Chapter Text
“You're fired,” Will's voice was firm, and Mac blinked a couple of times, unsure of what to do.
“I'm sorry?”
“You heard me, you're fucking fired. Go pack a box and get the hell out of my sight,” he told her.
“Will,” Mac started, and he shook his head.
“It's a Friday,” Will reminded her, before turning on his heels and storming out of her office.
“Where are you going?” Jim asked, watching as Mac threw books into a box, each one hitting the side of the cardboard with a thud. “What's going on?”
“He fired me,” she told him, swiping at her cheeks as she tossed another book into the box. She let out a shuddering sigh, placing both hands on the desk in front of her, her shoulders heaving as she began to cry softly.
“Mac,” her name came out of Jim's mouth as a whisper, disbelief mingling with pity, and the tone of his voice was what finally broke her and she began crying in earnest. She sank back into her chair, bringing her hand up to her mouth to muffle the sobs. He came around the desk and wrapped his arms around her, tugging her up out of the chair and to her feet. She buried her head in his chest.
“It was so stupid, coming back here,” she wept. "I'm so stupid."
“I'm going to fucking quit,” Jim insisted, vehemently, as Mac's body trembled underneath his arms from the force of her crying. "Fuck him. You're not...fuck him."
“No, no,” Mac shook her head. “Please don't. I made you come all this way. I made you quit your job and move to New York, and I can't ask you to quit.”
“You're not asking,” he shot back.
“Stay, at least until you find something else,” it was Mac's turn to be insistent, as she pulled back away from him. “Please, Jim. I can't...I can't be responsible for ruining your life too."
“I can’t work for him,” Jim said, his voice soft.
“He's a good man,” Mac told him, and Jim scoffed. “He is. He's just...he's complicated.”
“He's an asshole,” Jim replied. “It's not that complicated.”
“Please, just until you find another job,” Mac gave it one last try, and Jim let out a long sigh, glancing out into the newsroom before closing his eyes briefly and then nodding.
“Okay,” he agreed, and then grabbed a couple of books, placing them gently in the box. “Here, let me help.”
Will lit a cigarette and leaned against the railing of his balcony, taking a long drag.
He had fired MacKenzie. He had actually fired her.
Part of him had thought she would put up a bigger fight. Part of him wanted her to put up a bigger fight.
Will had retreated to his office, slamming the door behind him, and he hadn't emerged for a solid hour. The newsroom was pretty much empty, and mostly dark, by the time he came back out. Mac's office light was off, her door wide open.
It was empty. Her books and pictures had been packed up. The papers that usually cluttered her desk were gone, and the mug that he had been surprised she still had was missing (it had been a gift from him, and when he remarked that he was surprised to see it, she had shrugged, not meeting his eye.
“It's traveled a long way,” she answered. And that was the last thing he wanted to think about. He didn’t want to think about the mug bumping in her backpack as she made her way through Pakistan. He didn't want to think about what she had gone through while she was gone, what she might have witnessed, lived through.
He didn't want to have to admit that maybe she had suffered, that maybe she had paid a penance for her sins, that maybe he wasn't the only one who had been shattered in the aftermath of her confession. He didn't want to cede any of the high ground, when the high ground was the only thing he had.)
Her things were gone. She was gone.
Will rushed out of the office.
She was gone. He had fired her.
The cigarette wasn't helping. Even the scotch wasn't helping.
Fuck.
In the moment, the moment where he told her to pack her shit and get out, he had meant it. In that moment he would have done anything to make her go away.
He'd always been prone to a short fuse (followed up by an ability to hold a grudge. A charming combination that he recognized had shades of his father, but recognizing something and being able to change it were two very different things), and Mac had always known how to press his buttons.
He had fired her. And he had meant it.
But after he had calmed, as he stood, in the muggy, late summer night, he wasn't so sure.
They were onto something with this News Night 2.0 thing. Mac had been right, he was suddenly proud of what they had been doing, invested in his work again.
It occurred to him that he might never see her again. Last time she had run off to a warzone, and God only knew where she would disappear to this time. And this time it was on him, he sent her away, he fired her. He wasn't sure where she would go, but he knew her, he knew that she wouldn't stay around New York.
He might never see her again. And even though that was what he had wanted for so long, now that it was a real possibility, the thought left him feeling cold and empty.
Will took a long drink, and the scotch burned going down.
He sent her away this time.
Fuck.
Mac unlocked her apartment door, and after she closed it, she rested her forehead against it for a moment, before turning around and sliding bonelessly to the floor, her back against the door.
Will had actually gone and fired her.
She had lived in fear for the first few weeks, waiting on baited breath for him to exercise that clause in his contract, but when it hadn't happened, she started to breathe a little easier. Will was even starting to thaw a little bit. Their interactions were less stilted, more comfortable.
Maybe she had gotten too comfortable. She had stopped walking on eggshells around him, began standing up to him, voicing her opinions.
You’re fucking fired.
Mac wasn’t sure how long she sat on the floor. Standing seemed an impossible task; taking far more energy than she could summon at the moment.
It took the phone ringing for her to finally climb to her feet. Despite herself, she hoped it was Will calling to apologize, a gruff voice telling her that he’d see her Monday.
It wasn’t. It was Charlie.
“Mac,” her name came out as a sigh. “He’s a fucking idiot.”
“An idiot who has the power to fire me,” Mac pointed out.
“Power that he abused,” Charlie said. Mac didn’t say anything, because it didn’t matter if Jim thought Will was an asshole, or Charlie thought he was an idiot. He had negotiated three million dollars off his contract to be able to fire her, and here they were.
She shouldn’t have come back here. She should have never come back here. Damn Charlie Skinner. He should have left her to rot in that bowling alley.
“I’ll talk to him,” Charlie finally said, filling the silence.
“Don’t worry about it,” Mac replied, her voice cracking on the words. “Look, Charlie, we gave it our best shot, right? I think we both know that my coming back there isn’t a good idea. He doesn’t want me there, and I don’t…” She didn’t think she could handle much more of his vitriol, his bitterness, his anger. She might deserve a good part of it, but there was a limit. "I can't do it anymore, I can't be his punching bag."
"MacKenzie," Charlie tried.
"It's okay," Mac interrupted him
"It's not," Charlie replied, gently.
"No," Mac swallowed hard, feeling overwhelmingly sad and suddenly exhausted. "It's really not."
Will was half a bottle of scotch in when the doorman buzzed his apartment.
He half thought it might be Mac, come to fight for her job (and he half hoped it was. So he could back down, tell her to come in Monday, pretend like the whole thing hadn't happened). But it wasn't. It was Charlie Skinner, who pushed past him when Will opened the door and looked mad as hell.
"What the fuck were you thinking?" Charlie exploded.
"I was thinking that she showed extreme insubordination, and I fired her," Will answered with a calm he didn't feel.
"You're an idiot," Charlie shook his head.
"Excuse me?" Will demanded.
"The show has never been better," Charlie pointed out, his hands coming to rest on his waist as he stared Will down. "That was her. She turned this into a show worth watching. She turned you into a real newsman."
"Have you seen the ratings lately?" Will shot back. "She's tanked our ratings."
"I was wrong. You're not an idiot. You're a fucking idiot," Charlie exclaimed. "You two work together better than anyone I've ever seen! There was a reason I dragged her out of that bowling alley!" Will paused, the words bowling alley bouncing around his brain, stalling his anger momentarily before he barreled on ahead.
“She’s not the right fit for the show,” Will maintained, and Charlie rolled his eyes.
“I’m not sure what exactly happened, but you need to fix it. She is the best EP in the damn business, and you need to get your head out of your ass and fix this before she runs off and gets herself goddamn stabbed again in the name of journalistic integrity!” Charlie’s face was bright red with anger, and he was winding himself up to continue when he realized that Will was paling, frozen in his spot. “Christ, you didn’t know.”
“Stabbed, where? What are you talking about?” Will asked, his head filling with white noise, pushing out all other thoughts. His anger was dissipating quickly, being replaced with a low level uneasiness that he couldn’t quite name.
“You should ask MacKenzie,” Charlie said gently. “I thought you already knew.”
“Charlie, I swear to God I’m not fucking around, stabbed where? What the fuck are you talking about?” Will demanded, his hand trembling as he reached for a cigarette. He reminded himself that he had just seen Mac only a few hours before. Whole. Unharmed. Arguing with him. Alive.
“I’m a little hazy on the details,” Charlie admitted. “I didn’t know her then, so when the wire report came down I didn’t give it a whole lot of thought. I did some digging, after I decided to go try to hire her. There was a protest gone awry, I’m not sure what happened, but she was stabbed in the stomach. It was...” he paused, his eyes narrowing to look at Will, assessing Will’s ability at the moment to handle the information,“…apparently it was pretty touch and go for a little while.”
“I didn’t know,” Will murmured. “I didn’t…how didn’t I know? I would have seen it come down the wire!” Despite himself, he had kept track of where MacKenzie was, what stories she was reporting on. It seemed damn near impossible that something like that might have happened and he hadn’t been aware of it.
“From what I understand, she fought very hard to keep it quiet,” Charlie answered. “Called in a fairly large amount of favors. Her father, too. I saw the initial report, at first it was just that a CNN reporter had been injured in a riot, and then when nothing more came of it, I figured they had sustained minor injuries and that there was nothing more to report.”
Jim would know, Will thought suddenly. Jim would know what had happened.
As soon as he thought it, Will knew that trying to get information from Jim was going to be like getting water from a stone. He wasn’t going to tell Will a thing, not if Mac had asked him not to. And it wasn’t lost on Will that his and Jim’s already precarious relationship was almost certainly going to be collateral damage in the aftermath of Mac’s firing.
“She’s okay?” Will asked, looking up at Charlie. “I mean, is there long term damage?”
“Physically or mentally?” Charlie asked, giving Will a hard look.
“Charlie,” Will started.
“Save it,” Charlie held up a hand and stopped Will. “And fix this."