Note from deepandlovely dark: the which ended up as not actually a sequel to Tanista's gift fic for me, "Let Me Bid You Farewell"
but there are evident traces of it in this chapter, nonetheless.
There's something he's forgotten. Sort of an important thing, Jack catches himself thinking- a word, an idea, a delight. Maybe something he's forgotten to do for Mike. Sweet Mike, who he loves better than anybody else in the whole world; now wouldn't that be a pity, after all she's done for him?
"I must be getting on some," he says to his wife. "Did I mention anything I was going to do today, that I didn't?"
"Nope," Mike says cheerfully. She places the roast chicken on the table, where it's lit lusciously by the setting sun. Always has a thoughtful touch like that. "Another lazy Saturday, you said- now, I don't know how you do it. All that relaxing would drive me crazy."
"C'mon, you know what kinda guy I was when you married me." His mouth waters, as he picks up the carving knife and starts slicing: sage and onion stuffing, subtle overtures of thyme. "Don't tell me you're having second thoughts now."
"Never," Mike says, kissing him. "You're the only one for me, you know that."
"Oh? You were chasing Mac for long enough."
"Everybody does," she says, sighing a little. "The eternal unobtainable, that's him all over. Tell you what. Either of us is allowed to cheat with him, but they have to invite the other one along, how's that?"
"Mike!"
"Yeah, hon?"
"It's a deal." He passes her dripping drumsticks, takes the wings for himself. Crispy, chewy. Bland.
Bland?
Jack crosses his arms, leans back in a huff. "Murdoc, for god's sake get it right! How are you supposed to mess up my head properly, if you can't even get the basics down?"
Mike freezes, mid-gesture; the low hum of lapping waves stops abruptly. Murdoc steps out from behind the staircase, fiddling with a remote control and looking distinctly annoyed. "And what was wrong with the illusion this time, then?"
It's a gamble, every time the rush of memory returns, how many more goes of this he can stand. Every time his subconscious grabs onto a discrepancy like this, he's just giving Murdoc more ammo to use against him; but if he lets things like this slide, he's in danger of never remembering himself again.
I'm not the hero. Maybe that's Mac, or Nikki or Becky, but it sure isn't me. All I have to do is keep my head above water until the hero shows up.
Right? Right.
"Hullo, this is Texas? And not even actual Texas, just some kinda weird composite you've jammed together out of shoreside LA and bits of my childhood- well, lemme tell you something, that ought to include hot chili rub chicken like I remember. The kind I used to like snitching off food carts- well, maybe you can't manage that properly. But at least gimme some barbecue sauce to spice things up, sheesh."
"You don't like sage and onion stuffing," Murdoc says incredulously. "Dalton, you're an outright barbarian."
"Yeah, yeah. Go on, try it again."
Zwip.
"I decided I couldn't be bothered cooking today," Mike says. "Why don't we go out for double chocolate ice cream and call that dinner instead?"
"You're not only the cutest wife on the face of the earth, you're also real smart."
But Jack's frowning as he says it. There's something very important he's forgotten.
Oh, well. It'll come to him.
They live on a sweet little houseboat, anchored off of the Gulf Coast. Their bank account is full to bursting, from the proceeds of Mike's exotic orchid-growing business. Everything is perfect.
"Everything is completely wrong," Jack says surreptitiously into the phone. Glances around nervously, even though he'd taken two buses and a cab crosstown to be sure he wasn't followed. "You gotta help me. Something horrible's happened to Mike."
He was expecting Mac's peals of laughter, but it doesn't make it any less annoying to listen to.
"Come on, Jack. She was on the phone with me just the other day, congratulating me for the engagement to Nikki. Sure sounded like the woman I remember."
"But it's not, I tell you! Our Mike was smart, and sassy, and she had a lot of better things to do with her life then sit around nursemaiding me all day! Something's wrong!"
"You know," Mac says, sounding a bit bored, "there's this psychological disorder where people think their loved ones have been replaced by annoyingly similar dopplegangers. Given the odds, I'm thinking it's more likely you've got that, than that anything's happened to Mike."
"Oh, thanks. Thanks a lot. How about putting Becky on the line, huh? At least I can expect some sympathy out of her."
"She's not here. Camping with friends of hers."
"And another thing, has your niece turned into a social butterfly all a sudden? The last six times I've called you, she's been out, or skiing, or singing, or a million other excuses-"
"You mean six. Like you just said- y'know, Jack, teenagers do have independent lives? And so do I, for that matter."
"Then get me off your back by actually listening. I dunno, have some of your friends at Phoenix check on Mike. Anything."
There's a long sigh at the other end. "If it'll make you happy. Sure. See you around, Jack."
Phoenix. Phoenix phoenix phoenix- what the hell is a phoenix- oh, right. A city in Arizona. Not too interesting.
At least he's remembered it, though.
He's been lolling around on the couch too much, watching daytime television and eating potato chips. Waxing fat and unhappy.
"I wish I did something," Jack says, filling up the watering can. It is completely unnecessary- Mike could handle the greenhouse all by herself, and always has before- but at least it's movement, doing something. "Like you do, some mad burning passion for work."
"But that's not you," Mike says, sympathetically. "Face it, sweetheart, your role in life is to sit around and be catered to by the working stiffs. Good thing, too. It's not like you have the stamina for anything else."
That rings false, somewhere very deep inside him; he flushes hot with the sudden awareness that he has more than enough capacity for concentration, sure and intense, if only the right-something- would come along.
Only he can't think of anything like that, and a certain uncomfortable hollowness invades him again, as has been happening more and more often lately. Mike's right; he's spent his whole life being a lazy good-for-nothing who can't be bothered to leave the house six days out of seven. It's lucky he has her to cling to.
Zwip.
Murdoc charges down the greenhouse aisle, ripping plants from trays. "Dalton, do you not have the slightest idea what an orchid actually looks like? This here? This is a violet. And this one is a petunia. And that monstrosity over there, which your make-believe wife is so dutifully watering, I haven't the slightest idea what sort of horticultural disaster you've stumbled across but it is in no way, shape or form even remotely an orchid!"
Jack shrugs. "You're only making life harder for yourself now."
"A job worth doing," the assassin declares, pressing a dying violet against his brow, "is worth doing well. Otherwise I'd shoot MacGyver through the head and have done with."
"Thanks for being a perfectionist," Jack says; and catches himself slightly by surprise to realise how sincere he's being.
"You're welcome." Also sincere. There is a moment of mutual confusion.
"But that one," he says hastily, "it was just an idea I had. When I heard about green-winged orchids, I sorta formed this notion what they might look like. Maybe?"
"It was completely mistaken. They're purple, they're discreet, and they certainly don't have huge gaudy bits sticking off them at all angles," Murdoc says, tearing plants off a vertical growth board. "This is worse than a holiday lighting display."
"Not holiday. A….ah. Never mind."
For a moment, the intricate tangle of colours seemed to light up something in his memory, but the plants are all on the floor now, and his memory's deserted him again.
"So I talked with Mac's friends about you," Mike's saying.
Mike. Yes. Right.
"And they did a checkup on me, just like you asked. You know what?"
"Nope."
"I'm going to have a baby."
"Murdoc!"
"That," the assassin says, "was considerably faster than usual. Are you learning?"
"I can't stop you using Mike's image to get at me," Jack hisses at him. "I know that. I know she wouldn't blame me for what I can't help- but damned if I'll let you mock her in that way. You don't get to do that to her. Not even in a dream."
"Or what?" Murdoc asks, contemptuous. "If you had a way out of here, you'd have deployed it by now. You can't stop me."
"I can run away from Mike. Lose myself so far away, even you wouldn't be able to catch me. And then your whole scheme, whatever it is, has to be worse than useless."
"Why would you want to? Lazy as her characterisation is," Murdoc says, casually indifferent, "this is a reasonable match for a body you fancied. She feeds you. She's adequate for the thoroughly low-brow individual you are, there's no conceivable reason for you to abandon her."
"No reason for my mother to abandon me, either," Jack snaps; and the greenhouse vanishes, under the sudden onslaught -
no vocabulary for this, neither feelings nor thoughts nor emotions. Hopeless, undefinable ache that comes from hearing train whistles (why?), memory of a memory of near-tears over a motherly lily-of-the-valley perfume (third lay, on a twilit park bench), a hundred real schemes and a thousand imagined ones to keep himself safe and happy, because if he left it up to others there'd be nothing but dull-edged hunger and shards of broken trust (rage)
And the rage, velvet coils in waiting, that he'd packed securely away as a young child. Because rage just wasn't what he wanted Jack Dalton to be. But there it remains, nonetheless, and if he has to become that - if he's forced to become it, to escape this abuse-
(repeating mistakes; Mac keeps trying to die in an accident, Becky needs to be a dreamer. What was their mistake, Murdoc? How are you going to be caught?)
"Enough," Murdoc says, in quiet tones, and restores normality. Though only to an extent: the sky above them is night now, and Mike is gone. "Enough. I'll let you wake up now."
Jack doesn't even stop to ask the catch.
Awake again, yes. Mac's sure of it, Nikki's sure of it.
Jack's not sure of it, until he dizzily rests a hand against Becky and feels his wrist tingling oddly. Not unpleasant, but he moves away quickly.
"There's something I've forgotten," he says, a little weakly.
Nikki spares him the time for a look that's only half-annoyed. "What?"
"What the heck is it that I do for a living?"
"…you're a pilot. You've seriously forgotten that?"
For a moment, what she's saying makes perfect sense. Of course he's a pilot. That's what he does.
But as the thought of flying sinks in, all those images of rising away from the ground, vertigo envelopes him, thick and hard enough to choke him. How did he do this? How did he ever dare?
"Can't be," Jack forces out. "I'm afraid of heights."
"Nonsense," Mac says. "You were always fine with those, it was me who couldn't stand them…I mean, can't…"
There is a difference between Mac's silences when he's thinking, and when he's listening, and when he's just sitting around enjoying the hockey results, and one of the main problems about being a friend of his is distinguishing the varied flavours of same. This one is not wholesome.
"Come on," Jack implores. "Go find one. Roof of the building should be high enough."
Mac vanishes; Nikki helps him down from the impossibly dizzying height of the chair. Resting against the safe, solid ground, listening to the hum of machinery.
"I'll find you a pillow."
"Don't bother."
They compromise; he curls up on one of Becky's extra quilts, his head propped a little by the bunched material. Down here, the nausea settles; his head starts to clear. Maybe, maybe it'll be okay.
Before he knows it (too soon), Mac's back. Kneeling in front of him, with his usual polite indifference for formalities.
"You were right, Jack," he says. "Six floors up, and I didn't blink. It's gone."
"This is Murdoc's doing, isn't it?" Nikki says, her analytical zeal much in evidence. "He's upped his game. He's causing effects that persist even after the dream's over."
Jack pulls a corner of quilt over himself, starts to quietly weep. Mac takes his hand and holds it tightly, staring at the comatose figure on the bed.
Please, princess. Please.
Cause I don't think any of us can stand much more of this…