Mac sighed. He was exhausted but wired at the same time. The mission they had just finished had been surprisingly simple. For once the plan went off without a hitch, the bad guys were in jail and the team was heading home without trouble on the horizon. It was terrible. They were ten hours into a eighteen hour plane ride home. Jack snored in his ear, the older man's head resting on Mac's shoulder. Mac had no idea why Jack was hovering. It's not like Mac was going through trauma or a wound-well no more so than usual. Maybe Jack needed reassurance. Mac fought the urge to shove his partner off and get up to walk the cabin.
Mac knew if he did it would devolve into anxious pacing. Glancing at the others, he didn't want them to know about the storm inside. Especially Cage. Sometimes she looked at him as if her were meat on a stick and she was thinking about how best to gnaw into him.
Now she sat forward on a couch facing Bozer helping him "get his game on." A new girl-Molly?-had started down in the mail room. Mac thought she looked like an orange haired Cabbage Patch doll. Mac never said that out loud knowing the ordeal he would face from Jack having to explain how he knew about Cabbage Patch dolls. Mac smiled at the memory of trying to get his game on with Penny in first grade. Nope definitely not telling that story-ever.
Riley laid on one of the long couches either sleeping or listening to music, probably Beyonce. Mac huffed and for the bajillionth time looked at The Watch. It always had caps when Mac thought or talked about it. In some ways it was as confusing as his father had always been, one of the few puzzles Mac's ginormous brain couldn't untangle. Mac glanced at Jack smiling. He really had to stop thinking in Jack-speak.
Mac studied the ocean of blue-tinged fluffy ocean passing beneath him. The sun warmed him and the smooth engine made him sleepy Mac sighed and closed his eyes. His brain would not shut up.
SCENARIO ONE:
Mac was home, finally repairing the refrigerator. Bozer and Jack were sipping warm beer heckling him about being cheap.
"Just buy a new one! You have the money." Jack said shaking his head. Mac opened his mouth for the hundredth time to say they didn't need a new one, this one still had a long life ahead of it.
"Save your breath, Jack. I don't think we've had a new anything for a century." Again Mac opened his mouth to argue, but a loud knocking on the door interrupted him. He walked to the door his step hesitant. He could feel the bite of a taser, the laughing...Mac shoved it aside. Jack was beside him and he knew the older man always carried his Baretta. Mac's heart still flip-flopped as he pulled the door open, then it downright exploded. His mouth hung open and he'd stopped breathing if his dizzy feeling was any indication. His dad grinned and held out his hands stepping forward to wrap Mac in a firm embrace. Mac stood there numb.
"Mr. MacGyver." Bozer said. Dad turned and hugged Bozer smiling.
"Wilt, look at you. You look just like your old man! How is he?" Mac closed his eyes. How is Mr. Bozer? That's his first question. Mac was pretty sure he was about to pass out.
"Mac? Come sit down, you're gonna faint or puke?" Jack said from the other end of a tornado. Mac let Jack lead him over to the couch and he sank into it. Mac grabbed the edge of the couch to keep him from sinking through the floor. He stared at the older man who wore a face so like his own, and yet so different, "So you're Mac's Dad, huh?"
"And you are?" Dad held out his hand. Jack smiled a crocodile grin.
"I'm Jack Dalton." His voice slithered. Before anyone could blink his fist slammed into Dad's head and laid the man out cold. Mac stared at Dad then at Jack. Jack grinned until he saw Mac's face, "C'mon dude, I've been wanting to do that for years."
Short term outcome: Lame excuses, friction and fights followed by finding out why the man left without a word, anger lots of anger. Jack snarking at Dad every chance he got until he felt Mac's dad had served enough penance and understood exactly bad he'd messed up and what a great gift he had in Mac and how much he didn't deserve it. Eventually Jack would reluctantly accept Mac's Dad as a piece of their weird family while making it perfectly obvious that if Dad inched a toe over the line hurting Mac in any way...well that one punch would be a preview of coming attractions.
Final outcome: Find a new balance, fall into a new life pattern, finally feeling whole.
SCENARIO TWO:
Mac opened the door. He gaped at the ragged man in front of him. It took a long minute to find his father amidst the scruffy beard and sloppy clothes. The man's face is red, he shoves Mac into the house, his fists tight.
"You little idiot! Do you have any idea what you've done? First you murder your mother, then you won't leave me alone. Jeez, why the hell do you think I left? You're so needy and clingy. I'm sick of you, stop looking for me and get the hell out of my life. I hate you!" Mac swallowed a cramp around his heart. All of his worst fears confirmed.
Short term outcome: Jack kills MacGyver senior.
Long term outcome: Escaping from psych unit to visit best friend in jail.
SCENARIO THREE:
It was snowing. It had taken Mac and Jack three whole days of climbing through mountain wilderness to reach the crude hand made cabin. Mac paused staring at the cabin as if it would blow away into a snow mirage. It had taken six years, but they finally deciphered the clues his father had scattered across the world, telling Mac to come here, today and meet him. Mac clenched his teeth looking at Jack terror in his eyes.
What if his Dad didn't recognize him? What would Mac ask first? How would Dad explain his leaving and staying away? Questions bubbled in his brain like boiling soap.
"Are you ready, bud?" NO NO NO.
"Yes." They knock on the door. It slowly creaks open. There aren't any lights. Jack pushes Mac aside and steps into the dark, his Baretta leading the way. Mac shuffles outside impatiently. Jack doesn't come back out. A light goes on. Mac pushes the door open.
"Ja-"
"Mac! Don't come in…" Mac's eyes take in the scene but it flows over his brain not computing. His father's body sits bloated at a table, a shot gun slid to the side between his knees. His head...Everything bends and twists as he hits the ground. Jack kneels beside him, worried. His mouth moving. Mac blinks at Jack. When did Jack learn a foreign language Mac never heard before? A tunnel of blur, puking, tears and pain. Someone had sliced out his heart and stabbed it with meciless spikes. Mac stared as the flesh that once held a soul that made his was swallowed by a black body bag.
Faces parade in front of him, some he knows, some sympathetic, some angry they had to come all this way because some lonely miser offed himself. Mac thought there was a medic in there somewhere although he had no idea why. A paper in a clear baggy stained with blood was shoved into his hands. It took a long time for Mac to realize the squiggles were in a language he knew. He knew it, but didn't understand it. The words were easily comprehensible. Sorry for leaving, forgive me, blah, blah, blah. But they had no meaning. Everything was disjointed and didn't make sense. Then Mac was on a snow mobile falling down to camp at the base of the mountain. The cold snow whirled around him. In the winds he hears Dad whisper in the winds, but he still didn't know the language.
Short term outcome: Nuclear Hell
Long term outcome: ?
Mac blinked as a hand shook him. He looked over to see Jack's familiar dark eyes studying him. Mac frowned feeling his face. His skin pinkend as he realized his cheeks were wet. He glanced at the others. The other three were sleeping. No one had seen, except Jack. Mac smiled, it was always Jack. Mac wiped at his face.
"Have a good sleep?" He asked Jack his voice warbled flat short of the reassuring happiness he'd hoped. Jack sighed and put his hand on Mac's shoulder. His partner didn't have to say a word. Jack knew what Mac had been thinking about the same as if he screamed it from a skyscraper. Mac looked away and took a shaky breath. Jack got up from the seat. Mac sighed relieved. He could orient himself again. Jack sat back down and handed Mac a glass of water. Mac nodded. He took a sip and choked. Not water, vodka. Mac looked at Jack who grinned. Mac shrugged and drank the whole glass. Mac had never been much of a drinker. He felt the effects kick in before he reached the bottom of the glass. Everything was fuzzy, he was warm, calm, sleepy.
Mac closed his eyes dropping the glass. He tilted forward with a sigh. A hand pulled him to his side leaning on Jack's shoulder. Mac hummed softly as an arm found its home around his shoulders. Jack pulled him close and Mac drifted off, swimming free with dolphins on a fluffy blue ocean under a perfect day, safe in a loving home that sprawled across the curved horizon.