please just imagine me sending cosmic waves of love and appreciation out to you in the universe. thank you so much. i love writing this fic and your positivity and reception of it makes me love working on it that much more.
(chapter title from half alive's "the fall".)
In the month since the mission in Croatia, the one where Mac was shot, life at DXS settles into a kind of routine. Jack keeps a close eye on him on missions, careful and watchful, and he starts thinking of it as a tally system of sorts. Every time he blocks a shot or takes out a threat before Mac has to worry about it, he counts it as a point in his favor, a pebble on the scale, weighing it down towards trust. Jack isn't used to this, to having to win the faith of the partner he's been assigned to protect, but those EOD techs, the geniuses with the magic hands, they'd all understood his role from the start. Mac is different, though, and without that foundation, the solid understanding of what he was here to do, and his dedication to doing it, it's a foundation he's having to build, piece by piece.
The day that Mac calls out over the radio, calls Jack in because there's a man approaching the hideout where he's rewiring a panel to cut communications between a warlord and his generals, is one he remembers proudly. He swoops in and takes care of the problem swiftly and soundly, and the look on Mac's face when he looks up is one that struck him to the core. There had been surprise there, enough to be notable, and something else too. Something thoughtful, and serious. They'd exchanged a wordless nod, and that was that.
After that day, Mac does it again. And Jack feels the scales as they tip. It's hard work, and it's slow, and it's frustrating more days than it isn't, but it's working.
Those first few missions, the errands and package runs, they were as Jack expected. Training wheels. After that, things get harder, more complicated, more dangerous, and Jack takes it in stride. He feels himself coming alive under it, the work, and he can see more and more clearly why Matty brought him into this.
The further out they venture and the longer they're gone for, the more paradoxically Jack finds himself rooted in Los Angeles. He gets a lease at an actual apartment, one he likes, and starts buying furniture, redecorating. Goes out into his new neighborhood, finds the hole in the wall restaurants only the locals know about. Introduces himself to the single mother on the floor above his, the trio of grad students who live on the floor below. And all the while he begins to settle into his life outside DXS, it strikes him as more and more strange that, every time he walks back into the building, Mac is there.
It isn't just for missions, or specific assignments the two of them are on together, or some side project the Director has him on alone. He's there late at night and early in the morning, when Jack is in taking care of the paperwork he's taken over for their little team. It seems like Mac is always somewhere, a glimpse of him caught here and there, as the doors are closing to the elevator down to R&D, walking past outside a window and gone by the time Jack realizes he'd been there. It's so frequent that Jack begins to wonder if he ever goes home, if he's here all hours because there's nothing else for him to be doing.
As frustrating and prickly as he is, Jack can't help but feel like he's becoming attached to the kid he's been assigned to protect. It makes him worry, the way Mac seems to be completely absorbed in work every time Jack sees him, and then annoyed at himself for being worried, and then hypocritical for judging Mac for the same kind of behavior he himself is engaged in. It stands to reason he wouldn't see Mac at DXS all the time if he wasn't at DXS all the time, but then, he's new to town. Mac is young. He's twenty-three, he should be out there with his friends, going to parties and enjoying his life. He shouldn't be doing this kind of job, and even allowing for him being the kind of prodigious wunderkind he's swiftly proving himself to be, he shouldn't be so wrapped up in it that he's never doing anything else.
Jack is well aware he sounds like a grumpy old man waving a cane around and demanding these younguns get off his lawn and get a life. But it's worrying, nevertheless. He tries to put it out of his mind, not to get too involved in his young partner's personal life. What Mac does with his time is his business, Jack supposes, and if he wants to spend all of it here, so be it.
Another development in the month following Croatia is that Jack starts to see Matty around DXS as well. The early-transition nightmare is dying down, the dust left behind by her explosive introduction to the Deputy Director position settling and allowing her to form some kind of a routine too. She runs the prep for a few of their missions, and Jack has to admit, he enjoys getting to work with her again. She's efficient and to the point without losing her knack for pointed moments of humor, even in tense situations. Jack remembers quickly why she was one of the best people he's ever worked alongside, and it's not just for her work ethic.
It's late in the afternoon, just after the completion of their fifth mission, a successful, if freezing, operation in a remote location in Siberian Russia, and Jack is on a walk outside DXS. After the harsh climate he'd just spent four days in, which was four days too many if he's being completely honest, the warmth of the Los Angeles sun is a welcome reprieve. He'd missed the weather - it's nice to not feel like he's about to freeze to death even with three layers of coats on - and he's going to enjoy as much of it as he can before he goes in to write his after-action. He's got an orange in his hands that he'd picked up from a roadside produce stand on his way in that day, and the smell of it cuts through the air, sharp and sweet.
Mac was there when he arrived and Jack is sure he's still there now, somewhere in that building, doing god-knows-what. Jack tries to put it out of his mind just at the moment, worry about it later. Right now he wants to enjoy the sun on his face.
"Dalton."
The raised voice calling his name catches his attention and he looks back towards the building. It's Matty, having just emerged from one of the side doors, the one nearest the hall of directors, as he's taken to referring to where the heads of department offices are located. He squints at her, trying to make out her expression from more than a dozen feet away. She doesn't look very pleased, certainly doesn't look like she's enjoying the gorgeous day the way he is, which is a damn shame if you ask Jack - it is really a gorgeous day. When she waves, indicating him over, the movement impatient and furtive, like she's worried about being seen, Jack's own enjoyment of the day begins to fade.
As he crosses the pavement walkway separating them, the one winding all the way around the building, Jack tries to go slowly. He wants to enjoy at least these last moments of his sunny, late Los Angeles afternoon with this nice breeze and this nice orange before whatever Matty's about to tell him surely ruins it entirely. Jack puts the last section of the orange into his mouth as he reaches her, and tries to ignore how it suddenly tastes bitter.
"Everything okay?" he asks her when the orange is gone, peel tossed away in the grass next to the sidewalk.
"Do you have a minute to speak to me in my office? There's something I want to talk with you about." Matty's voice is tight and too casual in a way that makes Jack instantly nervous.
"Sure," he agrees, and without another word she turns and goes back inside. Jack follows shortly after.
Compared to the bright sun hanging low in the sky, the lighting inside DXS is weak and gloomy. Jack blinks in the sudden dim, waiting for his eyes to adjust, already missing the natural light, among other aspects of what his life was like five minutes ago, before whatever is about to happen got started. Matty's office is pretty far down the hall, several doors away from Director MacGyver's. Jack is grateful at least that the man isn't around to run into and won't be extremely nearby - he's not had direct issues with his boss so far, but something about the man is off-putting.
"How are you settling in?" Matty asks when they're both seated, she at her desk and Jack in one of the chairs across it, facing her.
"I'm settling in fine," he says, and it's the truth. "Apartment's nice. Neighbors are nice. Sun's nice, especially after, y'know. Siberia."
"I'm sure. And your partner? How are you getting on with him?"
"Well," sighs Jack, eyes roaming up over the bland beige ceiling of Matty's office and wondering how to describe the constant surprise of a living headache that is Angus MacGyver, "the kid is on my last nerve, swear to God it's like he's bound and determined to turn all my hair grey and put me in an early grave, but y'know. Other than that." He looks back to her, notes her unimpressed expression, and nods. "You were right, though. He's nothing I've ever seen before, he's incredible. He's driving me nuts but he's incredible."
"That sounds about right," Matty agrees, with a hint of a smile. It doesn't last long though, and soon her face is back to the mask of seriousness that it's been since he saw her outside.
"Alright, Matty." Squaring his shoulders, Jack straightens up in his chair and looks straight at her, eye contact a steady challenge. "I know you didn't call me in here just to chat about my partner. If it was that, you could've caught me in the hall any time, but here I am, in your office, and I'm getting the same sort of feeling from this conversation that I got in the park, day you offered me this job. What is this about?"
If anything, the feeling Jack has today is stronger and worse than the one he'd had at that table with Matty those weeks ago, when he'd unknowingly driven right into a new chapter in his life. He had no idea what he was walking into that day, and with how strange that turned out to be, he can't imagine what is about to happen now. It can't get much stranger - but then again, Jack is learning that you can't take such things for granted in life, especially not this life.
"Your recent mission," Matty says, getting right to the point, now that she's been called out on her preamble obfuscating her main point, and not well. "Siberia."
"Stolen nuclear waste, not enough for any kind of huge damage, but enough for a small weapons test, maybe enough for a prototype. A trial run, maybe, for something bigger. We got in, got it, got out." The cliff's notes are easy enough, but it had been a lot harder than that, and had almost been harder still. "It went fine." Jack cringes, and amends the statement. "For the most part, anyway."
"Define for the most part."
Jack's head tips to the side and he considers how to put it. "I mean it could've been worse, but I caught the issue before anybody got hurt or anything like that. Exfil had the wrong location, when I got back to where the sat-phone could catch a signal, I learned they were twenty miles off the mark. Lucky thing we hadn't dumped the truck yet, or we'd have had to hike it on foot, may have missed the extraction window entirely."
Matty nods, looking thoughtful, but not surprised. Jack's eyes narrow and he leans forward, elbow braced on the arm of his chair.
"What is going on here?" he asks directly. "Something is clearly going on. You're acting weird - my partner's been acting weird since the minute I met him. This whole place is weird, something is up, and you really ought to tell me what it is now so we can cut the nonsense and get to the point rather than asking me all of these roundabout questions about my mission when you could've just read the after action when I wrote it."
Just like that day in the park, she admits it without any amount of runaround or protest.
"You're right," Matty says. "There is something going on here, and to be completely honest, I had motives beyond what I told you when I brought you that job offer, when I brought you on here. It wasn't just about a job opening and keeping you occupied, and Agent MacGyver needing a partner who could keep up."
"Then what was it about?" Jack is growing swiftly impatient with this conversation. He feels like he's become an unwitting pawn in a chess game being played far above his head, and it's not the kind of feeling he's ever been comfortable with. Someone better start reading him in on the moves, and now. "I can't help unless I know what's going on, and you've gotta want my help, or it wouldn't've been me you brought on, you're smarter than that."
"I am," confirms Matty, and it would be arrogance coming from just about anyone else. From her, it's just the honest truth. "And I do. I want your help figuring out what exactly it is that's going on here. Because something is happening at DXS, and it's something that should not be. You said exfil would've been sent to the wrong location if you hadn't double checked and rerouted them."
"Right," says Jack, the word slow and drawn out. He can't see yet where she's going with this and he feels uneasy.
"Just before you departed for Siberia, I made a few checks on your mission intel. It turns out you'd been given incorrect numbers - the amount of nuclear material reported to be retrieved was off. The original reported numbers were lower - much lower. Enough lower to be insufficient for the creation of a weapon. You would've been expecting to walk into something far, far less serious than you did if I hadn't verified the report against our initial intel. And that exfil team. Sierra November."
"Good folks. Efficient. Solid Russian from uh, the, from-"
"Meredith Casey," Matty fills in, providing the name of the woman who'd gotten them through a potentially sticky situation with an air traffic controller. "She's why I sent them. There was another team slated to go for pickup, Echo Quebec, who you'd met before, which is likely why they were scheduled, but not a single member of their team speaks a word of Russian. If you'd been caught in any kind of position where they had to communicate with anyone but the two of you, we'd have had to scramble to find someone from the lab on comms to translate on the spot. Meredith Casey, with Sierra, she's fluent. So I rescheduled the teams."
"Echo Quebec. The pickup site. The intel numbers. That's a lot of 'could've gone wrongs' and 'would've been bad's for one mission."
"Exactly. I was waiting to see if it was a fluke, or a one-off, but this keeps happening." Matty leans down and opens a locked drawer in her desk, pulling out a stack of folders, print outs paper-clipped to the insides. "Seven mission after actions and intel reports where I was able to identify errors that could have led to major issues with the mission, if not serious injury or death, all of them involving Agent Angus MacGyver. Something is wrong here, and whatever it is, your partner is at the center of it. Now don't get me wrong, I don't believe he's responsible. If anything, he's the reason they haven't been catastrophic."
It's a timely clarification, as the moment she'd said that whatever was going on had Mac at the center of it, Jack felt his hackles go up, the beginning of a protest rise in his throat. He didn't know the kid very well - didn't think the kid wanted to be known, really - but some instinct in him, maybe loyalty to a partner, maybe intuition, had told him that if something bad was happening, Mac wasn't involved. Couldn't be involved. It was a relief to know Matty didn't think so either.
"Have you spoken to the Director about any of this? What's his take?" Jack asks, swallowing down embarrassment at how quickly he'd been about to snap at Matty in defense of a kid he was just on the verge of friendly with.
"He doesn't know."
"He doesn't?" That was a surprise. Matty isn't the type for insubordination, and if she's gone so far as to be compiling files, she should've been in communication with the Director about this by now. "Why not?"
"When he found out about the person who had infiltrated DXS," Matty explains, absently smoothing the edge of a paper sticking out from one of the folders, "the ensuing purge of the Department caused such a disruption that things have only barely settled back down. I don't know how he would react to the suggestion that maybe, in that purge, he didn't get everyone. I don't know how many people would survive a second. If I would, given what happened to my predecessor. So for the moment, this is staying off the Director's radar."
It tells Jack a lot about Matty's opinion of their boss, whether or not she'd meant it to. Jack isn't entirely sure he likes what it's telling him, either. The kind of boss you can't clue into an internal investigation, for fear he may overreact and fire anyone in his path, is not the kind of boss Jack particularly enjoys working for.
The pile of folders is given a short push across Matty's desk, ending up closer to Jack than to Matty.
"I know I've already asked a lot of you. I know this is asking a lot more. But I need somebody I can trust to keep this between us, and somebody close enough to it all to help me sort out what's going on here. I'm not going to order you. But I am asking you. Will you help?"
Jack has known Matty for years. He trusts her, and he owes her, and despite any time, distance, and trouble that's passed between them, she's always been high on the short list of people for whom Jack would drop everyone and come to help if she asked him to. And if that weren't enough, there's the thought of Mac's face, the confusion in him when Jack acted to protect him on missions, the tenuous connection building between them, the first time his partner radioed him for help. Without a moment's hesitation, Jack nods.
"Of course I will. I promise, this stays between us. Whatever it is, we'll figure it out."
Matty nods, satisfaction and just a hint of smug assuredness in her face, like it was confirmation of an answer she'd already known was coming. It's a reaction that makes Jack feel proud and sure it was the right answer. She'd already known he would agree, but had done him the courtesy of asking anyway, acknowledging what she was asking of him.
When he leaves the building, the sun has lost its friendliness, and feels more like a spotlight, leaving him nowhere to hide. The light of the fading day is inescapable and illuminating, and it's everything he can do not to hide the evidence from eyes that may be watching. If he moved to shove it under his jacket, though, it would only look that much more suspicious. For now, he looks like any other agent, taking paperwork home rather than finishing it at the office. The folders feel heavy in Jack's hands. With every step he takes, they feel heavier. By the time he gets to his car and deposits them in the passenger's seat, they feel less like folders of paper and more like bricks.
