I'm sorry.
Are you on assignment? It's occurred to me that you could be out on assignment. You said before that you'd be without signal for weeks in Afghanistan because you couldn't let the Taliban trace any messages back to your location and your encryption programs weren't good enough.
Where in the hell are you? You can't just fucking disappear like this. Shit. Didn't you get anything out of our argument?
To: mmchale
From: wdmcavoy
12:58 AM on March 20 2010
You haven't filed a story since March 5th. I'm looking at the wires. You haven't filed a report in two weeks. This hasn't happened since 2008. Yes—I checked. Make of that what you will. Mac, what the fuck is going on? You're not dead. I'd get a Google alert at the least if you were dead. Which is, coincidentally, more than I can get about you right now.
To: mmchale
From: wdmcavoy
12:24 PM on March 21 2010
I just heard from someone I got on the switchboard at CNN that you are no longer a CNN employee. I told them they'd lost their fucking mind.
To: mmchale
From: wdmcavoy
4:04 PM on March 21 2010
Brooke Baldwin just told me that you were released from your CNN contract on the 6th. MacKenzie, where the hell are you and are you okay? You've just gotten sick of CNN's sensationalism and gone rogue, right? Asking around your dad's friends for the money for your own start-up?
To: mmchale
From: wdmcavoy
11:18 PM on March 25 2010
I have it… from multiple sources (and I only asked around because I'm worried, I promise) that you failed a psych evaluation and were diagnosed with PTSD, CNN fired you for it, and now you're in DC debriefing at the Navy Yard. Which, first off: I will find you a lawyer and you will sue CNN for wrongful termination or I will represent you and you will sue CNN for wrongful termination. And secondly, please let me know you're all right. Not… all right. I know you're probably not all right.
I'm here. I'll be here, if you need someone to talk to. Or someone to listen. Or read, I guess. I one hundred percent cop to being an insensitive jackass, but I can read.
I'm an idiot. You were stabbed. You had been chasing a dangerous story and you were stabbed and I thought just because you were getting better physically, then all was going to be fine. You're not fine. And that's okay. I don't care how, just let me know that you're safe. I promise, MacKenzie. I'm never going to hurt you again. Let me help you. I'll help you get a job, any job you want. Or if you can't work, I'll help you pay your bills. I know CNN's been paying you in coupons and meal vouchers and what the rent on your apartment was three years ago.
Has CNN blocked you from accessing this email account? Is that the problem? I'll ask around and see if anyone has a new address for you. Someone at NBC said you'd applied, so they'd have a new one on your resume, although you really shouldn't have to send out a resume. I mean, you're you. By the way, you should sue NBC too, for discrimination. And ABC, from what I've heard.
To: mmchale
From: wdmcavoy
8:41 AM on March 26 2010
I'm getting on a plane with Don and my senior producer to do a panel at Northwestern. The one I mentioned awhile back. I'll be offline for a few hours, but please, Mac. Email me. Send up a flare. Smoke signals. Something.
—Will
She just wants to see him without him seeing her. After that, MacKenzie doesn't know what she wants. She wanted to chase the story about the independent military contractors, about Blackwater guards terrorizing Pakistani citizens, about Xe Services agents brutalizing people on the ground to collect intel. And then a Blackwater agent paid off an agent provocateur to lead her into the middle of a protest, agitate it into a riot, and stab her for getting too close to the story.
Even after CNN called her off, she kept chasing it anyway.
And now she's out of a job.
Out of a job, and heavily medicated.
Will knows. Of course he knows. Everyone knows. Charlie knows, and keeps calling her, telling her he'll come down to DC to see her, and that they should talk, which is probably code for "I can't hire you because even though you want nothing more in the world to return to a newsroom, you have PTSD and require enough alprazolam to tranquilize a horse in order to function normally, god knows how much you'd need to manage the chaos of a broadcast, so I'm going to take you out for an expensive brunch and hold your hand sympathetically." She has Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, which is mostly manifested in how painfully exhausted she is all the time, her body fighting remaining upright and her mind refusing to piece together thoughts and daring to refuse to sleep peacefully all the same.
On day twelve of being back in the States, she flies out to O'Hare International the same day that Jim rents a car to drive up to visit his family in Delaware and Molly has an interview with the director of the International Relations PhD program at Princeton.
The flight is a little under two hours, and she brings everything she currently owns (that isn't in a storage unit on Long Island) with her, in the new Louis Vuitton luggage that she bought to replace the falling-apart duffel bags that she's toted across two different warzones. She doesn't have enough to have to check a bag, and steps out into Chicago with one bag slung over each shoulder, breathing through pursed lips as she tries not to panic before she has the chance to hail a cab that will take her to Evanston.
She just wants to see Will, even if she can't face him. Not when she's come home like this, broken. Just like she set out to be three years ago, in the face of what she's done.
But there's no atonement for what she's done, and it's all gone to waste.
Just ask all the people who won't hire her at CNN, ABC, NBC… she can't face Will, can't ask him to help her get out of this, when she got herself into it because they broke up.
Congratulations, MacKenzie. You ruined your own life again, but at least you didn't take anyone with you this time.
She ends up quietly creeping into the auditorium, more than a few minutes late. Will is sandwiched between a smiling painful stereotype of a Republican and an endearingly deluded liberal sprouting off statistics in favor of rebutting anyone's argument, playing the harmless moderate.
Or would be playing, if he was saying anything at all.
Although, Mac supposes, that is the harmless moderate in today's climate.
Will keeps scanning the crowd, looking distinctly uncomfortable. Clutching her purse where it sits on her lap to her stomach, she worries that he's seen her. But she reminds herself that no matter how good Will is in front of cameras, he's never handled live audiences that were bigger than the inside of a courtroom very well, and there are at least five hundred people in attendance at Northwestern today.
He's just anxious, she tells herself, until he looks directly at her with a nervous expression on his face.
The two pundits keep talking over each other, louder and louder until the moderator jabs the tip of his pen into the fray, calling it to an end.
"Will—anything to add?"
Tearing his eyes away from the audience, Will smiles nervously before smoothing a mask of unflinching sarcasm over his face. "I think we'd need a more precise definition of perverted."
The audience laughs, and Mac sighs, and then hears his voice echoing in her head.
You know what happened to the show? You walked out on it.
Well, she's here, and he knows she's here. And she has nothing left to lose. Barely breathing, she pulls her folio out from her purse, flipping open to her new notepad. Well , she thinks. Here's his smoke signal.
The moderator, casting Will a skeptic glance, turns to the line of students at the microphone. "Okay… we'll go onto the next question. You sir."
He makes himself look at the grungy twenty-whatever at the front of the line. "Hi, my name's Stephen, I'm a junior, and my question's for Will McAvoy. Do you consider yourself a Democrat, or Republican, or Independent?"
For a long moment that he hopes comes across as consideration, he stares at MacKenzie. The relief he feels at her appearance is accompanied by a distinct feeling of weightlessness, and he barely recovers a nonplussed answer for whoever the fuck is trying to get something out of him.
"I consider myself a New York Jets fan, Stephen," he says, looking at the kid in question again.
Once again, the moderator (some Northwestern J-school ideologue whose name he's already forgotten) makes a stab at making him join into the shouting match. "Since it's been brought up—you've almost religiously avoiding stating or even implying a political allegiance. Is that because, as a news anchor, you feel the integrity of your broadcast would be compromised?"
Even from a hundred feet away, he can see Mac roll her eyes at that.
"That sounds like a good answer, I'll take it," he defers.
The moderator briefly looks down at his cards. "There was a short piece on Vanity Fair's website, by Marshall Westbrook, you probably saw it. Where he calls you the Jay Leno of news anchors. You're popular because you don't bother anyone."
He remembers what Mac said, her intense disappointment in what News Night , and by extension (or perhaps first of all) he, has become.
"Yeah," he answers slowly.
"How do you feel about that?" the moderator asks.
Back when Mac was his EP—and his girlfriend—all that mattered was that was that they were proud of what they were doing. Him, and Mac, and Charlie. And that was how it was, until Mac left.
(But MacKenzie is back, and she's here, in sight but out of reach, and since he spotted her in the crowd ten or so minutes ago all he can think of is her emails, the litany of I love you's and I'm sorry's, in conjunction with network executives saying they can't hire her now, she's a liability, and he just wants to haul off and punch one of them in the face, remind them how not six months ago they were trying to capitalize off her stabbing and get her to come home.
Maybe he should have told her that he read the emails, maybe then she would have responded, not hid from him, not felt like she had to buy a ticket to get to see him.
Will doesn't know how he feels, but it gives him pause.
But she's okay, and that's what matters.)
He scans the crowd. "Jealous of the size of Jay's audience," he deadpans, feeling a bit of his anxiety lessen when they laugh.
But the moderator doesn't let up. "Are you willing say here to tonight whether you lean right or left?"
"I've voted for candidates run by both major parties," he cages. Although honestly, all someone would have to do is Google him and figure out that he's worked for Bush 41 and the RNC, but apparently that's beyond people.
The moderator sighs. "Let's move onto the next question."
A blonde girl moves her way to the front of the line, and wrings her hands. "Hi, my name is Jenny, I'm a sophomore and this for all three of you: can you say in one sentence or less—what—you know what I mean. Can you say why America is the greatest country in the world?"
He almost rolls his eyes. It's not.
Sharon, though, is quick to answer. "Diversity and opportunity."
The moderator turns to the conservative. "Louis?"
"Ah freedom and freedom, let's keep it that way."
Will anticipates Louis' answer, staring at the edge of the stage to hide his incredulity, before failing to resist flicking his gaze back to Mac.
And then, his turn. "Will?"
Don't say anything I can't clean up after, Don had warned him before sending him out from the green room. Mac isn't his EP. Don is.
Faintly, a voice in his head tells him that it's a cowardly excuse. If Mac could go to the Middle East and back, suffer through all she has, and come back here, he should be able to live up to decent standards.
He used to, didn't he? Back when it didn't matter whether the audience boomed or if every op-ed on the East Coast was slamming him for being un-American. He did it for himself. Largely for Mac, but also for himself.
Because it was good back then, wasn't it?
He's going to find Mac after this, and—
He realizes he needs to answer.
"The New York Jets," he says again, for laughs. The audience reacts as he expects.
The moderator, on the other hand, does not. "No, I'm gonna hold you to an answer on that. What makes America the greatest country in the world?"
He answers with an irreverent flip of his hand. "Well, Louis and Sharon said it. Diversity and opportunity and freedom and freedom."
But he's drawn once more to MacKenzie, and looks up to see her fumbling with something in her lap, before holding it up—
IT'S NOT. BUT IT CAN BE.
"I'm not letting you go back to the airport without answering the question."
(The Chicago Waldorf, actually, since he didn't feel like doing the turnaround, and Charlie didn't fight him on it since it's a Friday.)
The law school answer then, he thinks, panicking inwardly.
"Well, our Constitution is a masterpiece. James Madison was a genius. The Declaration of Independence is for me the single greatest piece of American writing." "You don't look satisfied."
IT'S NOT, she holds up again.
It only worked back then because he had Mac, not Don, or any of the others in his long line of incompetent EPs. Who were incompetent, he allows himself to think, by virtue of not being Mac. What if he doesn't do this? What if he doesn't give a real answer? The relief at Mac being here, seeing her in one piece, is palpable. But if he doesn't answer like he knows the statistics, knows the nuances and the arguments and the facts just as well as he would when walking in to prosecute a case, then what?
Does Mac walk out of his life again? Is he willing to risk that? Is the audience more important? He's already let Mac down—
"One's a set of laws and the other is a declaration of war. I want a human moment from you," the moderator demands. "What about the people? Why is it—"
BUT IT CAN BE.
Mac bites her lip, looking at him hopefully.
No, he thinks. He's not willing to risk it. She's fucked a lot of it up, but so has he, and far more recently than her.
And he loves her. She never stopped writing, so now he—
Giving her one last hard look, he turns to the moderator, feeling his shoulders push themselves back. "It's not the greatest country in the world, Professor. That's my answer."
The moderator startles. "You're saying—?"
"Yes," he answers, entirely certain.
Scrambling, the moderator shuffles his cards. "Let's talk about—"
Not a chance.
In the distance, a wide smile splits Mac's face, and it's all he can see.
Will isn't picking up his phone. Logically, it's probably because a hundred people are trying to call him right now. But Mac can't find a flight back to DC until tomorrow morning, so she gives up on calling Will and calls for a taxi and directs the driver to the Sheraton, shoving her notepad back into her tote bag.
Shaking the entire ride, she stares at her phone, willing it to ring.
But it doesn't, so she grabs her luggage out of the trunk and heads into the lobby and towards the front desk to book a room, too tired to do anything but accept anything but the rate they want to give her.
It was exhilarating. Not perfect—Will's going to have a fight in front of him, especially for directing his temper at a sweet blonde all-American sort of girl (and doesn't the media love to sanctify those?), but finally. Finally. If only she knew what any of it meant.
In the middle of dropping her luggage to the floor and wrenching her wallet out of her purse, she's distracted by a commotion from the front doors.
"Mac! MacKenzie! Hey—"
Frantically, she thinks. He's shouting her name frantically.
"Will?" she asks, nowhere near as loudly.
Out of breath, he stops a foot in front of her, mouth opening and closing around jumbled thoughts. "Hi."
"Hi," she repeats back to him, too stunned to say anything else.
He looks like he doesn't know what to say, as paralyzed by their meeting as she is. Carefully licking his lips, he slowly reaches a hand to her face, jerking it back when someone else comes crashing through the hotel doors—Don, shoving though the doormen and barely avoiding being run over by a bellhop, face reddened from temper.
"Will—what the ever-loving fuck are you doing, jumping out of the car in the middle of the block—" he shouts, before noticing her. "MacKenzie McHale."
"Hi, Don," she quietly says, inclining her head toward him in greeting.
He stops short, looking back and forth between the two of them. "I'm confused."
"Will's little show back there may have been my fault," she explains, letting the straps on her purse fall down her arm and dropping it to the floor as well.
Don's eyebrows knit together. "Wait—"
"It's entirely her fault," Will says nonchalantly, waving Don off. "But that's besides the point."
"Will, get back in the car," Don demands, angrily clutching his BlackBerry in front of him.
"No," Will answers dismissively, hardly giving Don a glance and turning back to her. "Not without her. Are you staying here?"
Mac swallows hard, folding her hands together. "Well, I was going to get a room, but haven't yet—"
"I have a suite at the Waldorf, you can come with us," Will immediately says.
"No, she can't," Don interrupts, and the ire on Will's face flashes. "She doesn't work for ACN, and you have to start working on cleaning this up, Will, we have start issuing apologies—"
"I'm not apologizing," he says calmly, and Mac begins to suspect that his calm is entirely for her benefit.
Don's eyebrows lift comically high. "Excuse me?"
But Will ignores him, focusing solely on her. "What do I do now?"
"What do you mean?"
"How do I win this?" he asks, swaying closer to her. Almost imperceptibly, his voice is shaking.
Biting her lip, she forces herself to lift her gaze from his collar to his face. "Well… you need to apologize to Jenny."
"Sorority girl?"
She sighs, the hotel lobby disappearing from around them.
"Yeah, you say that and all people hear is a douchebag baby boomer condescending to a young woman. Her name is Jenny," she tells him forcefully, mind sorting the pieces into place. "And then you do a show, building off what you said. We make it less hostile, eighty-six your nostalgia bullshit. Change the message a little, also talk about what your era of good feelings wasn't—"
Don refuses to be ignored, wedging himself between them. "I'm your EP, Will, in case you've forgotten—"
"Yeah, I don't care."
How many EPs have you had? she wonders, but keeps to herself. Don, she knows, was only hired as his senior producer in January. What is happening right now? The evening's events are running together into a heady whirlwind, and Mac can no longer tell which way is up, just that Will has unconsciously reached for her hand and is holding it now, bracing his shoulders back to shield her from Don—
Who huffs, muttering as if to an audience before rolling his eyes and backing away. "I quit."
"I still don't care," Will calls, and they both watch Don walk out the door before looking at each other for a long moment, just breathing. "You could have me win this?" he asks, the bravado gone.
Nodding, she takes a step closer to him. "Yeah. If you're willing to let me run the show the way I want to. No pulling punches, Will, no more ratings gimmicks, we do the news the way it's supposed to be done—"
Then it's his turn to nod. "Do you want to come back to News Night?"
She may never get her whistleblower piece on the military industrial complex, but she's starting figure that it wasn't going to fill the particularly Will-shaped hole on her heart anyway.
"You need me, don't you?" she asks, laughing nervously. "Your EP just quit."
"Yeah. I do," he answers, voice low, looking her right in the eyes. She'd forgotten—nearly, but not quite—exactly how blue his are. "I need you."
"I need you too."
He squeezes her fingers before letting go of her hand, stooping down to sling her luggage over his shoulder and hand her purse.
"Okay."
And then holds out his hand again, watching her purposefully until she takes it, laces their fingers together, and leads them out onto the street to hail another cab.
It's time to go home.
Thanks for reading!