A/N: Aaaaaaand part 3/3. The woman – since a few people asked – that Charlie was referring to in the last chapter was Leona Lansing. I subscribe to the tumblr headcanons about the two of them being in Vietnam together, and Charlie being Reese's biological father, and Charlie and Leona being the failed 1.0 of Will and Mac, since there are so many parallels there.

Thanks to miss ellinor, Ellie 5192, Rachel2016, sarah, and fanficfanuk for reviewing Part II!

PART III: THERE ARE TIMES THAT WALK FROM YOU

They had gone back into the AWM building because she had, in the rush and excitement after the end of broadcast, forgotten to turn off her computer. If she hadn't been drunk, she thinks, it wouldn't have been such a big deal. But she had had four glasses of merlot and her computer was left on, so she was going to stagger back across the street, head up to the twenty-fourth floor, check the wires one more time…

Will (after more Jameson than had probably been wise, despite his claimed limitless alcohol tolerance) had offered to go with her.

She can't even remember what they had been talking about, but they had picked Maggie up from the ER not even two weeks before, so that could have been it, but it was probably the about the broadcast, the Benghazi story.

Neal and Gary had found someone who witnessed the attacks, she had an old diplomatic contact who was working a short assignment in the British Embassy, and they were the only station running the terrorist attack angle. The phone conversation they'd had with the White House about their sources afterwards, Will handing Jim a couple hundreds to get the tab started at Hang Chews.

Will called her spectacular twice after they threw out the rundown at 6:30. She can't quite remember how it happened, which might be the worst of it. They were alone in her office, almost obtrusively happy. So light she might take a step and her foot not hit the ground again. She had been prattling on about something, waving her hands about, focused on not tripping over the ground in her four inch heels.

When she looked up he was smiling. A real one, not the nervous kind, or the sardonic little grins she's grown accustomed to from him.

"What?" she had asked.

"Nothing," he had answered, shoving his hands into his pockets.

She kept talking, and rounded her desk towards him. When she looked up again, his hands were no longer in his pockets but framing her face. This kiss comes back to her, over and over again, in detail. His lips, soft against her own; the angle his mouth slanted against hers; his tongue tracing her bottom lip. MacKenzie wishes she could remember how long it was for — seconds, longer probably, she remembers his hands sliding down her shoulders and coming to rest on her waist. Her own resting tentatively on his chest, thumbs stroking his overwashed blue tee shirt.

And then he broke the kiss, blinking at her, a look of alcohol-laced panic rising on his face.

"I'm sorry," he said, pulling away from her. "I shouldn't have done that."

"Yeah," she replied, lips tingling. Shook her head, stepping clumsily backwards, waving it off. "Right. Sorry."

An anxious disquiet grew between them, Mac hastily assembling inadequate reassurances in her head to say aloud to him, and finding them all wanting. Unconsciously he swayed towards the door, and she bit her lip.

"I'll see you tomorrow, then?" she had asked, quickly.

Will tensed. "I — yeah," he said, before rushing out the door.

She had hoped he would have brought it up, in the weeks following. Come to her as the holidays reminded them of their loneliness, but they both spent Thanksgiving and Christmas alone, although she had been corralled into attending Christmas dinner by Aleksei's wife later in the day, where she was called upon to recount embarrassing tales of near diplomatic disasters they had bumbled into as children.

But then on New Year's, late into the morning, she sat on her couch in a cocktail dress. Mentally and physically exhausted, but unable to sleep after Will's staunch avoidance of her at the staff party. Exhaustion had become her norm by then, sleep only ever won with the aid of Ambien and Xanax and even then she woke up tired.

The longer Will's silence got, the more the idea of doing what Aleksei had done — stepping down from the New York Times editorial board to stay on as a columnist, teach full-time, dedicate more time to his family — seemed right, seemed fully-formed as something she could do.

She needed to leave.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Charlie shouts, gripping the arms of his desk chair.

Will splutters, leaning forward in his seat. He didn't come in here to get yelled at; then again, he didn't come in here of his own volition. Charlie had called down and all but demanded his presence. "What do you want me to do? I've asked her to stay."

"Have you?" he asks, tone not quite indicating trust in Will's assertion.

Flippant now, he huffs. "Have I what?"

He knows what he has done — apologized, sent her flowers. Which, yes, he understands that because it's Valentine's Day could be interpreted as a romantic gesture, but it's not as if he sent along a box of her favorite chocolates (Godiva extra dark truffles, she used to eat two and put the box away, but he could convince her she could eat a third) or some flowery card (not that he actually ever did cards, or Hallmark, mostly he wrote her notes on stationary). Just two words: I'm sorry.

They'd both gotten out of hand at Hang Chews, and he expected to come in and Mac would apologize to him, too. Though, he supposes, he can't really expect Mac to anything, but somehow in his less-than-sober state last night, picking out her favorite flowers and harassing some poor florist's assistant into getting them to her, not caring if they were out of season…

Why did he think he could trust her to reconsider?

(Mac didn't take the contract Charlie offered her this morning.)

Charlie folds his arms across his chest, the shoulders on his tweed jacket bunching up. "Because I've spoken to MacKenzie, and I think she would have told me if you had asked her to stay."

So maybe he didn't use those words exactly.

Will deflects, waving a hand in the space in-between them. "I — well — I pointed out to her that it's hypocritical and selfish of her to leave."

"So you have not, in fact, asked her to stay?" Charlie asks with a stern frown.

"I — no." Uncomfortable at the way Charlie is staring at him — not mad, by any degree, but still imposing and demanding — Will shifts in his seat, but is truly too large of a man to actually move within the confines of the arms of the chair.

"You've attempted to guilt trip her into staying," he says, slow and appraising.

"That seems a bit harsh," Will stammers.

But no less harsh than Mac's been to him. She started it, he half wants to respond, his mind bringing up citations of her more unreasonable demands. But his anger tangles down with the fear that mixes in his belly with the look of disappointment on Charlie's face and the imminency of Mac's departure.

Instead, his mind turns him towards the high-pitched strain in her voice that has become all too common these days, almost interchangeable with the deadened tired tone she adopts outside of the control room.

He doesn't understand why she wants to leave — she only sounds like herself when she's in his ear during the show. But Mac says she doesn't want to produce anymore, and it's only convincing him that she's toying with him, or worse.

Charlie looks at him, stunned.

"She has post-traumatic stress disorder," he says incredulously, with emphasis.

Will's mind goes blank.

"What?"

"She — what do you think I was trying to tell you when I hired her?" he gawks. "Do you remember any of what I told you when she — okay." Unfolding his arms, Charlie leans forward onto his desk, gesturing to him. "You can still fix this. We still have time. Ask her to stay."

But that's not what Will's mind is clinging to anymore. "Mac has—"

And he missed it?

"I'm honestly a little disappointed that you didn't take that away from our conversation — she changed Will. People just don't change like—" Charlie stops there, confusion and then creeping realization. Mechanically, Charlie sits back in his chair, his eyes no longer on Will's face. "Mac changed," he continues, voice softer. "Around the holidays. I thought it was just a little seasonal depression; everyone has someone and it's the holidays and she was lonely. But no, she changed."

Terror sits at the bottom of Will's spine. Mac's been avoiding him all day because the last time he was drunk, the last time he reached out to her while he was drunk, was because he kissed her and then ran out on her.

"Yeah, I—"

"What?" Charlie asks, snapping his attention back to Will.

"It's nothing." He shouldn't bring this up. It's his and Mac's business.

Charlie arches an eyebrow at him. "William."

"I kissed her," Will confesses, trying to come across as dispassionate, unconcerned. "I kissed Mac. It was stupid." He waves it away. "We were drunk, after the Benghazi broadcast, really, really drunk…" Not that it's an excuse, he thinks, pausing. "I told her it was — well, I didn't tell her anything, but it's been fine—"

"You — are you a fucking idiot?" Charlie yells, scrambling to his feet. "I mean what the fuck, Will. You aren't a dumb guy. Do you think Mac's just been taking your bullshit for her health? To clear her conscious?"

Obviously not, Will thinks, curling his shoulders forward.

Charlie tamps down on his voice and narrows his eyes. "She's not fine, Will, any more than you and I are fine. And now she's trying to tunnel her way out here because she's so not fucking fine that apparently she has to leave a career she loves, because it's associated with you. Because MacKenzie is in love with you."

He doesn't know how that pronouncement of Charlie's makes him feel.

"Because you two broke up for —I don't even care why anymore — and she self-destructed and went to a warzone. Who does that, Will? Is that what a mentally healthy woman does?"

Mac is a runner, he thinks. And then: he is father's son.

But Mac isn't running. One can hardly consider leaving employment at the end of a contract as running.

Mac is moving on, from him.

Charlie folds his lips into a grim line, shaking his head. For a long moment he closes his eyes, as if recalling something. "And then she comes back from that, and her trauma is wrapped up in your break up, and I figure, hey, you're both on the rocks. Let's put these two kids together and see if they can't help each other out."

He seems to say more to himself than to Will specifically, eyes focused on the back of the room. There's a stretch of silence again, before Charlie turns back to him. The angry fire in his eyes has gone out, but emotions weighs heavily on him. Sighing, Charlie leans an elbow on his desk, pointing a solemn finger in Will's direction. "You helped her right out the door, and now you are going to spend the rest of your life miserable."

A childish inkling of despair settles in his chest, a feeling of impending disaster wrought by his own reckless conclusions.

"I'm not an idiot—" he stutters, some long-ingrained instinct demanding that he try to deflect the blame off of himself.

"No, I'm pretty sure you aren't," he says forcefully. "Which is why you're going to go downstairs—"

Yes, that he is.

Will stands, brushing non-existent wrinkles out of his pants. "Okay, I need to go do the final rundown."

Charlie's face creases in consternation.

"You can't run from this Will. She's leaving. You need to talk to her," he says, half-cajoling, veering into what Will thinks must be disaster mode.

It's too late. It's not worth it, he wants to tell him. He and Mac aren't going to work. It isn't going to work. Even if Charlie is right, and Mac loves him. Mac's moving on, again.

"Will!"

Carding a hand through his hair, he waves at Charlie and skirts out of his office.

Will barely says a thing during the final rundown, his thoughts unable to settle. He spends the entirety of it looking at Mac, wondering why he let her get away with "everyone's exhausted." Some small corner of his brain tries to justify that he hadn't seen Mac in years, that she seemed fine, at the time. Except that she hadn't — in his office, trying to make her apologies, she was hunched and withdrawn, anxious in a way he'd never seen before, before the BP spill spun her like a top and she was off and whirling and steady once more.

Should he have looked out for Mac?

You didn't owe her anything.

But that's a miserable way to live life, measuring by how much you owe others and trying to make sure that they owe you.

Miserable.

At the end she picks up her files and slips out of the conference room, and before he can rethink it, he trails after her.

"Why are you really leaving?"

There's a near-imperceptible hitch in her breathing. "Can we not have this conversation here?"

"No, we're going to have this conversation here because you're not answering the question," he quips, rapidly losing any sense of delicacy or care regarding the situation. Mac's leaving him, or the show, or whichever. "I sent you flowers," he tacks on as an addendum as they pass through the bullpen, weaving through the desks.

Faintly Will recognizes that the staffers are paying attention to them; Tess, feet away, squeaks quietly at the flowers remark.

"They're beautiful, thank you," Mac mutters, tensing.

"You're avoiding me," he blurts out, reaching for her before jerking his hand back.

She stops anyway, wheeling around. "Do you really want to go there?" she bites back, quietly aggressive. Collecting herself, sadness flashes across her features and she bites her lip. "Let's just get through tonight's show, Will."

"Why are you leaving?" he asks again, sidling up behind her while she tries to sort out her notes.

"Jesus, man, is this what it was like when I pestered you six days a week about the voicemail? Which day is your holy day?" she asks, exasperated.

Will squashes any hint of franticness out of his voice. "That's not — what does Columbia have to offer that the show doesn't?"

He wants to hear her say it, that she's leaving because of him. Because that's what is left, and he's certain of it. Mac has hand-picked and hand-raised their staff into journalists that she's proud of, she's never given a shit about the ratings, and no one's pressuring her from the 44th floor. Mac no longer wants to produce.

It has to be him, Charlie confirmed as much.

Mac sighs, ducking her chin. "That's not quite—"

"Because you walked in here and changed everything and you have stayed through all my grief I've given you," he pauses then and stops walking behind her, blinking quickly, "which yes, I'm sorry for, but you weren't supposed to—"

That was the wrong thing to say. Mac halts fifteen feet from her office and turns heel again, anger clear on her tightened features. "Leave? Are you twelve, Will? Do you get to — to pull my pigtails and push me around on the playground and I'm just supposed to put up with it? I have. I have put up with it. But there comes a point where — you bought me flowers Will, and you can't even—"

"Can't even what?" he says, louder now. Clearly she doesn't care about keeping her voice down, half-shouting across the five or so feet that separate them.

"Not here."

He needs to hear her say it. And honestly, what in the fuck does it matter? He'll be a part of her history in a few months.

"You're leaving because I kissed you," he spits out, realizing that he's now turned this into a barbed thing, this secret between them.

And when several staffers in the vicinity gasp, he realizes how loudly he just said that. Jim stands at his cubicle with a violent glare on his face — Will immediately recognizes that he definitely deserves whatever ire Jim may be about to visit up on him — but his arm is grabbed by Neal, sitting close by.

But none of that compares to the expression on Mac's face. Cheeks reddening, she slams the stack of files in her arms down onto the nearest desk — Maggie's, who jumps and hastily attempts to keep the mountain of papers from cascading to the floor. Betrayal and indignation is etched into the pinched corners of her eyes, the curl of her upper lip.

He immediately wishes he could take the words and shove them back down his throat.

"I'm leaving," she begins, advancing towards him in clipped, measured steps, "because you haven't told me to stay — you've been — I've had to fight you every step of the way to have this show the way it is and I've done it. I have endured your bullshit antics from your rotating door of women, to your run with the tabloids, to your goddamn non-compete clause, Nina Howard — who tried to ruin our careers before you got into bed with her. I endured you bringing Brian in here, and every stupid cruel thing you've done to punish me. And you know what? I may have hurt you, brutally. I know I did. But never in my life have I done it intentionally, because I love you far more than I know is good for me. That is why I am leaving, despite the fact that I love this show, and I love our staff, and I love — I love you."

She stops a foot in front of him, open and vulnerable before crossing her arms in front of her, staring down at her shoes when all he can give her is a stunned expression.

He forces his lips to form her name. "MacKenzie—"

"No — I have dragged you back to this show over and over again," she shouts, face growing even redder. "I have asked you to stay, but you couldn't do me the same courte—"

"I dropped the non-compete clause, Mac, I can't fire you anymore—"

But she's right. MacKenzie has asked him to stay in a million different little ways, asks him to stay almost every day. MacKenzie has done everything right, since she came back. Well — she's made her share of mistakes, but she hasn't—

The idea of MacKenzie leaving the show hurts him more than anything else.

And that one's on him. A lot of it is on him.

He doesn't want to be miserable. And he definitely doesn't want Mac to be miserable, definitely not because of him.

"You never told me that you wanted me to stay!" she says. It sounds more like a cry than a shout, and he expects Jim tap him on the shoulder and land one right on his nose. "Just give me one good reason, then, why I shouldn't leave for Columbia."

Without truly processing what he's doing, Will wraps his arms around MacKenzie's waist, pulls her flush against him, and slants his mouth against hers. ("Holy shit," someone, Neal probably, exclaims.) Mac tenses, hands landing on his chest, but then relaxes against him, exhaling deeply through her nose. Slowly he moves his lips against hers. They're dry — he knows she's been chewing on the bottom one all day — and taste like coffee.

It's over quickly. The hands on his chest push him away and MacKenzie steps out of the circle of his arms, looking as stunned as he feels.

Clumsily, she collects her things off of Maggie's desk, avoiding the gaze of a very speechless Maggie. "You need to… you need to go to hair and make-up. We have the show in forty minutes."

"I—" He attempts to stammer out an explanation, but finds that he has none. Panic settles in, then, as she brushes past him and heads towards god knows where to hide. Turning on his heel he watches her, watches Jim and Neal and Don, who's appeared from somewhere, join her.

Vaguely, he realizes he thought that kissing Mac would solve everything. But he's old enough to know that their problems are far bigger than what a kiss can fix.

She has no idea how she's going to do the show, but at promptly 7:50 Will, in his suit and tie and fresh out of hair and makeup, sits behind the anchor desk just like he does every other weekday.

And as soon as hair and makeup finishes with touch-ups under the lights, he hooks his earpiece into place and does the mic check, shuffles his notes. As if absolutely nothing out the usual has occurred. He looks as if he's about to run a hand through his hair, but stops himself at the last second, instead pressing his palm against the gleaming top of the anchor desk.

"There's a story—"

"What?" she asks, quizzical. "Will, we have ninety seconds—"

He glances at his watch and pales. "I — okay, fuck that. I — I don't want you to leave."

"Yeah, I guessed," she says, knitting her brows together and very much trying to ignore Don and Jim standing over her shoulders. But she supposes the entire newsroom knows their business, so there's no harm left to be done.

"Sixty seconds," Jim says, leaning forcibly on the on-switch of the mic. Mac snorts, but swats Jim's hand away from the mic.

"I can handle it," she grits out, pointing him to stand back from the panel, before returning her attention to Will's face on the (many) monitor screens.

He looks like he's hesitating over what to say next, briefly consulting his cards on the A-block before deciding that those obviously can't help him with whatever he's decided to do. "I love you, too," Will bursts out with. "I love you, Mac, and I'm never gonna hurt you again. You're right, I should have just asked you to stay, I should have done a million things—"

"Ten seconds, Will," Herb says on her left. "Grovel during the break."

Startled, she looks askance at Herb, who shrugs at her as the opening strains of the News Night intro music plays. Charlie, with an all too-knowing expression on his face, appears in the middle of the A-block over her shoulder.

"Mac?" Will says at the first break.

Her head is spinning. "I'm here, Will. Kind of have to be."

"True love always wins, right?"

"What in the fuck is happening right now?" she asks, sitting down in one of the empty seats, thumb firmly planted on the on-switch of her mic kit.

"I'm sorry — I — I feel like I should keep saying that. I really am. For all the shit, and for not — for not realizing you were struggling, I should have paid more attention, I should have—"

(Mac studiously ignores that there are several transactions going on behind and to the side of her. And in front of her, if what's happening in the bullpen is what it looks like. In her periphery, Maggie seems to be gesturing Will with a hand signal that invariably means "keep going, gimme more.")

"And no matter what you say, no matter if you stay or if you go to Columbia, I'm gonna be in love with you for the rest of my life," he stutters, only stopping once she tells him he has thirty seconds, and that their next guest might give him the runaround, and not to let up on the riders the Republicans have put on RU-486.

For not realizing you were struggling.

She wonders what he means about that, before Charlie's hand rests on her shoulder and she looks up at him.

"You didn't."

He shrugs. "I just reminded him of a few key facts."

Something she strongly suspects might be elation starbursts through her limbs, and for the first time in months she doesn't feel like her feet are rooted to the floor by some creeping weed of anxiety.

He knows, and it's terrifying, but Will looks pretty afraid himself. She could be angry, and Mac knows that. She could be angry, she could walk out. Or, she could decide to be happy. Decide to be happy, with Will.

"Will?" she asks, gulping down her nerves.

But then she has to be in Will's ear for the phone interview, and then she and Joey have to wrestle with a graphics package that doesn't want to cue properly, and she's elbow deep re-routing around in a potential computer virus in the sound board by the end of the B-block and winds up just telling Will to shut the hell up or they won't come back from commercial break.

"Mac?" he asks nervously at the end of D-block. "You there?"

She huffs a piece of hair away from her face. "No, I decided to quit in the middle of the show."

"I feel like I could do this so much better if I just start over," he says, unfazed by her quip but still stumbling over his words. The contrast between the anchor facade he keeps propping up during the segments and his unscripted apologies keeps getting starker. "I — I — I don't ever want to not be — no. I love you; I'm gonna go back to that. I'm sorry. Again. And I'm gonna be in love with you for the rest of my life, there's no way out of that, that's just a… physical law of the universe. You own me."

"I thought we established that my first show?" she muses, smiling widely. Will's entirely too adorable when he's worked up like this. Behind her, Kendra laughs.

"Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, not just eight to nine," he explains, gesturing wildly with his hands and staring intently into the camera. "I know — trust me, I know love doesn't mean you'll — I'll wait, Mac, I swear—"

And then she tells him ten seconds back again, giggling quietly at the helpless expression on his face.

She barely says anything through the final segments. He knows how absurd he sounds, rambling on to essentially the entire control room and the three cameramen who keep giving him increasingly more pitying looks.

"Mac?" Will asks after Herb clears him and the cameras retreat.

The studio door to his left opens, and she's striding towards him. A very large part of Will expects her to round off and slap him across the face. He stands, continuing rambling his apologies — one has to stick eventually, right? Either that, or he's convinced Mac to hand Charlie a letter of resignation and declare her two weeks' notice as starting immediately.

But instead, with a very intent look on her face (he thinks he knows what Maggie was talking about with "a look"), she grabs his lapels with strong fingers and pulls his mouth down to hers. It takes a moment, euphoria pounding through his bloodstream, but his muscles loosen and his hands slide up her back to sink into her hair.

Someone in the control room lays on the button to his receiver, because he can hear them all cheering. So can Mac, who gives them the middle finger before batting the earpiece to hang down onto his shoulder.

He's entirely disinclined to stop kissing her anytime soon, but she pulls back and smiles up at him.

"I can't do the show without you, you know," he murmurs, desperately hoping his mic has been turned off.

(It hasn't. Faintly they can hear Jim and Don protesting loudly that Mac isn't supposed to give in this easily.)

Smoothing out his collar, she kisses him again, softly. "Oh, I know," she says, but sounds quite unsure.

"Without you, it's not our show," he says quietly, unable to take his eyes off her lips, and lifts a hand to pull the microphone off his tie. "I need you. I know I can't stop you from leaving, and I took long enough to—"

Smiling wide enough that the corners of her eyes crinkle, she shakes her head. "Billy, does it look like I'm going anywhere now?"

It takes her three tries to convince Will that she means to stay.

Of course, she doesn't blame him that his trust requires multiple assurances, after the month that they've had she needs to hear it multiple times as well. Not that teaching is entirely off the table — the Center for Investigative Journalism, which is the department within the journalism school that wants to hire her, has adjunct positions — an idea that Will supports. She'd only need six or seven hours away from the newsroom a week, in the mornings, for that. They've spoken about a lot of things (her PTSD diagnosis, for example), after tumbling into bed together earlier in the evening. There's a lot yet to be sorted, but she feels, they feel… settled.

She shifts onto her stomach, propping her chin up on his chest. One of his hands lifts so he can drift his fingers through her thoroughly mussed hair.

"Will you marry me?" he asks, like one does it every day, still gently combing her hair.

Mac lifts her eyebrows at that, pillowing her chin on the backs of her hands. "You'd better still have that ring."

Will laughs, and tells her to let him up. Sighing, she gives him an inquiring glance before rolling off him and onto her back, tangling her legs in his sheets.

"So is that a yes?" he asks, padding, still naked, to the dresser in his closet.

Mac snorts, grabbing with her toe the sheet from where they managed to push it to the foot of the bed, pulling it up to cover her. "Do you still have the ring?"

"Yes, I still have it," he mutters, and she sits up when he steps back into his bedroom with a Tiffany blue box in his hand. Shaking the black velveteen box out, he tosses the wrapping to land wherever before climbing into bed next to her. "I — I um, took it home the night of Benghazi. Before that it sat in my desk drawer. But I took it home, after I kissed you, and sat on the balcony and stared at it for a good long while. I chickened out—"

Oh, Will.

"Honey?" She grabs his chin, forcing him to look at her instead of the very large Tiffany's ring that is going to be sitting on her finger in a few moments. "Stop apologizing. And ask me proper."

He smiles in a way that is endearingly earnest, and plucks the ring from the box to hold it in front of her. "MacKenzie Morgan McHale, will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?"

Humming to herself, she pretends to consider it, and giggles when he nips at the corner of her jaw.

"Yes." One of his hands comes to her waist under the sheet, fingers reaching for the place on her ribs until she squirms. "Yes! Yes! I'm saying yes!"

They sit up then, Will first but pulling Mac — who wraps her arms around his shoulders and plants her lips onto his — with him. He nearly loses the ring in the sheets, fumbling blindly for it while trying to lever her mouth open with his tongue. Finding it again, he pulls back.

"You're saying yes," he whispers, lifting her left hand.

She bites her lip and grins. "I'm saying yes."

He slides the ring onto her finger, and they set down new roots.

Thanks for reading!