and once again this mission ended up longer than i thought it was, so the resolution to it shall have to wait another chapter.

now, onward! thanks so much as always, y'all are the best and i hope this chapter delivers. it's a favorite.

also as a note - i crosspost on ao3, and i've kind of lost the thread on what the etiquette of responding to reviews on here is, and i'm not sure how. but please know that each and every one is a joy and a delight to me and i appreciate them all.

(this chapter title is from mother mother's song 'get up')


It's really pretty easy to learn the ropes in the Northguard camp. Mac and Jack emerge from Curtis's mobile home the next morning, emerging into daylight that brings no warmth to the Earth it shines down on. The snow stopped falling at some point in the night, leaving maybe two or three inches of fresh fall on their parked truck, and indistinguishably added to that already on the ground. Jack catches him before they step through the door, apparently dissatisfied with the level of bundling Mac had taken it upon himself to do, once again pulling that hat from Curtis and Evelyn down over Mac's blond hair. The action has Mac standing, frozen and confused, taking a moment to lurch into motion and take the scarf Jack hands him next.

He doesn't try and put the scarf on this time, merely holding it out and waiting for Mac to take it. Mac accepts the fabric, tossing it around himself and tucking it into his jacket, cringing at the memory of what he'd done the day before, when they'd been standing in almost this same spot. It had been odd enough when Jack had just tugged the hat over his head, short-circuiting Mac's ability to respond to expected outcomes. Historically, people reaching abruptly for him has not ended well at all, and he was perfectly capable of putting his hat on himself. That Jack would do that, such a pointless and inexplicable action, hands brushing over Mac's head, had struck him dumb.

And then Jack had gone to loop the scarf around his neck, and Mac had snatched it out of his hands before he could, already thrown off by the strange, alien kind of affection involved in putting a hat on for someone. As he was already off-balanced, the sudden sight in his peripheral vision of someone reaching for him, straight towards the ugly scarring hidden by his jacket, had been too much to control his reflexes. Mac puts a hand up, pressing down over the fabric currently hiding the old injury, rolling his shoulder a little as he walks down the steps, following Jack out into the new light of the day. The scar has been aching since he set foot in this unbearable climate, settling into a persistent pain reminding him of just how tenuous and fragile his grip on life - and even more so on trust - is.

Breakfast is laid out in the main building, the one the others are all centered around. It's a former park ranger's outpost that was decommissioned a while back, then taken over by the Northguard when Holte moved his operation out of Grand Marais proper. It now houses the showers, laundry facilities, and a large industrial kitchen, all utilized by the residents of the encampment. A rotating schedule of militia footsoldiers put together a daily breakfast, while grocery runs happened every couple of days, leaving individuals on their own to either make their own lunches and dinners or plan them as a group.

It sounds almost like a nice, communal way to live, if it weren't for all the guns and the hostile looks and the weapons shipments laying in a shipping container somewhere in the woods and general one-charismatic-leader-away-from-a-cult vibe the whole place has.

Breakfast is doled out and eaten quickly, Mac losing track of what it had been before he's hardly left the building. Holte's daughter, Grace, is leading their tour of the Northguard's camp, showing them around everything of note that they hadn't been able to get to the previous night. She's walking briskly through the snow, boots crunching rapidly and head held high like she hardly notices the cold. Mac supposes that if you spent your whole life out here, you might get used to it. He tries to look unaffected as well, telling himself that Mac Nylander grew up here, is as used to this as Grace Holte is.

It doesn't really work, and Mac hopes he can pass his frown off as the sullen attitude his cover identity came with, unhappy to be dragged up here on his 'uncle's crusade to turn him into a productive member of society. There isn't much to see on their tour, and they make it quickly, doing a circuit of the mobile homes and the pathway to the shipping container where the weapons are stored prior to being sent upstate to the border. Mac can only imagine how they'd got the container out here to begin with.

It's set up on cinderblocks to avoid getting buried too deep in the snow to be accessed, and a rather complex looking electronic lock holds the door shut. For all their rustic image, it would seem the Northguard isn't above taking advantage of technology when it benefits them.

For the most part, it would seem that the daily operations of the camp were centered around the manifest and quality verification of the shipments of weapons, as well as the maintenance of the perimeter. Every item to be sent to their distributor at the border is to be carefully gone over, taken apart, and checked for flaws. An aspect of Holte's paranoia seems to have manifested itself as an obsessive need to verify the quality and operability of every weapon that passed through the Northguard up into Canada. This took a lot of time, given the sheer number of shipments now changing hands at this point in the operation. As for the perimeter, patrols are conducted in pairs or sometimes threes, making sure there's no indication of law enforcement or curious townspeople disturbing their remote hideout.

None of it sounds hard, in fact it all sounds boring as dirt to Mac, while Jack is doing a decent job at least pretending that this is exactly the kind of thing he'd sign up for in his daily life. The hard part is going to be sneaking around behind their backs in the few minutes here and there he won't have someone's eyes on him to track down the biologic before it managed to change hands. The next shipment is set, just like Curtis had predicted, for a week from the day they'd arrived, leaving six days from today in which to find the bioweapon and get it out of there.

Just six days. Six days to move amongst the Northguard and pretend he's one of them. Six days to be Mac Nylander, directionless drifter of a young man dragged by his uncle into the woods to learn direction. He can do this. Mac can do six days.

Days one and two pass without incident. Mac finds he doesn't exactly… dislike it, living with Jack, coming 'home' at the end of the day to that cramped, cold mobile home. He misses Bozer fiercely, there's no question, and he talks to Riley on the phone about something not at all related to their job at least once a day, chatter that lets him pretend he's somewhere other than this terrible, frozen place. Every so often, Mac finds himself with a handful of spare, unsupervised minutes, and he's able to slip away, poking around in the main building or near the shipping container, but all he's able to verify is where the biologic isn't.

He also gets to overhear a number of truly delightful conversations in the main building during mealtimes, conversations that remind him this is a seperatist militia. Conversations about some kind of violent insurrection in the same kind of dreamy, distant tone with which a person discusses retiring to the beach in Hawai'i, about an 'us' and a 'them' and what 'us' should do about, to 'them'. It makes Mac's skin crawl just to hear it. Luckily, he and Jack are still regarded too much as outsiders to be pulled into the conversations themselves.

The third night they spend in the Northern Minnesotan woods, Mac wakes in the middle of the night, the wind howling outside, screeching past the walls of the mobile home like there's a spirit outside wailing out its pain. He fumbles a hand out from under the cocoon of blankets around him and squints at the bright light of his phone, lancing through the darkness. The weather app shows the temperature, windchill factored in, to be twenty-six degrees below zero outside. With a low groan in the back of his throat, hopefully mostly drowned out by the wind, Mac puts the phone back face-down on the floor beside his bed, and tries to get a few more hours' sleep.

One thing that does not change over the first few days that Luke Holte and Will Anderson do not, in any way, take Mac seriously. The two men in charge of the camp, it becoming quickly obvious that Anderson is not just Holte's lieutenant but his right hand, even before the twins, hardly speak to him. When they address him at all, it's mainly through Jack, offhandedly snapping that Jack should 'tell your boy' this or 'make sure your nephew' that. It has a strangely dehumanizing effect, this bizarre hierarchy of age, with specific deference given to the fact that Jack's cover is his cover's uncle, an older family member and therefore, by Northguard views, completely in charge of him.

This attitude, and exactly how serious the Northguard are when it comes to a deferential attitude from their younger members, comes to a head one night as Mac and Jack are working alone with Anderson in the shipping container. The pieces of several semi-automatic weapons are laid out on a table, being cleaned before being re-assembled and packed back away in their boxes. Jack is going over them, ensuring everything looks as it should, while Mac is relegated to repacking, monotonously putting pieces away in boxes exactly as they'd come.

Anderson is sitting at the table with a map spread open in front of him, walking Jack through the route they'll take with the upcoming shipment. He's mostly been ignoring Mac, speaking directly to Jack and pointing at the map that Mac has only gotten periodic glances at. Mac is sitting there, having trouble maneuvering a piece back into its place due to the tight way they were packed together, when Jack glances over like he's been doing periodically all evening, in a lull in Anderson's monologue.

"If you twist it to the side, it'll-"

"I know, Jack, I wasn't born yesterday." The moment he says it, Mac regrets the way it came out, sullen and snappish like he actually is someone's combative, bratty nephew. He's ashamed of having given in to the impulse. The claustrophobia of this snow-locked countryside and how pretending at a familial relationship with Jack is making him feel has left him on edge and about to lash out, and it isn't Jack's fault he's having such inexplicable trouble with this mission.

Before he has the opportunity to apologize for it, though, before he can so much as make eye contact with Jack, there's a sudden burst of pain in Mac's skull. He blinks the surprised stars from his eyes and tries to get his bearings, figure out what's happened. Anderson is standing over him, having just shot out a hand and cuffed him over the back of the head, knocking his beanie off onto the floor and leaving his hair disheveled and falling into his face. It was a hard, shocking slap, and Mac is speechless, breath hitching and heart galloping in his chest.

Luckily, someone else saves him the need to speak at all. Another hand comes out of nowhere, seizing Anderson by the wrist and yanking him back before he can make another move towards Mac.

"HEY." The word is a half-shout, rocketed into the air of the storage unit and shattering it. "You do not lay a finger on him, Will, you understand me?" Jack's voice is furious and Mac can see him out of the corner of his eye, having stepped between the two of them, physically blocking the large, imposing man's line of sight, never mind his reach. He doesn't think he's ever seen Jack this angry, the entire time they've known each other.

"Keep your boy in line and I won't have to, Jack, that's not how we talk to those older than us around here," the militia lieutenant snaps back, jerking his arm out of Jack's grip and glaring first at him, then back at Mac. The pain's already faded, but the jar to the system hasn't, and Mac feels like he's been knocked off-balance. His skin itches and he wants to run. "Your nephew wants to stay here with us, he's gonna have to get used to that. Now you, Nylander, you'd better keep a harder grip on him, cause he mouths off like that to you, pretty soon he'll start with us. Discipline begins in the home, see to it he understands that."

He steps back, sneer carved so deep into his face it's like he's been sculpted from stone. Anderson's eyes flick from Jack to Mac and back again, and Mac feels like he's about to have a panic attack at any moment.

The door closes softly behind Anderson, disappearing out into the snow, and the room sits in stiff, uncomfortable quiet. Jack leans down and fishes the knitted black hat off the floor. He doesn't make a move to put it on Mac himself this time, handing it to Mac from a distance. If Mac hadn't reached out to take the hat from him, there was no way their hands could have even met. He does reach out and take it, though, and neither of them acknowledge the way his fingers shake, grasping the material.

For a moment, it looks like Jack might be about to walk closer to him, might be about to reach out to him, touch him. For a moment, Mac thinks he might want him to, might wish more than anything that Jack would give him something steady to hold onto. At the last moment, though, just when it seems like Jack is taking a step forward, Mac abruptly stands, yanking the hat back onto his head, a dull pulse echoing from the back of his head where Anderson's palm had whacked against his skull.

They make short work of the rest of the case of guns, and Mac is glad that Jack doesn't try to make him talk about what just happened. Every so often he'll glance up and find Jack looking at him, watching him with an odd, unsettled look on his face, the anger still clinging around the edges. Mac looks quickly away when this happens, trying furiously not to let his hands keep shaking as he slots pieces of metal back together.

"If he ever tries to lay a hand on you again," Jack says suddenly, as they're on their way back to their temporary lodgings, "you tell me right away." His breath fogs out in front of him and his cheeks are red with cold, though Mac suspects something else may also be contributing to the color. He seems upset, and something about it prickles in Mac's chest, settles nausea into his gut. "If he so much as looks at you funny, I swear to god, Mac…"

If it's the cold, plummeting with the sun as it dips down below the horizon, or the words in that hard, worked up voice, Mac doesn't know, but something makes his breath stop in his chest. His throat hurts and he swallows hard. He tries to find something to say, some way to respond to that, the protective oath Jack has just made to Mac and the cold air and the dusk sky. They're walking back up the narrow steps and into the mobile home, and Jack still isn't done, apparently, because as they get inside, he turns to face Mac, starting again.

"No. Actually. I just… I don't want you to ever be alone with Anderson, okay? He's not gonna get the opportunity to pull anything like that again."

"Jack!" Mac snaps at the same time that his patience does.

His chest feels odd, breath catching and coming out ragged, and he doesn't know what's happening. For some reason, what Jack said, the image of him putting himself immediately between Mac and the man who'd hit him, it has him torn between running as far as he can get and breaking down sobbing and begging Jack to keep him, to stay, to please just stay. One of those options is infinitely safer than the other, and Mac, in his second moment of childish pique of the evening, lets anger win.

"It was a slap! It's not like the guy shot me or anything, it is not that big of a deal. And what does it matter to you, anyway? You keep- I'm not your nephew! I'm not really your nephew, you're not really my uncle, and you're definitely not my-"

The words choke dead in Mac's throat and he feels awful. Despite not having finished the sentence, both of them know what he'd been about to say next. The unspoken word hangs in the air between them and Mac feels his eyes stinging, his throat aching and tight. Whatever Jack is going to do, however this ends, Mac is going to deserve it. He's finally pushed too hard too many times, and if Jack is going to walk away, Mac is going to deserve it. If Jack takes a leaf out of Anderson's book and decides to slap him over the head or across the face, Mac is going to deserve it. So he sits down on his bed, refusing to allow himself to look away, and waits.

"You're my responsibility," Jack says.

There's no shouting. No slap. Jack's voice has gone quiet and oddly subdued, and Mac feels a hard spike of guilt lance through him. He wants to say something, to walk it back into the way it was meant, that Jack had no reason taking on more obligation than he needed to, that Jack wasn't beholden to him the way a father was to a son. That the more he acted like he was, the more Mac got used to it, and the more terrified that made him.

"I'm not going to stand there while some blowhard slaps you around. It's not going to happen. I don't care what I'm not," though Jack's face leads one to believe otherwise, "what I am is the person here to keep you safe, and I'm gonna do that. Regardless of how objectively serious it is, whether there's any kind of physical damage done, the bottom line is that people do not get to hurt you, and especially not in front of me. It's unacceptable and I won't allow it."

Jack gives it a few moments, where Mac thinks he might be waiting for a response, even some kind of acknowledgement, and then turns to go. He has perimeter sweep that night with one of the other grunts with the militia, and the door closes with a light click behind him as he steps out into the freezing night. Mac is left alone in their temporary home, knowing full well he's messed up and having no idea how to fix it. Just as he's about to turn around and walk to his bed, for lack of any other recourse, a sound outside stops him.

The walls of the mobile home are thin and not especially well sound-guarded, and he can hear a voice, just beyond the door. Jack's patrol partner, one of the few women in the camp, he thinks it's the one with the bright red hair and the glasses. Mary-something maybe. The voices start close and peter off with distance, indicating she and Jack are walking away, leaving Mac only able to catch the first few sentences.

"Heard about what happened with Anderson," Mary-something says. Mac's entire body is dead-still, frozen inside with his hat and scarf still on, listening as hard as he can. "And look, Nylander, if you love your nephew at all-"

"I do."

"Well, okay, then you need to keep him in line around Anderson. You don't know what could happen if the kid pisses him off too bad."

The conversation fades too far away to hear any more than that, and Mac's knees almost go out. Numb, he stumbles over to his bed, dropping heavily onto the mediocre mattress. He feels like he's been gutted, like something heavy and freezing cold has slammed into his chest and knocked all of the breath out of him. Because Jack hadn't hesitated, hadn't even waited for Mary-something to fully finish her question before asserting his answer, strong and without a moment's pause.

If you love him at all- I do.

Mac feels the words more strongly than he'd felt Anderson's hand cuffing the hat off his head, more deeply than the cold that's not left him for a moment since the plane touched down in Duluth. It hurts to hear, because it makes him wonder who had said it. Jack Dalton or Jack Nylander? And who had he been talking about - Dalton's partner or Nylander's nephew?

Jack might like him, Mac can understand that. Jack might even care about him more than he was supposed to by the nature of the job. But love is something different. Love is something more frightening and dangerous than anything they've faced in their almost year working together, if only because, in this moment alone in this mobile home in the middle of nowhere Northern Minnesota woods, Mac can admit, just to himself, that he wants it. The idea that Jack might actually love him, might look at the arrogant, distant, combative kid he'd been assigned to when Matty brought him on and see something worth staying for… All of it scares Mac to death with how much he wants it to be true. How much it can't be true.

Eventually, Mac gets himself under control, pressing his hands hard over his face to scrub away the remnants of the ragged way this day has worn him down. All he wants is to find this bioweapon, get ahold of it, and get the hell out of Minnesota. Maybe once this mission is over and they're home, far away from the snow and the cold and the Northguard, away from the Holtes and from Will Anderson, things will go back to normal.

He lays down, yanks the covers over himself, and sleep does not come.

The floor of the mobile home creaks under the footsteps Mac has come to recognize in pattern as Jack's, walking from the door not to his own bed, but instead toward Mac's. It takes every ounce of self control Mac has to maintain the illusion that he's sound asleep, keeping still as the footsteps slow and stop beside his bed. There's the soft rustle of fabric as Jack bends down, and the blankets are pulled up higher, until Mac's chest and shoulder are completely covered, fabric just brushing his chin. A tender, feather-light brush of fingers over the back of his head follows, ghosting over where Anderson had hit him.

Mac manages, somehow, to stay still, to prevent the catch in his breath from appearing to be anything other than that, a slight hitch of a sleeping chest. He expects that to be the end of it, but somehow it isn't, and the touch remains, making him feel as small as Holte and Anderson ignoring and talking over him had, but in a way that makes him feel safe rather than scared.

The hand on his head moves whisper-gently, smoothing over his hair again and again, and it seems almost like Jack is trying to erase the memory of Anderson hitting him. It's almost working, too, the small flashes of the brief moment of violence quelled in the face of the constant, gentle pressure on his head now, the slight dip of Mac's mattress where Jack is now perched at the edge of it. It reminds him, oddly and out of nowhere, of when he'd been shot in Stockholm, waking up in a Swedish hospital with James standing beside his bed.

He'd been shot in the neck and nearly died, and when he'd woken up, his father had looked at him, long and silent, until the pain meds took him back under again. The next time he woke, James had launched into a lecture about carelessness and keeping your guard up, about watching his own back because he's never going to be a great agent if he doesn't live long enough to learn to be one. James had gone on that disappointed, angry, maybe-worried rant, and then he'd left, eyes snapping abruptly off Mac as he'd walked out of the room, leaving Mac alone with his thoughts and thirty stitches he was too scared of ripping to so much as move his head to watch his father leave.

For several long, wordless minutes, Jack sits on the edge of his mattress, hand brushing over the back of Mac's head, strands of hair catching around his calloused fingers. It's impossible to understand, the way everything he'd ever wanted and never gotten from James seemed so easy for Jack, and maybe that's why he does it. Maybe that's why, after all the lights have been extinguished and Jack has left, gone back to his own bed and laid down, he starts talking.

"I'm sorry." Mac's not sure where he finds the guts to say it, knowing that the moment he opens his mouth, Jack will know he's been awake the whole time, but he does. Somehow, he does, and the words float out into the room like they had their first night there, but in the other direction. "I didn't mean-" His mouth is dry and his face feels hot despite the cold, and Mac can't get the rest of the sentence out. "I'm sorry."

For a long moment, he wonders if Jack might have fallen asleep, or simply not known what to say in response. Then, just as Mac is about to roll over and hope to find some sleep himself, comes the voice, quiet but clearly audible in the small space.

"It's okay. I know you didn't." A pause, easy and non-threatening. "I promise. It's okay."

Mac closes his eyes tight shut and decides to try, at least try, to believe it.