Be patient just a moment longer, I promise it's all about to come spilling out into the open. In the meantime, I hope you all don't kill me when you get to the end of this one.
About three, maybe four more chapters to go! Thanks for sticking with me.
(warning: scenes of/mentions of abuse, emotional/psychological/physical, though less than in previous chapters.)
When Matty bid Jack a solemn goodbye at her office door, it had been with the caution that answers may not come right away. She'd said with a disbelieving and annoyed shake of her head that it was almost like the Agency went to every extent possible to create morebureaucratic red tape than already existed. It might, she'd warned, take several days for the disclosure request to even process with their version of Oversight.
Therefore, Jack is not expecting to be woken first thing the very next morning by a phone call from Matty, telling him to get in, 'now'. He rushes in as quickly as he can, making record time from his apartment to Matty's office. The woman is on her feet when he gets there, pacing the length of the room and radiating agitation. It's just about the least professional Matty has ever looked, and that is enough to send a renewed jolt of fear through him.
"What is it?" Jack asks, his anxious voice sounding too loud in the relative silence of the office. "What did they say? Who'd you talk to? If it was James, don't believe him, whatever he said, you can't-"
"I spoke personally with the Agency's Director," Matty interrupts. She's stilled now beside her desk, arms folded and face creased in a frown.
A thousand worst-case scenarios spin around Jack's head at once, and it all combines into an indecipherable nightmare of fear. He can't stop seeing the bruise on Mac's face, the flinch when Jack had tried to touch him. It's the first injury Jack has seen on him, but it's hard not to look back and see a pattern. The odd way Mac has alternatingly stuck close and grown distant over the past couple months, spending just so much time with James, his exhaustion, the extra risks he's been taking on missions…
"You were right," Matty says, breaking into Jack's spiraling thoughts. "Nothing about this is on the up-and-up."
There are some things in life you just don't want to be right about. This is one of these things. Jack nods shortly, trying to forestall panic. There are no details yet, he reminds himself. You don't actually know anything yet.
"So, what'd they tell you about the op? I thought you said it'd be a few days. What happened to 'it'll take time'? Not that I'm complaining, but…" Sometimes, fast answers mean worse answers. This feels like one of those times too.
"That's only if you're requesting information on an actual Agency operation," Matty says, her voice deadly serious and undercut with ice. Before Jack can snap at her to get to the point already, she goes on. "The Director has dismissed my request for oversight privileges on my agent's involvement in an Agency mission on the grounds that they have absolutely no record of a Phoenix Foundation consultant on any active assignment."
"Well they're lying," Jack concludes immediately. "Shady group like that, we can just take their word for it? No way."
"I don't think that's the case." With a shake of her head, Matty looks out across her office. She doesn't seem to be looking at anything in particular. It seems like the aimless staring at nothing a person does when they are sifting through memory, flipping a mental Rolodex for pertinent information. "They're the most secretive people I've ever dealt with, that's true, but they've always followed inter-agency protocol to the letter. And besides, when I spoke to her, the Director's response gave me the distinct impression she had no idea what I was talking about. Not just about our MacGyver's involvement in their MacGyver's mission, but in general."
"Which means…" says Jack slowly. He has a pretty good idea what that means, but he needs to hear Matty say it.
"Either James has gone rogue and is conducting an off the books, unsanctioned mission the Agency isn't aware of, or he's playing some kind of game with Mac."
"Gotta be the first option." The assertion is quick and sure. Matty looks like she agrees with him. "We both saw his face yesterday. James has to be taking him into the field. You don't get bruises like that from mind-games."
"I think you're right. James also isn't the type to just mess with someone like that. I wouldn't put it past him to test someone, especially his son, but he wouldn't do it for no reason. He'd do it in the course of achieving an objective. He'd make it useful." Matty's face twists further, dislike clear and undisguised in her expression. "James doesn't do things without a purpose. He's a pragmatist."
"A pragmatist," Jack repeats. He's got no idea what sort of man James MacGyver is, aside from the kind who would effectively orphan his elementary school aged child. They've barely interacted since the man's reappearance, and it's just one of many things about him that makes Jack nervous. They don't know each other at all. Matty on the other hand… "What else? You know him. What's your read on this?"
"I don't know him, not well."
Jack frowns deeper. "He's saved your life. You said so yourself. He's saved you a couple of times."
"That he has," she agrees with a bitter, cold smile. It's barely a smile at all. More of a grimace. It sets Jack's teeth on edge. "But I wouldn't say I know him beyond that. He's a hard man to get to know. I tried, over the years. I knew he had a son, and that was just about the most personal thing I ever knew about him. He never talked about Mac. I don't think I remember him even mentioning the kid's name. Not until, well."
"Until we started here."
She nods. "Exactly. That's the first time he ever talked about Mac, at least to me. Before that… James was never much for personal conversation. Like I said, pragmatist. The man saved my life but he made it very clear he felt I owed him for it. We weren't friends."
The twisted sick feeling in Jack's gut gets worse. He wants Mac here, within eyesight, now. He knows, knows the kid's with James now, and if it weren't for the fact that he doesn't know where James lives, Jack would be extremely tempted to go and get him right now, interfering be damned, micromanaging be damned, helicopter parenting be damned.
"Not a nice guy, then," he mutters, rubbing at the back of his neck with one restless hand. It's posture mirroring how he'd sat last night, also nauseated by worry, describing to Matty how Mac had flinched away from him.
"Not somebody I would want around my family," Matty says. There's something pointed in her voice, and Jack is pretty sure he knows what it is.
"I have to tell Mac," Jack says quietly, tilting his head up and looking at the ceiling like he'll find answers there. There are none to be found. It's just a ceiling, like every other ceiling. "He might hate me for it, think I'm trying to… I don't know. Get between him and his dad. Y'know, for a minute there, I thought maybe I was trying to find a reason to, that I was… I ignored things I shouldn't have, and now…"
"And now you know there's something wrong for sure, and you can do something about it," Matty finishes for him firmly. He glances over at her. She's looking at him with empathy in her eyes at the same time as there is a firm set to her jaw. It's a face that says 'I get it, I do, but you need to cut it out with the pity party and get yourself together'. "He might react badly, but he needs to know. He's in danger, and you need to protect him. Even if it makes him so pissed he won't look at you."
She's right, of course. It's nothing Jack didn't already know, but there's something to be said for hearing it out loud from someone else, someone whose opinion he holds in the highest esteem.
"Okay," he sighs, getting up. "Okay. He's with James now, I'll try giving him a call. If he doesn't answer, I'll tell Bozer to let me know as soon as he gets home." He hardly answers when he's with James, but who knows, maybe the universe will decide to throw Jack a mulligan for once in this whole mess. Getting up to leave, he pauses when he's almost to the door, turning back to her.
"What is it?" Matty asks, and there's kindness tinging the edges of the impatient question.
"I need to know that you- That if-" he says, voice soft and unsure. Jack can hear the almost-tremble in his own words, and he can't find it in himself to steady them. He stops and breathes for a moment, trying to figure out how to say this. "If, when I tell him what we know about James, about the mission, if he gets mad, if he's, what'd you say? If he's so pissed he won't look at me, I need to know you'll let him know you're there for him, that he's got somebody he can lean on. Finding out James is lying, it's gonna… It'll hurt him, and if he feels that hurt by being mad at me, that's fine. But he needs someone. Bozer and Riley will be there, obviously, but there should be… He's gonna need…" He's gonna need a parent, too, Jack doesn't say.
Matty hears it anyway, and she dips her chin in agreement. Her face has gone soft, and she nods again. "I will. He'll know, I promise. And Jack?"
"Yeah?"
"Get that man away from our family."
It's his turn to nod, and with that, Jack leaves. I'm gonna try, he thinks, the door closing softly behind him.
"I don't think you understand," Mac says, pointing at the schematic up on the board. "If we send the agent through like this, they'll be caught at the fourth sublevel West hallway, and it's game over."
"Oh, I do understand." Again, James isn't looking at him, a common thread when they're focused on a specific part of the plan. "That's the point."
"The point is the agent will get caught? That doesn't make any sense, dad, why would you-"
"Because the objective is this office, Angus," James says, voice short and annoyed. He jabs a finger at the laminated map pinned to the board, smudging the edge of a word scrawled in erasable felt pen. It's impossible for Mac to reign in the flinch at the sudden, quick movement, and he only hopes James hadn't noticed. "The encryption key is in there."
"Yes, dad, I know that," Mac mumbles, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. The pressure aggravates the bruise around his eye, and he pulls his hands away. The small smudge in the green marker labeling the office is bothering him, and he itches to fix it, though he knows the action would be ill received. "But if the agent gets caught, then-"
"Then they'll be brought directly to the man in charge, the man this office belongs to." Again, James is talking to him like he's stupid, slow and annoyed, an edge to the words.
"And killed. They'll be brought to him and-"
"For god's sake, Angus, let me finish." The snap has Mac's mouth shutting immediately, teeth clicking audibly. James spends a second longer glaring at him, then turns back to the map. "And interrogated. They'll be brought to that man and interrogated, because what that man likes more than anything is a puzzle. If our agent gets caught before here-" James jabs at a point much earlier in the infiltration schematic, and Mac fights the urge to take a giant step back, "-then they'll be killed immediately. If our agent gets caught after here-" another point, this time at a spot almost to the center of the compound, "-then it's too close, and nobody will bother calling the boss. But here-" an indication of the place Mac had pointed out, the place where their whole plan falls apart, "-if our operative is caught here, then, well. Then they're far enough to be interesting, but not far enough to be an immediate threat. And viola, we're in."
"That's…" Ridiculous. Nonsensical. Reckless. Insane. "That's so, so dangerous."
"It's a dangerous job," James says with a small wave of his fingers, dismissing the concern out of hand. "Our agents knew that when they signed on with us."
"But-"
"But nothing. This is how we're doing it."
"I can't be part of this," Mac insists, raising his voice to demand being heard. His hands are trembling, adrenaline spiking at standing up to James. There's already a dangerous look in the man's eyes, a look that says watch it, son, I'm warning you. "I can't be part of a plan that's deliberately getting someone caught when we have other options, way less dangerous ones. Look, if we just-"
Before he can finish his explanation, a hand seizes the sleeve of where his arm is stretched out. Mac's eyes snap shut and he braces himself, but no pain follows. He opens his eyes hesitantly, to see James looking at him with disdain, still holding onto the long-sleeved t-shirt he's wearing, just like ones he's been wearing all the time since James started being less careful about where on Mac's arms he grabbed hard enough to leave marks.
"I think," James says, voice measured in a way that means Mac is treading on thin ice, "you need to take a walk. Cool your heels, think this over rationally, come back inside when you've got some sense, got it?" He releases Mac's sleeve with a shove towards the door, causing him to stumble backwards and nearly trip over the edge of the carpet.
It's not worth arguing over, and he suddenly finds he would indeed appreciate some distance from this particular conversation. Mac walks out the door, closing it carefully behind him. James doesn't like slammed doors, and what counts as 'slammed' changes day by day.
Not two blocks away from his dad's house, wandering aimlessly in an attempt to figure out what he's going to do to get James to change his mind, to not put this agent at risk like this, Mac's phone rings. He fishes it out of his pocket, his chest constricting when he sees the name on the screen.
Jack Dalton
Instinct has him looking around, checking to see if James is watching. Mac admonishes himself immediately afterwards, feeling stupid and paranoid. He's on the sidewalk in a residential neighborhood, outside of the house, and there's no reason to assume at all that James would be able to see him, and no reason Mac needs his permission to talk to his partner anyway. It's his phone, his phone-call, he'll answer it if he wants to. Feeling a spike of rebellious irritation, he answers the phone.
"Hey Jack," he says, and he'd be worried about how the words had come out half exhausted half annoyed if it weren't for what Jack says immediately after.
"We need to talk about your dad, kid."
He knows. The thought screams through Mac's head. He knows. He knows. He knows.
"What about him?" Mac asks, pulse rushing in his ears, under the continuing chorus. He knows. He knows.
"This mission he's got you on-" the flood of relief is instantaneous, even as Mac feels guilty, wonders if the way they all believe this is just about a mission counts as lying, "-it's… It's not what you think it is."
Mac stops dead on the sidewalk, his resumed pacing halted still. A jogger behind him calls out a surprised warning, barely dodging before she'd have run right into him. Mac barely notices.
"What are you talking about, Jack?"
"Matty called the Agency. I'm sorry, buddy, I know you wanted us to stay out of it, but after you showed up with that- I've gotta keep you safe. That's my job, right? I keep you safe. And whatever you're doing on this mission was getting you hurt, so I had to have Matty do what she could to talk to your old man's people. Just so we could have some kind of oversight, some say in things."
It's classic Jack, it's nothing Mac shouldn't've seen coming, but he still somehow finds himself stunned silent. He can't think of a single thing to say, so he says nothing, listens to Jack keep talking.
"You said we couldn't know, you couldn't talk to us, because the Agency has rules, but the mission's not sanctioned."
All the air leaves Mac's lungs in a rush. He feels suddenly dizzy, and he looks around for a bench, something, otherwise afraid he'll end up sitting on the curb, on his knees in the grass.
"What? Wh- What?"
"The Agency has no record of your dad's mission, or your involvement in any Agency business. I'm sorry, but whatever James told about who's giving the orders here, it's not true. He's gone rogue, set the whole thing up himself. Whatever he's doing, it isn't for them. He lied to you."
He lied to you. It hits Mac in the chest like a cartoon anvil has been dropped on him from a great height, like he's been punched hard enough to leave his ribs fractured and his lungs bruised. He lied to you. Because Jack wouldn't. No matter how many reservations he had about James, no matter how much he worried or disapproved of the man, he wouldn't make something like this up. He wouldn't lie to Mac, not about this.
James, though… There's nothing in Mac telling him the same thing about his father.
"He…" Mac can't finish the sentence. "Jack…"
"I know, Mac, I know." There's apology in Jack's voice. Fear, too, though of what, Mac isn't certain. He can't decipher it right now. "Look, I-"
"I gotta go," interrupts Mac abruptly. His pulse is galloping, and there's an anger building in him that's burning so hot he's afraid he might explode. "I have to- I gotta talk to dad."
"Mac, listen to me for a second." Jack's voice comes fast and urgent through the speaker, insistent enough that Mac stops, halfway through turning to head back down the sidewalk towards James' house. "Be careful. I mean it, kid, be careful. Remember what I said, you're in danger you call me. Promise me. Please."
Silence. Birds, in a bush somewhere. A man on a telephone on the porch of a house across the street. A dog barking a block away.
"Mac. Promise me."
"...Okay. I promise." The phone is halfway down, Mac's thumb hovering over the 'end call' button, when he suddenly jerks it back up, saying in a rush, hopeful and uncertain, "Jack?"
"Yeah? What is it?"
"I don't… Depending on what he has to say, I- Will you come and get me? He picked me up, and I- I don't-"
"Of course. Just send me the address and I'm there. You know I'm there, the second you call."
It's not a lot, it doesn't ease the burden of what Mac knows he's about to do, the hell he's inviting on himself when he confronts James about this, but it's something. It's something he can hold onto if he feels like he's about to lose his nerve. Jack is coming. He just has to finish this conversation, and Jack is coming for him. Just one conversation, albeit the hardest conversation he's ever even thought about having, and it'll be over.
(Maybe the whole thing will be over, depending on what James has to say for himself, maybe this whole ordeal, the hitting, the unpredictable anger, the belittling and shame, maybe it'll all finally be over and no one will ever even have to know.)
"Thanks," he says into the phone, barely above a whisper.
Whatever Jack says in response, Mac doesn't hear it, already lowering the cell. There's just a faint rumble of a familiar, comforting voice. With a shaking finger, Mac ends the call and shoves the phone back in his pocket. The walk back to James' house seems to pass by in a blink. He doesn't knock, just opens the door and walks in.
"I need an explanation," he says, voice uncontrolled in volume and pitch. Mac stares across the room at James, tremors running through the set of his shoulders every couple of seconds. "I need you to tell me the truth, dad. Now."
