A/N: Well, this is one of those things that I swore I'd never do, and then it seemed like a good idea at three in the morning so I did it anyway. It's a fun idea to bat around in fic, although not really something I want to see on the show for season three. Either way, it was fun to write, especially considering I'm taking a break from a 40k mega-angst WIP that I'll be dumping on you later in the month. :)

For Meg, even though she says that this isn't her fault. (It totally is.) Also, thanks to Allie and Rachel for helping me figure out a few scenes.

What is this? You may be asking. We just don't know.

I. WINTER

It starts with snow, on a Sunday, with an email. It ends that way too, on a calm morning with snow drifting between sky-high buildings, slicking the streets with ice, piling up on sidewalks.

They're supposed to go into work, a meeting with Rebecca and the lawyers; they all are, but the snow has been coming down all night and Rebecca emails the staff early telling them not to bother, and so they email the staff and tell them to stay home, and safe, cancelling the prep for Monday they'd planned on doing after they were done with legal.

"Come back to bed," Will mumbles forlornly, and then her name, which in his half-asleep state skips the '-cK' entirely, replacing it with a stuttered breath, and transforms the '-z' into an '-s,' and Mac thinks it might be her favorite way that he says her name. One arm flung over into her side of the bed, his eyes blink blearily open, watching her.

The ambient light streaming through the wall to wall windows casts their bedroom with a dreary grey pallor, and MacKenzie briefly watches the snow swirling down from the sky before turning back to her laptop. "In a minute," she tells him, fingers clacking down onto her keyboard.

"Aren't you freezing?" he asks, turning on his side to watch her sit at the desk against the interior wall in nothing but her glasses and her engagement ring, thinking about how her skin seems to glow in the silver morning light, and how foolishly in love with her he is.

Laughing, she tries to finish up her email to Jim. "Yeah, and in a minute you're going to warm me up."

"Well then," he says, sounding more alert.

She hits send, shuts the lid to her laptop, and crawls back between the sheets, still laughing when Will wraps his arms around her waist and pulls her on top of him.

They have an excuse to hide away, might as well make use of it.

Afterwards, she lays on top of him, head tucked under his chin. His hands retrace the familiar path up and down her spine as the snow picks up. They watch it blow past the windows, down towards the street, willing time to keep.

Slowly, they drift back to sleep.

The lawsuit is preparing to move into the deposition phase, and the brief reprieve they were given during the initial round of discovery is over.

The lists of witnesses have been finalized, dates and times for cross examinations set. The legal team is coaching the key witnesses through hand signals and how to answer—except Will, who already has the skills to antagonize opposing counsel through this sort of thing—making video after video and making them come in Sunday after Sunday.

Mac pops Xanax like candy, but she's okay, and Maggie is throwing herself into work but she's okay too, and Will thinks that Jim is straight up belligerent, but it's because he's sticking up for Mac and all the things that Jerry's lawyers are leaking to the tabloids about her so he doesn't care, and he knows that he himself isn't the easiest to get along with these days. Don and Sloan spend most of the day with their heads bent together, and overall they're all okay.

Outrunning sorrow by sprinting headfirst into the show (it's not, but it can be, can be, can be) and they spend more time hand-in-hand than not, even if Mac has rules about no kissing in the newsroom. Smiling in the way that make her eyes crinkle, she had convinced him to let the staff unable to go home come to his, now their, apartment for Christmas.

Will McAvoy isn't particularly taken aback by the notion that he has a family anymore, but he still has to double check every once in a while. Happiness is a wheel, turning along to betrayal and anger before too long.

But MacKenzie isn't leaving and MacKenzie clutters up his life and MacKenzie makes him stop running and playing by the rules he's used to protect himself for so long.

He hadn't realized he let so many people in until he heard the gate battering against the fence, hinges creaking loudly.

When Tess comes into his office after her second round of deposition prep on the verge of tears, he just sighs and pulls her into his arms, scowling when she protests him using the cuff of his sweater to dry her face.

(Tears, he's an old pro at. Bruises, standing his ground, getting the kids out of the house.

The rest he's still working on.)

"I knew I was in trouble," Reese mutters to him at the end of a meeting one night, scribbling in the margins of an amicus brief filed by CNN. "Three years ago, when you told me to call her Ms. McHale."

"Is that why you hacked her voicemail?" Will asks mildly, lifting his eyes to scan the conference room to make sure that no one nearby is listening.

Reese snorts. "To delay the inevitable? Yes."

Will lifts an eyebrow at that, before dropping his attention back down to the brief, reading all the nice things people from CNN have to say about Mac and Jim. "Delay the inevitable?"

(Not that he disagrees, that is. Three years ago, yes. But now?)

It takes him a moment to realizes that Reese is laughing at him.

"What?"

Reese shakes his head. "I deleted the voicemail because I knew she would come running to you if she heard it, and I needed you two on uneven ground."

"That backfired," Will says, thinking back to The Greater Fool article, the American Taliban broadcast. And then, quieter. "We weren't ready. I wasn't ready."

"Well, yeah," Reese scoffs. "If you have to get so stoned you can't feel your face to do it, you probably aren't."

But this story isn't about the lawsuit, or the voicemail. Instead, it's more about the strange fine filaments that root deep in the soil and knot together during the hard frosts and hold out, waiting. The roots that hold everything together, refuse to be dug up.

MacKenzie never expected to be stronger.

It snows twenty-six inches in New York City the first three months of 2013, and she lies in bed and tells Will her secrets as her therapist weans her off antidepressants again. Her deposition was weeks ago, and the secrets are ones she's just retelling at this point, or new ones that she's made with him. Jim is the keeper of some, the ones made while she was sleeping or sedated, or face down in the dirt. She knows he's told Will about Islamabad.

But she lets that crumble like dirt from between her fingers and lets something grow stronger into the parts of herself that they've stripped away during this winter. Her deposition was weeks ago and she no longer assumes all of the guilt for Genoa, for how she and Will fell apart.

They weren't ready then, but they're ready now.

(It can be, and it is.)

And then they get up, and go to work. To their staff, who seem helpless now that there's nothing they can prepare for, with depositions over. But they're okay. If anything's stood the test of time, it's that winter cedes to spring.

It takes them months, and in the end, it's Mac that finds it again. It winds up happening on her birthday, of all days, late in February.

It had started mostly as wishful thinking, and then grew into a mild obsession. They had access to every story he had ever put his hands on, so why not? So MacKenzie spends hours in the editing bay, combing through footage.

Maggie joined her in the second week.

"I walked out of the room for the interview. If you're responsible for Genoa, then so am I," she said, in a tone that left no space for disagreement. "How do you want to divide this up?"

Dantana vs Atlantis Cable News is dismissed in late February, upon the revelation that he had previously edited raw footage not just once, but twice, before.

When the verdict is handed down from the judge and phoned back from Rebecca to the AWM building, MacKenzie ignores the rules, throwing her arms around Will's shoulders and meeting his mouth halfway, squealing when he lifts her against him. She's the victorious general, the breaker of the siege line, and he smiles contentedly at her in Hang Chews later, after broadcast, surrounded by their eager staff.

The next week, they re-up their contracts with ACN, signing on for three more years. Mac stares him down until he's certain that Scott's gotten rid of the non-compete clause, and his salary is where it was in 2010.

(It's more than that, actually, but he won't brag.)

He buys her another ring.

She buys him one, too, and they make an appointment at City Hall for their lunch hour. Like it is with all secrets in the News Night newsroom, everyone finds out, and the marriage of Will McAvoy and MacKenzie McHale is witnessed by ten members of senior staff, two anchors, one executive producer, and one president of the news division.

II. SPRING

The death threats taper off after the suit is dropped, and ratings keep going up. Cleared of wrongdoing, the DoD wants to talk to them again, so does the Attorney General's office, and their military sources come back on. It's warm for March, so they walk through Bryant Park after broadcast, her hand tucked into the crook of his elbow.

(Most people have a honeymoon phase at the beginning of a relationship.

Will and MacKenzie are not most people. Their relationship restarted with a lawsuit and a near mental breakdown, followed by months of heated tabloid coverage and being forced to dredge up their pasts for the sake of a legal defense.

That light and dreamy phase comes after the suit is dismissed and it finally settles in, eight years after they first fell in love and five months after getting back together.)

Tugging at the ends of her hair, he continues a round of bickering from the control room, until she slides her hands under his jacket and moves her fingers over his ribs until he squirms, and then retaliates. And then she does, poking him at the part of his waist that makes him yelp and curl in a bit, and he winds up chasing after her in Byrant Park at ten at night. And catches her, because she's in heels and can't get very far, wrapping his arms all the way around her waist and lifting her off her feet.

"No—no, I'm right. I'm right and you know it," she says, laughing. Eyes bright, cheeks flushed, and all he can think about is how beautiful she is.

(The wheel has stopped, and she's the one who snapped the spokes.)

"Don't bring in the guy from Holder's office, you said," she quips, doing a poor imitation of him. "He'll just give us the run around."

"He did give us the run around!" he protests.

She spins in his arms, and he smirks at the look of righteous indignation on her face. "Yeah, but now Holder looks like the hypocrite he is, and our request that the drone policy be addressed by Obama—"

"Yeah, yeah." He slides his hands under her cardigan, clenching his hands in the back of her blouse until it's untucked from her skirt and he can smooth his fingertips over her lower back.

"Admit it," she says, before biting her lip up at him, resting her hands on his chest.

She's all big hazel eyes, and he can play her just as well as she can play him—slowly, he trails a hand up her body, cups her jaw. Leans in, and kisses her softly, tugging her bottom lip between his teeth before tracing it with his tongue, pulling away when MacKenzie exhales softly and threatens to reciprocate.

"You were right," he whispers, before starting to laugh.

"Good," she says, thumping him on the chest and then beginning to move away from him, before reconsidering. Lips inches from his, she doesn't quite let their mouths meet when he moves to kiss her again. "Now take me home. I want to get you into bed."

The staff knows. In the sense that MacKenzie has been walking around with a rosy glow for weeks, and Will's a little too self-assured, and it's vaguely unnerving, although infinitely better than the days that they were at each other's throats. It's seasonal, they joke.

"Do you think—is it just a honeymoon phase?" Tess speculates one day before rundown, rimming her coffee cup with her fingernail.

Jim, settling in across the table, and not a part of the conversation, says, "I don't want to know."

Tess and Tamara ignore him. "I mean, you've seen how they act during broadcast. And in general. Maybe that's just how it works in the bedroom. There's no shot in hell that they're boring in the—"

"Do we have to?" Jim whines plaintively.

Maggie shrugs. "We talked about them before they got engaged. Granted, it was more about how Will was the king of denial, but—"

"I mean, they've kept this up for like, three weeks now," Tamara points out, craning her neck to see their bosses come out of Will's office.

Maggie nods, quirking a side of her mouth up into a half-smile at Jim's expense. "Sloan thinks they're trying."

"Trying for what?" he asks, giving up on leafing through iNews alerts, instead dedicating the remaining five minutes before the meeting to frowning petulantly.

Tamara shakes her head. "Nah. It's a honeymoon phase, and may it last us a long time."

"Law of averages, though," Tess points out.

"Trying for what?"

Neal takes a seat, tossing his phone onto the table and rubbing his temples. "Whatever keeps them happy."

There was the time (times, to be honest) in the shower, because the shelf along the wall is just the right height for her to brace her foot on.

The Saturday morning she was cooking breakfast in nothing but his discarded shirt from the night before, and he padded out from the bedroom and wrapped his arms around her waist, and trailed a chain of open mouthed kisses from her ear to her shoulder, until she turned off the burner and he took her from behind with her hands braced on the lip of the kitchen sink.

On the balcony, once it got warmer, but still wrapped up in blankets, breaking in new furniture.

And then the new couch, far more than once, because its overstuffed and deep. Once to distract him during a March Madness game. Another fumblingly, after coming home from the bar after having one or two too many for any kind of finesse. Another because it was a Sunday and there was a Law and Order marathon on TV that Will was too busy mocking ("That's not how—it doesn't work like—okay he's clearly the murderer." "Is the DA's office that sexy?" "I'm not deigning that with an answer." "I'm just saying, I thought we had a lot of interoffice romance.") for either of them to be bothered to move, and paused halfway through for Will to scowl at improper courtroom procedure.

Often in bed, often with her on top, because he likes to watch.

The weekend after the Boston Bombings he covers her and its slow, and rolling. When they're done the sheets are half off the bed because of what he knows of MacKenzie's time in the Middle East, he knows she needs to forget the week, so he doesn't stop until her voice is hoarse, pushed beyond screams and into choked off, unintelligible wails.

She knows how to make him whimper and reduce him to a nonverbal puddle, so it's fair.

It happens entirely by accident, that month. Late April, Mac thinks, doing the math.

Sitting on the floor of the bathroom in her office, she muses on the absurdity of the universe that you can accidentally make a person. Her clockwork cycle is five days late, and everything she's finding on Google is telling her that the antidepressant she was on for a few months this past winter apparently renders her hormonal implant completely ineffective.

Still, considering that Will is nearly fifty, and she's nearing forty, and he's not in the greatest health—

It's poor Jim who she asks to run to CVS ten minutes after the end of the final rundown. Naturally, she has the epiphany that five days late should probably warrant a pregnancy test in the middle of the finalization of the D block, and since there are still tabloids hounding them and absolutely no one else can keep a secret—

"I need to ask you to do more stuff that I'd never anyone to do," she says, after closing the door behind him.

Jim shifts uneasily at her sheepish request, before smiling down at his shoes, rocking back onto his heels. And then almost laughs when he remembers that Will's in hair and makeup, so they probably have a very small window on this.

Mac considers explaining that she doesn't want Will distracted or worried during broadcast, but she'll be more distracted by not knowing, and she isn't keeping secrets from her husband and she is so sorry for putting him in this position, but Jim only nods.

"Okay, but I literally have no idea what I'm looking for," he warns her, warily watching the door.

Patting him on the shoulder, she tries to give him what she hopes is an encouraging smile. But she's nervous, and he can tell, so he squeezes her hand on his way out the door.

Pregnant.

Times five. Two Clear Blue Ultra and three First Response Early Result, because Jim had shrugged and said those were the denominations that they came in.

"Mac, I know you, you're gonna want at least double confirmation."

He wasn't wrong.

"Seriously?" she whispers, watching two more lines appear.

Okay. They can do this.

And they've—she's not opposed to children. She never considered them before Will, and like marriage it was nothing she wanted in general, but was something she wanted with him. Her and Will's baby. And they've made jokes about it before, children. Irreverent, but not opposed.

And he'll—Mac takes a deep breath, staring down at the positive test again. He'll be happy. As cautiously happy as she is.

She's thirty-nine, but she's in pretty damn good health, she's not on antidepressants anymore, and she'll cut out Xanax immediately. The apartment has a guest room that can be turned into a nursery, and AWM has onsite daycare, and regardless, they run the show so they'll make it work. Will will have to quit smoking. They've already started on making the apartment less of a man cave, new furniture and actual rugs and more things on the walls and tables, better food in the refrigerator.

MacKenzie checks the time.

"Shit."

It's okay, they're stronger, she tells herself when she slips her headset around her ponytail. Roots firmly in place, she thinks, when Jim sidles up beside her. His concerned gaze isn't a question but she gives him an answer with a subtle nod and a small grin.

She's overly quiet towards him during the broadcast, preoccupied, Will thinks, but chalks it up to some sort of general control room malfunction.

Until she follows him into his office after broadcast and he notices how tightly she's clutching her folio.

(Even with an hour and some minutes, she hasn't figured how to tell him about probable impending fatherhood.)

Pausing in unknotting his tie, he asks her, "What was up with you guys tonight? You seemed distracted."

"Ah, yes."

Conceptualizing the child that, barring no great illness or tragedy between now and seven weeks from now, will grow up to a fully realized person who will first depend on them for mostly everything starting from mid-January—if she's doing her math right—was a bit of an arduous mental task.

She tries to keep her tone very matter of fact. "That would be because—I'm pregnant."

Not quite successful in keeping her nerves out of her voice, she only makes herself more anxious.

For a few seconds he just blinks at her, hands frozen at his half-undone tie, a look of shock creeping over his face, nine months' worth of images of MacKenzie, pregnant sliding through his mind in a way that is entirely overwhelming but not unwelcome. "What? How?"

"Apparently one of the medications I've been on makes the specific kind of birth control implant that I have—not work," she explains, holding her folio securely in front of her. "I found out while you were in hair and makeup—I only realized, well a few hours ago. It's been a busy week, so I didn't—I think I'm five weeks. I didn't tell you before broadcast because I didn't want to drop it on you and then shove you into the studio."

He still doesn't quite… react, and she worries her bottom lip between her teeth.

"...Will?"

In three paces he crosses the space between the two of them, picking her up off the floor and spinning her, and when he puts her down she can feel his smile pressed into her neck. Elation, heady and heartening, floods her belly.

"Not at work," she murmurs halfheartedly a moment later when presses his lips to hers, smiling widely when he gives her the sort of grin that means he doesn't care at the moment at all.

He slants his mouth against hers again, lips moving gently, deliberately, against her own. And then:

"We're having a baby?"

"Yes, honey. We're having a baby."

III. SUMMER

"We're going to get so much shit for this." Holding up the ten-week sonogram to her face, MacKenzie refuses to sit up any further than two pillows under her shoulders. Morning sickness hasn't been… terrible. It's infrequent, but when it happens it knocks her out of commission for a few hours, and she's never been more thankful for a job that starts later in the morning. "The staff isn't stupid, although they think we don't hear what they say about us. Also, I think Maggie knows."

"How? Jim?"

She shakes her head, and then regrets it. "She's been intercepting a lot of things from lower level staff on its way to me and taking care of it. And little things. She knows I've switched to decaf, you've quit smoking, that we're coming in later than usual. Neal knows, but I think it's because he spends so much time in my office and sees Jim trying to wrap me bubble wrap and do everything for me when you aren't."

Will laughs, rolling onto his stomach next to her and steals back the sonogram, ignoring her disgruntled squeak. "They're investigative journalists. If they haven't figured it out by the time we tell them, we should consider replacing them."

"So… Jim, Maggie, and Neal," she counts off on her fingers, batting Will's hand away when it starts to creep up under her shirt. "I wouldn't be surprised if Charlie knows. Sloan might catch on, especially if Don does, but his work day doesn't start until the afternoon, so…"

God, though. She can't wait to be out of the first trimester. The past five weeks have been a whirlwind of doctor's appointments and general anxiety and malaise, topped off with fatigue and Congress not being able to get its shit together. And the general task of quietly getting acclimated to the fact their lives are going to be upended in seven and a half months.

But the blood tests show low chances of chromosomal abnormalities, and the ultrasound showed that the baby at least has the correct number of heads, and they'll be looking for markers for Down's and other defects at the next scan in a few weeks and they'll be mostly out of the woods for risk of miscarriage soon, so…

They're both moving from "cautiously happy" to "happy but still pretty nervous," slowly but surely. And they'll both be much happier anyway once he no longer has to hold her hair back while she pukes at strange hours of the morning and occasionally, very late evening.

(Upside: Will has learned how to put her hair in a ponytail.)

"Tess will know as soon as Tamara figures it out. Or vice-versa." He settles for brushing her hair back off her forehead, frowning when she purses her lips, exhaling slowly through them. He'd suggest that she stay home until the 2 o'clock rundown, but the last time he did that she rolled her eyes and said she was pregnant, not an invalid.

"Kendra might already know," she says once the wave of nausea passes. "You can never tell with Kendra. Martin doesn't. And Gary…"

"Everyone will know as soon as Sloan knows," Will says, imagining her storming through the bullpen at full volume, tabloid of some kind in hand, before turning to reach over to his nightstand to continue thumbing through the newest parenting book they've acquired.

(He's acquired.

His childhood was a definite deviation from the norm, and he already knows he's going to get his ass kicked by an infant, so he might as well learn as much as he can before the kid's born.

MacKenzie just smiles fondly as his neuroses. Besides, he's seen her leafing through them, too, since most of her experience with small children is holding them in refugee camps and orphanages.)

She laughs, and it makes him thrilled and terrified in ways that are indescribable and settle in his stomach when she moves her hands to lie flat over the small hill of her belly. "Two more weeks and everyone will know anyway."

"So we should just tell Sloan and have her do it for us?"

"I heard from the Hollywood Wrap-Up people downstairs that apparently there's a story going around about you two going into what is apparently today called a 'baby boutique' in Soho?" Charlie warns them sometime late in June, after calling them up to his office after the 2 o'clock rundown. "Just so you know that rumor is going around again."

For a moment, neither are certain if Charlie's playing them into admitting it or if he honestly doesn't know.

(Both possibilities are equally valid.)

When they don't immediately respond, a look of confusion washes over his face. "What?"

Smiling nervously, Mac bites her lip at Charlie while Will studiously looks at his hands. It strangely feels like being called into the principal's office, except that they're married and, well, they were going to start telling people next week anyway…

Eyes widening, Charlie sits up in his desk chair, realization slowly dawning. "Wait…"

The expression on his face begins to resemble the one of absolute nonplussed shock that he wore when Will introduced her as the future Mrs. McAvoy. She can't help but laugh, and then turn to Will. "Show him, I left my phone in my office."

"Show me what?"

"We haven't… told anyone yet," Will says by way of explanation, handing his Blackberry across the desk to Charlie.

Fumbling on his reading glasses, it takes a moment for what exactly the grainy, black and white image on the phone's screen means to hit him. "Well I'll be damned." Staring at the picture of what Will has decided looks more like a hamster than a baby for a moment longer, a wide grin creeps across Charlie's face. Then he stands, walks around his desk, and pulls a giggling MacKenzie into a fierce hug, before holding her at arm's length to examine her. "When?"

"I'm due January 15th, but if they're anything like Will they'll take their own damn time," she says, laughing giddily again when Charlie cuffs Will upside the head before hugging him, too.

Of course, it isn't always happy—simple nervousness bubbles over into anxiety, which forms into the rigid shape of neurosis. It's not like he's worried that he won't love the child (he does), or that he'll turn out like his father (he'd kill himself before that happened), but Will's not ignorant enough to think that his relationship with his own father won't inform the one he'll have with the baby.

And he's not an idiot to keep this from MacKenzie, who's stressed enough at it is, and tired enough as it is, and who always knows when he's keeping something from her anyway, so it's easier just to tell her and then have her prod him into actually going to one of his appointments with Jack.

Which just ends up with him back in Charlie's office, once Jack points out that the only constructive paternal influence he's had in his life is his boss.

"You do fine with your staff," Charlie points out, pouring himself another two fingers of bourbon before topping off Will's tumbler. "You know, once you learned their names."

"What does that have to do with anything?" Will mumbles into his glass.

"You and MacKenzie have a pretty young staff," he points out, sitting down behind his desk again. "And you handle them all fairly well. And Don, and Sloan, and just about any wayward twentysomething that wanders into your paths."

Will frowns. Looking after their staff, rough as it could be during the Genoa trial, is probably nothing like raising a child. Considering that the staff goes home at the end of the day, and can feed themselves, and know how to tie their shoelaces. "That's not the same as a—"

Charlie rolls his eyes, and quickly changes tactics. "You raised your siblings."

"Thirty-five years ago!" When he was young, probably too young (definitely too young), and definitely more energetic and less rundown and less inclined to drop dead. Because christ, what if he has a heart attack, or gets lung cancer, and the kid's fourteen? Then it doesn't matter that he has no idea how to keep the specter of John McAvoy from screwing him up—

Will realizes Charlie is staring, waiting for him to come back from his mental trip.

"And you still had good instincts, thirty-five years ago, under very different circumstances. And you have MacKenzie," he patiently explains.

"No, well, yes—but I'm almost fifty. Most men are sending their kids off to college at my age."

His mother died from breast cancer at fifty-eight, and his father dropped dead from a heart attack last year at sixty-nine; the McAvoy's aren't exactly known for their longevity. Well, okay. He doesn't entirely know that, he tries to reassure himself. John was estranged from his family, so Will doesn't actually know if his father's demise was some genetic defect or the result of forty years of immense alcohol consumption.

Mac's side is hanging on in their eighties and nineties, so the baby will probably have her.

"Start working out," Charlie tells him. And then, with a shrug, "stop eating so much bacon." Settling his drink down on his blotter, he gives him a reassuring, if not slightly condescending, smile. "Stop worrying, kiddo. At least about the being a good father part. You'll figure it out. You're too neurotic not to."

"That's your advice?"

Charlie sighs. "You and Mac make a good team. You'll figure it out. It's like having an employee. A very demanding, very helpless, very small employee who sleeps a lot."

Will nods. "So it's nothing like having an employee."

"Absolutely," Charlie says with a grin.

The first trimester ends, and Mac is unable to fit into even her largest skirts. Pants were forgone a month ago, but she's been able to keep herself out of maternity clothes thus far by buying higher waisted skirts a size up.

Around the apartment, its leggings and yoga pants with tee shirts that are starting to get too tight around the waist and started being too tight around the bust weeks ago, and she's bought new bras twice already.

(For two weeks there was a firm hands-off rule, because hormones made everything, especially the new breasts that Will loves to look at, hurt.)

However, the morning sickness is gone, even if it feels like every other hormone is raging.

Every hormone. And they know from what they've read that it'll be a bad idea for her to be on her back after the fourth month, so she's letting Will be on top while he still can.

In the shower afterwards, his hands running over the bump that is definitely there now, even if it's still largely unnoticeable to the common observer (which Will most definitely is not), they discuss how to go about announcing it to the staff.

They wind up doing it on a Friday in the middle of July, after the end of broadcast. There are a few distinct reactions—

Don, it appears, had figured it out weeks ago but Sloan hasn't, and when she realizes that her boyfriend had kept it from her, turns punches him repeatedly in the shoulder. Don shies away, nearly dropping his cell phone, trying to catch the blows. "I thought you knew!"

"No!" Sloan cries, after hugging both Mac and Will.

Don trails after her, gaping. "How did you not notice?"

"Why did you?"

There's no good way to answer that, Don realizes, and suddenly becomes interested in his phone again.

Tess and Tamara shout "I knew it!" at each other from across the room. Money is exchanged between Kendra and at least three staffers. The control room staff seems largely unsurprised, and Mac knows that Herb, father of four and grandfather of six, has had her pegged since week seven or eight, when her morning sickness had started in earnest.

"Anyway," Mac says, once the applause dies down. "We wanted to let you know, because we'll be looking in house and out, for an EP to replace me, probably for six months. If all goes to plan, my last show until June will be the Christmas Eve broadcast."

"So you're not going to work up until you start having contractions in the control room?" Don teases.

"Don't even joke," Will mutters, looking up at the ceiling.

(He's taken the week between Christmas and New Year's off, presumably so they can finish the nursery and getting everything together for the baby, but getting Mac to take early maternity leave was more of a concession for his mental health than anything else.)

Mac snorts. "I would, but he's less than enthusiastic about the idea." She catches Jim's eye and they both grin; she's worked through a considerable slew of ailments in worse conditions. Which Will knows, but since those incidences didn't involve his wife and unborn progeny…

"Our child is not going to be born in the newsroom." He already has too many worst-case scenarios that run through his head about this on a regular basis.

Mac rolls her eyes, and places a hand over her stomach. "You do understand how long labor lasts, right?"

Sloan starts referring to herself as "Auntie Sloan" to him in reference to the baby almost immediately—

"When do I get to find out if I'll have a niece or a nephew?"

"Second week of September."

"But that's so far away!"

"Tell me about it."

"...Right."

—but Will figures that he's claimed her as his little sister, so it's not entirely… strange. Or unwelcome.

And Mac's teased Jim as "Uncle Jimmy" more than once, in between berating him for following her too closely.

Leona complains loudly about Charlie getting a grandchild before her, out of McAvoy, of all people, and then tries to get in on the action by talking to them about the pull she has at Mt. Sinai, which has the best maternity ward in the city, don't they know.

Close to his birthday, Maggie shyly presents them with a blanket she started to make back when she first suspected—

"May. Late May? My aunt and uncle lived on the farm next to us, and she had six kids from the time I was in the fourth grade and high school graduation. I couldn't really help but notice. Besides, Will, you were kind of obvious about it."

"You know how to knit?"

"Crochet. And don't try to change the subject. It's kind of adorable."

"Get out."

Mac gives him that look, and then turns back to Maggie with a smile on her face. "Thank you."

—that's soft, solid, and a sturdy off-white.

Everyone is excited for what Tess and Tamara have offhandedly referred to as "the News Night baby."

Will doesn't quite know what to make of that, and Charlie just rolls his eyes—

"We've had this discussion."

"Wait, we have?"

—and pours him another drink, while they go over the tabloid coverage now that the gossip columnists have gotten their hands on it.

She can't sleep through the night anymore, getting up to pee at least once, usually twice, and then lies awake, joints aching too much for her to fall back asleep. Which means she gets a lot of time alone with baby, while Will's asleep.

Somewhere along the line, they've dropped 'the' off the beginning of 'baby,' which means they really need to find out the sex soon or they're going to go mad. Once they know if it's a boy or a girl they can start moving onto things like arguing over names instead of rehashing childcare plans.

Although, surprisingly, they decided to paint the nursery a shade of light green with absolutely no contention.

She's still worrying that she'll be utterly useless, though. Genoa nearly made the floor drop out from under her, even after the engagement. Her mother didn't have postpartum depression, but MacKenzie has a history of mental illness and mild PTSD, and she's read that birth itself can retraumatize, and no matter how many times she and Will go over the plan, she's worried.

About everything.

In general. Which her mother says is normal. And especially about giving birth, which she knows is normal.

Somewhere around 4 AM she feels it. Not for the first time, because she's been feeling the flutterings for weeks, but the first time she can feel baby kick against where her hand is currently resting.

Fighting the urge to sit up (because baby always stops as soon as she moves), MacKenzie reaches over and grabs Will's hand, pressing it to the spot where she just felt movement.

"MacKenzie?" he asks, in his usual sleepy way, rolling towards her.

"Wait," she whispers, willing baby to kick again.

He blinks blearily at her, dazed, until baby does it again, stronger this time. And then a slow, goofy grin splits his face. Pulling the covers down to the tops of her thighs, he rolls so he's eye level with the very noticeable curve of her belly.

"Hi," he says, lips pressed against her stomach.

She giggles, tears prickling her eyes, when baby does it one more time.

IV. AUTUMN

Everyone knows when the appointment is—mostly Sloan's fault, which is Mac's fault, but Sloan asked—so when they get back from the sonogram at twenty weeks the staff looks like they're all trying very hard not to seem nosy.

Tossing his things down at the table for the rundown, Will rolls his eyes at all of them and takes the sonogram out of his back pocket and hands it first to Maggie, by virtue of her sitting closest.

"It's a girl," he says, voice not at all convincingly disgruntled, "for that pool that you think that we don't know about."

Maggie squeals, and passes the print-out to Jim on her left before throwing her arms around his neck. Will gives up on trying to hide the smile on his face when the senior staff swarms around Jim's shoulders to try and get a glimpse at Baby Girl McAvoy.

Mac watches with an amused grin on her face from the door to the conference room, giving them a few minutes and answering a few questions—yes, she's healthy, yes, that's her nose, yes, that's a foot, no, we have no idea what we're naming her, don't ask him, I'm not lying and we're already fighting about it—before commencing with the 11 o'clock rundown.

While Mac's "no kissing" rule stays firmly in place, the general guideline of no workplace PDA slips slowly out of reach the bigger and bigger she gets.

It turns out that while the adhesions in her abdomen weren't enough to prevent conception, they are a cause for general discomfort now that she's well into her second trimester. And then her lower back is sore, because it's a given, and the leg cramps and general loss of her sense of balance which has her finally giving up her heels.

Will has strong hands.

Which she knew, but she's never been more grateful for them than when she's trying to straighten up after sitting in an editing bay with graphics for an hour and he comes up behind her, puts his hands on her hips, and digs his thumbs until her lower back until the muscles unknot.

Or at home—where's she's completely given up on her very small non-professional wardrobe and has begun commandeering his shirts to wear with maternity leggings, or sweatpants that she can cinch below her belly—where he'll spend hours trying to get her shoulders to loosen up, worrying about if she's eating enough or sleeping enough.

"I'm fine. She's fine."

(She still doesn't have name.

In a way, Will's oddly relieved that the baby's a girl. He doesn't know if he could face down a little boy who looks like him—maybe it could be easier if his hypothetical son looked like Mac, darker hair, darker eyes—every day while still wondering why his father did what he did. But a daughter is less… he has faith he'll transfer fewer of his issues onto her.

He still doesn't feel ready, no matter how many drinks Charlie dumps into him.)

"Are you cold?" he asks, leaning over the back of the couch (their attempts baby-proofing the apartment has included rearranging the furniture set-up, although they might just move it all back) trying to read the email she's writing her mother over her shoulder.

She attaches a few of the pictures they've been taking to mark the progression of her expanding waistline, and then hits send. "A little." Closing her laptop she leans back into the couch and smiles up at him. "Come warm me up."

MacKenzie has more faith in him than he does, though, and he doesn't want to shake that in her.

"Do we have a comment from the budget office yet?"

Maggie leafs through her notes. "They are saying in the report that the shutdown will an estimated 0.2 to 0.6 of a percentage point off U.S. gross domestic product in the next quarter, and will dampen job creation by an estimated 120,000, and will overall cost the government $2 billion in 'services that could not be performed.' Do you want me to run that to Sloan for her five minutes?"

"I'm sure that's already what she wants to talk about, but tell her that, yes, and tell her to talk to Will because he wants her to do ten minutes and then the panel in the C block." Leaning back in her desk chair, Mac crosses her arms over her stomach.

(Covering a government shutdown while six months pregnant is something she never wants to do ever again.

Or probably have the vaguest chance of ever having to do again, so it's okay.)

Maggie scribbles that onto a post-it that she tacks on top of stack of them already attached to her notepad, and then stands. "I'll go do that."

When she's gone, Jim's left sitting in the chair across from her desk.

"Are you guys any closer to finding someone to fill in for your maternity leave?"

Mac sighs, and then laughs, rubbing her forehead. "No. Will doesn't like any of them."

"What about Don?" he asks.

Licking her lips, Mac mentally runs through the list of Executive Producers that Will's gone through in his time as anchor through her head, trying to think of who'd still be willing to work for him. "Do you know how long his average EP lasted while we were embedded?"

Jim feels like this is going to be funny, although probably not in a few months once they are facing Will in a MacKenzie-less workplace, and then after that a Will and Mac with a baby at home, although the current plan involves bringing her in often enough that they won't need a full-time nanny. "No."

"Twelve weeks."

"Oh god." He knew that though, that before he and Mac came to ACN that Will basically ran through EPs like tissue paper, discarding them for the virtue of not being Mac. Although maybe, Jim thinks, with Mac home with the baby, he'd be more inclined to keep one around. At least for six months. Twenty-four weeks. "You'll be doing the broadcast with an infant in a sling, or whatever those things are called, two and a half months in."

Mac smiles in an entirely unsettling fashion, and Jim knows what's going to come out of her mouth a moment before she says it.

"No," he says, pre-emptorily.

"You might be the only person he'll put up with," she says, grinning mischievously.

"No," Jim protests. He is so not putting himself in the line of fire. Even if Will will be exhausted and easily manipulated—the man is grumpy when he doesn't get enough sleep. They all already endured him quitting smoking; Jim is not looking forward to sustained sleep deprivation from either of them.

"You saved my life!" Mac retorts. "More than once, mind you, and he knows that. You two had man-to-man chats, or whatever, back during the trial. And he knows you and Maggie have already been picking up the slack—"

"You're not slacking off—"

"So you'll move to EP for six months, and Maggie will shift to senior producer, and once I come back you'll be first senior producer and she'll be second. A ton of shows have two, and since Will and I will have little—well, we'll have her at home—"

Jim sighs in a way that is distinctly long-suffering. "Fine."

Mac perks up in a way that belies her obvious relief. "Really?"

"Yes, fine, I'll do it."

Tilting her head at the scene in front of her, Mac leans towards Sloan. "I still can't decide if this is a Nebraska farm-boy thing, or a paternal nesting thing."

Sloan shrugs. "I don't know, maybe it's a guy thing? They all seem pretty disinterested in reading the instruction manual."

Maggie shakes her head. "I can't tell if it's because they're trying to keep up with him. I'm pretty sure Don and Jim tried to look at it." She picks up the mobile—a cascade of white and pale pink butterflies—and examines it. "This is cute."

"Yeah, we finally accumulated enough stuff that we really can't put this off any longer," Mac answers, looking at the soft cream rug and polka-dotted crib bedding, stuffed animals, picture books, Maggie's blanket, the rocking chair her parents sent, clothes from his sisters, the steady stream of things they've bought or been given in the past seven months.

"Maybe it's an anchor versus producer thing?" Sloan wonders, watching the slow and somewhat steady assemblage of the espresso colored crib in the pastel green nursery.

Maggie considers it. "I dunno. I'm from Kansas and my Dad thinks he's too good for instruction manuals. But it could still be a paternal nesting thing."

"Anchor thing?" Sloan asks, folding her arms under her chest.

Mac hums. "Anchor thing."

The day marking a year since the start of Will and Mac 2.0 passes quietly.

The morning holds the first appointment with the obstetrician of the third trimester, an injection of immunoglobulin (she's rhesus negative, he's not), and a second glucose test. Which comes back normal, thankfully, but by the time they get to work MacKenzie's fighting off a headache, and winds up spending the first rundown in her office.

Charlie sits with her, looking at the new sonogram and she has Maggie make a copy for him, before emailing it to Will's sisters and brother, her parents.

They cover the appointment of Mauluana Fazlullah as the head of the Pakistani Taliban, she and Jim calling in their own sources, and using footage from an interview they were able to secure with him back in 2008 as a favor from CNN. Then the M23 rebellion in Uganda, the 1200 warheads confiscated at the Turkish-Syrian border, a shooting in Detroit, and by the end of the day her headache is pounding.

He takes her home at the end of broadcast and they watch some shitty legal show with her head in his lap, his fingers massaging her temples while he rambles on about improper procedure and they wind up quietly debating the merits of prosecuting consensual crimes.

The baby kicks through all of it, and MacKenzie hopes that she can recognize Will's voice. She listens to it enough, considering the job.

After half an hour of comfortable silence, during which she spends far too much time anxious over if six months is too soon to head back to work, or too long for an EP, and if they're terrible parents for wanting to bring her into the office with them, if they're setting themselves up to pigeonhole her, or make her hate them and journalism, and questioning her general parenting abilities again, Mac asks, "What about Harper? As a middle name."

"For Jim?" he clarifies, looking down at her.

She nods.

He considers it for a moment, running his fingers through her hair. Scooter has stuck by Mac's side for seven years now, through hails of gunfire and into interviews with Taliban members, and religious protests-cum-riots, carried her out of one while she bled from the abdomen. "I like it."

Exhausted, Mac laughs softly. "She still needs a first name."

"We'll figure it out."

(He's starting to believe it, too, as the pieces of this new life are falling into place.)

Mac's had trouble sleeping for months, but at thirty weeks her main problem is the baby deciding that she wants to be awake when Mac wants to sleep, and since the Green Zone Mac hasn't been a very heavy sleeper.

He gets up before her now, her increments of sleep stretched out with hours in between, during which she's usually careful not to wake him. Not that he minds if she does, she just wants one of them to be getting enough sleep, but when she does get desperate enough, or restless enough, to wake him up, they usually end up on the couch, watching mindless television while he massages her calves or in the nursery, needlessly re-arranging things.

More hot than cold again lately, she's kicked off the blankets in her sleep. He pushes her shirt up to her belly button, tracing the darkened line of skin bisecting her belly with his index finger, and then an angry purple stretch mark.

("I like them," he told her a few weeks ago, kissing one, and she rolled her eyes fondly "Well, I better."

He thinks she's entirely too beautiful, carrying his child, and tells her often.)

And then feels his daughter press what he thinks might be her foot against his palm.

"Go back to sleep," he tells her quietly, laughing at the small absurdity of it, and feels another smaller kick against his palm. "You'll wake mom."

Again, a mild flutter rather than a kick this time.

He keeps talking, curling up against Mac's side, sliding his hand up and down over the curve of her abdomen, chasing where he thinks she's moving until she stops.

Which is, of course, when he notices that Mac's been awake for the past ten minutes, watching him. "At least she listens to one of us," she mumbles sluggishly, still finding the energy to smirk. Sighing contentedly, she turns onto her side, tugging his arm until he spoons up behind her, and they both drift back to sleep.

It becomes habit to drop into the control room before broadcast and tell the baby to behave before heading into the studio for mic check, which Kendra and Tess smile at and is also an excuse for Will to make sure that Mac's sitting down, and not running to and fro like she's always done.

It's quick, usually, and sometimes done in the hallway leading out into the bullpen when they're running late.

Of course, it doesn't always work.

"Will, wrap it up. Your daughter has her foot in my ribs and I'm too uncomfortable to yell at you."

VI. THE NEW YEAR

She's born on Sunday, January 5, 2014, on a calm morning with snow drifting between sky-high buildings, slicking the streets with ice, piling up on sidewalks, and after sixteen hours of labor. Two weeks early, her parents are left scrambling on their own, their families' travel plans not made for another ten days. Regardless, with snow bearing down on New York City, flights aren't landing anyway.

They aren't ready, and hold out on informing anyone besides the doctor and the hospital, once the contractions prove to be steady. MacKenzie panics, because labor leaves her nauseous and for hours she has trouble holding even water down, even after the epidural, and the idea of a waiting room full of people isn't something that she wants to deal with.

Will, of course, is obliging.

And frightened, and oddly appreciative of the fact that the last time MacKenzie was in this much pain, it was Jim who stayed with her, so he's sure that his daughter's middle name is the correct one.

She breaks his hand an hour into pushing as the epidural begins to fail, and he doesn't even notice.

But at 4:06 AM, shaking with fatigue, MacKenzie finds herself with an infant on her chest. Mottled grey and pink, covered in fluid, the baby wails, and neither of her parents can breathe. Arms coming up to hold her daughter by an instinct she didn't know that she had, MacKenzie finds herself laughing and crying. She feels Will kiss her sweat-slicked forehead, but can't bear look away from their squalling infant, with her clenched fists and fine light hair and kicking legs, until the nurse finally takes her away to be examined, and she shoos Will to go along with her.

He holds her for the first time fifteen minutes later, and when her eyes open the focus hazily on his face, he finds a hundred new ways to love.

An hour later, they're installed in a private suite in the Mt. Sinai maternity ward, the one with the view that overlooks Central Park, which Leona pulled strings for them to get.

Their gift from her was also partially from Charlie—a cradle that neither of them wants to know the price tag of, given with a strangely emotional instruction from Leona that it's to be used in their offices, because their child is welcome at the AWM building at any time. Charlie tells them later that she had a nursery for Reese next to her office when he was born.

Charlie's gift was book of pictures of the two of them spanning from 2005 to a few weeks before Christmas, when he gave it to them during their second impromptu staff Christmas, including a picture of the crowd at at Northwestern where MacKenzie can actually pick herself out.

He's Grandpa Charlie. And with Reese still single, Leona's been pretty insistent on putting a claim on the baby, too.

Their daughter has a very strange, very extended family.

But Charlie gets a namesake since, after all, he's the one who put them back together again. Who hired Mac when no one would and kept him on when any other company would have given him the ax, prodding them for years and supporting them through everything they've ever put on the air and encouraging them to find their ways back to each other.

Charlotte.

Will's hand shakes when he fills out the birth certificate—their daughter is the most important thing he'll ever attach his name to. He brings the form over for Mac, and awkwardly she shifts Charlotte into one arm to sign it.

Focused intently, she concentrates on getting Charlotte to stay latched, stroking the back of a finger over the round of her pinkened cheek. They don't know how long she'll be able to breastfeed—If she'll need to go back on antidepressants or back to work or if she just can't, in the long term—but she wants to try. And almost cried (harder, that is, moaning about all the hormones coursing through her body at the moment) in relief when it happened quickly.

"Hey, she's our kid. She's bound to be above average," he'd joked, combing the strands of hair that had fallen out of MacKenzie's ponytail back behind her ear. But he knows that Mac generally has trouble believing in her capabilities to do anything that isn't the news, despite how easily she can lead a staff and get people to believe in themselves.

Even still, he'd gotten a watery laugh out of her.

"Did you ever think we'd get here?" she whispers while they watch Charlotte drift asleep, still eating. "Did we ever want to get here?"

"I like it here," he winds up answering.

Eyes reddened by burst blood vessels, and almost twenty-four hours without sleep, she smiles up at him, and he marvels at how beautiful she is. "Me too."

It had hit them both like a body blow. And maybe that's what they should have expected; they certainly never planned on each other. The kind of love that a parent has for a child isn't something you can plan for, and it wasn't until they saw her—

(Not that either of them really knows what they're doing, but still.)

"Do you want to hold her again?" she asks him, fading fast. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he helps Mac into a bra and she has Charlotte in her lap while he ties the back of her gown before she pulls her robe. He scoops her up off the space between Mac's legs, mildly terrified at how small she looks against his forearm.

And then he pulls the blankets up around Mac, sitting and watching both of the women in his life sleep.

Mac wakes up a few hours later, and they call Charlie, telling him to come meet his granddaughter.

Speechless, Charlie pulls Will into a tight hug when they tell him the baby's name, before kissing MacKenzie on the forehead and wrapping an arm around her shoulders, looking down at the bright-eyed infant in her arms.

Sighing at the snow coming down, Will shrugs on his jacket, and looks down at his wife. "What do you want for breakfast, hon?"

Now that he won't be leaving them alone, he can run out like he's been meaning to for hours.

"Everything," she tells him, very seriously, before turning to Charlie, laughing. "I haven't eaten in twelve hours, I'm not joking. No, um. I don't care, so long as there's bacon."

He returns an hour later as the morning shows are starting with waffles and bacon and eggs from a diner a few blocks away, and a Harry Winston box that holds a necklace with a garnet and diamond pendant on a platinum chain.

They all laugh when MacKenzie can't decide which she's happier to see—her husband, the food, or the jewelry.

There's a disagreement over who in the staff gets called first. The disagreement is among the staff—Jim, Sloan, Elliot, Don. The solution is to take a picture of Charlotte in her bassinet, and the placard displaying her name and vital statistics, and send it in a mass email—

Weekend update:

Charlotte Harper McAvoy
6 lbs 7 oz, 20 inches

Mt. Sinai Hospital, Suite 454.

—some time around nine.

Jim, who to be fair does live the closest, gets there first, looking entirely bedraggled and wind burned, and he and Mac bend their heads together for a quick conversation. Giggling, Mac wipes a tear off Jim's cheek with her thumb before depositing Charlotte into his arms. Ten minutes later, Jim shakes Will's hand and reminds him of the bone that's broken somewhere in there, which makes Charlie roar with laughter, and Mac smile sheepishly.

Don and Sloan are next, both complaining about getting this dropped on them without warning while shaking snow off their coats and out of their hair.

"Hey, low drama. I respect it, nice change of pace," Don says, handing Mac a bouquet of flowers and a stuffed rabbit that is ostensibly for Charlotte, and then becomes the first person to shorten Charlotte into Charlie, quickly clarifying with "Little Charlie," and Mac realizes her daughter is probably forever doomed to that prefix for the rest of her childhood. Insofar with the News Night family.

Next is Maggie, Tess, and Tamara, and minutes later, Neal, who breathlessly informs them that Maria Guerrera somehow has it, says congratulations and that she knows nothing, since she hates Tony Hart as much as the rest of them, and so that the plan for Elliot to announce the birth while filling in at eight can go ahead.

(To be honest, Elliot is the one who would probably be the angriest if usurped of that privilege.)

Little Charlie, as everyone is inclined to call her, is passed around between them all in the larger room of the suite while Jim remains steadfastly at Mac's side.

"Hi beautiful, I'm your Aunt Maggie. And that's Auntie Tess, and Aunt Tamara, and that's Uncle Neal. Don't listen to him about Bigfoot. Or anything, really—"

"Hey!"

And then Kendra, Gary, and Martin, who walks in chugging Starbucks bemoaning sleeping with his phone on silent. And then Don, sitting on the edge of the bed talking to Mac, "Wait, she broke your hand? I wanna see this—"

Sighing, Will looks down at his hand, and the quarter-sized purplish bruise along his first metacarpal. "Mac's stronger than you'd think. Pretty sure I got the better end of the deal, though."

"Damn straight," Charlie quips.

Charlotte winds up Sloan's arms, eventually, sitting between Maggie and Don, and despite the fact that at six hours old she cannot possibly resemble either of her parents in any meaningful way, the staff gets down to sorting out her features.

"She has blue eyes," Sloan says, watching the uneven quick breaths of the vaguely awake newborn.

"All babies have blue eyes," Maggie counters, before lifting her hand to Charlotte's head, pushing the pink cap back an inch. "She's blonde."

"It might grow in darker when she's older," Tess considers, leaning over Maggie's lap to get a better look. "I think she has Mac's nose."

"Probably for the best," Sloan teases.

"Hey!" Will pouts from his vantage point at Mac's side, on her bed. He goes to stand, but she firmly keeps his arm in place around her, rolling her eyes.

"I mean, there was no way those two were going to produce a child with delicate features." Neal remarks, before adding, "I mean that in the nicest way possible."

"She's gonna be a ball buster," Maggie decides. "And her eyes are kind of light, more like Will's than some indistinct blue. They might stay that way."

"The fact that you know my eye color—"

"Will, I get paid to watch your face," Maggie says, snorting. "I have a pretty good idea of what color your eyes are."

"That is true," Sloan says, eyes drawn back to Charlotte when she yawns. "She's so cute. She gets that from Kenzie."

"I'm stealing my child back," Will sighs, ignoring Sloan and Maggie's protests and lifting the infant out of Sloan's arms.

"If it's your child, I'm pretty sure it doesn't constitute theft," Mac says from the other room, holding out her arms for Will to place Charlotte into, and immediately sets to the task of smoothing her swaddling blanket and evening her hat on her head.

The conversation turns again, after Charlie makes Gary and Neal and Martin run out for bagels and coffee and they come back with enough food to feed a veritable army, and Elliot.

"I mean, Will, you're already good at letting people cry on your shoulder, so you're ready for the teenage years," Tess says, smiling coyly, and he's reminded of calming her down during deposition prep a year ago.

Kendra laughs. "And at best we all act like a bunch of toddlers, and Mac somehow makes us all fall into line."

"And she can listen to like five people talking at her at once." Gary says assuredly. "Crucial mothering skill."

"Both good at sleep-deprivation."

"And Will has the singing thing down," Martin, who still isn't entirely awake says. "Babies like that."

"Mac paces incessantly," Jim says, grinning impishly at her, smile softening when Charlotte squeaks, blinking up at her mother. "Put her right to sleep."

Because, after all, having a baby rarely drastically changes anyone, or makes all the pieces fall into place. Most of the time, the fundamental pieces are already there, even if there's still a lot to learn. Most of the time, becoming a parent is re-assembling pieces of yourself that you know that you have, loving people in ways you haven't known—or haven't realized you've known—before, casting off old rules and old habits.

It's a time to keep, to find the roots you planted years ago without realizing, the strange fine filaments that root deep in the soil and knot together during the hard frosts and hold out, waiting. The roots that hold everything together, refuse to be dug up.

"Looks like we have a village," Mac sighs softly, once the crowd disperses back into the snow, having been told to get home safe.

"Mmhmm," he agrees, struggling to stay awake in the recliner next to the hospital bed.

Her laugh is light. "Go to sleep, Billy. We'll be okay."

And they probably will be.

A/N #2: Anyway, if you know me and my vehement opposition to Will and Mac having a baby in canon, you're probably pointing and laughing. Or not. Either way, thank you for reading!