I'm so so so so so so so so sorry. There is no excuse. You're all going to kill me. Even I want to lynch me for thinking of this. I swore I'd never write a fic where Mac died. I also decided on Monday not to write any more fanfiction wil after the exams - since then 7 ideas - gah!

You don't have to be a masochist to read this - but it may help.


Sunset

They lay together in the large bed in the remote Italian villa. Dusky sun streamed through the open windows, filling his hair with light and giving her skin that ethereal glow she had always dreamed of. It was just a shame she couldn’t see how beautiful she looked, he thought as he listened to the peacefulness that came with her deep, regular breathing. He loved the time they spent together – especially the last few weeks, but lying here watching her sleep warmed his heart in a way nothing else could.

A cloud drifted past and cast shadows over his musings. A chill ran down his spine that wasn’t entirely due to the sudden drop in temperature. He didn’t want this to end and yet it had to. They flew back to England in two days. But that wasn’t when or how it was going to end. That wouldn’t happen for several years yet. And it wouldn’t be over in a few short hours either. He would get gradually weaker and less able to do all the things he loved, until one day when he would fade away from the world and the woman that he loved. He turned involuntarily to the sleeping angel beside him and this time, instead of being filled with peace and joy at the sight of his bride, all he felt was a well of sadness. How could he do this to her, and yet how could he do it without her?

He lent over and placed a soft kiss on her cheek. A tear slid inevitably onto her skin and he noticed a subtle change in her breathing. Her eyes eased open and, as she saw the look on her husband’s face, they were also filled with tears. She reached out an arm to him and pulled him into a silent hug. They held each other as the light turned from orange through red and into black, the tears still shining on both cheeks.

aww that's soo sweet and soo sad at the same time i love it already enzo

Awww that was amazingly sweet

Sorry - you should be more then sorry. Mac is not allowed to die in fics :angry:

Although lucky them being in Italy :)

Aww that was very sweet
But :cry Mac must not die! :(
More soon please!

awww :cry
i love it great startt

*glares* Enzo, I can't say I like where this fic is going.

Awww that's so beautiful!! :cry

aww the bit about 'how could he do it to her', 'how could he do it without her' is SO the essence of their problems in the special and beyond.... aww i love it but im IGNORING THE BIT WHERE U SED HE'll DIE COS HE WONT.


OKKKK???????????

yeah you're still going to kill me

News

The clock hangs lopsided on the wall. Its long arms creeping round forcing time to continue. The seconds turning into minutes, minutes turning into hours, into days, months, years. His life racing forwards, onwards, upwards and away. And yet he sat outside the door willing the hands to keep on turning. He never had been good at waiting and there were few things more important to him now than what was happening unknown, behind the blank door.

It had been 3 months since they had returned to work and left the pleasures of Italy behind. And it had been 4 days since Caroline had started tumbling out of bed into the bathroom each morning to sit with her head over the toilet as she greeted the meal they had cooked together the previous night. One thing Mac had always planned to have somewhere vaguely in his future was children, but he wasn’t expecting the choice to be forced on him so early. Caroline and he decided to not waste time, as they wanted to have as much time as possible to be a proper family, before it was too late. It looked like finally something was going his way for once. All he had to do, was wait.

It felt a bit selfish that he was bringing a child into the world who was going to grow up without a father. But they would have Caroline and she was going to be a wonderful mother. And he would make sure they knew that he loved them. It was probably better this way than if he had just walked out on them. At least they will know that he didn’t have a choice. That if there was anything he could do to stay and watch them grow up he would do it. Its true it will be harder for him to leave both of them. But he knew they would be in the best hands with each other. He could leave a little part of himself to keep Caroline company.


The door beside him opened tentatively. His eyes rose from staring at the floor into Caroline’s smiling face. “We’re going to have a baby,” she announced with barely contained happiness. As he leapt to his feet, his heart was filled with excitement to quell the morbid thoughts. However as he wrapped his arms around her, he felt the room begin to swim around him, he could no longer see clearly and strange lights flashed before his eyes. He did not feel his legs give way as blackness enclosed him.


His eyes opened to find himself sitting back in the chair. Caroline didn’t notice he had recovered immediately, as she was reassuring a concerned passer-by that Dr Macartney was fine and it was all perfectly normal. He sighed, it was quite true. One of the main symptoms he had to face was low blood pressure upon standing or orthostatic hypertension as his physiotherapist called it. He had multiple system atrophy, a variation on Parkinson’s disease that progressed more rapidly and was equally incurable and he was going to have to learn to live with it.
“Caroline,” he said softly, as she was still watching the man walk down the corridor – possibly to see if he really was convinced that nothing was wrong. She turned to face him, unsure how to proceed.
“It’s great news.”
“What?” she was momentarily confused, but then realised what he was talking about, “oh yeah, it’s great isn’t it?” The glitch was forgotten and her voice regained animation. She sat beside him and started chatting animatedly about what colour to decorate the nursery and who they should tell first.

*Sue White style cry* NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! He can't die - not when they're so happy. Why are there so few happy Caromac fics at the mo!? However, it is very well written...:) Please add more soon!

no!
:sob

Is that real enzo? It sounds rather convincing!

aww i'm soo gald they are having a baby but i really don't want him to die :(

yes it is real - found it on wikipedia

love that bit so sad!!!!
awww its a great fic but :eep

:cry
he really cant die!! :sob

I will say it again :angry: MAC IS NOT ALLOWED TO DIE I FICS or I will get very nasty and do unspeakable things :ph43r:

i didn't mean to kill this many people when i started this but this is how it ended up.

Drink

He walked into the bar and spotted the familiar mop of dark curly hair as his eyes adjusted to the gloom. He paused, inhaling the unique odour of stale beer, sweat and cheese and onion crisps, stealing himself for what was to come. However, he could hesitate no longer as Guy turned and spotted him.
“Mac!” he leapt off his stool and quickly grabbed at the bar to steady himself. Seven or eight empty pint glasses stood on the table, a testament to his evening so far.
“Perhaps we should get a table with chairs that you aren’t going to fall off?” suggested Mac.
“I am perfectly capable of keeping my balance,” he slurred, but weaved his way to a table anyway. Mac joined him shortly, after ordering tonic water lamentably. These things were so much harder to do sober.

“And so they found the bodies a month ago but they were having problems identificating them ‘cos they didn’t have any identifyiation on them. Well you wouldn’t, would you? How many people take ID with them when they get washed out to sea? So they couldn’t identify them, you see?”
“I see,” Mac said, as Guy seemed to have temporarily stopped babbling and was waiting for a reply from him. “So how did they identify them then?”
“Dr Statham,” Guy paused to take another swig of his Guinness, “Doctor Statham swallowed a key, no, no, a soldier and my, my … Joanna swallowed a key and the key was from his locker here … at the hospital. There are no lockers in the pub.”
“I see,” Mac repeated. It seemed unbelievable that a key could be traced like that but he wasn’t about to start arguing with someone who was having difficulty stringing sentences together. That would make it too easy. Also he felt it was cathartic for Guy to talk about it. However unpleasant the relationship between Guy and his mother had been, Mac was sure that he hadn’t wished her dead, not seriously.

“And I never had a mother growing up. And she abandoned me. And then we ended up working together and she couldn’t resist the Secretan charm. Well can’t blame her.”
“Yeah I don’t think we need to go there,” Mac interjected.
“So anyway. I’ve lost all the mothers and pseudo mothers I’ve ever had.”
“Well I’ve only ever lost one,” Mac muttered half to himself, “So I think you win there.”
“You lost your mother? Where did you loose her? Was it in a supermarket? I lost my teddy in a supermarket once.” Guy suddenly realised what he had said and strove to make contradictory noises.
“I’m sure I told you before,” Mac said resignedly, “she died of cancer when I was eight.”
“Oh that’s terrible.”
“Yes, yes it is. Which is why I don’t like to talk about it.”
Guy reached across the table to hug him but knocked over one of his many glasses in the process and Mac started to help clean up instead.

Awww, poor Mac :(

OOO don't let Mac die my heart go's all achy thinking about it! :cry

aww mac
joanna and alan are gone too :( nooooo
but i love the fic :)

yey its a bit not focussed on death!

Birth

The stark white walls, identical to the ones he saw everyday, burned into the back of his skull. He thought he was used to spending hours upon hours on end in the hospital but at least he got to move around then; he didn't have to look at exactly the same four walls that he could probably draw from memory with his eyes closed and one hand tied behind his back.

A scream from his side and a crushing pain in his hand, returned his attention to his bedraggled wife. He usually wouldn’t question Caroline’s beauty but red and sweaty with hair plastered to her forehead and sticking up all over the place wasn’t exactly her most endearing look.

Finally after 17 grueling hours the midwife announced it was time to push. Mac felt a wave of gratitude to the woman who was prepared to go through hell to give him a child. Not that Caroline hadn’t wanted one either – although at the current moment in time Mac wouldn’t like to ask if she had changed her mind.

Infantile wails suddenly broke into his thoughts. He looked up to see a pink wriggling mess being wrapped in a soft white blanket.
“It’s a lovely baby girl,” the midwife announced and took her to a side table to be checked. Mac, however, relaxed. Her lungs were certainly fine. He leaned down to kiss Caroline and stroked her hair behind her ears. She lay back on her pillows, a smile spread across her face.

aww *melts*
You can't kill Mac now - I might have to hurt you :( There're too many angsty fics around right now *whistles innocently*
Love it!

Yeah I agree with Lou so much angst in one forum! Aww about the baby girl :) Please add more soon!

AWWWW!! *squees* that was lovely

Sweet and everything but does kind of remind me why i wanted to adopt! Ouch! :huh:

he lost his mother at the age of 8 :sob

I love Guy being drunk and saying he lost his teddybear in the supermarket :lol:




:ph43r: remember the fic rules - No Mac Dying Fics Allowed :ph43r:

aww :wub:

but :cry Mac can't die!!
IMO will be on to you!! :ph43r:

Awwwww! I love this.

If i forgot anyone I'm sorry. (and still very sorry for the whole Mac-dying thing)

Name

Mac sat in a hard plastic chair, not taking his eyes off the bundle in his arms. The child he was holding was the physical embodiment of everything he had ever wanted from life. A symbol of how much he and Caroline loved each other. The little hair there was on top of her hair was neither fraises blonde like his nor darkest brown like Caroline but a lighter brown that was a mix of the two. He wondered idly if she would become a doctor like her parents, or do something totally different. He would never know.

“Mac?” a tired sounding voice tore his attention from his daughter to his wife. He hadn’t noticed her waking up, so fixed had his attention been. He leaned over to help her sit up and then placed the baby in her arms.
“She’s so beautiful,” Caroline whispered, lost in her daughter’s blue eyes, “We do need to think of a name though.”
“Yeah that inspiration which was supposed to come when she was born is slightly absent though.”
There was a short pause as they both looked at the tiny girl in Caroline’s arms, trying to read her soul.
“Charlotte?” Mac started.
“Victoria,” Caroline offered.
“Emma.”
“Claire.”
“Amy.”
“Imogen.”
“Hollie.”
“Verity.”
“Louise.”
“Rosalind.”
“Jess.”
“Madeline.”
“Debora.”
“Kim.”
It was like playing tennis with names. And yet lovely as all the names were, none seemed to suit.


It seemed like hours later and as if they had covered every name they could think of. She had finally drifted off to sleep and lay tranquilly in Caroline’s arms. Mac stared at the ceiling, hoping inspiration would be found in the cracked plaster. Miraculously it was.
“How about Juliet?” he proposed, sounding more positive than he had managed in the last half hour.
Caroline considered it for a minute, “Juliet Macartney, I like it.” She looked down at the sleeping girl as if asking her opinion silently.
“Seriously?” Mac sounded incredulous, he had begun to think they would never find one they both liked.
“Yeah. Slightly unusual and still modern and yet not.” A grin broke across her face.
“Well that’s that sorted then.” He could barely keep the relief out of his voice.
“Err well, not quite,” Caroline’s grin faltered, “there’s still a middle name.”
“Are you sure we need one?” Mac suggested, not looking forward to another three hours brain-wracking.
“Yes.” Caroline was firm.
“Isn’t there a tradition of using a family name as the middle name?” Mac asked, hoping this may narrow things down a bit.
“I am not calling my child Patricia, it may have been fashionable when my mother was born but I wouldn’t inflict that on anyone.”
Mac’s heart sank, “I suppose not.”
“What about your mum?”
“What about her?”
“I don’t think you ever told me her name.”
“Did I not?” Mac’s eyes did not seem to be focussed on the room anymore, “It was Lillian.”
“Lillian,” Caroline pondered this, “Juliet Lillian Macartney. It fits well. Would you mind?”
“Why would I mind?” Mac attention returned to his daughter, “Hello Juliet Lillian Macartney, welcome to this messed up world.”

Awwwwwww. That was beautiful. And you used so many of our names! Thanks.

:D Beautiful names all. I know a girl called Juliet - shes off her head! So it should suit perfectly :P Ahh now this fic feels cosy like hot chocolate!

And I hope you keep the cosy hot chocolate-ness and don't ruin it by, oh, I don't know, killing Mac. *glares*

hmmm yes well :pelt *hides* sorry

Yay! Thanks for including my name in it. That was so sweet, and Mac's last line was so GW

Awww. And Mac can't die now, he's got to change nappies :D

aww :wub:
and thanks for using my name hehe :)
:cry don't kill Mac! :cry

aww that's a fab name for the baby i think it fits too that was soo cute and thankies for using all our names - it made me feel special :D

Awww a baby!!! I licle Girl!!!

I love that you include everyone's name.....i hope for your sake Jessica isnt referring to me :lol: