It was Christmas Eve. Snow was falling gently and Mac and his arch-nemesis Murdoc were wrestling atop a snowy mountain. Mac was taller and fitter, but Murdoc was wiry and more cunning. They were fairly evenly matched.

"This is it," thought Mac. "My final battle against Murdoc. Either I will subdue him and take him prisoner or one of us will fall to our doom."

It was looking as if he might be the one to fall. "Tell Pete I did it for the Phoenix Foundation," he said.

And then his mobile phone rang, loud and clear and festive.

"What the blazes is that?" demanded Murdoc, releasing his grip on Mac whilst wriggling away from Mac.

"My cell phone," said Mac.

"Huh, what?"

"We have all the latest high tech at the Phoenix Foundation, you know," boasted Mac.

"Well, duh, so do we at HIT," retorted Murdoc. "But why the blazes is it playing 'Jingle Bell Rock'?"

"Because it's after midnight and it's now Christmas Day, duh," replied Mac.

"Oh, shit," said Murdoc. "My watch must be an hour out. Time zones are very confusing for me. I thought it was coming up for 11 pm on Christmas Eve. Shit, shit, shit."

"Please mind your language," said Mac. "Sure, you're homicidal and all that, but you really mustn't swear when there might be children around."

"Children? Are you completely out of your mind? Alone, nobody for miles around, on a freezing mountain top, about to push you to your certain doom, and you're worrying about children being around."

"Possibly," conceded Mac. "It is entirely possible that I have lost the plot. Jumped the shark. Become involved in a storyline that makes no sense. Why does it matter what day it is?"

"HIT rules. Not allowed to kill anyone on Christmas Day. Bad publicity."

"But you break all the rules."

"Not this one, I'm afraid. My late parents were very, very insistent on it. No murdering on Christmas Day. Ever."

"Your parents were assassins?"

"Well, yeah. What were yours?"

"They owned a farm in Minnesota."

"I thought that was just a cover story. Weren't they DHX agents? Or maybe your mum was a Russian spy and she and your dad were meant to assassinate one another but they fell in love and had you instead?"

"Nothing so exotic. Anyway, can we focus on the part where you weren't allowed to murder me for the next 24 hours?"

"Well, 23 and a bit. The minutes are ticking away." Murdoc scowled. "Well, they will be when I reset my bloody watch."

"But I could murder you?"

"But you won't. You're MacGyver. You're not going to kill me in cold blood."

"But I could take you prisoner?"

"Oh, no, I would resist."

"So, I have nearly 24 hours when you won't kill me?"

"Or torture you."

"Really?"

"Well, not much. I think tickling your feet would be allowed, if I could get your boots off you." He made a snowball and threw it half-heartedly at Mac. "And snowball fights are fine."

"So, we could declare a truce?" Mac suggested. He picked up the snowball and threw it back at Murdoc.

"Yeah. Remember we worked together to rescue Ashton?"

"Yeah, and then you turned up and tried to kill me and said we were even 'cos you'd ordered some fancy food that you didn't even give me time to eat."

"Yeah, sorry about that. But I'm offering you a truce now."

"Then we're going to both get off this mountain? With no more fighting?"

"We can work together to get off this f***ing mountain. It's freezing and my bad knee is starting to play up."

Mac sighed. Murdoc not killing him was good. Murdoc not swearing was a bit of a big ask. And it was going to be difficult trying to get down from the mountain without being able to work in a team.

"Yeah, okay."

"Are we going to trust each other enough to be tied together with rope?"

"Oooh, sounds kinky."

Mac sighed. "Okay, no rope, so we have to go the long way down."

Having still not completely shed his fear of heights, he was secretly relieved not to be climbing down a cliff face.

"I'm not going down -"

"Murdoc! Will you just give the adult humour a rest?!"

Murdoc pouted. "You're no fun at all. So, we're not going down the hard way."

"No!" shouted MacGyver. "We're going straight ahead and turning left at the big fir tree."

"I know a short cut," said Murdoc.

By the time they had reached the foot of the mountain, Mac had had to concede that Murdoc knew a lot of great short cuts. And he wasn't bad at making a fire. And that he had brought a small stash of marshmallows to toast. They had also found a rather convenient abandoned wooden shelter.

"We'll be sitting round braiding each other's hair next," said Murdoc.

"You are not touching my hair," said Mac.

Murdoc pouted.

"Oh well, it isn't long enough for a proper plait anyway."

"It so is!" protested Mac.

Five minutes later, Mac was sporting two tiny pigtails, held in place with green paracord. "My parents invented paracord, you know," said Murdoc.

"They so didn't!" MacGyver was only mildly shocked that Murdoc's code of ethics would allow him to lie on Christmas Day.

Murdoc shrugged. "Believe the official version of events if you wish. Now let's make some friendship bracelets."

"Isn't that a bit - girly?"

Murdoc shrugged again. "And there I was, thinking you were so secure in your masculinity."

"I am!" protested Mac. "But we're not actually friends. You were trying to kill me a few hours ago."

"And I will again," promised Murdoc, almost soothingly. "But isn't it nice to just celebrate peace on Earth for a single day?"

"No, I want to celebrate peace on Earth all year round," said Mac.

"You're such a goody-goody. Now, let's play truth or dare."

"No." Mac stood up, but his legs were so tired. He sat down. A little rest wouldn't hurt.

"Okay," beamed Murdoc. "I go first. Tell me your first name."

"My dad was called James MacGyver. We're a very traditional family."

"Nice try. I can see how some people would just assume he gave you the same first name."

Mac sighed. The elision had worked on two Lisas and at least three Kates and one or two Deborahs, but Murdoc was pretty darned sneaky.

"Okay. Dare."

"I dare you to join me in making friendship bracelets. A black one for me. An orange one for you."

"This is silly," said Mac. "We should be getting something to eat, getting some sleep and then heading back to ... wherever."

"I'll go look for something edible," Murdoc promised. "You just get on with my bracelet."

Mac sighed, but started knotting together strands of black paracord.

Two hours later, they were wearing their respective bracelets and eating some of the fish, shoots and leaves that Murdoc had found. Some tubers were wrapped up and baking in the embers. Mac had lost another "Truth or Dare" challenge (refusing to hand over some top secret information to Murdoc) and had made a small snowman as his Dare.

"Why are you evil?" asked Mac.

He hadn't intended to ask, it had just slipped out.

Murdoc sighed. "I was brought up to believe that evil was, well, a necessary evil. To balance out the good in the world."

"And do you still believe it?"

Murdoc sighed again. "I think it's mumbo-jumbo, to be frank with you. I think I'm basically a sociopath. I've never formally been diagnosed, but I did a test and I scored very highly for it."

"Don't you want to change?" asked Mac, eagerly.

"No, too much trouble," said Murdoc, munching annoyingly noisily. "I get paid very well for my work with HIT. And I don't want to 'fess up to anything 'cos I don't want to go to jail." He stared deep into Mac's beautiful brown eyes. "You can't change a person. They have to want to change."

Mac sighed too. "Fair enough." Then he thought about it. "What am I saying? You're a heartless killer, you should be in jail."

Murdoc sighed. "You're so preachy! You're eating a fish!"

"Circle of life," protested Mac.

"Like, the fish might eat you in your next life?" asked Murdoc.

"Not quite."

"Worms will eat you when you die? Assuming I don't burn the body."

"They will. And you're not going to kill me, because I will outwit you."

"Suuure you will. But the worms won't kill you."

"Circle of life," repeated Mac. "Life feeds on life."

"A bear might kill and eat you?"

"Maybe."

"But that's not very likely, is it? And you don't eat bears. You eat fish."

Mac decided to drop the question of Murdoc's terrible ethics and ask something personal. "So, how come you don't appear to have a first name, either?"

"My parents didn't believe in first names," said Murdoc. "Like Heathcliff in that novel by one of those British birds who lived in a vicarage."

"Wuthering Heights." Mac's mother had been a fan of the Brontë sisters.

"Funny name for a vicarage. So, my parents registered me as Murdoc Murdoc, but I never use the second Murdoc."

"So Murdoc is technically your first name?"

"Take your pick."

"Were your parents really both assassins?" asked Mac.

"Yup." Murdoc launched into a long, sad tale about his parents which sounded suspiciously like a storyline from a TV programme Mac had been watching because his then love interest was obsessed with dramas about forensic scientists who were also police officers.

"Really?" Mac raised one thick, horizontal eyebrow as far as he could, which wasn't far.

Murdoc laughed. "No."

"Is Ashton really your sister?" asked Mac.

"What do you think?"

"The Phoenix Foundation tested her DNA when we arranged for her to go into the witness protection programme. We're 99% sure she's your daughter."

Murdoc looked cross. "I refuse to confirm or deny that."

"Oh, so she is!"

"Don't look so pious, MacGyver. Maybe you have a secret daughter lurking somewhere."

"I definitely don't," insisted Mac. "I would know."

Murdoc laughed. "Would you, MacGyver?"

They sat, watching the sun rise over the snowy mountains.

"It's quite a sight," said Murdoc.

Mac raised both eyebrows.

"I'm a sociopath, not a Philistine," said Murdoc. "I love a beautiful sunrise as much as anyone else."

The baked tubers were almost ready.

"We should have a sing song," said Murdoc.

"What?"

"Oh, come on. We at HIT have spies. We know you sing and play guitar."

The mood was only partly ruined by the fact Murdoc claimed to only know one Christmas song all the way through. Mac was all in favour of admiring winter wonderlands, but less sure about declaring his love for Murdoc in front of a fictional snowman masquerading as the fictional Parson Brown.

Murdoc, however, sang with great gusto.

The tubers consumed, Mac and Murdoc put out the fire and started hiking. After about an hour, they found a hut intended for weary hikers. They lit the fire, made phone calls and sat around waiting to be rescued.

More to make conversation than in the hope of exacting any real information, Mac asked, "Were your parents really hitmen?"

"Hit persons," tutted Murdoc. "No. They worked at The Mmepụta Oyiri Institute."

"The what?"

"I'll write it down for you," said Murdoc. He was grinning in a manner Mac found very odd. "As long as you write down your parents' recipe for barbecue sauce."

Barbecue what? Mac thought back a few months. He had been entertaining and had served up some fish in barbecue sauce. An old MacGyver family recipe, he had said (although he had tweaked it slightly to make it kosher parev, halal and gluten-free. Mac was nothing if not a considerate host).

Had Murdoc been spying on him?

The recipe exchanged, the name of the supposed institute written down, the phone calls made, both protagonists felt very weary. The fire was going out, and they didn't feel energetic enough to go searching for winter fuel.

Thus Pete and some Phoenix Foundation staff arrived to find Mac huddled up next to Murdoc for warmth.

"Hi," said Mac, sleepily. "We just dozed off."

"Hallo, Mr Thornton," said Murdoc, drowsily. "I don't kill people on Christmas Day. My people are coming to collect me soon, and my truce ends at midnight today."

"That's good," said Pete, cautiously, still training his gun on Murdoc. "Come on, Mac."

"Bye, Murdoc." To his surprise, Mac found himself actually hugging Murdoc.

"Good bye, Angus," said Murdoc. And he winked. "Love your hair that way."

Mac had forgotten about the teensy plaits.

"No," said Pete, a few days later.

"No?"

"Well, Murdoc is still trying to kill you. He made an attempt to kill you just this morning. Sorry we didn't find out sooner; we will buy you another houseboat if you want. But there is no tracking device in the friendship bracelet he made you. Nothing suspicious at all. Not even itching powder."

"How odd," said Mac. "Wait, my houseboat is gone? Thank goodness Jack Dalton stole all my stuff yesterday and I spent the night in a hotel."

"Also, it turns out your watch had been tampered with. Nobody knows why. Murdoc was right. It was actually only 11 pm on Christmas Eve when your phone notified you that it was Christmas Day."

"How odd," said Mac. "How fortunate."

"And we found out something peculiar about the Mmepụta Oyiri Institute. Do you happen to know what Mmepụta Oyiri actually means?"

"Not a clue," said Mac. "You know that languages aren't my forte."

Pete was looking very excited. "This could be the key to explaining how Murdoc has survived so many impossible situations."

To be continued ... perhaps!