Seriously…guys…I can't write anything for four days, and then I manage this in like 40 minutes. I wish I had an explanation for you, but I don't understand my brain. Enjoy! I'm off to sleep so that I can wake up and watch ep 5!

Chapter 3 Pt. II: Three Weeks Later

You see her when you close your eyes

Maybe one day you'll understand why

Everything you touch surely dies

Numbness. That was a good word for his life right now.

It turns out that it's pretty hard for a machine to run when the battery is taken out. The staffers – they're still functioning as they should. If anything, they're even more passionate about this crusade they have been sent on than they were before she left.

Him on the other hand…okay maybe it isn't the battery. Maybe its that oh so small, seemingly insignificant, but ironically essential bridge between the power source and the what's its supposed to be powering (him!) that keeps the electricity flowing which has ceased to function. It's just gone. That one small wire (or in this case person) that is the key.

Charlie called him into his office today. Told him to take a night off because he couldn't look like that on the air again; people would think he was sick, apparently. Well, metaphorically that may be true. Sure, he likes to think of himself as a romantic; one of the dying members of the species Gentlemen that still lingers on this Earth…but lovesick seems to be just a little too much for even his romantic brain to handle.

Charlie complains that the make-up people had to bring in so much 'scaffolding' to make sure his eyes did not look so gaunt that the only way they would be able to deal with it that evening was to throw some CGI budget at the show. It was a no.

"Charlie –" He sighs. He is met with nothing but resistance from the older man's eyes.

He grimaces, frustrated at his own failure to hold himself together.

He can't go home now. He knows that he just can't. Going home now means that he'll have to spend and extra four hours in his penthouse which has seemed to have grown to about twice the size he swears he remembers it being not three weeks ago. He's not sure what happened…whether he slept-walked one night and had an unconscious mid-season clearout of his belongings, or whether it has just miraculously turned into a TARDIS, but it feels bigger. It feels emptier.

It has crossed his mind that maybe he just feels smaller, but in all honesty, he feels so off-base right now without his touchstone that he's not certain even of basic physical dimensions of his world. The road could go vertical like it does in Inception when he's walking to work tomorrow, and he's honestly not sure he'd care.

He just can't go home.

He's agreed to go home on the sole basis that he agrees he needs to go there to sleep (not that he does – hence the scaffolding). He is adamant about spending the rest of his time at the office in an attempt to keep himself busy, and shut out from the rest of the world which seems determined not to drop their haranguing and intrusive questions about his (by the way, nonexistent!) love life.

Why can't they see he's a lonely, stupid little fuckwit, who is obviously incapable of having a love life, and leave him the fuck alone?

"No, Will. You look like you haven't slept in a week."

That wasn't exactly an exaggeration. They had reached a stalemate and neither wanted to be the first to give in.

"Have you spoken to her?" Will asked quietly, fairly certain that he had not given his mouth permission to say those words.

Charlie huffed at him. Rocking back against his desk, seemingly sizing Will up as if deciding whether or not he merited an answer. In the end Will suspected it was more pity that made Charlie speak rather than any real belief that he deserved it.

"Yes." Okay. So that was all he was going to get.

Will imagined that this was what it must be like to have been parched for water for days on end and then have someone dangle a dripping, ice-cold bottle in front of your face. He was hanging on Charlie's next words…they just didn't seem to be coming…

"And -?" He asked, in what some might call a fairly high pitched voice. He suspected he looked as crazy as a severely dehydrated person might, as well as just feeling like one.

"And what, Will?" Charlie replied impatiently. "She took off to North Africa for a month! I'd say that's a fairly solid hint that she doesn't want you knowing what she's doing – that she wants some distance."

"She's said that?" He pressed, starting to pace around Charlie's office, as this new information seemed to swirl in an opposite direction around his mind, causing him to feel slightly disorientated. The older man stared at him, exasperated.

"Well, I'm assuming a smart man like you wouldn't need to be told that. The four and a half thousand mile gap she put between you should tell you that." He appraised him warily, following Will with his eyes like he was watching a live tennis match. "But then you've always been a bit stupid when it came to Mackenzie, haven't you?"

Was that a note of sympathy, Will wondered? He dismissed the idea almost as soon as it occurred to him. He knew whose side Charlie was on in this…well, whatever it was? And Will actually agreed with him – Charlie was on the right side. Well…no…but yes - he was. Of course he was. Will just didn't like admitting it.

"But she doesn't even want you to tell me about her?" Okay, now he knows he sounds desperate. This time, the pity is blatantly written on every line in Charlie's face.

He knows Charlie thinks of him as a son; and when he disappoints this man, he feels a horrible twinge in his gut that he never felt when his 'real' father had a go at him. He respects this man, and wants him to think well of him. And he knows that he has seriously fucked up. He just royally screwed over this man's daughter.

And it's funny, he thinks (well, funny strange, not funny ha-ha), that he has become part of – even the leader – of this family of misfits and differences, when all he had ever meant to do when he escaped from a town outside a town near Lincoln all those years ago was to leave that idea of family behind. But now he's found a better one – a real one. And he's only gone and ruined it.

"She needs some time Will." Charlie says softly, at last. He moves off the desk, walking round it to the little tray of Bourbon that sits in the corner and pours them each a glass. He gestures for Will to take a seat across from him and lays the glass on the far side of his desk. "You hurt her, and she needs some time to calm down."

"She hurt me first!"

He regrets it instantly, knowing how petty and childish it was, and also how different those two incidents were – he's been having this argument with himself for weeks, even before Mac left.

The dagger look Charlie gives him only makes him regret it more.

"Yes, because two wrongs always make a right, don't they? What? You thought if you just slept with someone she didn't like she'd call it even and that would be the end of it?

Sure – she cheated while she was with you, and technically you're not together now so you weren't cheating, but dammit McAvoy! –You've been treating our girl like shit for months – years, even – and playing with her and toying with her…

Don't think I didn't catch that look on your face that day in the hospital! You've been giving her false hope and she's been swallowing it by the mouthful. You were 'even' months ago. You've been torturing her and now you've gone and stuck a knife in her back just to finish it off!"

He had gotten into one of those rants of his where he forgets to breathe whilst he spews out his thoughts, resulting in him taking in one gasping breath before downing his Bourbon and panting slightly as he gets up to pour another.

Usually Will finds this highly entertaining, and teases him about it; today he just wants to choke on his own sip of the drink as it burns the back of his already raw throat. It was a great effort to meet the older man's eyes, but he felt he had too.

"Frankly, you're lucky she's coming back at all. Second chances didn't even cross your mind when it was her."

A flicker danced in Will at these words, as he dared to get his hopes up in spite of the overwhelming wave of hopelessness that had settled in as the days since she had left had dwindled on.

"But she is definitely coming back?"

He really hated that pity that he saw in Charlie's eyes. Really hated it! But it was the only connection to Mac that he had right now and he was clinging on to it (metaphorically of course) with both hands.

"Of course she's coming back." But he could hear the hint of doubt in Charlie's voice.

"Charlie –"

"She said a month, Will. She keeps her promises."

"But what if – what if she decides…"

"What if she decides there's no point in coming back here when's she appreciated out there just the same except without the daily side dish of guilt and harassment over a stupid mistake she committed over half a decade ago and has been paying penance for ever since?"

Will groaned.

He hadn't talked about this to anyone else because he honestly didn't think that anyone downstairs would give him the time of day right now to get it out.

He had to hand it to them, they had learned Mac's version of professionalism inside out – they were still a great team to him…they just were not going to let him forget this in a hurry.

"I know Charlie."

"Know what?" The old man asked smartly, an expectant glint in his eye.

"That I fucked up. That what I was doing was stupid and – even if it was technically 'right' , it was wrong. That by doing it was messing with any potential we still had -"

"If you didn't see the potential that you two still had then you're an idiot." Charlie chastised him. Will slumped back in his chair, draining the remainder of his glass. "I don't know what that message said – though let me tell you I reckon I came to the same conclusion Mac did – but you let her believe you were getting there after two years of torture, and then you ripped it away again in the shittiest way possi –"

"I didn't rip –"

"What, Will? You think she thinks you want to get back together with her now?" Charlie actually laughs. "Why on Earth would she think that? Frankly, I think you'll be damn lucky if she's still interested in you when she does get back – which she will, because she's Mackenzie and she's (one time excepted) the most loyal person I know, and she's not going to let us go through this Genoa crap alone."

Will stayed silent. He didn't really know what to say. As a lawyer, he felt his defense right now had so many holes in it, that if he was a flag of battle, it wouldn't last two minutes in the wind before it was torn to shreds.

"Your mistake," Charlie continued, pushing himself out of his chair until he was once more settled on the desk in front of Will, taking the tumbler from his hand, "wasn't actually sleeping with Nina – although that was pretty dumb - your mistake was thinking that you and Mac were still on an uneven footing when you did."

He clapped a hand on Will's shoulder, shaking his head as he did so. "You may never be able to forgive her, or even trust her again, and that's okay…I guess. You have that right. But ask anyone – including yourself – who has worked here these last two years, and I'm willing to bet all the Bourbon in Kentucky that they'd all say she's paid in full, plus interest for her sins."

Will knew he was right.

He had, he was ashamed to admit, come here looking for some sort of support – some sort of comfort that all was not lost and this was fixable. All he'd gotten was a harsh dose of reality and a cold look in the mirror. And maybe that was exactly what he deserved.

"I don't know how to fix this Charlie." He admitted quietly.

"No, neither do I kiddo." He replied tiredly. He cranes his neck at Will oddly, looking at him in a way that makes Will slightly uncomfortable. "Though…though I do know that about five years ago Mackenzie came and told me the exact same thing."

Will's head snapped up at that. His heart was suddenly beating a little faster.

"And up until a little while ago, she was actually doing a pretty good job of fixing it, don'tcha think?"

Charlie's eyebrows were drawn high into his hairline, but there was a hint of a smile ghosting his face, and Will dared to hope that maybe Charlie had not quite given up on them yet; and really, without Charlie and Mac's belief, where would he be right now?

It wasn't quite the comfort he had been hoping for, but it was more than he felt he actually deserved.

"Go on kid, get out of here."

Charlie was back to business. It was like someone had just flicked a switch inside him and his facial expression had changed and his posture had straightened. He looked more in charge. Will needed to remember how to do that.

"The boss is back in a couple of weeks, so we need to get this ship back on course. Get some sleep, man!"

And he does.

And then he spends four hours writing an email.

A week later, he still hasn't had an answer.

Damn.

You see her when you close your eyes

Maybe one day you'll understand why

Everything you touch surely dies

Your thoughts about Malestrom were awesome and you're the most supportive, amazing bunch of readers! So…there will be another chapter! Maybe two. We'll see…

Thanks for reading! A x