This one has a trigger warning for violence, so please don't read if this may be a problem for you.

Also, this is my first attempt at a Newsroom fanfic, so please review if you would like me to keep going.

Enjoy!

PS. Clearly, I do not own any of the characters, except for Kyle Sander, whom I will disown as soon as I have finished the story.

"Where's Mac?" Will asked, striding into the hair and make-up room about an hour before the show.

Jim turned away from the State Department official he was briefing while she got her makeup done, and gave Will a long, hard glare.

"What?" said Will defensively. "I thought she usually briefed guests while they were in hair and make-up?

"Yeah, she does."

"Okay, so why isn't she here now?"

Jim excused himself from the official and motioned for Will to step out into the corridor with him .He waited for the door to close behind them before grinding out "She's probably avoiding someone."

"Me?" said Will. "What the hell am I supposed to have done now?"

Jim huffed and glared at him again, before answering very slowly, as though he were talking to a child who didn't quite get it. "No, she's not avoiding you. She's got bigger problems that you at the moment."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

Jim looked at him incredulously. "You mean to say you really don't know?"

Will felt his stomach tighten. He never liked it when he couldn't find Mac, but he liked it a whole lot less with Jim implying that something might be wrong.

"Look Jim, all I know is that my staff have been acting increasingly hostile towards me for the last month, Maggie looked at me in the meeting this morning like I'd just killed a puppy in front of her, and now it's less than an hour to air and I can't find Mac."

"Yeah, and what were you saying in the meeting when Maggie looked at you like that?"

"Look, Jim, I'm really not in the mood for twenty questions, I just want to know where my EP is and who the fuck she's supposed to be avoiding?"

"I'm not playing twenty questions. Just think about it for a minute Will. What were you saying when Maggie looked at you like you'd just killed a puppy?"

"I don't know, I was . . . talking about booking someone to comment on the situation in Syria, maybe?"

"Yeah, and not just anyone . . ."

"Kyle Sander, I was talking about booking Kyle Sander, so what?"

Will had gone through college with Kyle, and okay, he was a bit of a jerk, but he was also taught Military Strategy at West Point, so he'd seemed like the obvious replacement for their former Defence analyst who had been unexpectedly posted overseas – about a month ago . . .

"Are you seriously saying that my staff have been treating me like a leper for the last four weeks because I invited a West Point Professor on the show a few times to talk about Syria?"

"Have you seen the way he looks at Mac?"

Will was struck dumb for a moment. That was what this was all about? "She's a beautiful woman Jim. Men look at her." It was one of the things he had both loved and hated about dating Mac – the attention that she constantly got from other men, even when she was oblivious to it.

"Not the way that Kyle does. And he doesn't just look . . ."

"What the fuck do you mean?" Will yelled, starting to get seriously scared. Now that he thought about it, he'd never really seen Kyle and Mac together – Will was usually finished in make-up before the guests even arrived at the studio, and they had usually left again by the time he was off the air.

Jim flushed. "He stands too close to her, Will. He touches her when he doesn't need to. He looks down her blouse. He makes lots of comments about sex, and how he could show her a good time. And that's just the stuff he does in front of the staff."

Will felt physically ill. He knew Kyle was a jerk, but he had no idea he could behave like that. And yet he didn't disbelieve Jim – it wasn't the sort of thing he would lie about. A guy who would humiliate a woman in front of her staff would probably be very careful to hide what he was doing from an overprotective man like Will. "Why didn't anyone tell me? Why didn't she tell me? In fact, why didn't she tell him to fuck off of her show and never come back? Mackenzie eats guys like Kyle for breakfast!"

"Yeah," said Jim, "normally she does – unless . . ."

Will was a smart guy. It only took him a few seconds to get there, and when he did, he felt like he'd been kicked in the guts. "She thought," he paused, and swallowed hard, "you all thought, that I'd invited him on the show as some kind of sick punishment, that I wanted him to treat Mac like that?" He couldn't believe that they could think so badly of him. Although, given that they'd all been witness to the amount of pain that he'd put Mac through by inviting Brian into their newsroom, maybe they were right to think it, even if he was completely innocent this time around. "And she's not telling him to fuck off because she thinks I want her to put up with it?"

Jim just looked at him sadly and shrugged. Really, there wasn't anything else to say.

"Jesus Christ!" Will exploded. "Where is that bastard? I'm gonna rearrange his fucking face for him, right after I break both his hands so he remembers never to put them on Mac again!"

"I don't know where he is. He should be in hair and makeup by now. I was going to go and look for him as soon as I'd finished with State in there" said Jim, nodding his head towards the room that they'd just left.

"Mac's missing, and so's Kyle?" yelled Will. "Fuck!" He turned and bolted for the newsroom. He had to find her. He had to see with his own two eyes that she was okay, and nowhere near that Kyle fucker. He had to tell her that he was a miserable bastard, and he had hurt her too many times, but never like this, he had never meant for her to put up with something like this. He had to tell her how very, very sorry he was. But mostly she just had to be okay. She just had to be . . .