Premise: After he is blinded in the episode "The Negotiator," MacGyver gets his sight back. What if he didn't? Some adventure, some mystery, maybe some spy novel hero action, a lovely sidekick, and lots of new MacGyver cleverness thrown in. Come along for the ride!
Summary: It's March 1988. A Russian ballet dancer has sent a code asking for help and MacGyver is the man for the job, but he's blind. Pete sends him in anyway, and they both find out the simple extraction points to a way bigger mystery than they bargained for. In fact, MacGyver might be the only person able to stop the escalation of the Cold War and the explosion of another World War!
A/N: My posting schedule is a little random. I write when I have time. I love to get reviews and they definitely encourage me to post more often.
Disclaimer: I don't own MacGyver, characters or any of it. The usual.
Chapter 1
"All right, nice and easy," a voice growled at him, and the hard muzzle of a gun was shoved into his side. MacGyver winced. "We know you can't see any more, so you'll be no trouble. Just come along quietly."
MacGyver resisted the urge to roll his eyes. They would see whether or not he could cause trouble, but not yet. He would bide his time.
Who were these guys anyway? The gun pretty much ruled out rehab teachers. He doubted they transported students at gunpoint into echoing garages like the one in which he found himself.
The goon pushed him forward, and he stumbled over a length of pipe along the floor. Thankfully, they hadn't tied his hands, apparently assuming that blindness was enough to keep him docile. He regained his balance, just in time for another shove in the back. He hit one shoulder on the metal frame of a door, and staggered into what sounded like a much smaller space than before. The door slammed behind him and a lock clicked.
MacGyver stood still for a moment, listening intently. He was alone in the small space. No breathing or rustling of clothes sounded near him. The footsteps outside receded.
To MacGyver, the room was pitch black, although there could have been a little light he couldn't see. It really didn't matter, and after weeks under bandages, the dark seemed more familiar than it ever had before. He'd never been afraid of the dark anyway. Heights, now, that was another matter.
XxXxXx Two weeks earlier XxXxXx
"This is really a coup for the Phoenix Foundation," Pete Thornton said. "You really did it this time, MacGyver. Exposing the fraud in the environmental analyses was one thing, but hiring Deborah to kill you? Good grief. That was taking it way too far."
MacGyver followed Pete out of the courtroom, through a quiet carpeted hallway, past the hushed telephones of a receptionist's desk, and into the brilliant sunshine of a spring afternoon. His eyes closed involuntarily against the light, and he put a hand to his forehead. Pete stopped and turned toward Mac.
"Hey. You okay?"
Mac stood where he was, just outside the glass doors of the courthouse, his hand shielding his eyes, his other hand balled into a fist.
"Yeah, yeah," he said through clenched teeth. "Just give me a minute."
He waited, mentally pressing against the searing headache pain, willing it to subside, but it got worse. He felt his heartbeat thudding in his ears as the ground began to rock dizzily beneath his feet. Pete's voice faded, swallowed up in the blackness of unconsciousness.
He woke in a hospital bed.
As he lay fingering the smooth sheets, he wondered vaguely if it was the same bed he'd woken in a week earlier when he'd narrowly missed being blown to smithereens by Deborah's bomb. It could be the same bed. Or it could be one down the hall. It didn't matter. The soft bustle of hospital sounds were the same. The smell of cleaners, the beep of monitors, the stillness of his room all felt exactly the same.
He reached up and touched the cotton bandages on his eyes, held in place with criss-crossed strips of tape. Maybe this was the same day, not a week later. His eyes hurt, but somehow he didn't really care much.
Morphine. They'd given him morphine.
His head felt unbearably heavy and he let it sink into the pillow and drifted off on the hazy nothingness that pain meds brought.
Later, he woke again, the fog of morphine lessened, but the pain in his eyes intensified. His head rolled on the pillow, trying to find a place where the agony was less.
"How are you feeling?" The voice at his bedside made him jump. He hadn't known anyone was there.
"Hurts," he replied, his mouth dry and cottony. Both hands clenched as the pain traveled into his skull and down his neck muscles. He retched suddenly, and rolled onto his side to vomit over the side of the bed.
As he did so, he seemed to see bright sparks of stars and pinwheels of light erupt in the blackness under his bandages. He pressed his eyelids closed as tears seeped out between them.
"This should help," said the nurse ambiguously, and soon the morphine fog enveloped him again.
Much later, he struggled to the surface of his tossing sea of consciousness again. This time, he was aware of people in the room with him. Quiet voices spoke with one another, and a sleeve rustled. He took a ragged breath and lifted his chin slightly.
"MacGyver?" Pete's voice asked from his left. "Are you awake?"
Mac turned his face to the left but couldn't get his parched mouth to form words. His entire being felt dry, shriveled. He took another deep breath.
"You gave us a scare, there, Buddy," said Pete, a touch too heartily. "The doctor says you developed an infection in your corneas. They weren't healing properly. Anyway, the infection gave you a fever, and it was touch and go there for a while."
"It looks like you'll be all right now, though," said another voice from the foot of the bed. Nikki. Great. Just who he needed to see right now. Or not see. Whatever.
Mac opened his mouth like a dying fish. He managed to scrape out a word, "water."
"Oh," Pete said. "I'll ask the nurse."
Mac heard retreating footsteps and more muffled voices. The footsteps returned, and Pete said apologetically, "they won't let you drink water yet. Something about you puking all over the monitors. But they gave me some ice chips for you."
Without hesitation, Mac opened his mouth like a baby bird and held the ice in his mouth, feeling the cool moisture soaking into his dry tongue.
"That's good," he rasped.
"Well, we'll let you get some rest," began Pete, but Mac stopped him with a gesture, hampered as he was by IV lines.
"Thanks for coming," he managed. He wanted to say more, but his head was swimming again, and the pain on the surface of his eyes felt like shimmering fire.
He vaguely heard Pete and Nikki leave, and the nurse enter. She set supplies on his tray table and began checking his pulse, her fingers cool on the skin of his wrist. When she had checked his temperature and blood pressure, she began peeling the tape off his bandages. He winced as it tugged on his skin.
"Just changing your bandages, Mr. MacGyver," she said apologetically and continued to peel. In spite of his eyes being closed, the bandages were stuck to his face with dried mucus, and he gagged at the smell, and the pain of her light touch.
"Let me get you a dish this time," the nurse said wearily, and she held one ready for him. He used it, then sighed deeply as she gently sponged his eyelids, each stroke causing searing pain.
Thankfully, she finished, and rebandaged his eyes again, while he slipped into an uneasy sleep.
When he finally awoke, he knew immediately that his fever had broken. He lay in the cool bed, enjoying the sensation of well-being that washed over him like a wave. Footsteps clicked across the floor, and a female voice said, "Mr. MacGyver? I'm your doctor. I think it's about time we check on those eyes."
"A lady Doctor?" he thought groggily. "That's pretty cool."
She leaned over his bed. Her starched white coat crackled, and she smelled faintly of… was it lavender? He found it soothing.
The sensation of well-being stopped abruptly as the nurse began peeling tape again. He wondered if he'd have any eyebrows left when this was over.
At long last the tape and bandages were off. He heard the nurse step over to the blinds at the window and lower them with a rattle. Remembering the pain of the light outside the courthouse, he felt grateful for her thoughtfulness.
The doctor sponged his eyelids, which were again glued closed. This time, a dull ache accompanied the sensation.
"What can you see?" she asked.
He reluctantly forced his eyelids open, but found now that the dimness of the room wasn't painful. Rather, everything seemed to be in shadow. Objects appeared vague and distorted; shadows that squatted in corners of the room without clear lines or form. He scanned from left to right, trying to recognize anything, but the misty haze that filled the room rendered everything characterless.
"Not much," he admitted ruefully.
The doctor clicked something in her hand. The haze in his left eye brightened, and he flinched.
"Can you see the light?" she asked.
"Yes," he said.
She repeated the blast of light in the other eye, which he could also see.
"Any shapes?" she queried.
He looked across the room again. "I-I'm not sure," he admitted.
"How many fingers?" she asked and he looked in the direction of her voice. For a second, he thought he saw the movement of her hand, but it refused to take shape. Instead, a whitish-gray veil hung between his eyes and her hand.
He shook his head wordlessly.
"Well," she said briskly, snapping off her light with finality, "we'll keep the bandages on for a few more days, just to be sure the infection is all the way cleared up."
MacGyver's mouth felt as dry as if he'd swallowed cobwebs. "Will… will my eyes clear up?"
"There's always that possibility," she said, her voice just a little too cheerful.
"Doc," he said, facing her. "Are my eyes going to clear up?"
She paused just a beat too long. "Your corneas were burned, Mr. MacGyver. Instead of healing, they developed an infection, which has caused corneal scarring."
"Corneal scarring? What does that mean?" he asked softly.
"Scar tissue is blocking your sight. There may be the possibility of surgery in the future, once the infection is completely cleared up."
"And that will fix it?" he pressed.
"There is a chance it can be improved," she said hesitantly.
"But…?" he asked, voicing the unsaid word that hung in the air.
"Your eyes are susceptible to more infection, and with damage this severe, it's unlikely that surgery will help entirely. There is also risk of detached retina."
"So, that means…?" he asked, although he thought he knew the answer.
"You will likely always have some level of visual impairment," she admitted gently.
He sat quite still, letting this news wash over him. Visual impairment. Blind. Why didn't she just say it? He was blind. Would always be blind, to some degree. Terrific.
He sucked in a lungful of air.
"Mr. MacGyver?" the doctor asked, as if he'd somehow managed to evaporate and she wondered where he'd gone.
"Yeah, yeah," he said. "I got it."
"Are you all right?" she asked, setting a cool hand on his shoulder.
What did he say? No, he wasn't all right. He was blind. He didn't have any interest in being blind. Still, as usual, his pragmatic side kicked in.
"I'll be okay. Thanks, Doc."
She patted his shoulder in sympathy, and left the nurse to the task of replacing the gauze and sticking more tape all over his eyebrows. Darkness settled over him with the gauze, and he lay back on the bed, wondering if all of the last half hour was a drug-induced hallucination.
He hadn't known he drifted off until the sound of the door opening roused him. Stiff male shoes tapped their way across the floor toward the bed.
"Pete?" he guessed.
"Hi Mac," Pete Thornton confirmed his identity, but his voice had a catch in it. "I, uh, saw the doctor out in the hall."
"Yeah." Good friends didn't need words.
"Yeah," Pete echoed blankly. "Hey, don't worry about your job. I'm placing you on…"
MacGyver cut him off. "Disability? Retirement?" he asked bitterly.
"I was going to say leave. Just until you've recovered and gone through rehab." Pete sounded gruff.
"Makes me sound like an addict in recovery," muttered MacGyver, and to his surprise, Pete snorted.
"You'll be back in no time," he said.
"Let me guess. At a desk." MacGyver couldn't keep the anger out of his voice.
"Like you would ever be happy behind a desk," argued Pete.
MacGyver wondered how Pete could be so understanding when the rest of the world probably would want to lock him away in an institution, but, he shrugged it off. At this point, he felt too tired to try and reason it out. He was asleep before Pete left.
XxXxXx
Two weeks later, MacGyver stood in front of the hospital entrance, savoring the smell of the morning air and waiting for the van that was supposed to pick him up and deliver him at the rehabilitation center. The orderly had delivered him to the front door in a wheelchair, which felt oddly disconcerting to be driven through the muffled halls in that way. Once outside, though, he was glad to stand and stretch his back, letting the breeze ruffle his still-too-long hair.
He was equally glad to be shed of the bandages and having his eyes uncovered and open felt more like normal than he'd been for weeks. His view of the road in front of the hospital, obscured by the scars, looked dim and shadowed, but not black. The bright sun on his face filtered through in some measure, and he enjoyed its light, however unuseful it seemed for getting around.
A car pulled up to the curb, probably the van he expected. He bent, and picked up his duffel, waiting for the driver to identify himself.
Without speaking, someone opened a door to MacGyver's left and a hand grabbed his elbow. He was half guided, half shoved, into the back seat of a car, his hand sliding on vinyl, his other still clutching his duffel. The door slammed shut, and a second later, the passenger door in front of him also closed.
It was odd, he thought, that the man hadn't said anything. Also, he'd been imagining a van, but this was most definitely a sedan, and the two men in the front seat hadn't said anything. A prickle of fear ran along MacGyver's spine, but he sat still and waited.
The car swung away from the curb and pulled out into traffic.
"Name's MacGyver," he said by way of introduction. The men in the front seat still said nothing. A cigarette lighter clicked.
The car turned a quick corner, and MacGyver braced his hand against the seat.
Information, he decided. That's what he needed most of all right now.
He swept his left hand across the seat, and discovered and untidy pile of food wrappers, a flashlight, and a sweater. Hmm. The flashlight had possibilities.
Shuffling his feet to the side revealed more food wrappers, and something that clanked. Tire chains. Definite possibilities there.
But were the guys driving the car actually just his rehab teachers? Only very quiet?
The car slowed, and pulled into a place that blotted out all of the scarce light in MacGyver's vision. He waited in the darkness, tense and listening. The noise of a garage door closing was followed almost immediately by the sound of his own car door being opened.
XxXxXx
His tennis shoes stood firmly on smooth, hard concrete. He decided to start behind him in exploring the room, since he knew roughly where the door was. As he expected, the metal door was locked, although it also had an inside lock. That was interesting, he thought, and pressed the button.
The door was in the corner of the room, and the walls were also metal. His foot clanged against something, which turned out to be a wastebasket half filled with rough paper towels. A quick sniff revealed hand soap and automotive grease. Hmm. Flammable.
Continuing past the wastebasket, he found a toilet paper holder, empty, and beyond that, a toilet. Next to the toilet was a sink. Trying the faucets, he discovered that the cold water faucet worked, and the hot one did not. Above the sink hung a cracked mirror, and next to that was the wire frame that held the roll of paper towels.
Under the sink were the usual pipes, a grimy pile of magazines, a large wrench, an additional roll of paper towels, and back toward the back of the floor, a cigarette lighter. Handy.
He felt in his pocket for his Swiss Army knife, but remembered that he'd put it in his duffel, which of course he didn't have now. He wondered what the goons had done with it. If it was still in the car, he might be able to find it later.
The next obvious thing to check was to look for windows or vents through which he might escape. This search proved fruitless, however, as the small room had neither window nor vent on the walls or ceiling. The fourth corner, did have a shelf with junk on it: cat litter, for soaking up grease, some paint, a bucket and a bottle of ammonia.
By now, he was back at the door. Unlocking the knob again, he set his shoulder against it. Nothing. The knob turned, but the door wouldn't budge. Was it a hasp? A bar? He tried to recall the sound as the door had shut, but the click could have been the latch, or an exterior padlock. He tapped on the door and listened to the tone. Near the center of the door the tap sounded muffled. He guessed it was a bar rather than a hasp, and he turned back toward the shelf.
Taking down the empty plastic bucket, he removed the wire handle and began to straighten it like a coat hanger. One end he bent into a hook, and then began to feed the wire through the crack between the door and the frame. Like a slim-Jim, he thought wryly.
Halfway up from the floor, the wire encountered resistance and he delicately explored it from both above and below. It appeared to be roughly the size of a two-by-four and made of metal. He adjusted the size of the hook he had made and went at the bar again from above.
In short order, he'd lifted the bar high enough to be free of the metal hooks that held it. Gently, carefully, he eased the door open until he could slip his hand through the crack and grasp the bar, so it didn't crash to the ground, alerting the thugs. He set it silently on the ground, upright, against the wall, and slid out along the opposite wall of the cavernous space.
One of the biggest drawbacks to blindness, he soon discovered, was that he had no idea if someone was watching him. He supposed that if there was, a hue and cry would be raised, so he let out the breath he was holding and inched farther along the wall.
A huge, blurry rectangle of impossibly bright daylight shone from a distance, and from that and the noises, he decided that the garage door had been left open. If he could get to it, that would be his way out. Walking straight across the concrete floor seemed like suicide, however.
He listened again for voices. They came from his right, high up and muffled. Probably some kind of office, he supposed. Chances are there were windows overlooking the workspace floor, so he'd need to be clever. He edged to his right, towards the office, since there was less chance of his movement being spotted if he was directly under the windows instead of across the room, especially since he wasn't sure how dark it was. It's possible the dimness that he saw was just due to the corneal scarring, and the room was actually very bright. He could hear the buzzing of overhead fluorescent lights, so he knew it wasn't too dark.
His right hand lost the wall of the bathroom as it fell away toward the back of the shop. At the same time, his forehead struck wood and he winced. Reaching up to touch it, he discovered the wooden frame of a rough stairway, likely the one leading to the rooms where the voices were. His toe also struck wood, but under the stairs was an open space. Investigating with one hand, he grimaced as his hand moved directly through a cobweb. Batting it away, he continued into the small, low space, and found several piles of thick, grimy chain. Next to those were a few scattered connecting links, and he put a couple into his pocket. He decided to leave the chain, since silence was his only camouflage.
The stairs descended to his left, but before he could move, a door overhead clanked open and he froze. He realized he hadn't put the metal bar back on the bathroom door, a mistake that might cost him now.
As if the man behind the door had changed his mind, a slam overhead told MacGyver that the door had shut again, and he silently released the breath he had been holding.
He debated with himself over going back and replacing the door of his prison in order to deflect attention, or to just try to get out of there as quickly as he could. He decided on the latter, but knew the second they spotted that door, he would be found.
Crouching, he circled the bottom of the wooden stairs, felt along the wall, just under the office windows, he guessed. He stayed as flat as he could to the wall, but grimaced when his foot caught the edge of a large wooden spool, and a metal tool crashed to the floor. He bent to pick it up and found that it was a good-sized wrench.
The office door above opened again, and MacGyver winced. Rats.
This time, footsteps came quickly down the wooden stairs. Almost without thinking, Mac turned and when the man reached the bottom of the stairway, Mac leaned out from the side wall and swung the wrench. He'd underestimated the height of the man, still on the last step, and it hit him in the chest with a dull thud. With his breath knocked out of him, the man fell backward onto the stairs. With a light touch, Mac ran his left hand up the front of the man's shirt, found his hair and pulled him forward into a sitting position. Using the huge wrench in his right hand, he clocked the man across the back of his skull, and the man crumpled like a forgotten suit of old clothes. Mac grabbed him by the armpits, awkwardly, still holding the wrench, and dragged him back along the wall away from the stairs.
This time, he avoided the wooden spool, which evidently had been used as a makeshift workbench. It sat in the corner between the office wall and the outer metal wall of the shop. Leaning against the wall of the shop, Mac found a long piece of aluminum or copper tubing, lightweight, but rigid, and about five feet long.
Perfect.
Using the tube as a blind man's cane, he probed gently in front of him so as not to knock any more things over. Surprisingly, the other men in the office hadn't come down the stairs yet, for which he was profoundly grateful.
Using the metal pipe, he made his way around several metal tool cabinets and a workbench. In the far corner was a taller metal box; he supposed it was a dumpster. He was close to the wall with the bright light now. All he needed to do was to slip around the side of the door.
At this precise moment, as he stood with his right hand on the side of the metal dumpster, he heard shouts from the office doorway behind him. Feet pounded down the wooden stairs, and several voices shouted to one another in a language Mac didn't recognize.
For a split second, MacGyver stood rooted, like a deer caught in the headlights of a car. Then, he bolted, feeling his way toward the door of the garage. Outside in the dazzling sunlight, with his vision washed out to a milky white, he turned, and with his right hand on the outside metal wall, began to follow it as quickly as he dared. Inside the garage, several pairs of shoes slapped toward him on the echoing concrete.
MacGyver's hand slid onto empty air as he reached the corner of the building. He turned to his right, and continued running along the wall, the metal pipe and wrench gripped in his left hand. Footsteps rushed after him, and any minute now, he expected to hear the whine of bullets.
Without warning, his feet slid out from under him and he was falling nearly vertically. Rocks, grit and dry, thorny bushes scratched at his back and arms as he slid downward. His tools immediately caught on the brush which grew thicker as he fell. He released the pipe and wrench, and let them fall where they may, while he continued his mad decent.
A particularly thorny bush reached out to claw him across the face and the stem of another grasped his wrist wrenching it sideways. He greeted his teeth in pain. Just at that moment, bullets began whizzing through the bushes, and he stopped his attempts to get back on his feet, instead, sliding on his rear and back, grimacing as the gravel tore through his shirt and into his skin.
His fall felt as though it took forever, but in reality, it was only about 30 seconds until he lay gasping and panting on his back under a thick tangle of thorny brush. The ground was very nearly level here, and so far none of the bullets had found their mark. He lay still, letting the dust around him settle, hoping it would not pinpoint his location to the men above.
Once the noise of his fall had quieted, he could hear their voices above and behind him, sounding confused. They shouted to one another, and he could hear their feet rushing along the top of the ridge, which must've been where the parking lot of the building fell off to this gully of bushes in which he now lay.
The pain in his torn back grew steadily worse, and as quietly as he could, he turned over to lie on his stomach in the dust. There was just barely room to do so, for he was surrounded by a tangle of scrub brush, which effectively hid him from the guns of the men above.
At this point, his plan was to wait to see if they would give up. Instead, he heard more words, and argument, and then an ominous crackle. He smelled smoke, and realized that they had set fire to the bushes above him.