Hopefully now some questions will be answered! Thanks as always for your awesome comments, I love to hear what you're thinking, predicting, and enjoying about the fic.

(warning: emotional, psychological, and physical abuse. be careful, as this chapter contains the most extreme/explicit violence in the entire fic. also, stronger language.)

"I need an explanation. I need you to tell me the truth, dad. Now."

There is something almost satisfying in how, for the first time he can remember, James is completely taken aback, thrown by what Mac said. He recovers quickly, though, straightening his spine and leveling Mac with his best exasperated look.

"You're gonna have to skip the melodrama and tell me what you mean," he drawls. There's a hint of an eye-roll and a scoff in the words, if not externally displayed. "Tell you the truth about what? I've answered every question you've had for me, I don't see a reason for you to be so hostile right now. Try asking again, like an adult."

The tremors seizing Mac across the shoulders grow stronger, though the nature of the shaking changes. It's a lot of things, the turmoil coursing through him, but at the moment, with James' condescending voice continuing the constant stream of second-guessing and belittling criticism that started months ago and hasn't let up since, anger has taken the lead.

Anger has been there the whole time of course, anger for for how James left, how close he'd been the whole time, his behavior since his return. Anger for the distance created between himself and his team, between himself and Jack specifically. More than the physical violence, the pain he's caused and the bruises left by his hands, Mac is angry about having to hide it, for how he feels like he's been lying to the people he loves most in the world since the word 'go'.

And now, if what Jack told him over the phone is to be believed, and Mac can't imagine he's lying about this, it turns out James has been lying to him from the start. This project, the big draw for them to spend time together, the crucial mission so many lives rested on, it was all a lie, and Mac feels so angry he can hardly bear it. Anger has overpowered the fear that's grown to grip him every time he so much as thinks about James, and the need for answers is stronger than the fear of the consequences of asking.

"You lied to me," Mac says, and the accusation is freeing. It lays out the core of what's been happening between them, a slightly altered, off-center confession. You hurt me. You've been hurting me. "The mission, the plan, none of it was true. Don't even bother denying it. I talked to Jack, I know it's not Agency sanctioned. I know your organization doesn't even know you're doing this, that we're doing this.

James takes a step forward, and all of Mac's training, his instincts, his ability to read a situation, it's all telling him one thing. You're in danger. Get out. But Mac stubbornly grits his teeth and holds his ground. He's not leaving here without answers.

"Jack," James repeats, voice low and dangerous. "You've been talking to Dalton? You ran to him with this?"

The image evoked of the schoolyard tattletale, the pathetic kid so dependent on someone he can't do anything by himself, it makes Mac bristle.

"I didn't run to anyone," he snaps, ignoring the little voice in his head taunting him with how much he'd wanted to, with how hard he'd had to fight with his own desire to show up at Jack's apartment in the middle of the night after his father had laid into him with words or hands. There were some days it had been bad enough that Mac could hardly look at the person in his life who most greatly represented safety, the promise of being cared for and protected, without wanting to spill everything or break down into explanation-less sobbing. But he hadn't. No matter how hard all that had been, he hadn't.

(Maybe he should have. If he had, it never would've got this far. The only reason it's gotten as bad as it has is because Mac let it. It's his fault, isn't it, for letting it continue?)

"Dad," Mac starts, but is quickly interrupted.

"Be quiet a moment." James is squinting at him now, shrewd and accusing. There's something about the way he's standing, how his posture has changed, that makes Mac feel like the conversation has shifted onto increasingly unstable ground. "If you didn't run to Dalton, how did he know about this? How would he know the Agency didn't sanction this operation if you didn't tell him about it?"

"I…" It's a question he hadn't asked when they'd spoken on the phone, overtaken by other, seemingly more urgent priorities. "I don't know. I'm guessing he talked to Mat- to Director Webber and she called the Agency. She has the authority to do that, she's the Director of the Foundation."

"And why," says James with a hint of a dangerous tone in his voice, "was he talking to Webber. How did he know to talk to her?"

Mac feels like they're rapidly losing the thread of this conversation. He was supposed to be the one asking the questions, not stuck feeling like he's on the wrong end of an interrogation, like he's about to be found guilty.

"He was worried," he explains, voice rising back into annoyance again, reminded of why he's here. He's here because his father lied to him, and now he's being scolded for how he had in turn lied to his friends, his family, to cover for what James had been doing to him. "Jack's my partner, it's his job to protect me, and when I started acting off he got worried. Riley and Bozer saw it too, because they care about me, and they notice that kind of thing. So when they asked, I just kept saying it was the mission. That I was tired because of the mission, stressed over the mission, I just kept saying the mission. So it blew up until they thought you'd involved me in something really bad. I lied to them. That's why Jack went to her."

"And why the hell would you do that instead of just keeping your mouth shut?"

Somehow, it still sounds like Mac's fault. He's standing there, in his father's living room, telling the man how covering for how James hurt him had led his team to contact the Agency, exposing his lies, and still, it's all coming out sounding like Mac's fault.

"What was I supposed to do, tell him the truth about..." About the abuse? The words stick in Mac's throat, completely unwilling the come out. For lack of being able to verbally finish making his point, he merely gestures upward, a wordless indication of the faint bruising still decorating his face.

James' response indicates no embarrassment at the consequences of his actions, the evidence that he'd hit his son hard enough to leave a mark. No embarrassment, no remorse, not a hint of guilt. Just annoyance, and disappointment.

"What you were supposed to do is not be such a child about this," he barks. Mac flinches, which serves to anger James further. "See, that's what I mean. If you hadn't let yourself get so affected by a couple of reprimands then there wouldn't've been a need to say anything to them at all. I've done nothing I wasn't well within my rights to do, and if you hadn't overreacted, if you had just-"

"Dad-"

"I'm not finished, not until you know what you did." James is standing perfectly still, staring at Mac straight on. Somehow, the icy calm on his face is more frightening than if he'd been pacing and screaming, throwing things and breaking furniture. "Because the mission may not have been sanctioned but the problem facing the Agency is very, very real. The encryption key is real, so is the man who has it, and so are the people who will die if he figures out what it is."

True or not, it still doesn't explain the lies, why they'd apparently been working behind the Agency's back this whole time. Mac can't help but mention as much.

"So why didn't you just figure it out with your team at the Agency, your partner or whoever?" There's still so much of this that doesn't make sense to Mac, so many pieces he can't sort out.

When James explains, cracks the whole thing wide open and exposes what'd lain underneath, Mac wishes he still didn't know. Sometimes, knowing is worse.

"It wasn't just a mission, not just a plan to solve a problem. It was your resume."

"My…" Mac shakes his head, uncomprehending.

"Oh for- The Agency, we don't run things like the Phoenix Foundation does. Or the FBI, or whoever. We don't train green agents. We don't like to waste that kind of time. When the Agency recruits, it does so exclusively from other existing agencies."

The pieces fall into place with a dizzying suddenness.

"You wanted me to come work for the Agency," Mac says slowly, and James nods emphatically.

"It could've been perfect, son." James' voice is almost grieved, regretful like he's lost something amazing, a once in a lifetime chance. "This plan, it would've been your ticket in. They'd have seen what you can do, seen what we can do together, and they'd have forgiven my going under the radar to set it all up and invited you on in a heartbeat. Hell, they'd probably have let you take the lead on the retrieval."

"And you didn't… You didn't think to ask me if this is what I wanted?" Of all the things James has done, this one reaches a truly new level of egregious. He's clearly, not for a moment, given a single thought as to what Mac would want, whether he would be on board with this. "You think I want to leave my team, my partner, my family, and come work for you at an Agency I know nothing about?"

"I'm your father." The way James says it makes it sound like an obvious answer, "You're my son. My son, my family. You only get one family in this life, and whether you like it or not, and you and me, we're it. I know I left, and I shouldn't have done that, but it's time to let it go. There will be other teams, other partners, but I am your only father. But now, well, now, because you had to go and tell them all about our plan, it's over. It's all over."

"I didn't tell-"

"Angus, be quiet," James says, abruptly loud and harsh. The calm of before is gone, evaporated into thin air. "Do as you're told for once in your life. My career is done, hear me? Done. We were so close. If I'd been able to give them a finished plan, a completely airtight solution to getting that encryption key back, they'd have had no choice but to listen to me and take you on. We could've made the perfect team, you could've made the perfect agent, hell, maybe even better than me. We'd have been together, son. You and me, just like we should've been all along. Instead, you… You ruined everything. It's over for me at the agency. I'm finished."

"I didn't mean to-" Mac tries. He's stopped by a swift, sharp gesture it takes several seconds to process as just that, a gesture, not a backhand headed straight for his face.

"You have no idea what you've done. No idea…" James shakes his head and turns away, standing for the moment still, looking away out the window into the back yard. His hands, hanging by his sides, are clenched into fists.

It's with a shock that Mac realizes he has no idea what James is going to do to him. He's pushed the envelope, hard, and he's smart enough to know how a pattern of violence escalates. James may be quiet across from him, but it's not going to last.

Remember what I said, you're in danger you call me. Promise me. Please.

Concentrating on keeping his hand still and his movements innocuous, Mac pulls his phone out of his pocket. He's shared his location to Jack, and is half-way through typing a message when the device is suddenly yanked out of his hands.

"What the hell's the matter with you? You texting Dalton right now? To what…" James squints at the screen. "To come and get you?" He takes a threatening step forward, hand already beginning to raise as he moves.

James has hit him before. He's slapped Mac across the face, cuffed him over the head, knocked him into tables, grabbed him and shaken him, there have been more than a dozen individual incidences of physical violence that Mac can identify since that first snap. James has hit him before, several times, but this is different. This isn't about teaching him a lesson, a correction for a mistake or for being stupid or naive. This is not going to be like all the other times, where James will impress the point upon him and then they'll move on. This is the first time Mac has known James was setting out with the intent to hurt him.

Maybe this is why, when Mac moves to take his phone back, and James' hand locks onto his wrist, bruisingly tight and preventing him from moving, he can't help the words that jolt out of his mouth.

"Dad, don't. Please don't."

Don't what? Don't hit me? Don't hurt me?

It's only the second time Mac has risked asking his father directly to stop.

They'd been in roughly this same position too, standing in James' living room with his raised forearm seized in a ruthlessly careless grip. It'd been just after a mission on which Mac has gotten hurt.

Mac jumped.

The mission was a success and he walked away with a badly twisted wrist. They made it back to the plane without incident or conversation, and Mac's anxiety mounted with the pain in his arm. Jack was pissed, and he knew it, and he was sure he was about to catch hell over the choice he'd made, as soon as they're settled. Jack had shouted at him not to do it, over the headset, reminded him there was another way, said it explicitly, 'don't move'.

And Mac had jumped anyway.

When the plane took off, as soon as they were settled on their way home, Jack moved his seat, sitting down directly across from Mac. Mac cringed. He gritted his teeth, fighting down the urge to fidget, and braced himself for a loud, angry lecture about recklessness and doing as he was told. Jack studied his face for a long moment.

"Give me your hand," is what he'd said.

Mac blinked, confused. "What?" It was not what he was expecting Jack to say, and not in the tone he'd been expecting to hear it in. Jack spoke softly and his voice, like the lines around his eyes, was tired.

With a split second, shameful hesitation, instinctively pulling his injured limb close to his chest before he realized what he was doing, Mac blushed. It's Jack. He had no reason to be wary of Jack. There was anger in him, sure, Mac knew there was, but Jack would never hurt him.

You thought the same thing about James, an insidious voice whispered in the back of his mind. Mac ignored it and extended his arm. It's not even remotely the same thing.

Jack's fingers, closing around his forearm above the wrist, avoiding the damage, loose and gentle. He held Mac's arm carefully, turning it to evaluate the injured wrist. Mac silently allowed Jack to manipulate the arm, to wrap a palm around the back of his hand, guiding his fingers closed into a fist and back open again. The movement caused a fresh spike of pain through damaged tissue, and Mac couldn't stop the small noise he made. Jack stopped what he was doing immediately, his thumb smoothing feather-light over the bone of his wrist in apology.

Jack hadn't yelled. He hadn't shouted or towered over Mac, hadn't done any of the things James would do. This more than anything made Mac feel even worse. How Jack had only looked at him with frustration and worry and some kind of heartache.

When he reached his father's house the next day, James' attention zeroed in on Mac's wrist immediately. The official diagnosis was a mild sprain, and the brace he'd been coerced into wearing through the cooperative efforts of Jack and the Phoenix's medical staff was not subtle. He was hardly inside with the door shut behind him before James was moving. Mac barely stifled the urge to lurch back and away out of his reach.

James grabbed his forearm and pulled his wrist up into view. The grip he had on Mac was tight and hard, sending pain shooting through the already damaged arm.

"Dad," Mac said, the word pulled out of him without thought, an instinctive, automatic attempt at alerting James to the consequences of his actions. You're hurting me. Stop, it hurts.

"What'd you do to yourself this time?" There was concern in James' voice, sure, but it's overshadowed by disapproval. Even James' wording betrayed his primary focus.

"There was an accident on the mission, I had to make a judgement call," Mac explained, voice controlled and steady. "I picked a course of action that promised the greatest chance of success."

"So you were playing with fire and took a stupid risk," James said. His grip tightened fractionally and Mac winced. He twisted his arm a bit, trying to escape James' hold. Without knowing it, James had grabbed Mac's arm over the same place Jack had touched him, and the difference is striking. There was none of the extreme gentleness Jack had shown, the care towards not causing Mac any further suffering in his examination. James was gripping him like a defective object, twisting his arm carelessly to see the brace from another angle.

"Dad," Mac said again, louder. You're hurting me.

James either didn't notice or didn't care that he'd said anything at all, just pulled Mac over into the light of a lamp next to the table. It was one step too far, a sharp shock of white-hot pain shooting through his wrist, and the words actually made it out that time.

"Dad, you're hurting me, stop."

James had let go. Just like that, James let go.

'Stop. Don't.' He hadn't said it before or since. Maybe because he was afraid of what it would feel like to tell his father 'please stop' and have James ignore him. Because that would mean James knew. As long as he doesn't ask for it to stop, as long as he doesn't name what's happening, Mac can tell himself James doesn't know what he's doing, that he doesn't quite realize how what he's doing his hurting his son.

That first time, it worked, and James stopped, let him go immediately.

It doesn't work like that this time. When James' hold only hardens, panic sends Mac's free hand up, grabbing at his father's sleeve in an attempt to dislodge him. James responds by seizing his other wrist, now gripping both of his arms, and slamming him hard back into the wall. Mac's head bounces off the unassuming beige paint and his ears ring with the force of the impact.

"So that's it, huh?" James says in a raised voice, and Mac, mind swimming, can't do anything but fight to draw in breath. "You're just gonna ruin my career, my life, and then text the fucking surrogate you latched onto because you couldn't make it on your own to come save you when things get a little tough? That's what you're gonna do?"

Mac's head hits the wall again when James jars him, punctuating the demanding questions with a rough shake.

"Answer me. Answer me, Angus, you answer me when I speak to you or I spear to god…"

But he can't, he just can't. Mac can't speak. Even if he could, he had no idea what to say. All that makes it out is a soft, strangled whine. A whimper, pathetic and wounded.

One of the hands holding his wrists releases, only to flash up and across so fast Mac barely registers it, only the pain it leaves behind, the burst of shrieking nerves followed by the drip of blood down his chin from his newly split lip. The grip on his arm returns twice as hard as it was before, and the bones in his wrist ache.

James is shouting something, loud and furious, and Mac can't process a word of it. His ears are ringing, from the impact of his head against the wall, the fist across his face, the sheer overwhelming terror of the situation, it's all taking up too much space to allow for anything else. The heaving of his chest has grown frantic, breathing in short, erratic pants. He's been scared of James before, but never like this, never with the surety that James is going to keep hurting him, isn't going to stop until something stops him.

Mac knows he should be doing something. He knows he should be fighting, finding leverage to get his hands free and hit back, kick James' knee out, somehow defend himself. The door is so close, not forty feet away, and all it would take was dazing James enough to get there, run out of the house, and he'd be free. But Mac's brain just isn't working, and for once in his life he has no ideas. There's just pain, and fear, and the voice of a little boy in the back of his head, a confused, devastated child wailing why are you hurting me.

"Are you even listening to me?" That sentence makes it through the haze.

It could be hazarded to be the most commonly asked question of their whole relationship, delivered at various levels of annoyance or ire, and right now it's positively furious. It's a roar of a demand, and Mac sees the hand that'd hit him release his wrist once more, pulling back. He closes his eyes tight shut. He doesn't want to see the next part coming.

That's the precise moment a loud bang cuts through even the volume of James' raised voice, and the front door flies open.