Title: Ignorance
Author: Val Mora
Rating: T (that's PG-13 for the real world)
Pairing: Roger/Mac
Disclaimer: Not mine; all to MGM/UA and the other people associated
with the making of the movie. Except for the innuendo, which is
mine.
Roger does not know how Mac cannot have learned it. Mac knows everything else – after all, he was designated Intelligence for a reason.
Mac knew about the vodka but pretended he didn't so that the Americans could have their little secret, so that he wouldn't have to tell Roger what they were up to with the potatoes.
He memorised all the goons' timetables and can spout them off when called for. He can also remember conversations and repeat five-minute exchanges without mistakes and remember it for two days, even when it's in German.
He knew about Ives being close to wire-happy long before anyone else did, and tried to cheer him up. Roger knows he did, because there was something broken in Mac's eyes after Ives charged the fence. Not that it compared to the way Mac looked at Hilts like he expected him to break, too, and the satisfied, grim smile on his face after Hilts promised to escape for them, because it meant Hilts wasn't broken.
Mac's figured out where Hendley gets half the things he does, how a few of the goons are so wrapped around his fingers that they're staring back the way they were before he twisted them 'round so they don't even realise they're helping the Allies more than they are the Germans.
Roger could ask him anything, and Mac would answer. How he'd answer, though – that could change. Because Roger does not think Mac would answer the one question that he wants to ask.
And he's been so careful, so terribly careful, not to reveal anything for Mac to learn. He is too sure that someone else would notice, maybe even the goons, and even if von Luger didn't use it, the Gestapo would. Mac is not weak, but he is Roger's weakness.
But Mac has ways of knowing everything, and Roger hopes sometimes that maybe Mac knows anyway. There's a reason he's Intelligence, and it is this: he does not have to be told for him to know it.
So Roger is hoping that Mac knows it anyway.
