Couldn't let that ep go without one more little Mac and Jack scene. I'm not usually the best at emotional hurt/comfort, I actually don't think I've written any of it for this fandom, so it may not even be worth reading. It's shorter than usual, too, cause some family stuff, the holidays, and finals all hit at the same time, but I ended up really liking this one.
Mac sighed as he heard the sound of boots stomping their way across his floor, intentionally loud; Jack's way of giving him a heads up that he had completely ignored Mac when he insisted that he didn't want company tonight. He wasn't sure how long it had been since Matty had left, it might have just been minutes but hours could have passed since she had finally walked away, giving his hand a quick squeeze and instructing him to take the next few days off work. He still hadn't moved.
"I already told Matty. I don't want to talk, Jack." Mac said once he heard the back door open, not bothering to turn away from the LA lights.
"Well now, for starters," Jack began as he made himself at home in one of the wooden chairs on the deck. "I ain't Matty. And besides, who said anything about talkin'?"
"I'm not drinking either." Mac warned.
"Yeah, yeah. I know." Jack assured. "You're one of those weird guys who refuses to numb their pain with alcohol. Likes to wallow in their misery sober. Which is why I didn't stop for beer, just showed up empty handed. Not even a six pack. Well, I mean, except for the one under this here shirt. But I can't very well get rid of that, there'd be too many heartbroken women around the world." Jack joked.
Mac huffed a quiet laugh and finally turned around to face his partner with an eyeroll.
"There he is." Jack said with a smile.
"Matty called you?" Mac accused, crossing his arms.
"Riley, actually." Jack said. "But don't be mad, I'm glad she did. You don't need to be alone right now."
"I'm fine Jack." Mac said, moving to turn back away from his partner. He heard the sound of the patio chair scraping against the deck's floorboards and felt Jack's hand land on his shoulder a breath later.
"Don't do this to yourself, Mac." Jack said, voice tight. "Don't shut me out."
"I'm not shutting you or anyone else out, Jack!" Mac said, running his hands through his hair in frustration. "I just don't want to talk right now."
"Well I'm not leavin'." Jack insisted. "So you might as well come over here and sit down."
Mac recognized Jack's tone of voice, it was the no arguments one that meant business. He didn't have the energy to argue about it so he walked across the deck and dropped into the chair beside Jack's with a sigh. "Happy?"
Jack didn't bother with a response, just sat down beside his partner and propped his feet up on the empty fire pit. " I say we light a fire if we're gonna stay out here. It's cold tonight."
"Zoe was cold." Mac said his voice angry, volume rising with every word. "When she was drowning, in sub-zero Arctic water. It was colder than she ever imagined anything being. She said that. And she died in it. Because I couldn't save her, Jack." Mac's voice broke on his partner's name and wiped away a lone angry tear that had escaped.
Jack waited calmly, unphased by Mac's sudden outburst, giving the younger man time to take a few steadying breaths before breaking the silence. "Zoe, huh?" He asked softly. "That was her name?"
Mac nodded, staring intensely at a spot just past Jack's shoulder, not making eye contact but drawing comfort from having his partner, his rock, in his peripheral vision. He smiled sadly, memories of the young woman he had barely known racing through his mind.
"I wish I could have met her." Jack continued.
"You should've." Mac said softly. "I actually asked her to come take a tour of Peoenix when she got back home. But she never made it."
"What, like a date?" Jack asked, failing to hide his proud smile.
"No." Mac insisted, but his eyes met Jack's, looking up shyly through long lashes. "But the ice cream we were going to get after might have been."
Jack bit back a grimace at the new information. What they did was more than just a job to Mac, and while casualties in the field were inevitable, Mac took it hard whenever they lost someone. Losing someone he may have had feelings for, no matter how new those feelings were, was a particularly bad hand his partner had been dealt.
"Alright." Jack said, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. "Do I need to start from the bottom and tell you that her death wasn't your fault or do you already know that?"
"If I could have just…" Mac began but Jack cut him off quickly.
"What? If you could have what, Mac? Cause everyone I have talked to said you did everything, every damn thing, possible to save that girl." He insisted.
"There had to be something." Mac whispered, talking more to himself than Jack. "If I had more time, or there could have been some spare tools on the ship that they didn't find, a junk drawer with something I could have used."
"You know what my dad used to say whenever he would hear someone talkin' like that? Going on and on about what they didn't do or what they would do different if they could go back in time?" Jack asked, trying to bring Mac out of his own head. "He would tell 'em to stop living in the World of If Only. If only I'd done this, If only I'd gone there, If only I'd kissed her. Pops knew what he was talkin' about, kid. You can't live your life like that."
"Yeah well Zoe can't live her's at all now. Because of me." Mac replied, eyes staring blankly at the LA skyline again.
"Mac you didn't kill her." Jack insisted.
"Well I didn't save her either." Mac said, his tight voice making it clear that he was falling deeper into his grief-driven downward spiral.
Jack turned to a different approach. "What was the mission?" He asked suddenly.
"What?" Mac asked, turning his head to look at Jack.
"The mission." Jack pressed on. "The exact job? What were you supposed to do?"
"Find a way to repair the damage to the ship, using the items available, that would hold until a rescue ship could reach where they were stranded and save the thirty-two people onboard." He replied automatically.
"And?" Jack asked.
"And I failed." Mac said. "Because instead they brought home thirty-one."
"You know anyone else who could have done what you did?" Jack asked. "Who could have fixed the generator, stopped multiple fires on a boat, built an air purifier. You know anyone else who could have found a way to buy those kids enough time to get home? Cause I don't."
"What's your point, Jack?" Mac asked with a defeated sigh.
"My point is that if you hadn't done all those things, Mac, every one of those people on that boat would be dead right now." He paused, reaching out to rest a hand on Mac's knee. "Including Zoe."
Mac stayed silent but Jack could see the wheels turning behind Mac's blue eyes, assessing his partner's words. Jack continued. "You gotta take a step back and look at the whole picture, bud. You brought thirty-one people home. Thirty-one people who would be dead right now if it weren't for you. That's what, sixty-two parents? Who have their kids home now, safe and sound. You didn't fail, Mac."
"Sure feels like it." Mac said, his voice hoarse.
"Look, I know you take it a lot harder than I do when the mission doesn't go as planned and we can't save everybody. It always gets to you more than me." There's nothing wrong with that, he quickly added. "Hell, sometimes it scares me how easy it is for me to write off losing a civilian life. The way I see it, at the end of our career, when someone sits down and tallies up all our stats, as long as we saved more people than we lost then we did our job."
"I can't look it like that." Mac said, standing up suddenly and walking back to the balcony, the overhang of the deck's roof suddenly feeling suffocatingly oppressive.
"I know you can't." Jack answered, staying seated and giving Mac his space despite how badly he wanted to follow the younger man. "And that's fine. Like I said, you're grieving process is probably way healthier than my lack of. But this one's hittin' you even harder than normal and that's worrying me."
"It is." Mac admitted. "You're not wrong."
"Why is that, you think?" Jack asked, taking a risk and moving to stand beside his partner, leaning his back against the railing though, keeping Mac's face in his sight. "Think it's cause you liked her? I mean, not to sound like a twelve year old girl or anything but, like liked her?"
"No." Mac said then sighed. "Maybe a little. I don't know, Jack. I just feel so damn guilty. I keep running through the list of available supplies over and over, trying to find something, anything that I could have used. Trying to find some way to save her, even though it's too late."
"You know what I think?" Jack asked, drawing a knee up and resting the heel of his boot against the deck railing. "Why this one's so hard?"
"I have the feeling you're gonna tell me even if I don't want to know." Mac answered.
"I think this one's so much worse because you feel like you have to blame yourself since there's nobody else for it to fall back on." Jack said.
"What do you mean?" Mac asked, turning a curious look towards Jack.
"Think about it." Jack insisted. "This was just a tragedy, plain and simple. No bad guy with a gun or psycho setting' off bombs. There's nobody to blame for her death, a death that she bravely chose, by the way, to save her students. In our line of work it's pretty much black and white, the good guys and the bad. There's no bad guy here, just a real unfortunate circumstance. And since you don't have someone to blame, you're puttin' it all on yourself."
Mac nodded but didn't say anything for a few moments, silently running Jack's words through his mind.
"I don't know what it was." He said finally. "Why I got so, attached, I guess is the right word, to her. I only knew her for a few hours but man, she made a big impression."
"Hey, it happens." Jack said with a shrug. "She was special." He bumped his shoulder into Mac's. "But hey, in my experience, nerdy little geeks who are too smart for their own good and carry around Swiss army knives can worm their way into your heart real fast."